Ted Williams
Stan Musial
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Dead even across the measured categories. Our all-time ranking places Ted Williams at #5 and Stan Musial at #10.
Head-to-head FAQ
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The case for Ted Williams
The purest hitter in history by nearly any rate measure. Williams's career .482 on-base percentage is the all-time record, his 1.116 OPS trails only Ruth, and his .344 average came with 521 home runs — power and discipline fused as no one has fused them since. He hit .406 in 1941, the last .400 season, famously refusing to sit on the final day and going 6-for-8 in a doubleheader to finish there. He won two Triple Crowns (1942, 1947) and somehow lost the MVP vote both times. The counterfactual defines him: he missed all of 1943-45 training as a naval aviator during World War II and most of 1952-53 flying combat missions as a Marine pilot in Korea, costing him roughly five prime years. Conservative projections put his career at 650-plus homers and near 3,300 hits. He hit .388 at age 38 and homered in his final at-bat in 1960.
The case for Stan Musial
Musial's symmetry is the stuff of legend: 3,630 career hits, exactly 1,815 at home and 1,815 on the road. The consistency behind the coincidence is the case for him — a .331 average across 22 seasons, 475 home runs, 6,134 total bases (second all-time behind only Aaron), three MVPs, seven batting titles, and 24 All-Star Games, all for the St. Louis Cardinals, with a missed 1945 season to Navy service. In 1948 he came one rained-out home run short of the Triple Crown, hitting .376 with 39 homers and 131 RBI while leading the league in eight major categories. He struck out only 696 times in nearly 11,000 career plate appearances — fewer than many modern hitters accumulate in five seasons. He was never suspended, never ejected, and never controversial, which is partly why history underrates him. The numbers do not.