It is easy to romanticize the emotional resonance of Ken Griffey Jr.’s baseball career.
Mariners’ first superstar; most popular player in the game for several years; 630 home runs. Griffey played with flair and joy and skill, which endeared him to millions, and he saved baseball in Seattle. Literally. Let’s see Mickey Mantle do that.
Yet while that is an impressive résumé, we come here today to examine Griffey’s performance on the field. To examine his place in the baseball pantheon, because that’s what we do here at By the Numbers.
It’s a significant place, for sure. A place of honor, indeed. But one of the drawbacks of living in the Northwest over the past 20 or so years has been the hyperbole surrounding Griffey’s skills.
Great player? Yes, of course. Best center fielder ever? Best player of his era? Best player of the 1990s? Griffey wasn’t close to being any of those things.
Let’s look at the center fielders. I have Griffey ranked seventh all-time: Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, Tris Speaker, Joe DiMaggio, Duke Snider, then Griffey. Here are some quick comparisons:
• Few people would argue that Griffey should be ahead of Mays. We’ll leave it at that.
• For Cobb, let’s use these examples: Cobb led the league in runs five times and RBI four times; Griffey led once in each category. Cobb led the league seven times in on-base percentage and eight times in slugging percentage; Griffey never led in OBP, and led once in slugging.
Those are just some of the many, many advantages for Cobb. You know, if you don’t mind the fact he was an insufferable jerk.
• For Mantle, we’ll simply point out his .421 career on-base percentage, compared with Griffey’s .370.
According to the most sophisticated methods available, a lineup of nine Mickey Mantles would have scored 9.3 runs per game; Griffey’s number would have been 7.2, despite playing in a more offense-friendly era.
• Speaker had 3,514 hits, is the all-time leader in doubles, batted .345, and was the best defensive center fielder in history.
You can argue that baseball was easier to play during Speaker’s career, which ran from 1907 to 1928. And you would be right, if for no other reason than Speaker played when the game was segregated.
But one of the things that marks Speaker as one of the all-time greats is his adaptability. He was a great player during the Deadball Era, and remained great after the advent of the lively ball. He would be a great player in any era.
• DiMaggio had a career Offensive Winning Percentage of .752, compared with Griffey’s .663, and was an A-plus defensive player. DiMaggio played only 13 seasons, but part of that was because of three years in the military during World War II. We won’t dock him points for that.
It’s difficult to make a convincing case that Griffey should rank ahead of any of those guys. To be honest, if somebody is truly among the all-time greats, I would expect them to lead the league in the key categories more often than Griffey did.
Here is the number of times these players led their league in runs, RBI, OBP, slugging, and adjusted OPS (on-base plus slugging, adjusted for home park):
R RBI OBP SLG OPS+
Mays 2 0 2 5 6
Cobb 5 4 7 8 11
Mantle 6 1 3 4 9
Speaker 0 0 4 1 1
DiMaggio 1 2 0 2 1
Griffey 1 1 0 1 0
Those aren’t necessarily huge differences between Griffey and the others. But it certainly doesn’t suggest that he should be ahead of them.
It’s not a criticism to say Griffey wasn’t as good as Mays, Cobb, Mantle, Speaker or DiMaggio — even if people in these parts might disagree. But what about Snider, who isn’t regarded with the same breathless reverence as those other center fielders?
Griffey’s career numbers are far superior to Snider’s, because he was good enough to stick around 500 games longer. But the deciding factor is their peak value. At his best, Snider was better than Griffey.
From 1953-56, Snider batted .320 with a .415 on-base percentage and .626 slugging percentage. For Griffey’s best years, we’ll use 1993-97, and we’ll even throw out the 1995 season in which he was limited to 72 games because of injury. For 1993-94 and 1996-97, Griffey’s percentages were .309/.395/.639.
Snider’s Offensive Winning Percentage during that time was .786; Griffey’s was .746.
If you want to claim Griffey was better than Snider, I won’t argue. But I think I would rather have Snider.
What about defense?
Thus far, we haven’t talked about defense, and that’s where I have a penchant for spitting into the wind. Griffey had a habit of playing very deep, helping him to chase down balls at the warning track or leap to steal would-be home runs.
This was a great way to win Gold Gloves — Griffey captured 10 of them — but it also came with some cost to his team. In short, Griffey was a tremendous outfielder, but he wasn’t quite deserving of the iconic status he was accorded.
About 10 years ago, baseball historian/statistician/guru Bill James developed a sophisticated metric for measuring defensive ability. It takes into account things such as how many left-handed pitchers a team has, how many fly balls the staff allows, etc. James’ numbers show that Griffey was among the three best defensive outfielders in his league — and therefore deserving of a Gold Glove — on two occasions. Those were in 1997 with Seattle, and 2000 with Cincinnati.
According to James’ system, here are how many Gold Gloves each of the top center fielders deserved: Mays 10, Cobb 3, Mantle 5, Speaker 11, DiMaggio 8, Snider 4, Griffey 2.
Now, you might or might not buy into this assessment. And that’s the beauty of the entire issue. Regardless of what the cold analysis of the statistics says, regardless of what some number-crunching geek asserts, it can’t take away what Griffey meant to Mariner fans. It can’t take away the thrill of watching him in his prime, or his importance to baseball in the Northwest.
There are a lot of baseball players who have been better than Ken Griffey Jr. but don’t have half of his highlight reel. That’s important; that’s part of the fun. Griffey was a great player, and will be a deserving first-ballot Hall of Famer. But I have a hard time seeing where he was one of the five best center fielders in history.
