Yes, except that he appeared a more competent batter in those grainy films than he was in person for the last 5-10 years of his career:D
Not, of course, that I ever met him in person. I’ve never particularly cared for the Orioles, and players who IMO are overhyped don’t get much of my consideration.
[sub]Good thing Weirddave is offline this week or I could pretty well expect him to yell at me:D[/sub]
Overrated? You can’t be referring to the former two-time MVP of the American League, can you? Or, arguably, the greatest shortstop that ever lived? For shame…
Yeah, that overrated shortstop who hit .276/.340/.447 with 431 homers and 1,695 RBI over his career and owns the major league record for most home runs by a shortstop. Shortstops with those numbers were a dime a dozen back when he broke in.
And he was a pretty good fielder, too (holds the record for the highest fielding percentage in a season by a SS, and the record for most seasons leading AL shortstops in putouts, and the record most double plays in a career by an AL SS, and the record for the most seasons leading AL shortstops in double plays, and the record for most assists in a season by an AL SS, and the most seasons leading the leagues in assists by an AL SS, most consecutive errorless games by a shortstop)
Yeah, Ripken. He sucked. Totally overrated.
As for Ripken only playing so he could break Gehrig’s record, you mean in 1995? He was washed up in 1995? Are you serious?
No, Ripken didn’t suck. But yes, he was overrated. Way overrated.
Take a look at the last decade of his career. OB%: usually below the league average, sometimes a few points above. Slugging %: ditto. IOW, an average hitter for literally the last half of his career.
And, as an average hitter, you know what he was doing? For most of those years, he was batting in the 3-4-5 heart of the order. And then he was playing 3B, where you normally want a guy with a better-than-average bat.
And then let’s look at his fielding numbers for that same period. Range factor - basically average for his position(s), all through that decade. So for a frickin’ decade, he was average. And was regarded as one of the greatest names of the game.
Yes, I’d call that overrated. What else is there to call it?
Basically, Ripken parlayed a few good seasons early, a monster 1991, and the Iron-Man thing, into a legend. And his career was really less than the sum of its parts, in part due to the Iron-Man nonsense. While he was hitting those 431 homers, for instance, he burned up a shitload of outs.
You know Dave (Kong) Kingman, he of the monster homers and lots of outs? Kong’s just a couple of places ahead of Cal on the all-time homer list, 442 to 431. But swingin’ for the fences, all-or-nothing Kong only made 5381 outs in his career. Ripken made 8893. A team only gets 27 outs a game, and year in, year out, Cal burned well over his share of those outs, hurting his team in order to burnish his legacy. Like Pete Rose, he put himself and his legacy ahead of his team. But while Rose is quite fairly reviled for doing so, nobody criticizes St. Cal.
Overrated? You bet.
You can’t hold the batting order against him. The Orioles really, really sucked during those years, and no one else was a possibility for batting 3-5. He may not have hit as well as a 3-5 hitter should hit, but he did hit as well as a 6-7 hitter should hit - and that’s where he was during the early part of his career. That’s the kind of hitter he was.
Same with 3B. He never was the prototypical 3B, so it’s not fair to say he was overrated because he wasn’t as good as the other 3Bs - after all, they didn’t move him because he wanted to move.
Is Pete Rose a relative of Bob Daisy, Joe Tulip or Fred Magnolia?
Ripkin was one of my faves, and I was happy to see him in the line up.
But there were several stretches in his career when I would have sat him down for a few games because he simply wasn’t hitting and could have benefited from a few days off.
There’s never been any proof of the ‘benefit of a few days off’ thing. I’m not even sure how one would quantify it.
And as for the ‘greatest SS of all time’ thing…that’s one of two people. Honus Wagner or the man currently inspiring awe…Alex Rodriguez. It’s Wagner right now but odds are ARod is going to have that title by the time it’s done.
Well, the team could have benefitted with him taking a few days off…
OK, you got me there.
But player performance doesn’t show any gains, I tell you!
Nor does lack of player participation show any gain for the team, necessarily. For example, Player A is replaced in the lineup by Player B. Player B goes 4-4 with 2 HR. Is this a better result than if Player A was in the lineup? Unknown; perhaps that would have been the day Player A broke out the whuppin’ stick and went 4-4 with 3 HR.
dan - during 1992 and 1993, it seemed that every time I saw a game or looked at a box score (from my distant vantage points in SC and SW VA, where I was then living) they’d be batting Chris Hoiles seventh or even eighth. (In 1992, he had an OB% of .384, and slugged over .500. He improved in 1993, too.) Made me grind my teeth a lot, because back in those days I still cared about the Orioles.
By 1994 and 1995, the difference between Hoiles and Ripken in the batter’s box was a lot smaller, but Hoiles was still better. And Ripken was still in the middle of the order, killing rallies with outs, and Hoiles was still down there near the bottom, most days.