Eddie Murray - Not Among the Greatest

Yesterday I came up with my Top 5 Firstbasemen of All-Time and I had them listed as:

1. Lou Gehrig
2. Mark McGwire
3. Jimmy Foxx
4. Jeff Bagwell
5. Todd Helton

Now I freely admit that Todd Helton was a mistake and upon further reflection I would make the list:

1. Lou Gehrig
2. Mark McGwire
3. Jimmy Foxx
4. Jeff Bagwell
5. (tie) Jim Thome (tie) Willie McCovey

One name you won't see on that list from me is Eddie Murray. Now don't get me wrong - Murray was a great player - just not a GREAT player.

At no point in his career was Murray the most feared hitter in his league (that would have been Jim Rice, George Brett, Reggie Jackson, or Dave Winfield). Murray in my eyes was a player who was very good for a very, very long time. Longevity - not greatness was the secret of his success.

Proponents of Murray will point out that he is only one of three players to have both 3,000 hits and 500 home runs. The other members of that exclusive club they will point out are Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. Pretty exclusive company they will point out.

I agree that is exclusive company but I hope the proponents aren't trying to infer that Murray was in the same class of a Mays or an Aaron. That's ludicrisp!

Murray's membership in that club is due to longevity not greatness. Just think - Rafael Palmeiro will be joining the club of 3,000 hits and 500 HR - would anyone in their right mind try to argue that he's among the top 4 players in history?

A great player is someone like Stan Musial - who I chose for comparison because he played the exact same number of games as Murray (3,026). During their careers Musial managed 375 more hits than Murray, three more MVP Awards (3-0), 12 more All-Star Game appearances, and 737 more total bases than Murray. In fact - since Musial played over 1,000 games at firstbase - I would say that Musial would be higher on the list of All-Time firstbasemen than Murray (although Musial is number 3 on the All-Time left-fielders list).

When comparing players from different era's - a helpful stat to look at is OPS+ because it takes into effect what the league averages of the day were and thus allows you to gauge how above average a particular player happened to be. Stan Musial had an OPS+ of 159 compared to Murray's OPS+ of just 129. How does Murray compare to the other players on the firstbasemen's list?

Murray OPS+ 129
McCovey OPS+ 148
Jim Thome OPS+ 151
Bagwell OPS+ 153
Foxx OPS+ 163
McGwire OPS+ 163
Gehrig OPS+ 179

For something else to dwell on - going into this season Fred McGriff had an OPS+ of 134 and Don Mattingly had a career OPS+ of 127. The only thing that really separated Murray from these two guys was longevity - not greatness (no slight intended to either McGriff or Mattingly).

Eddie Murray was simply not a GREAT player.