How Great Was Tommy Henrich?
Posted by Steve Lombardi on December 1st, 2009 · Comments (5)
Today, in light of Tommy Henrich’s passing, I asked the Complete Baseball Encyclopedia to show me every Yankees batter with at least 5,400 PA with the team where he had 1+ RCAA during that span. And, once I had those results, I calculated the RCAA/502 PA for each player. Here is that leader board:
Player RCAA PA RCAA/502PA
Babe Ruth 1634 9197 89.2
Lou Gehrig 1247 9660 64.8
Mickey Mantle 1099 9909 55.7
Joe DiMaggio 708 7671 46.3
Tommy Henrich 280 5409 26.0
Bill Dickey 339 7060 24.1
Earle Combs 307 6509 23.7
Derek Jeter 388 9809 19.9
Yogi Berra 323 8352 19.4
Don Mattingly 293 7721 19.1
Bernie Williams 343 9053 19.0
Jorge Posada 208 6312 16.5
Tony Lazzeri 221 7059 15.7
Roy White 242 7735 15.7
Bob Meusel 139 5544 12.6
Thurman Munson 113 5903 9.6
Graig Nettles 109 6247 8.8
Willie Randolph 115 7465 7.7
Elston Howard 63 5485 5.8
Red Rolfe 58 5405 5.4
Wally Pipp 18 6340 1.4
Note Tommy Henrich’s placement here – trailing only Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle and DiMaggio; and, better than Dickey, Jeter, Berra and Williams. Needless to say, Henrich was a heckuva hitter, eh?
Out of curiosity, what is A-Rod’s?
Interesting. There’s a greater drop off from 4th to 5th (DiMaggio to Henrich) than there is between 5th and 19th (Henrich to Howard). Too bad my boy had only 4,500 PAs for the team or else he’d be on your list.
I’ll do a list like this soon using A-Rod’s Yankees PA as the cutoff.
Yet another reminder how great Gehrig was. Way ahead of DiMaggio, who defines 1st ballot Hall of Famer, and even well ahead of Mantle who was inner circle Hall of Fame great.
[...] As requested by readers earlier today, and powered by the Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, here’s every Yankees batter with at least 3,900 PA with team ranked by their RCAA/502 PA in those PA: [...]