Many baseball publications and experts have labeled Mike Schmidt the greatest Third Basemen of all-time and it is easy to see why. He had it all and did it all. He may not have hit the highest Batting Average, but he was a three time National League leader in On Base Percentage and had four more top five finishes. You already know his power numbers. Schmidt won five Slugging Titles, five OPS Titles, eight Home Run Titles and four RBI Titles. He could defend the hot corner, winning ten Gold Gloves and finishing in the top ten in Defensive bWAR six times. Speaking of bWAR, he finished number one overall in the National League four times, finished second five times and is one of the few players to exceed 100 in his career, which was all as a Philadelphia Phillie.
More importantly, his rise to the baseball elite brought a winning culture in Philadelphia, something they hadn’t had in years. Schmidt would help bring the team to the playoffs in 1976, the first time they had reached the post season in 26 years. After playoff berths in 1977 and 1978, Schmidt propelled the Phillies to a World Series win, the first in franchise history and he was named he MVP for his efforts.
To no surprise, Schmidt was a first ballot Baseball Hall of Fame inductee in 1995. The Phillies inducted Schmidt to their Wall of Fame in 1989, and the franhise retired his number 20 the year after.
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