ITS A DONE DEAL: Another mega star player committed to the St. Louis Cardinals just….
The best stat to determine a player’s worth is WAR–wins above replacement–an analytical metric that was not available until relatively recently.
The formula for WAR differs for position players and pitchers, and I’ll lay it out in layman’s terms.
WAR uses every aspect of the game– batting, baserunning, and fielding, factors in position and ballpark and determines how many wins better than a league average player an individual player might be.
Using WAR to help us rank them, let’s look at the top 24 players in the history of the St. Louis Cardinals franchise.
It’s simply impossible to have any sort of conversation about the St. Louis Cardinals without first talking about Stan Musial, who is and probably always will be the best player to ever suit up for the Redbirds.
Musial played all 22 of his Major League seasons with St. Louis, slashing an incredible .331/.417/.559.
He owns the Cardinals franchise records for games, home runs, RBI, doubles, triples, hits, runs.
Musial won three MVP awards, seven batting titles, was an all-star in all but one of his full Major League seasons, and helped the Cardinals win the World Series in 1942, 1944, and 1946.
The sweet-swinging lefty was an obvious inductee into the Hall-of-Fame in 1969 and St. Louis retired his number 6 upon his retirement in 1963.
