Due to Pete Rose’s outstanding record of 4,256 career hits, many baseball fans think that Rose was the greatest hitter to ever play the game. However, a closer look at statistics shows that is really not true.
If you’re wondering who the greatest hitter actually is, it’s Ty Cobb. Let’s look deeper into the stats.
Rose vs Cobb: Who Was Truly the Greatest Hitter of All-Time?
The first number to look at is the most important individual hitting number in baseball: batting average. Both Rose and Cobb had outstanding batting averages, but Cobb actually hit .366 over his career, while Rose hit just over .300, coming in at .303 for his career average. Anyone who’s hitting at a higher average than the MLB record-holder for career hits has to be in the conversation as one of the greatest, but Cobb beat Rose by a whopping .063.
On-base percentage is another major stat to measure a hitter’s ability, because of course good hitters know how to get on base often. This is the second stat that Ty Cobb really excelled at over Rose. Cobb had a .433 career OBP, which is .058 better than Pete Rose’s career OBP of .375. One of the main goals of hitting is to get on base, and Ty Cobb did that much better than Pete Rose.
The evidence of Cobb being a better hitter doesn’t stop there. It continues across even more statistical categories.
Of course in baseball the name of the game is to score runs, so runs batted in is a huge stat for comparing hitters. Pete Rose had 1,314 RBI in his career, and of course Cobb bested that. Ty Cobb had 1,937 career runs batted in, beating Rose by 623 RBI. A difference of 623 runs batted in is a huge difference, and it proves that Cobb was much better at driving in runs than Rose was.
A major aspect of hitting is power. Of course no one has to be the home run king to be a good hitter, but things like slugging percentage and extra-base hits are very good indicators of how well-rounded a hitter is. Starting at slugging percentage, Ty Cobb had a .512 career slugging percentage, while Rose had a career slugging percentage of .409. That is an astounding .103 difference between Cobb’s slugging percentage and Rose’s. Extra base hits is a very important category for hitting, because everyone knows you have to do more than just hit singles to become an outstanding hitter. Rose had a lot of extra base hits, finishing off his career with 881 doubles and triples, but Cobb outdid him yet again with 1,019.
Ty Cobb beat out Pete Rose in multiple hitting statistics across the board, and what’s even more impressive is that he did it all in a shorter anount of time than Rose. Both players played 24 years in the league, but Cobb played fewer games. 527 fewer, to be exact. So Cobb’s impressive number become even more impressive than they were, and it proves that Ty Cobb was the greatest hitter in baseball history.
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