Greatest hitter ever. Wished he had a better team around him his stats would even have been better. Not a huge margin ,but nevertheless better.
I wasn’t a fan of his, don’t know why, had nothing to do with the Padres, I don’t care about them one way or the other. I think it might have been the Gold Gloves when the guy never took a risk defensively. Always took the wide route to cut off a ball to the wall instead of a sprint and dive to take away a hit (believe me, I know there is a proper context to playing it either way). He just always played it extremely safe in the outfield. That said, it’s not like he was a bad outfielder at all. He was still good.
As a hitter? One of the best ever. The guy just didn’t miss putting it in play and usually it was in the right spot given a game situation. It was almost like he could pinpoint his placement. He’d go the other way, he could dead pull, but hit up the middle, occasional power. You just weren’t going to strike him out. With the amount of movement on pitches, not so much speed, from MLB pitchers, it’s downright just amazing.
Maybe he needed better players around him and in baseball, you simply do not carry a team regardless of position - you don’t have a Jordan or a Gretzky that just throws you deep into team success. You get 4 at bats per game or pitch once every five days, you can be the best of the best and still finish in last place. Part of what makes baseball the very best game on earth.
He didn’t have a lot of opportunity to shine in post season … but when he did have the opportunity, he didn’t shine from what I recall. Huge dips from regular season numbers. That doesn’t make him a bad player at all …. But from my point of view, yep, it takes away from his greatness. Even mediocre players can have the it factor. I don’t think he did.
I guess I did know why I wasn’t crazy about him. But I won’t argue his amazing bat.
Crucify me.
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