Bernie Williams & Ken Singleton

[Crash Course]

Which SH had the more effective career as a batter?

[Jayhawk Bob]

I'd say they were essentially interchangeable offensively. Williams gets the clear edge in overall value because there was a time, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, when he was a real, live center fielder, and a good one at that. But at the plate I don't see much difference between them.

[KCBOOMER]

Does seem like a pick'em proposition. When Bernie could play he had more defensive value than Singleton, but the last few years have been brutal.

[pjl7]

I do have a couple of perceptions of the two that differ. First, I think of Singleton as a singles hitter without much speed. I think of Bernie as having a little more power and wheels.

The numbers do bear this out, although the offensive context for them differs quite a bit. Williams has a few more homers, but the key power stat separating them is doubles, with Williams having over 100 more doubles in about 250 more at-bats. The SB stats are also very different (145-21).

Singleton's 21 SB in 57 attempts has to be up there with the least successful for the number of attempts. Strangely, after going 7 for 23 in 1972-3 he went 5 for 7 in 1974 (maybe he learned something) and then never attempted more than 4 in a year after that.

Williams OPS is 101 points better than the league for his career while Singleton's is 111. They do, however, get to this number in different ways. Williams' gets to 101 with 55 points of SLG and 47 of OBP (must be a rounding issue...) while Singleton did so with 62 points of OBP and 51 points of SLG.

The most telling stat of all in looking at this for me was seeing that the league slugging average for Singleton's career was .387. Some of this is due to the fact that he spent five seasons in the NL. However, for his career Singelton was only in two league with SLG over .400 while Bernie was in only two leagues with SLG under .400.