As good as Mays was, I have to go with Speaker. Career assists record with the wrong arm! He’s naturally a righty but a horse riding accident at the age of 10 resulted in him throwing with his left instead.
Cobb’s rationale for not taking advantage of the lively ball for HRs deserves thought. (I’m not sure he chose right, but it makes more sense than at first appears.) Cobb was, for his entire career, a superb baserunner and base stealer – notoriously competitive and even dangerous to try to prevent from sliding into base safely6. And he was generally part of a lineup with other good batsmen/baserunners. He felt his on-base percentage would drop significantly if he started going for the long ball, and that he could contribute more in terms of runs scored/batted in by focusing on his superb singles hitting and base-running. He was not averse to taking advantage of a good pitch for a home run, but he made a judgment call on how he and his style of play could be most effective for his team.
Ty Cobb, a team player? That’s going to require some substantiation. Everything, EVERYTHING I have read about the man is that he was all about himself. It was Ty Cobb against the world his entire life.
This is pretty much the decision made by most ballplayers prior to 1920. It was just generally accepted wisdom that going for the long ball was a loser’s strategy, and that a slugger could hit more home runs but would see their average plummet.
Everyone liked hitting home runs; there’s a reason Frank Baker got the nickname “Home Run” after hitting two huge World Series homers. If you had a park suitable for it you might swing for the fences a bit more, as with Gavy Cravath. It just wasn’t seen as a generally viable strategy.
What’s at debate here is whether or not Cobb legitimately believed he could hit home runs at will but chose not to, a claim that has been made many times based on the very common and very, very unproven story that he claimed he could hit homers and to prove it immediately hit five homers in a doubleheader. If of course Cobb could hit two or three homers per game he would have been insane not to, since he didn’t even average that many HITS per game. But of course he couldn’t do that and I do not believe he ever actually claimed he could.
I picked Mantle, but have absolutely no problem with people picking Mays.
At his peak Mantle was better. Mantle also has a rather enviable World Series record, which Mays does not. So it’s a fair choice, I think, to pick Mantle.
I can see the argument for Cobb, too. Cobb helped his teams win as much as Mays did; I voted for Mays because he played in a measurably more talented league and was a better all-around player (Cobb wasn’t a superior defensive player.) But I think a vote for any one of those three is perfectly reasonable.
How do you figure? They both seem to have had similarly awesome seasons. At least fWAR thinks so.
Top 5 seasons, BBRef WAR:
Mantle
12.9
12.5
11.9
9.8
9.5
Mays
11.0
10.6
10.4
10.2
10.2
Most other metrics will arrive at a similar conclusion. 8.4 (16%) of Mays’ value is from his defense, while Mantle’s is only 1.8 (3%); Mantle slaughters Mays however in offensive value, with an OBP close to 50 points higher.
John DiFool answers this question quite effectively. Mantle’s biggest years were some of the biggest a position player has ever had.
Mays, on the other hand, had durability (and sobriety) Mantle did not.
Your original statement wasn’t very specific, so I thought you were talking about total player value, not just offense. If you’re limiting it to offense then yes, Mantle had a better peak than Mays.
Nobody said anything about limiting it to offense. Mantle was a better player in 1956 and 1957 than Mays ever was. The shoulder injury was at the end of '57 so there’s a lot of reason to consider that his abbreviated peak.
The numbers cited include defensive value. I honestly believe Mantle’s best years were better than Mays’s best years. Mantle in 1956-1957 was about as good as a player has ever been in modern baseball, right up there with Ruth and Bonds.