Player Spotlight    Craig Tomarkin

The following comparison of Pete Rose to his long-time teammates: Bench, Morgan, Foster and Perez, shows that he was not in the top 3 hitters on his own team. He did out hit fellow Hall of Fame teammates Dave Concepcion and Tom Seaver.  

To illustrate the point, batting records of their best single season, top 5 seasons, top 10 seasons and careers were compared. Their seasons were sorted by the following criteria to determine which is their "best."  And, with exception of the "career" totals, no season with fewer than 400 plate appearances was included.  The players were sorted by OPS (on base avg + slugging avg) and by Total Avg (TA=batting avg + slugging avg).  Then, the rankings were averaged to determine the total combined ranking.

After studying the table below, also consider the intangibles.  While I don't consider Pete Rose a superior fielder, to his credit, he won 2 Gold Gloves as an outfielder.  His teammates winning Gold Gloves, Bench who won 10 and Morgan who won 5, are in the Hall of Fame, Foster and Perez didn't win any and are not.  As far as base running, if you use stolen bases as a measure, Rose was adequate, but not superior.  To me, while he was fun to watch (I admit I was a big Reds fan) and longevity is a big factor, by most fundamental and widely accepted statistical measures, he just wasn't as obvious a choice for the Hall of Fame as some make it seem.  Sorry Pete!

Comparison of 5 Cincinnati Reds During the 1970's and 80's
Best Season	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	OBA	SLG	TA	RANK	OPS	RANK	COMB
FOSTER, GEORGE	52	149	6	.320	.382	.631	.951	1	1.013	2	1.5
MORGAN, JOE	27	111	60	.320	.452	.576	.896	3	1.028	1	2
PEREZ, TONY	40	129	8	.317	.401	.589	.906	2	.991	3	2.5
ROSE, PETE	16	82	7	.348	.428	.512	.860	4	.940	4	4
BENCH, JOHNNY	40	125	6	.270	.384	.541	.810	5	.925	5	5
Top 5 Seasons	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	OBA	SLG	TA	RANK	OPS	RANK	COMB
FOSTER, GEORGE	173	578	31	.301	.371	.561	.862	1	.932	2	1.5
MORGAN, JOE	114	432	301	.303	.433	.508	.811	4	.942	1	2.5
BENCH, JOHNNY	177	621	29	.280	.362	.539	.820	3	.901	3	3
PEREZ, TONY	144	533	23	.299	.373	.522	.820	2	.895	4	3
ROSE, PETE	55	305	51	.331	.405	.466	.797	5	.871	5	5
Top 10 Seasons	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	OBA	SLG	TA	RANK	OPS	RANK	COMB
FOSTER, GEORGE	294	1002	37	.285	.350	.511	.796	1	.861	3	2
BENCH, JOHNNY	297	1036	51	.275	.356	.506	.781	3	.862	2	2.5
MORGAN, JOE	173	719	454	.289	.415	.463	.752	5	.878	1	3
PEREZ, TONY	257	1028	28	.289	.354	.494	.784	2	.848	5	3.5
ROSE, PETE	99	664	96	.323	.393	.452	.775	4	.845	4	4
Career	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	OBA	SLG	TA	RANK	OPS	RANK	COMB
BENCH, JOHNNY, 17	389	1376	68	.267	.344	.476	.743	2	.820	1	1.5
FOSTER, GEORGE, 18	348	1239	51	.274	.337	.480	.754	1	.817	2	1.5
PEREZ, TONY, 23	379	1652	49	.279	.342	.463	.743	3	.805	4	3.5
MORGAN, JOE, 22	270	1143	689	.270	.391	.424	.694	5	.815	3	4
ROSE, PETE, 24	160	1314	198	.303	.373	.409	.712	4	.782	5	4.5

One last word...a VERY honorable mention goes to another teammate who should not be forgotten KEN GRIFFEY, SR., whose career stats matchup favorably to Pete Rose too.

His rankings if we had included him in the above "career" table:

Career	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	OBA	SLG	TA	RANK	OPS	RANK	COMB
GRIFFEY, KEN, 19	152	859	200	0.296	.360	.431	.728	4	.791	5	4.5

What do you think? Email the Guru

Read what others have said about Pete "Charlie Hustle" Rose

Final tallies on fan vote

Official web sites: Pete Rose,  Johnny Bench
Wikipedia references: Pete Rose - Johnny Bench - George Foster - Tony Perez - Joe Morgan - Ken Griffey - Dave Concepcion

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