Thank you for the call on Rose. Obviously people don’t come to FR for the sports; but it still is crazy that people here have called him the “Greatest Hitter Ever.” Embarrassingly naive.
Greatest hitter ever? You could start a thread with just by itself. Cobb, Musial, Gehrig, Williams, DiMaggio, Hornsby, Ruth, and few others could all have an argument.
A few years back on the FR, there was a thread about Pete Rose. Someone offended my Mick-idolatry (note my screen name) by saying that Pete Rose was the greatest switch-hitter of all-time. I took each player's five best seasons and compared them. Other than batting average, Mantle just crushed Rose - even Mantle's fifth best year far surpassed Rose's best. Power numbers weren't a surprise but on-base percentage was. That is supposed to be Rose's game and Mantle far exceeded him. Selecting the five best seasons for Rose was easy - the seasons to pick were quite clear - but for Mantle, there were 5-6 seasons which could have been included as his 4th or 5th best seasons. (IIRC, I used to MVP share to determine inclusion.)
It was during this analysis that I first concluded that Pete Rose is really overrated. I have not done the analysis but I be willing to bet that Eddie Murray's and Chipper Jones' best seasons would beat Rose's as well.