Ken Griffey Jr.

With the retirement of Ken Griffey Jr. last week baseball lost one of it's best and most liked players, one who even made it through the steroid era unscathed. But just how good was he, and when was he best? Sounds like a perfect time to debut my new baseball simulator program! The program plays a full nine innings with up to 9 batters using singles, doubles, triples, and home runs (it has yet to include speed things like stolen bases and advancing an extra base, and it counts walks as singles). Putting in a player's stats for a year then having them bat over and over repeatedly for a game gives a good indication of how good a player is at swinging away. So, how good was Griffey? Here's the results by year ("runs" being the program calculated category):

	YEAR	TEAM	OPS	RUNS
GRIFFEY JR	1989	Sea	0.74896	3.862
GRIFFEY JR	1990	Sea	0.84987	5.274
GRIFFEY JR	1991	Sea	0.93168	6.8
GRIFFEY JR	1992	Sea	0.89248	5.661
GRIFFEY JR	1993	Sea	1.02355	8.356
GRIFFEY JR	1994	Sea	1.07558	8.828
GRIFFEY JR	1995	Sea	0.85999	6.146
GRIFFEY JR	1996	Sea	1.01857	8.006
GRIFFEY JR	1997	Sea	1.02992	8.006
GRIFFEY JR	1998	Sea	0.97242	7.037
GRIFFEY JR	1999	Sea	0.95552	7.117
GRIFFEY JR	2000	Cin	0.93908	7.081
GRIFFEY JR	2001	Cin	0.89663	6.045
GRIFFEY JR	2002	Cin	0.78522	4.621
GRIFFEY JR	2003	Cin	0.91595	6.458
GRIFFEY JR	2004	Cin	0.86276	5.713
GRIFFEY JR	2005	Cin	0.95036	6.746
GRIFFEY JR	2006	Cin	0.8019	4.682
GRIFFEY JR	2007	Cin	0.8741	6.029
GRIFFEY JR	2008	Cin/CWS	0.7761	4.583
GRIFFEY JR	2009	Sea	0.7333	4.183
GRIFFEY JR	2010	Sea	0.45506	0.712
GRIFFEY JR	Total	--	0.90428	6.264

It turns out that Griffey's strike shortened 1994 season was his best, even better than his 56 home run performances in 97 and 98. How does this compare to other players? The average for the MLB so far this year is 3.68 runs (meaning this program is about half a run too low, most runners go second to home on a single) so even Griffey's worst years were better than average. Amongst other Seattle greats Griffey's '94 (8.83) is better than both A-Roid's '96 (8.41) and Ichiro's '04 (5.39). Still, Junior's not quite on Pujols's level (10.93 in 2008) and a long was behind former greats like the Babe (a whopping 17.63 in 1920). Nevertheless, with his 10 Gold Gloves, 184 stolen bases, and 630 home runs I'd take Ken Griffey Jr. on my team anyways.

Good suggestion Woozle.