Ted Williams
Ty Cobb
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Ty Cobb leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Ted Williams at #5 and Ty Cobb at #8.
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 Ty Cobb
Cobb was the perfected weapon of dead-ball baseball: a .366 career average that stood as the official record for a century — until MLB's 2024 incorporation of Negro Leagues statistics placed Josh Gibson's .372 above it — plus 4,189 hits, 897 stolen bases, 2,245 runs, and a dozen batting titles by most counts, including nine straight from 1907 to 1915. He hit over .400 three times, won the 1909 Triple Crown without a single over-the-fence home run, and stole home 54 times, still the record. His 151.5 WAR came almost entirely from hitting and baserunning in an era when a five-homer season could lead the league. The caveats are real: he played against a segregated talent pool, his game did not project power, and his reputation for violence — partly exaggerated by a discredited biographer, partly earned — complicates his legacy. As a pure hit machine, only Gibson's shorter-season record outranks him.