Greater Hitters Ever

I've been doing some research on who is the greatest hitter in baseball history. I started my quest after looking at Rogers Hornsby's batting averages. Damn... that man could hit!

Well, how would you go about determining who is the greatest hitter? Not some long drawn out mathematical equation that only a fucking rocket surgeon could understand... a straight-forward approach that the everyday fan can understand.

Here's my thinking...

The greatest hitter would have to hit Home Runs.
The greatest hitter would have to have a lot of RBIs.
The greatest hitter would have to hit for a high Batting Averages.
The greatest hitter would have to accumulate a lot of Bases on Balls.
The greatest hitter would have to have very few Strike Outs.

My formula is add HR, RBI, BA, BB, subtract SO to arrive at a total number. Rank the hitter's totals by year.

Count the number of times the hitters placed in the top 50 and the hitters' placement in those rankings.

I was thinking about adding Runs Scored, but that is not a function of pure hitting. Also, by adding that stat to the equation, it would skew the results in favor of the Home Run hitter. The HR would be counted as a Run, HR, RBI. I'll leave Runs Scored out of the equation unless anyone has any other ideas about modifying the formula. [The only adjustment would be to maybe do RBI less HR for a true RBI total - that way the HR totals aren't weighted]

Also, I didn't really want to include the down-side of the careers where someone has diminished skills, hanging on too long, etc. I wanted the comparisons to be based on their outstanding seasons over a period of at least 15 years.

I have several candidates on my list that meet the requirements for power and average: Ruth, Gehrig, Hornsby, Mays, Williams, Aaron, Bonds, Musial.

Starting tomorrow, I will profile the stats of the sixth greatest hitter of all time and shine a spotlight on some of the more outstanding features of that player's career.

Each day I will profile another player until we reach Madfish Willie's Greatest Hitter of All Time!

Lets see how you would rank them before I start listing them: