Brett’s season is a strong one to think about regarding inclusion on this list. He barely qualifed for the batting title (117 games and a little over 500 plate appearances). His slugging percentage was great and so was his OPS, but he didn’t amass an obscene amount of total bases (or hits for that matter) because he didn’t have a ton of plate appearances.

I see your point. It is true that this list is weighted towards slugging and total bases. Remembering back to when I decided to leave in and who to leave off came down to who had more total bases.

In my mind, that’s what offensive baseball should come down to, getting on the bag. But it doesn’t exactly tell the whole story.

George Brett had a phenomenal season in 1980 – coming close to hitting .400 isn’t anything to overlook especially in the modern age. His slugging was a sizzling .664 and his OPS was 1.118. Comparatively speaking his numbers for the day were remarkable, but not what I considered better than what I decided to list – you could say it came down to total bases because he had less than 300. That just doesn’t stack up as well as someone who should have been listed like Williams or Mantle. I suspect it’s because those guys were power hitters and Brett was never considered a homer guy.

I think you’ve got a good argument that I’ll look into and see if what I’ve listed can hold up to that point of view. It would be hard for me to believe it wouldn’t because, again, I looked very hard at average and slugging so it makes sense that their OPS would turn out ok.

I apologize, it seems you do have an understanding of some of the more advanced statistics. I harped on this point because in the writeup you concentrated on things like batting average and RBI’s, probably in an attempt to pander to the more casual baseball fan.

Total bases is very important, and we can better look at that by way of slugging percentage. I still contend that OBP% is more important than SLG%. Bill James and most of the sabermetricians who followed him feel the same. You have limited outs and the ability to not make them (which is what OBP kind mostly measures) is crucial. I really like OPS (OBP+SLG) as a measurement of offensive value.

These are all incredible seasons you posted, and all great players who would have put up outstanding numbers in any era. I just don’t think they’re the 10 best offensive seasons relative to their era. If the category had been “Most impressive offensive numbers disregarding offensive environment” you’d have me, but it wasn’t.

Sorry, got excited and spewed nonsense on the total bases thing.

Very good point. I agree that there have been many outstanding offensive seasons over the many years – to pick only ten is going to leave many snubs. Maybe next time go for 15-20, or pick ten from each era. Hey even a top ten best steroids era seasons would be fun too!

Just one correction – total bases does not include stolen bases or crossing the plate. It’s only the number of bases from hits – 1b, 2b, 3b and HRs. This is where slugging pct. comes from TB/AB=SLG.

Very good points about not playing against everyone available.

I take issue with your assertion that I do not have a clear understanding of baseball statistics. For what it’s worth, I’m a Bill James fanatic – the guy practically invented sabermetrics. Although it is true that I don’t understand every statistical issues that guy comes up with, it hardly bears any relevance to what I’ve written. Anyone can look at the offensive output of these seasons and clearly see that they are superb.

(I would mention that I’ve been in many roto/fantasy leagues over the past 25 years, but seeing how my team is dead last right now AND I want to get laid sometime in the next decade, I probably should’ve kept that to myself.)

You can argue that I’ve neglected to mention great seasons from any particular player and I’ll happily acknowledge that, provided you back it up with the numbers. You simply cannot argue that any one of the players I’ve mention did not put up fantastic numbers – in particular slugging and/or total bases. On base percentage might be more important than batting average in your opinion, but I happen to think total bases is more important – because it includes singles, doubles, triples, home runs, stolen bases and crossing the plate.

Anyone can look at these numbers, and while it is important to take into account everything you mentioned, you can’t look at what they did and think that it doesn’t matter, or shouldn’t be mentioned in this list. They put up these fantastic numbers given whatever situation they were in. Do you really think Ruth or DiMaggio or anyone else on this list WOULDN’T excel at hitting in different eras – ballparks – inclusive competition? Discussing that is an interesting matter, but it leads back to the fact that they did what they did when and where they did it.

Finally, I have no idea if Pujols is on the juice. It’s nearly impossible to see what he does in the batters box and not have some suspicion. But so far, his name hasn’t come up.

No biggie, it still makes for fun discussion. For the fellow stat geeks that may be interested, here are Klein’s splits for 1930 (I hope the columns format properly):

Games AB R H TB 2B 3B HR RBI AVG SLG
Home 77 326 91 143 259 32 3 26 109 .439 .794
Away 79 322 67 107 186 27 5 14 61 .332 .577
Total 156 648 158 250 445 59 8 40 170 .386 .687

source: http://tinyurl.com/lau46e

Clearly he was better at home (which no one denies), though his away number aren’t too shabby. Admittedly not top five (17th overall in SLG), which was my original objection to z’s post #131. It would be interesting to compare the splits for other top players that year (or the other players on this list) but I am too lazy to do that at the moment.

After reading into the comments I see that this issue has been discussed further, making my point moot.

I just saw this post and flipped through real quick, so I had not been following the comments.

Sorry for the rehash again.

You leave off “suspected” steroid users but include Pujols as number 1. His career performance and explosion onto the season in his rookie year throw off so many red flags. I guess he hasn’t been named by anyone, yet.

Many of these great performances were recorded by players playing against inferior competition, no Latinos, Asians, or African-Americans. 9 of the 10 (we’ll include Musial, in 1948 there weren’t more than a handful of African-Americans in the majors, 2 or 3 I believe) seasons you named were before desegregation.

7 of the 10 were between 1921 and 1937. I find it hard to believe there was such a confluence of great hitters at that point and that this isn’t more a function of the hitters environment of the time.

The final problem (that I’ll mention) is that whoever made this does not have a clear understanding of baseball statistical analysis and some of the more sophisticated measures which we have available to us today. It’s 2009. On Base Percentage is much more important than batting average. We also have statistics at our disposal which normalize a player’s performance relative to the year and even in which field he played his home games in.