First post of a series disclaimer: some of the most popular posts I’ve ever done were the Road to 17 posts in which I examined each year leading up to the Pirates’ record-breaking 17th consecutive losing season. Because I like writing about Pirate history, I like being subjectively objective, and I like making nonsensical lists, I’m going to spend this off-season making one Pirates-history-based Top 5 list a week.
OK, top five individual offensive seasons in Pirates’ history. This is not an easy task. To begin whittling, I used Baseball-Reference’s Play Index to sort the top seasons in Pirates History by OPS+ (I’ll provide a link at the end of the post so as to not spoil what’s coming) and found there have been exactly 130 times a Pirate player has put up an OPS+ of 130 or better. The top 15 on the list all exceed 170, which means that they’re all incredible years. Whittling that list down was not easy, but I did my best after the jump.
Starting at Number 5, we’ve got Roberto Clemente’s 1967 season, and I’ve got to admit that a big part of the reason this makes the list is my huge personal soft spot for Roberto. Ralph Kiner had three seasons with a better OPS+, but doing this list without Roberto making it feels wrong. His .357 batting average was the best of his career and it helped him to a .357/.400/.554 line bolstered by 23 homers while playing in cavernous Forbes Field. Perhaps most impressively, he did it all while swinging from his heels. Until 1996, Roberto’s 1967 season was the only time in history that someone hit better than .350 with more than 100 strikeouts.
If we kick the list off with Roberto, Number 4 has to be Willie Stargell’s 1973 season for two reasons. The first reason is that Stargell was awesome that year. The second reason is that despite that, he was nowhere near as good as the three seasons that make the top three. In ’73, Stargell lead the National League in doubles (a career high 43), home runs (44), RBIs (119), slugging percentage (.646), and OPS (1.038). Those numbers never cease to surprise me; in my mind’s eye Stargell is always Pops, the slightly heavy, aging, limping first baseman of the 1979 team. I never see a fearsome slugger, capable of striking fear into the heart of the National League. That’s what Stargell was in his first four years in Three Rivers, before age and the turf took their toll on him. His 1973 season was the best of the lot, and that’s why he makes the list.
Number 3 is Barry Bond’s 1992 season. I’ll be honest; if I were capable of being completely objective about Barry Bonds or 1992, this season would probably rank higher. Bonds hit 34 homers, stole 39 bases, and reached base an a .456 clip while slugging .624. Put another way, there are only 49 seasons in the history of baseball of an OPS+ of better than 200, and this is one of them. Even without the drugs, Bonds was a great, great hitter.
I actually had a great deal of trouble separating the top two slots. The problem differentiating is that one season is a singularly exceptional season, while the other one is a mind-bogglingly terrific one in the context of league performance. Because I’m a sucker for normalization, let’s start with the singularly exceptional season at Number 2. That would be Arky Vaughn’s 1935 season. Vaughn set a Pirate record in ’35 for both batting average (.385) and on-base percentage (.491). That meant he could rack up a .607 slugging percentage despite a relatively pedestrian (for this list) 63 extra base hits. What’s most amazing to me, though, is this: over the course of Vaughn’s 610 plate appearances in 1935, he walked 97 times and struck out just 18.
By now, you’ve certainly realized which player clocks in at Number 1 on this list. It’s Honus Wagner’s 1908 season. The Flying Dutchman hit .354/.415/.542 in that season with 19 triples and 109 RBI. It’s possible you’re looking at that line and thinking to yourself that it doesn’t seem that great and it resembles the Clemente line from way back around number 5 that I said almost didn’t make the list. But if that’s what you’re thinking, then you’re forgetting the deadball era. The Saint Louis Browns’ Roy Hartzell clocked in with an OPS+ of 101 in 1908, which means he’s as close to “average” as I could find. His triple slash line was .265/.302/.320 and the Browns’ Sportsman’s Park was much more hitter friendly than Exposition Park was in its final season, meaning than an OPS+ of 100 on the Pirates would actually be a little worse than that. Wagner put up a season numerically (as in using counting stats) on par with some of the best seasons in Pirates’ history in one of the worst hitting environments in history.
Honorable mentions: Ralph Kiner (1949), Brian Giles (2002), and Dave Parker (1978), without duplicating players (otherwise Wagner could’ve had the top five to himself). And here’s the as-mentioned Play Index list of individual seasons of OPS+ better than 130 throughout Pirate history. And if you’ve got suggestions for future Top 5s (no matter how esoteric, as long as they’re Pirate related), leave them in the comments.
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