Holding Court & The Hit King

Rose over Ruth? Mays?

 

And Trout's career OPS is .911. He has 209 hits and just turned 21. Jeter had 12 hits at the age of 21. Trout wins.

 

We need a MankyCabrera now.

 

The idea that it's some sort of slam dunk in either player's direction is kind of wrong, I think. They are very similar, offensively. Even their OPS+, which normalizes between eras, bears this out. Jeter is 117. Rose is 118.

 

Yeah, I think the whole Rose >>> Jeter thing is a backlash to the hype. Though those of us who were around during Rose's prime got pretty damned sick of the Charlie Hustle hype, too.

And anyone who can say Prince Valiant Rose has better hair than anyone has got to be smoking something funny.

 

I give Rose credit as a player. But I'd rather have a Hank Aaron anytime.

 

Pete Rose got under opponents' skin like few other players. I know there's no modern stat for that, but it is something Rose had that Jeter really doesn't

 

Jeter has a base stealing ability that Rose never had. Rose still 198 bases but was caught 149 times. Rose also zero power after turning 30. Jeter averages 15-25 HRs a year.

 

Now I know you're fucking with us. Jeter's career high is 24 homers -- in 1999. He has 255 in 18 seasons. That's about 14 per year. Which is also his average since the season he turned 30.

The true part is that's more power than Rose ever had. Rose's career high was 16 and he averaged less than seven per season (160 in 24 years). Of course, homers were much harder to come by then.

 

Sorry, I rounded up to 25. So I should have called him a 14-24 HR player.

Home runs weren't harder to come by in the 1970s, Jeter would have still hit the same amount of HRs then as he did in his era. If the top players in the 1970s had conditioned themselves the way the modern player does they could've hit 50-60 HRs per year. Mike Schmidt has said he would have used steroids if they were available. He was a 40 HR guy without them.

 

Modern players don't hit 50-60 HRs per year.

But I concede that players in the '90s and early '00s did, and Jeter played through that era.

 

Active players who have hit 50+ HRs: Howard, Bautista, ARod, Fielder, Ortiz, Thome, Andruw Jones.