Ron Santo

[Cannon Shell]

Originally Posted by Scav

You cherry picked numbers there CRAZY style, where is HR's/RBI's/2b's/Errors/hits/K's/Walks. You bust out 2nd rate stats except for SB's (which I will not and can't argue with because Sandberg wasn't a good baserunner). The interesting thing about this is I have never seen runs created per AB's. I am now a HUGE fan of that stat. Where did you get that from?

The stats I selected are not second rate and are more easily comparable then strictly raw data like HR, runs, rbis, etc which are directly related to era, ballpark and lineup. Baseball Prospectus has tons of interesting stats like these. I think that the biggest and probably best all around offensive stat is Value over replacement player(VORP) because it eliminates the biases of era, ballpark, lineups, position difference, etc. This stat takes almost every offensive stat into consideration and compares the players # vs. the league average from each individual year at the same position. The beauty of this is that you can compare players of different eras and positions (except pitchers which have thier own measure). It would be very similar to a sheet number in horseracing where all the variables are formulated into a single number. Using VORP it is readily apparent that Morgan is not only better than Sandberg but by a wide margin.

VORP by year for Morgan
Year MLB ranking VORP ranking at 2b
1970 18th 53.6 1st
1971 12th 43.1 1st
1972 1st 74.1 1st
1973 1st 77.6 1st
1974 1st 79.8 1st
1975 1st 92.0 1st
1976 1st 94.3 1st
1977 3rd 72.4 1st
1978 68th 26.7 6th
1979 59th 29.5 7th
1980 48th 31.8 6th
1981 41st 22.0 3rd
1982 17th 47.9 1st
1983 57th 27.6 7th

VORP for Sandberg
year MLB ranking VORP ranking at 2b
1983 134th 13.6 18th
1984 2nd 68.3 1st
1985 9th 61.0 1st
1986 51st 29.3 8th
1987 37th 40.6 4th
1988 49th 30.8 4th
1989 14th 49.5 2nd
1990 3rd 68.7 1st
1991 14th 52.6 2nd
1992 5th 61.7 1st
1993 73rd 27.2 8th
1994 350th 16.0 23rd
1996 111th 19.7 14th

Morgan was not only the best 2nd baseman in baseball from 1970 thru 1977 he is probably the best overall player in baseball during that time. Sandberg was the #1 rated 2nd baseman 4 times but was in the top 10 in all of baseball those same 4 years. He has some other years years where he was a top player but not to the same degree as Morgan.
I have not been able to find much difference in the defensive abilities of the 2 players but Morgan is not only a better player than Sandberg he may well be the best overall player of the 1970's.