Category
|
BA+
|
OBP+
|
SLG+
|
OPS+
|
Mod. wOBA+
|
Mod. wRC+
|
oWAR/650 PAs
|
Rbat/650 PAs
|
Value
|
110.5
|
111.5
|
135.2
|
146.7
|
121.5
|
147.1
|
6.0
|
33.4
|
Has any player in baseball history had a smoother, more beautiful swing than Ken Griffey Jr.? It's tough to rank anyone ahead of Ted Williams, but if there's any hitter who can best the Splendid Splinter in that category, it would have to be The Kid. When he came into the league in 1989, a fresh-faced 19 year-old prodigy, he was under the more pressure than perhaps any other rookie in baseball history (save for the possible exception of Mickey Mantle), saddled with monumental expectations and pressure. Amazingly, he exceeded them, and in the process, established himself as perhaps the most universally beloved ballplayer since Babe Ruth or Willie Mays. No one ever played the game with greater joy and exuberance, and his mind for baseball was fantastic as well. All-in-all, he enjoyed a ten-year stretch that exceeded almost anyone when it came to knocking baseballs out of the park. Finishing his career with 630 home runs, good enough for seventh all-time, the young prodigy met and surpassed goals others had set for him, which is about as difficult a task as any. The Kid ended his career on a sad, extended decline, and may have missed out on being what so some thought he could have been when he was in his prime while he was with the Mariners: The Greatest Ever. However, what he did accomplish is something that deserves to be highlighted, and his remarkable gifts resulted in a player who inspired more joy in the hearts of baseball fans than almost any other one before him.
When Junior came onto the major league scene in 1989, to say he had something to live up to would be selling him short, immensely short. Griffey's father, Ken Griffey Sr., was a 3-time all-star for the and a 2-time World Series champion for the Cincinnati Reds, a group considered by many to be one of the greatest teams ever when they won back-to-back World Series in 1975 and 1976. Jr. was the No. 1 pick in 1987 at only 17 years-old, and was up in the Show just two years later. He immediately made an impact, accumulating 3.3 bWAR during his inaugural campaign in '89. Out of all 19 year-old position players who had at least 400 plate appearances, The Kid had the third-highest bWAR at 3.3, while his OPS+ of 108 ranked 7th out of those 19 qualified players, in addition to having 16 home runs. It was one of the best seasons a teenager had ever put up in MLB history, and set the tone for the next decade, as Griffey would go from 19 year-old can't-miss prospect to MLB superstar. In fact, his next three years would see him continue to improve, as he hit 22, 22, and 27 long balls in each of the succeeding years. In 1990, he made his first All-Star team, accumulating a slash line of .300/.366/.481, good for a 136 OPS+ and 5.2 bWAR. His next two years saw him reach a .500 slugging percentage in each, and his 1991 season was his first great one, getting 7.1 bWAR and a 155 OPS+. By the end of his fourth season, Griffey had a 138 OPS+ for his career, 87 home runs, and 21.4 bWAR. He was a star, and 1993 would see him go supernova.
By 1993, Ken Griffey Jr. had already accomplished a lot. He had two seasons with at least a 149 OPS+ (his prior two years), had won three gold gloves, and finished in the top 10 in the MVP race in 1991 (where if you go by sabermetrics, he should have been a lot higher). However, he had not really showed the insane power numbers that he would become most well-known for. He hadn't yet hit 30 homers, he hadn't slugged .600, he hadn't had a .400 OBP, and he hadn't been able to crack the 1.000 OPS barrier. Well, in 1993, he accomplished all of the above. For starters, he slashed .309/.408/.617, working out to a 171 OPS+. His 8.8 WAR led all AL position players, and was second in the league behind a pitcher, Kevin Appier. Griffey probably should have won the MVP, but a fifth-place finish wasn't too bad. In addition, he hit 45 home runs, walked more than he struck out (for the first time in his career), and drew 25 intentional walks. He had 52 batting runs, the most for any season in his career and scored 113 runs, his highest up to that point. It was a huge coming-out party for the 23 year-old, and would be the first of five seasons in which he slugged .600 and the first of consecutive seasons with above a 170 OPS+. He led the AL in total bases, accruing 359, the most for a 23 YO since Hank Aaron in 1957. He was everything he had been promised and more.
