Translating Stan Musial's Numbers Into 2012 Norms

With Stan Musial passing away over the weekend, Jesse did a nice workup of his career numbers, noting that Musial stands as one of the best hitters to ever play Major League Baseball. But, the more I looked at his player page, the harder I found it to wrap my head around his combination of power and contact rates.

Musial struck out 696 times in his entire career, spanning nearly 11,000 plate appearances, and his strikeout rate was nearly half of his career average (5.5%) during his peak years. In 1943, Musial struck out 18 times in 701 trips to the plate, a strikeout rate of just 2.6%, the third lowest mark of the year. In that same season, Musial racked up 81 extra base hits, and he posted a .206 ISO, good for fifth best in baseball. We just don’t see guys who are elite power hitters and elite contact hitters much anymore.

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