Hank Aaron was one of the five best MLB players ever

So much of Henry Aaron’s baseball legacy is linked to three numbers – 715, 755 and whatever Barry Bonds’ home career eventually ended up with – that we overlook too much brilliance on the field. Put it this way: if you turned his 755 runs into a home run, he still ends with more than 3000 hits. Or to put it another way: he played 23 major league seasons and was a 25-time All-Star (there were several All-Star Games early in Aaron’s career).

Although he is widely regarded as one of the top five players in MLB history, Aaron remains underrated among the everyday greats. He played most of his career in the shadow of Willie Mays, his contemporary who was the more visually breathtaking player thanks to Mays’ defense in center field. Many still consider Babe Ruth to be the greatest referee. Aaron is therefore only the second best player of his generation and the second best right winger of all time.

When experts and fans talk about the best players in the history of the game, they usually talk about Ruth and Ted Williams and Bonds, or even singles like Tony Gwynn, before Aaron’s name appears. However, no player has played as long as Aaron with such sustained, steady excellence.

Arriving every day is not glamorous, but it is one way to overthrow Ruth and pick up 755 home runs. As a rookie at the Milwaukee Braves in 1954, Henry Aaron broke his ankle in early September and ended his season on 122 games. Maybe he wasn’t quite Cal Ripken as Ironman, but Aaron didn’t miss any more games after that. From 1955 to 1968, he played 2157 of the possible 2,214 games, and he averaged just 4.1 games per season. In 1969 and 1970, then 35 and 36 years old, he dropped to 147 and 150 games.

Along the way, he never even had a bad season. His only MVP award was in 1957, but Aaron finished 13 times in the top 10 of the MVP during an era in which the National League was chock-full of future Hall of Famers fighting for the award and in the top three in three different decades ended. . Here is one way to look at its high level of almost two decades:

Most 6-WAR SEASONS
Aaron 16
Mortgages 16
May 15
Ruth 14
Tris speaker 14

Most 7-WAR SEASONS
Mortgages 14
Aaron 13
May 13
Ruth 12
Lou Gehrig 11

Mays is right there with Aaron, but even Mays faded in his late thirties. Mays’ last 30-homer season was at the age of 35 in 1966. From the age of 36, he made 118 home runs. Aaron scored 47 home runs at the age of 37, and from the age of 36 he scored 201 home runs.

This is another proof of Aaron’s consistency. Forty-seven other players have scored at least 47 home games in a season – 15 of them more than once – but Aaron is still in his home race for the second time. Since ending his career in 1976, four players through the age of 30 have scored more home runs than Aaron. None of them could keep it going in their thirties:

Up to 30 years old
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 the age of 30
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 years old, Aaron hit .314 with 27 homers, 105 runs and 106 RBIs, his first major season. In 1973, at the age of 39, he reached .301 with 40 home runs – in just 120 games. But Aaron was not just a slugger. He averaged a career average of 305 and hit 0.300 14 times, though many of his peak seasons were in the 1960s, in the toughest passing conditions since the set pieces era. In an interview with MLB Network just last month, Aaron said that the thing he was most proud of was that ‘I did not strike’.

Indeed, he never hit a hundred times in a season and ended up with more runs than strikeouts. Keep in mind that Ruth, who played in an era with far fewer strikes than even Aaron’s era, led his league five times in strikes. Ruth inflated in 12.5% ​​of his record appearances, Aaron in just 9.9% of him. Maybe that’s why Aaron was such a good clutch and RBI man. He hit .324 in his career with runners in the points position, and in “late and tight” situations when the game was most at stake, he hit .318 / .407 / .576 – better than his overall line of .305 /.374/.555.

Bonds may have surpassed Aaron on the home list, but Aaron is still the leading leader in RBIs and total bases. Using the unofficial list on Baseball-Reference.com (RBIs are only considered official since 1920), Aaron’s 2,297 Ruths surpasses 2,214. Pujols stands at 2,100, but 2021 is likely to be his last season.

Years ago, Aaron entered the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball booth. At one point, there was a runner on second base without exception. Joe Morgan asked Aaron how often he tried to move the runner to third place, expecting Aaron to perhaps say that he played the game the right way and hit the ball to the right side. Aaron lets out a big, hearty laugh. “Never,” he said. “I always tried to hit the man.”

The total base record can be even more unbreakable. Aaron has 6,856, which is Stan Musial’s 6,134 good. If another player comes along and repeats Musial’s numbers, he will still have to pick up 181 home runs to break Aaron’s record.

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Aaron was not only a dominant hit, but also an excellent fielder and forerunner. He won three gold gloves, and while informing the stats from his era, Baseball-Reference is ninth among the right fielders in runs he scored at plus-98. He stole 240 bases with an excellent success rate, and when he hit 44 home runs and stole 31 bases in 1963, he became only the third player to win 30-30 in the same season (after Ken Williams and Mays). Joe Torre, his longtime teammate at the Braves, said he had never seen Aaron make a mistake on the field. While appearing in just three post-seasons (the 1957 and 1958 World Series and 1969 National League Championship Series), he won 0.362 / .405 / .710 with six home games in 17 games.

He is fifth all time among position players in career war:

Effects: 162.8
Ruth: 162.1
Mays: 156.2
Ty Cobb: 151.0
Aaron: 143.1

You can add Ted Williams to the conversation (121.9 WAR despite missing several first years due to World War II and the Korean War) – although Williams was not the field worker or forerunner that Bonds, Mays and Aaron were. So, yes, the top five are accurate, probably ahead of Cobb once you make a timeline adjustment, and you can judge what you want to do with Bonds.

What about playing at the same time as Mays? OK. Certainly. Mays’ greatness seems to have underestimated Aaron a bit, even in their playing days. However, not everyone of the time necessarily agreed. Here’s a quote from Hall of Fame third baseman Pie Traynor in 1964: “I’ll take Hank Aaron over Mays any day. Give me a guy who’s going to play there and will play every game, never get tired, no do not complain and will not fail you … You do not hear much from Hank, but still he is just such a good fielder, runner and a steady and better hit. ‘