A Pittsburgh Pirate throughout his entire MLB career, Pie Traynor is one of the names that come up when discussing the best Third Baseman of the first half of the 1900s.
Traynor played a handful of games for Pittsburgh in 1920 and 1921, and from 1922 to 1935, he was their starting Third Baseman. Traynor did not hit a lot of Home Runs (58), but he hit in the clutch, exceeding 100 RBIs six times. He never won a Batting Title but was often in the hunt, finishing over .300 ten times, and he concluded his career with a lifetime .320 Batting Average and 2,416 Hits. He also was in the top ten in MVP voting seven times. The most important thing that Traynor did was take the Pirates to a World Series win in 1925.
This rank might seem a little low, but his advanced metrics are lower than you would expect, and he had minimal power. Subsequently, the Pirates have had many Hall of Famers.
Traynor was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1948, and his number 20 was retired by the team in 1972.
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