Tuesday, September 02, 2003

By Brian O'Neill, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

It now can be said with assurance: Brian Giles just completed one of the 10 best five-year runs in the century-plus history of the Pirates.

	Baseball has been built on a mountain of statistics, but only with the arrival of the computer age has the stats geek thrived. This is an occasional series looking at the Pirates through the eyes of a numbers junkie.

I noted in mid-July that Giles is the all-time Pirates leader in on-base percentage (.426) and slugging percentage (.591). While acknowledging it is easier to reach the top when your Pirates career is entirely of your prime, I suggested then that Giles' output here made him "comparable to the dozen Pirates hitters in the Hall of Fame."

I thought I had chosen my words carefully. But Rich Otterman of Churchill and Ron McClure of Murrysville e-mailed to gently slam me for going in one era and out the other. Pirates history stretches from the dead-ball era through integrated rosters and into international rosters. The ballparks are smaller today, and the pitching is diluted. Players should only be judged by how they performed against their peers.

Otterman soon led me to a statistics lover's paradise, baseball-reference.com, and I began compiling the most dominant Pirates seasons going back to 1887. It took time. But after days of scratching down names such as Ginger Beaumont and Kitty Bransfield, I had my 10 greatest five-year runs in Pirates history. With 50 points a perfect score, the list follows:

1. Honus Wagner, 1905-1909, 49 points

2. Ralph Kiner, 1947-1951, 46 points

3. Willie Stargell, 1971-1975, 45 points

4. Barry Bonds, 1988-1992, 35 points

5. Arky Vaughan, 1933-1937, 31 points

6. Dave Parker, 1975-1979, 28 points

7. Roberto Clemente, 1966-1970, 25 points

8. Brian Giles, 1999-2003; Paul Waner, 1926-1930; Fred Clarke, 1902-1906, 23 points each.

My methodology was simple. I looked up the top 10 finishers in slugging percentage and on-base percentage for every National League season going back to the Grover Cleveland administration. I awarded points only if a Pirates player finished in the top 10 in the combined category of on-base percentage plus slugging percentage (OPS). Ten points for a first-place finish and one point for a 10th-place finish. (Giles was sixth in the National League in OPS the day he was traded, so I gave him five points for 2003.)

It is not a perfect list. It takes no account of defense or baserunning. Nor does it account for sustained excellence; nearly all these players put up great numbers over longer periods. (Wagner led the league in OPS eight times, a remarkable feat given that nobody told him.) I also never figured a way to account for the increase in the number of major-league players during the past 40 years.

But I can compare Giles to Kiner. Giles wasn't half as dominant. Kiner finished first, fourth, first, second and first in OPS in his prime here, while Giles finished fifth, ninth, 10th, second and sixth. But both left fielders were essentially the only thumpers in their lineups during their Pirates summers.

During Kiner's time, only one other Pirates player finished in the top 10 in OPS. Hank Greenberg finished ninth in 1947. Giles had less help. No other Pirates player has finished in the top 10 in OPS since 1992. That season, Bonds finished first for the third consecutive time, and Andy Van Slyke finished fifth.

One last thing: The most productive hitters in their full Pirates careers is merely a reshuffling of the same group. Here's that order: Wagner, Stargell, Kiner, Waner, Clarke, Clemente, Vaughan, Bonds, Parker, Giles. Your most productive all-time Pirates are seven Hall of Famers, a future Hall of Famer in Bonds, the pre-cocaine Parker and Giles.

So I was right the first time. Giles played like a Hall of Famer while he was here.

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