San Francisco Giants: Top 30 players of all-time
10. 40. . . . Roger Connor
NY/SF Giants best players all-time: No. 10-Roger Connor
54.4 WAR
Roger Connor was regarded as baseball’s “first great slugger” before Babe Ruth arrived, according to SABR and when you dive in deeper into Connor’s history, you can see why.
He only struck out 5.6 percent of the time and he had a batting average of .319, a .402 on-base percentage, and a .488 slugging percentage.
He played for seven different ball clubs including the Giants for many years. He was a two-time National League champion with the club in 1888, and 1889 as well as being the RBI leader.
Four years earlier in 1885, he was the batting champion, as he had splits of .327/.421/.504 in 104 games at the age of 37 years old.
It was surprising to see that Roger Connor was not recognized at first by the National Baseball Hall of Fame since he was such a big slugger in a dead ball era.
But he did get his chance to shine (even though he wasn’t with us) in 1976 when he was finally inducted into Cooperstown by the Veterans Committee alongside Bob Lemon and Robin Roberts.
Connor ended up passing away due to a stomach illness on January 4, 1931 when he was 73 years of age.