April 17th is a great day in Pittsburgh Pirates and baseball history.
Roberto Clemente made his MLB debut for the Pirates 62 years ago today
3,000 career hits
Hall of Famer
4 batting titles
Won 2 World Series pic.twitter.com/qv4YFCTdf5
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) April 17, 2017
But which of his 18 MLB seasons were best? How do we decide that? Most home runs, hits or runs? Best batting average? No -- we're past that these days.
Using the advanced metric that is FanGraphs' Wins Above Replacement (WAR), we are able to see which five stand out most among the rest. How? This single number summarizes a player's total contributions to their team and is an estimate of how many wins they add to his team over the course of a season.
Through this very lens of today's sabermetrics, let's take a look back at a historically great player so we can more vividly see how impressive Roberto Clemente's best seasons are.