Stan Musial's Place in the Baseball Hall of Fame's Inner Circle

Stan Musial played his final Major League Baseball game on September 29, 1963, in St. Louis. Musial was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on July 28, 1969, after being named on 317 out of 340 ballots cast by members of the Baseball Writers Association of America. Even for BBWAA Hall-of-Fame voters, Musial receiving just 93.23 percent of the vote is somewhat confounding. The former Cardinal's career combined elite production and longevity in a way few Hall-of-Famers ever have. He joined the Hall, a ballplayer amongst peers in the most inner circle of the Hall of Fame.

Looking at Musial's career stats, it's clear that he was a special player. He played in over 3,000 games, rapped more than 3,000 hits, clubbed 475 home runs, and drove in over 1,900 runs. His .331 batting average is quite high. His .427 on-base percentage is truly elite. Whenever I looked at Musial's career stats, his .976 OPS makes me do a double-take. It wasn't simply a function of a healthy run-scoring environment or hitter-friendly home ballpark, either. Musial posted a career OPS+ of 159.

STAN MUSIAL CAREER BATTING STATS

Standing alone, they speak for themselves. Musial's longevity and production make him a special player. For additional context to the laundry list of statistical accomplishments The Man has under his belt, I thought we'd see how he compares to his fellow all-time greats.

The first thing to understand is that Musial played baseball for a really, really long time.

Musial played in 3,026 games during his 22-year career. At the time of his retirement, that was a National League record. Even after Hank Aaron broke it along with a few other records, Musial's games played total is the sixth-highest in the history of the game. A look at the other names in the top 10 for games played makes it clear that a ballplayer has to be pretty good at baseball to make it into over 2,900 games.

MLB ALL-TIME LEADERS IN GAMES PLAYED (1871-PRESENT)

We start with Musial's longevity because his career is amongst the longest in the history of the game. An excellent hitter, his .331 average is great. But 31 players in MLB history have hit for a higher career average. Of those 31, seven have played fewer than 1,000 games. Eight played between 1,000 and 2,000. This means that 16 players who have played in 2,000 or more career games have hit for a higher average than Musial. It we up the qualifying number of games to 2,500, only five Hall-of-Famers in MLB history have a higher batting average than Musial: (1) Ty Cobb, .366; (2) Tris Speaker, .345; (3) Babe Ruth, .342; (4) Paul Waner, .333; and (5) Eddie Collins, .333. For those curious, seventh on this list and one spot behind Musial sits Derek Jeter with a .313 average.

With OBP, it's the same situation. When trimming down the list of players with a higher OBP than Musial and a minimum of 2,000 games played, Musial places 14th, behind the likes of Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Barry Bonds, Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb, Jimmie Foxx, Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins, Mickey Mantle, Todd Helton, Frank Thomas, and Edgar Martinez.

Using the same 2,000-game threshold for SLG, Musial is a top 10 player, behind the following players: (1) Babe Ruth, .690; (2) Ted Williams, .634; (3) Lou Gehrig, .632; (4) Jimmie Foxx, .609; (5) Barry Bonds, .607; (6) Manny Ramirez, .585; (7) Rogers Hornsby, .577; and (8) Alex Rodriguez, .560. Musial's .559 SLG places him ninth all-time amongst players with 2,000 or more games played, ahead of Mays and Mantle (.557) as well as Aaron (.555).

Given Musial's excellent OBP and SLG, it's of no surprise that his on-base plus slugging (OPS) is also one of the ten best ever for a player with at least 2,000 games.

MLB CAREER OPS LEADERS (MINIMUM 2,000 GAMES PLAYED)

Unlike Manny Ramirez and Frank Thomas, Musial's OPS wasn't boosted by a high-scoring run environment and/or a hitter-friendly home park. When we look at OPS+, a stat that adjusts for the hitting environment a player played in and for park effects, Musial is again a top 10 players all-time amongst those who logged 2,000 or more games.

MLB CAREER OPS+ LEADERS (MINIMUM 2,000 GAMES PLAYED)

While Musial's rate stats are made all the more impressive by his longevity, it is the length of his career that makes his place in the counting-stat ranks so secure. When Musial retired, he was the NL career leader in hits. He would later be passed by Aaron and then Pete Rose. Nonetheless, Musial is fourth all-time in hits.

MLB CAREER HITS LEADERS

Of Musial's 3,630 career hits, 20 percent were doubles. He ranks third all-time in doubles.

MLB CAREER DOUBLES LEADERS

In addition to Musial's 725 career doubles, The Man also rapped 177 tripes and socked 475 homers. On the all-time leader board for extra-base hits, he places third with 1,377 extra-base hits. On this list, Musial ranks ahead of Ruth, Mays, and Gehrig, amongst every other player who ever played save Aaron and Bonds.

MLB CAREER EXTRA-BASE HITS LEADERS

When it comes to driving in and scoring runs, Musial is also in rarefied company. The Greatest Cardinal Of Them All ranks fifth all-time in RBI with 1,951 and eighth all-time in runs scored with 1,949.

MLB CAREER RBI LEADERS

MLB CAREER RUNS SCORED LEADERS

The advanced stats also show Musial to be one of the greatest ballplayers ever to lace up his cleats. We have long used Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) here at VEB. It's a stat readily found on Fangraphs that uses linear weights to give each type of offensive play a proper run value. It counts singles, doubles, triples, homers, walks, steals, and outs and then the number is scaled so that it can evaluated the same as OBP. Thus, a wOBA over .400 is really good. Anything greater than .425 is all-time great. Musial is an all-time great by wOBA, tying Bonds with a career .435 wOBA.

MLB wOBA CAREER LEADERS

The stat Weighted Runs Created Plus does the exact same thing as wOBA, but with three important differences. Like all "Plus" stats, it adjusts for park effects and the league scoring environment of a season or career. It is also scaled to 100 with 100 being average and greater than 100 being above-average. The higher a player's wRC+, the better. Unsurprisingly, Musial's wRC+ is pretty high.

MLB wRC+ CAREER LEADERS

Wins Above Replacement is a stat that attempts to measure a player's entire contribution: batting, baserunning, and fielding. The Fangraphs Glossary entry for WAR explains the stat like this:

Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is an attempt by the sabermetric baseball community to summarize a player’s total contributions to their team in one statistic. You should always use more than one metric at a time when evaluating players, but WAR is pretty darn all-inclusive and provides a handy reference point. WAR basically looks at a player and asks the question, "If this player got injured and their team had to replace them with a minor leaguer or someone from their bench, how much value would the team be losing?" This value is expressed in a wins format, so we could say that Player X is worth +6.3 wins to their team while Player Y is only worth +3.5 wins.

Because WAR is a counting stat, Musial's longevity and excellent production are reflected in this stat more than in a rate stat like average, OPS, or wOBA. By fWAR, Musial is one of the ten best position players in history, neck and neck with Williams.

MLB fWAR CAREER LEADERS (POSITION PLAYERS)

The stats clearly show that Musial is an inner-circle Hall-of-Famer. They reflect a player whose greatness has been under-appreciated for years. Musial hit for average and power and got on base at a high rate. He hit singles, doubles, homers, and even triples. Any discussion of the greatest ball-players of all-time should include The Man. He has a résumé as good or better as almost any many who ever played the game.