The Rice Fallacy
A common refrain among those who misguidedly trumpeted Jim Rice's candidacy for the Hall of Fame a couple years ago was that he was the most dominant power hitter of his time. This, of course, was ridiculous, but they could give you the numbers: from 1975-1986, Rice led the American League in homers, RBI, total bases, hits, and runs. Sounds pretty dominant, when you put it that way.

Problem is, 12 years is a really long time in baseball, and that selection of 12 years just happens to encompass Rice's entire career as a useful player. The list of guys who were full-time players in the American League in 1975, 1986 and every year in between just isn't very long; the #2 guy behind him on most of those lists is Cecil Cooper, who's never had quite as much of a Hall of Fame following. Rice was never anywhere close to the most dominant power hitter of his time. Reggie Jackson was in his heyday at the beginning of that period, but tailed off into the 80's. Rice had a two-season head start on Eddie Murray and a seven-season head start on Don Mattingly, but both were much better than Rice was when they did play during that period. And of course, Mike Schmidt, Dave Parker and others were doing their better-than-Rice work over in the NL.

So determining who led the league in various categories from 1975-1986 has exactly one purpose: to inflate one's opinion of Rice. It gives him every possible advantage. If we double the size of the window -- expand it just six short years either way, 1969-1992 -- Rice drops to 3rd in homers and RBI, 9th in runs, and 5th in total bases. Still a solid showing, but quite a bit less dominant (especially when you consider his much more deserving teammate, Dwight Evans, moves ahead of him on each list and has never gotten a sniff). Conversely, you could shrink the window, and -- depending on which window you pick -- Rice might move down the list again, because you've expanded the pool of players who were able to accumulate the plate appearances to compete against him.

Anyway, the point is, when you've got a good player who played for a long time and want to know how he stacked up against his contemporaries, the one thing you can't do is see how well he stacks up on counting stats lists that span the exact window during which he was a full-time and productive player (and if you want to go the extra mile, limit it to just one of the two leagues). That's a sure way to make anyone sound undeservedly good (hey, Rusty Staub was 4th in the majors in hits and total bases from 1966-1978!). I'm gonna go ahead and call this -- you guessed it -- The Rice Fallacy.
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So What Does That Have to Do with George Sisler?
The other day, in writing about the Browns, I called Sisler "overrated." Ron took exception in the comments. Ron's defense of Sisler was much more intelligent and meaningful than the Rice Fallacy, but seems to me to suffer from the same limitations (and in some ways suffers more severely). Ron noted that of all first basemen who played 1500 games during the years spanning Sisler's entire career (1915-1930), Sisler's 124 OPS+ was the best.

Well, sure. To make that list, a player needed to play at first base in at least half of his games and average 94 games played over those sixteen years. For each year that your career started after and/or ended before Sisler's did, you needed to average 7 more games a season in the years you did play, and ultimately, your career needed to overlap with Sisler's by at least ten seasons, and you'd better stay incredibly healthy for those ten (150 games/season, with 154 total games being played in a year). Not surprisingly, that list has six names on it, and they're not names against which players are often compared to determine their greatness: Joe Judge, George "no not that one" Burns, George Kelly, Wally Pipp and Charlie Grimm. Meanwhile, if you played some of the same seasons as Sisler, but happened to start a little earlier (say 1912-27) or a little later (say, oh, I don't know, 1923-1938), you don't make the list.

Sorry, this just doesn't work. If you've designed a list that contains six unimpressive names and specifically eliminates great players against whom he played, your only purpose is to pump up Sisler. It just doesn't mean anything. It's better than the Rice Fallacy, because you're using OPS+, something that actually measures hitting ability. But it's even more problematic, because you're not just limiting it by league, you're limiting it by position. Again: Sisler comes out on top over five other players. Just doesn't tell you much.

So How Good Was Sisler, Really?
Well, let's start by doing the same thing we did with Rice. Rather than just comparing him to players who played 1500+ games over the exact span of Sisler's career, let's double the range. Adding eight seasons to each end gives us 1907-1938. There's no way one can plausibly argue that it's not fair to compare a guy who had a long career from 1915-1930 to guys who had long careers sometime between 1907 and 1938.

The list is here. The list is 17 names long; still not a ton, but more. Sisler, with his 124 OPS+, shows up a respectable sixth, but he's a lot closer to Jim Bottomley (#5, 124) and Ed Konetchy (#7, 122) than he is to Gehrig (#1, 180) or Jimmy Foxx (#2, 169). He even has competition in his one big strength, batting average; his .340 is just .001 off the lead, but both Gehrig and Bill Terry are at .341 and Foxx is just behind at .335.

So there's one look at it. For another, why are we limiting this to first base, anyway? First base, even in Sisler's day, was known as the easiest position on the diamond. Players who couldn't play any other positions (or couldn't play them anymore) played first base. If a first baseman is going to be great, he has to be not only among the greatest first basemen, but among the greatest hitters. And, well, even returning to the original limitations (1915-1930, 1500 games), Sisler is 11th. There's Ruth and Hornsby and Cobb and Speaker, of course -- no shame in finishing behind those guys -- but then there's Heilmann and Wheat and Rousch and Veach and Cy Williams. Rousch and Williams were primarily center fielders, and the guy right behind Sisler on the list, Frankie Frisch, was a second baseman. This is not the kind of company that a truly great first baseman keeps.

Not to pile on, but expanding back to 1907-1938, Sisler's 28th. There are Hall of Famers all around him, but they're catchers and shortstops and center fielders.

Conclusion
I've said before that I think Sisler is absolutely a legitimate Hall of Famer. He was a very good hitter for a pretty long time. He was very good in the dead ball era, and remained very good in the Babe Ruth era, despite never hitting many home runs. Batting average may be (okay, is) overrated, and doing your best hitting when the entire league hit .304 makes your own personal batting average very overrated. But the two seasons over .400, including a season in which he hit .420, and the fact that he held the single-season hits record for over eighty years, give him a little something else that Jack Fournier lacks.

Sisler is one of the 20 or so best first basemen in the history of the game. He's a legit Hall of Famer, but he's closer to Orlando Cepeda or Jim Bottomley than Jimmy Foxx or Willie McCovey. By absolutely no stretch was he the best 1B of his era; Gehrig and Foxx were very much a part of his era, as was Bill Terry, and Sisler falls well behind all those guys. Some people, because his name came up when Ichiro broke his hits record and they noticed that he put up pretty numbers like .407 and .420, confused him with a legend, like Gehrig, Hornsby or Wagner. This just couldn't be less justified.

For most of Sisler's career, the balls were live, the parks were huge, and the pitchers didn't strike anybody out. It was an absolutely perfect environment for a high-average, gap-power, never-walk-or-strike-out hitter like Sisler to put up lovely numbers. So in that sense, the era in which he played is exactly why Sisler is so overrated; put in the proper context, he just wasn't that great. He was the greatest player in Browns history, but if you're putting together a Browns/Orioles all-franchise team, he's clearly behind Eddie Murray, and he probably slips onto the bench just barely ahead of Boog Powell.