Griffey's 1994 may very well have been better than his 1993, had it not been cut short due to the strike that prematurely ended the baseball season in August. His power numbers were even better on a rate basis in 1994 than they had been in his fantastical 1993 campaign, as Jr. slugged a career-best .674 with 40 homers in only 493 plate appearances. If you pro-rate that out to 691 plate appearances, the same as he had in 1993, that works out to 56 homers. In fact, if you go a step further and adjust for era, in 2019, with 650 plate appearances, he would have hit 70 dingers! Griffey was proving to be the premier power hitter of the American League, an offensive force with few equals. He would continue his destruction of AL pitching over the next several years, his most famous stretch being the 1995 ALDS, where he homered five times off Yankee pitching in that series, coming back from a long absence during the regular season to decimate NY. His 1996-1998 involved the greatest display of power hitting the American League had seen since the days of Babe Ruth, with Griffey hitting 49, 56, and 56 long balls those years. He should have won MVP in 1996 when he slashed .303/.392/.628, finishing with a 154 OPS+, 152 Mod. wRC+, and had a league-leading 9.7 WAR, but he got it the following year, when he went .304/.382/.646 on the way to a 165 OPS+ and 9.1 WAR. He ended that three-year stretch with another 56 home run campaign in 1998, again slugging over .600 and getting 387 total bases. He finished 4th in the MVP race that year, his third-straight top-4 finish. In that three year-span, Griffey hit 161 home runs, averaged 374 total bases per year, and slashed .297/.379/.628. It truly was about as dominant a stretch of power-hitting that the game had rarely seen.
In 1999, Ken Griffey Jr. hit 48 home runs, the sixth straight season he had launched more than 40 over the fence, not counting his injury-shortened 1995. He was 29 years old, and by that time, he had already homered 398 times in his short career, second-most up to the age-29 season behind his former teammate Alex Rodriguez. His offensive WAR of 64.1 ranked 11th all-time, and he had a 149 OPS+. The man was a machine, simple as that, and seemed the most likely individual to challenge Hank Aaron's record of 755 homers (by 1999, Barry Bonds, who would eventually break Aaron's mark, was 34 years old and had 445 home runs). However, the most cruel of sports misfortunes was soon to visit him, as mounting injuries, starting in 2001, robbed him of the chance to make a serious charge at 755. Between 2002 to 2004, he missed 280 out of a possible 486 games. Even with these debilitating injuries, he still slugged .501 during that time, but everyone knew his time as an elite hitter had passed. Griffey finished out his 22 year career back in Seattle, where he ended with an abysmal 30 OPS+ over 108 plate appearances in 2010.
Junior's career is controversial for only one reason: how do you evaluate it? Is he overrated, underrated, or thought of appropriately? The very fact that I ranked him 20th among AL hitters may cause some to think I fall into the former camp, one who thinks the praise he gets is too high given what he actually did. However, I actually think he is perfectly rated, as when he was in his prime, he produced some of the most beautiful and dominant baseball the game has ever seen. From 1996-2000, a span of five years, he hit 249 home runs, averaging almost 50 each year, which would be fantastic in a single season let alone five straight. His 1993-1998 seasons saw him average 8.2 bWAR per 650 plate appearances, historic figures. His 1996 year is one of the greatest a center fielder has ever produced, and if he had played all 162 games that season, it pro-rates to 11.2 bWAR, putting him on par with the best seasons from Ty Cobb, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle. Was he the greatest player of all-time, or even at any point in his career? No, but when your time in the game largely overlaps with Barry Bonds, you can easily be forgiven.If he would have stayed healthy, perhaps he could have passed Mays, but his career was so great even without the what-ifs that it's okay to dwell on what he did accomplish. The Kid was truly one of a kind.
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