My brother makes a strong (and correct) argument that Tony Gwynn is better than Cal Ripken. There’s some cardinals fan bloke commenting on that post saying Gwynn was hopped on steriods for a few years. Which is a complete joke. I made a chart to prove Gwynn’s batting was not out of the ordinary. And to show that Tony Gwynn is better than Cal Ripken.
I think the chart speaks for itself:
To put the difference of 0.847 and 0.788 into perspective: Tony Gwynn’s Career OPS of .847 ranks him 177th all-time. While Ripken’s is 500th all time.
BTW, Ray Durham is 499th all-time.
You’re a total dork. But I love it! And I’ll be sure to point this out to my graph-happy Hubby as well.
Batting Average does it for me. Ripken career BA: .276 Gwynn career BA: .338 That’s a 62 point difference. SIXTY-TWO! If that doesn’t convince you, then how about this. Ripken had 6 seasons where he batted in the .250’s. Besides his rookie season, Gwynn NEVER batted lower than .309. Ripken’s 431 career homers is much greater than Gwynn’s 135 (296 difference), but the batting average stats are staggering.
I’d love to see a line chart of Ripken’s batting averages by season. It’s really shocking to see how his .300+ seasons are padded by seasons with poor batting averages. Ripken was a great player, but his Iron Man reliability status certainly cannot be applied to determining what his BA was going to be on a yearly basis. Very inconsistent.
The reason why I used OPS was because when you make the argument about batting average, people point to how Ripken had all these home runs. So to give Ripken credit for his homeruns and skew the stats more in his favor, I used OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging). According to a Ripken fan, the OPS should show how great of a player he is, because it takes into account his homeruns. The fact of the matter remains that 431 homeruns spread over his career shows that on a day-to-day level, he is no better than Ray Durham. Ray Durham, people.
Oh, i never realized that OPS was on-base plus slugging. nice.
Also, Tony Gwynn hit .400 over a 162-game stretch from late 1993 to early 1995 (encompassing the entire strike-shortened 1994 season.)