Hank Aaron was one of the top five MLB players ever

So much of Henry Aaron’s baseball legacy is tied to three numbers – 715, 755 and whatever ended before Barry Bonds’ career home run – that we all too often overlook his all-round genius on the field. Put it this way, if you’ve turned his 755 home runs into outs, he still ended with over 3,000 hits. Or 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).

While widely regarded as one of the top five players in MLB history, Aaron is still underrated among the greats of all time. He played in the shadow of Willie Mays for most of his career, his contemporary who was the more visually stunning player thanks to Mays’ defense in midfield. Many still consider Babe Ruth the best right fielder. Aaron is thus only 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 game’s history, they usually talk about Ruth and Ted Williams and Bonds, or even singles like Tony Gwynn, before Aaron’s name comes up. However, no player has played with such sustained, consistent excellence for as long as Aaron.

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

He didn’t even have a bad season along the way. His only MVP award came in 1957, but Aaron finished in the top 10 of the MVP voting round 13 times in an era when the National League was packed with future Hall of Famers vying for the award, finishing in the top three in three several decades. . Here’s a way to look at its high level of play over nearly two decades:

Most 6-WAR seasons
Aaron 16
Bonds 16
Mays 15
Ruth 14
Tris speaker 14

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

Mays is there with Aaron, but even Mays faded when he was in his late thirties. Mays’ last 30 homers season came in 1966 at the age of 35. From the age of 36, he hit 118 home runs. At the age of 37, Aaron hit 47 home runs in his career and from the age of 36, he hit 201 home runs.

That’s 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 ended his career in 1976, four players have hit more home runs than Aaron by the age of 30. None of them could keep it 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: HR 366, WAR 80.7

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 RBI’s, his first great season. In 1973, at the age of 39, he hit .301 with 40 home runs – in just 120 games. But Aaron wasn’t just a slugger. He finished with an average of .305 in his career, hitting .300 14 times, even though many of his peak seasons came in the 1960s, in the toughest conditions since the dead-ball era. In an interview with MLB Network last month, Aaron said the thing he was most proud of was, “I didn’t strike out.”

Indeed, he never struck out 100 times in a season and ended with more walks than a strikeout. Keep in mind that Ruth, who played in an era with far fewer strikeouts than even Aaron’s era, led his league in strikeouts five times. Ruth fanned out 12.5% ​​of his record appearances, Aaron only 9.9% of his. Maybe that’s why Aaron was such a good clutch hitter and RBI guy. He hit .324 in his career with runners in scoring position, and in “late and close” situations when the game is most at stake, he hit .318 / .407 / .576 – better than his overall line of .305 /.374/.555.

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

Years ago, Aaron stepped into the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball booth. At one point, a runner was on second base with no outs. Joe Morgan asked Aaron how many times he tried to get the runner to third place – expecting Aaron to say he played the game the “right way” and hit the ball to the right. Aaron laughed heartily. “Never,” he said. “I’ve always tried to hit the man.”

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

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Aaron was not only a dominant hitter, but also an excellent fielder and runner. He won three golden gloves, and while the metrics from his time are considered estimates, Baseball-Reference ranks him ninth out of the correct fielders in runs saved plus-98 for his career. 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 play 30-30 in the same season (after Ken Williams and Mays). Joe Torre, his longtime Braves teammate, said he never saw Aaron make a mistake on the field. To top it all off, while playing in just three post-seasons (the 1957 and 1958 World Series and 1969 National League Championship Series), he hit .362 / .405 / .710 with six home runs in 17 games.

He is fifth of all time among positioners in career WAR:

Bonds: 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 some peak years due to WWII and the Korean War) – although Williams wasn’t the outfield or base runner Bonds, Mays and Aaron were. So yes, the top five are correct, probably for Cobb once you make a timeline adjustment, and you can judge what you want to do with Bonds.

How about playing at the same time as Mays? OK. Certainly. Mays’s greatness seemed to make Aaron a little underappreciated, even in their playing days. 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 over Mays every day. Give me a man who’s gonna play every game, never tire, won’t complain, and won’t pass out … You doesn’t hear much about Hank, but he is just as much a fielder, runner and a more stable and better hitter. ”