Hank Aaron was one of the five best MLB players of all time

Much of Henry Aaron’s baseball legacy is tied to triple digits – 715, 755 and whatever Barry Bonds’ career total is – that we too often overlook his general talent on the court. Put it this way: if you turned his 755 points at home into outs, he again finished with over 3,000 hits. Or another way: he played 23 seasons in the major leagues and was 25 times All-Star (there were several all-star games early in Aaron’s career).

Despite being widely regarded as one of the top five players in MLB history, Aaron has remained underrated among the all-time greats. He played most of his career in the shadow of Willie Mays, his contemporary who was the most visually stunning player thanks to Mays’ defense at center field. Many still consider Babe Ruth the best right fielder. So Aaron ranks simply as the second best player of his generation and the second best right fielder of all time.

When pundits and fans talk about the best hitters in the history of the game, they’re usually talking about Ruth and Ted Williams and Bonds, or even single hitters like Tony Gwynn, before Aaron’s name appeared. No player, however, has played with such sustained and consistent excellence for so long as Aaron.

Showing up everyday isn’t glamorous, but it’s a way to topple Ruth and hit 755 home runs. As a rookie with the Milwaukee Braves in 1954, Henry Aaron broke his ankle in early September, ending his season at 122 games. Maybe he wasn’t quite Cal Ripken as an Ironman, but Aaron didn’t miss many more games after that. From 1955 to 1968, he played 2,157 of 2,214 possible matches, missing an average of just 4.1 games per season. In 1969 and 1970, then aged 35 and 36, he fell to 147 and 150 games.

Along the way, he’s never had a single bad season. His only MVP award came in 1957, but Aaron finished in the top 10 for 13-time voting MVP at a time when the National League was filled with future Hall of Famers vying for the award and finished in the top three in three. different decades. . Here’s one way to look at his high level of play for nearly two decades:

Most seasons of 6-WAR
Aaron 16
Bonds 16
May 15
Ruth 14
Speaker Tris 14

Most seasons 7-WAR
Bonds 14
Aaron 13
May 13
Ruth 12
Lou Gehrig 11

Mays is right up there with Aaron, but even Mays passed out in his late 30s. Mays’ last 30 home season was at age 35 in 1966. As of age 36, he completed 118 home runs. Aaron reached a career high of 47 home runs at 37, and at age 36, he has completed 201 home runs.

This is another testament to Aaron’s consistency. Forty-seven other players have hit at least 47 home runs in a season – 15 of them more than once – but Aaron is still second all-time in home runs. Since he finished his career in 1976, four players have made more home runs at age 30 than Aaron. None of them were able to continue in their thirties:

Up to 30 years
Alex Rodriguez: 464 HR, 85.0 WAR
Ken Griffey Jr .: 438 HR, 76.2 WAR
Albert Pujols: 408 HR, 81.4 WAR
Andruw Jones: 368 HR, 61.0 WAR
Henry Aaron: 366 HR, 80.7 WAR

After 30 years
Rodriguez: 232 HR, 32.5 WAR
Griffey: 192 HR, 7.6 WAR
Pujols: 254 HR, 19.4 WAR
Jones: 66 HR, 1.7 WAR
Aaron: 389 HR, 62.4 WAR

In 1955, in his second season in the majors, at just 21, Aaron hit .314 with 27 home runs, 105 runs and 106 RBIs, his first big season. In 1973, at age 39, he hit .301 with 40 home runs – in just 120 games. But Aaron wasn’t just a puncher. He finished with a career average of 0.305, hitting 0.300 14 times, although many of his peak seasons were in the 1960s, under the most difficult hitting conditions since the deadball era. In an interview with MLB Network last month, Aaron said the thing he was most proud of was “I didn’t hit”.

Indeed, he has never crossed out 100 times in a season and finished with more walks than strikeouts. Keep in mind that Ruth, who was playing at a time with far fewer strikeouts than even Aaron’s, has led her league five times at bat. Ruth has been involved in 12.5% ​​of his appearances on set, Aaron just 9.9% of his. Maybe that’s why Aaron was such a good clutch hitter and RBI guy. He’s hit .324 in his career with runners in goal position, and in “late and close” situations when the game is most on the line he’s hit .318 / .407 / .576 – better than his overall line. of .305 /.374/.555.

Bonds may have passed Aaron on the home run list, but Aaron is still the all-time leader in RBIs and aggregate goals. Using Baseball-Reference.com’s unofficial roster (RBIs have only been considered official since 1920) Aaron’s 2,297 surpass Ruth’s 2,214. Pujols stands at 2,100, but 2021 will likely be his last season.

Aaron walked into the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball booth years ago. At one point there was a runner on second base without an out. Joe Morgan asked Aaron how many times he tried to move the runner to third – perhaps expecting Aaron to say he played the game “the right way” and hit. the ball on the right side. Aaron let out a big, warm laugh. “Never,” he said. “I always tried to hit the guy.”

The total registration of bases could be even more unbreakable. Aaron has 6,856, well ahead of Stan Musial’s 6,134. If another player came in and duplicated Musial’s numbers, he would still need to score 181 home runs to break Aaron’s record.

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Aaron was not only a dominant hitter, but also an exceptional defenseman and baserunner. He won three Golden Gloves, and while the measurements of his day are educated guesswork, Baseball-Reference ranks him ninth among good players in races recorded at over-98 for his career. He stole 240 goals with an excellent success rate, and when he hit 44 homers and stole 31 goals in 1963, he became the third player to go 30-30 in the same season (after Ken Williams and Mays). Joe Torre, his longtime Braves teammate, said he had never seen Aaron make a mistake on the pitch. To top it off, while appearing in just three playoffs (the 1957 and 1958 World Series and the 1969 National League Championship Series), he hit .362 / .405 / .710 with six circuits in 17 matches.

He is the fifth player of all time in WAR’s career:

Bonds: 162.8
Ruth: 162.1
May: 156.2
Ty Cobb: 151.0
Aaron: 143.1

You can add Ted Williams to the conversation (121.9 WAR despite missing several major years due to WWII and the Korean War) – although Williams is not the defender or baserunner that Bonds, Mays and Aaron were. So, yeah, the top five is right, probably before Cobb once you’ve made a timeline adjustment, and you can judge what you want to do with the bonds.

How about playing at the same time as Mays? OKAY. Sure. Mays’ greatness seemed to have made Aaron a bit underrated, even back in the days they were playing. However, not everyone at the time necessarily agreed. Here’s a quote from Hall of Fame third baseman Pie Traynor in 1964: “I’ll take Hank Aaron every day through the months of May. Give me a guy who’ll go play every game, never get tired, won’t complain or swoon on you. … You don’t hear much about Hank, but he’s just as good a defenseman, a runner and a better hitter. “