Honus Wagner's 1908 season, win shares, and RC/27

[gusmahler]

Because of another thread, I was looking at my copy of Win Shares to see just how good of hitter Lou Gehrig was. I came across Honus Wagner's 1908 season, which ranks as the greatest seson of all-time. Even his hitting win shares that season was 49.21, higher than ANY of Babe Ruth's seasons and surpassed only by Barry Bonds in 2001 (and later in 2004).

But according to other stats, it's not that impressive of a season. His OPS+ was 205, which is very good, but not close to being best ever (tied for 40th).

And RC/27, also developed by Bill James, has that season as 8.93, not even Wagner's best season and not even close to the best season of Bonds and Ruth (who both had 3 seasons with RC/27 over 17).

You look at Win Shares, and Wagner is probably the 4th best hitter of all-time, after Bonds, Ruth, and Williams (in that order).

But if you look at RC/27, Wagner isn't even close to the performance of Joe DiMaggio, much less Bonds or Ruth.

So what gives? Which stat is a better indicator of Wagner?

http://www.baseball-reference.com/w/wagneho01.shtml