An Amazing Stat from the Hall-of-Fame Career of the Great Stan Musial!

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An Amazing Stat from the Hall-of-Fame Career of the Great Stan Musial!

“Stan Musial is a better player than Joe DiMaggio was in his prime.” -Ty Cobb, speaking of Stan Musial in 1952.

“Ty Cobb is baseball’s greatest. I don’t want to contradict him, but I can’t say I was ever as good as Joe DiMaggio.” – Stan Musial, replying to Cobb’s compliment, with his usual modesty.

Stan Musial’s career stats are staggering. Awhile back I featured Stan Musial’s 1946 season as one of the best ever.  But here’s one of his achievements I’ll bet you never heard before:

On July 28, 1963, the Cubs’ Dick Ellsworth struck out Stan Musial three times in the Cubs’ 5-1 victory at Wrigley Field. Here’s the kicker:

It was the only time Stan fanned three times in one game during his 22-year career, over a span of 3026 contests!

That’s right. Stan struck out three times in one game only once in his entire career. Considering the rate at which modern players strike out, that’s truly an amazing feat, and tells you all you need to know about how the game has changed. Over his career, Stan struck out only 696 times in 12,718 plate appearances, a ratio of 5.47%, or once every 18.2 times.

“Stan the Man” Musial played 22 seasons for the Cardinals (1941-’44), (1946–’63), hitting .331, 25^th all-time. When he retired, Stan held National League records for career hits (3,630, currently 4th all-time); RBIs (1,951, 6th all-time); runs (1,949, 9th all-time); doubles (725, 3rd all-time), total bases (6,134, 2nd all-time), and extra base hits (1,277, 3rd all-time). His career 159 OPS+ places him among baseball’s elites (100 being the major league average). His 475 career home runs at retirement ranked second in National League history behind Mel Ott (511). Had his career not been interrupted by military service, he most certainly would be a member of the 500 Home Run club.

Stan won seven National League batting titles and two RBI titles. He had a .417 career on-base percentage, and .599 slugging average. He won three National League MVP awards, and led the Cardinals to four pennants and three World Series championships. He shares the major league record for the most All-Star Games played (24) with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays.

In Stan’s great 1946 season, he led the National League in most offensive categories, including batting average (.365), runs (124), hits (228), doubles (50), triples (20), total bases (366), OBP (.434), and slugging (.587), to go with 16 home runs and 103 RBIs, winning his second National League MVP award. It would be hard to top a season like this. However…

1948 may actually have been even better. Musial again led the league in virtually every offensive category. But what made this season so historically significant was that his lead in most of the categories was by huge margins: batting average (.376, 43 points higher than second place finisher), hits (230, 40 higher), runs (135, 18 higher), doubles (46, six higher), triples (18, six higher), RBIs (131, six higher), OBP (.450, 27 points higher), slugging average (.702, 138 points higher), extra base hits (103, 28 higher), and total bases (429, 113 higher). In 611 at-bats, Musial struck out only 34 times. His 39 home runs, a career high, left him just one short of league-leaders Johnny Mize and Ralph Kiner, and thus one home run short of the Triple Crown.

The great Stan Musial was a first-ballot inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969. He was also selected for the Major League All-Century team, and to the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame. His #6 has been retired by the Cardinals.

Gary Livacari

Photo Credits: Featured photo beautifully colorized by Don Stokes; All others from Google search

Information: Excerpts edited from the Stan Musial Wikipedia page; statistics from Baseball Reference.