I’ll admit it: I was disturbed earlier this year when Rafael Palmeiro passed Mickey Mantle for 11th place among alltime home run leaders. Actually, I was angry. It struck me as somehow offensive that Mantle would be bested by a thickly-mustached Viagra pitchman who hasn’t led the league in a major offensive category since 1993, and who has a total of three top-10 finishes in MVP voting. Palmeiro, I thought, might not even belong in the Hall of Fame.

As is so often the case, this was prejudice getting in the way of facts. In truth, Palmeiro is one of the greatest first basemen ever, clearly bested by only Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx. He’s not obviously better than players like Jeff Bagwell and Hank Greenberg, but he’s not obviously worse either.

This assertion will surprise most people, but the numbers bear it out. Before concluding that Palmeiro doesn’t deserve a place among the all-time greats, think about some of the things that have affected the perception of his career.

First, Palmeiro has had the misfortune of playing at the same time as some of the best first basemen to ever live, and thus has never been a consensus choice as the best player at his position.There has always been someone, be it Will Clark, Frank Thomas, Mark McGwire, Jeff Bagwell, or Albert Pujols, who was better. Being one of the three or four best for more than a decade is less impressive, in some ways, than being the best for five years.

Second,Palmeiro started his career in a fairly severe pitcher’s era.The offensive explosion didn’t begin until he was 28, and that makes the first third of his career look less impressive than it was. In context, his 1991 season was one of his best: He hit 26 home runs and drove in 88 runs that year, numbers now associated with a decent shortstop.

Third – and most importantly – Palmeiro’s skills are exceptionally broad and subtle for a first baseman. In addition to hitting for average and power and drawing walks, he was an excellent defensive player in his prime. He also brought speed, stealing as many as 22 bases in a season and grounding into fewer double plays than his peers (Palmeiro had done so once every 53 plate appearances coming into this season; Bagwell did it once every 42, and Thomas once every 44).

When you add it all together, Palmeiro had a surprisingly high peak. For this article, I examined 10 top first basemen according to a metric developed by Baseball Prospectus called Wins Above Replacement Player. This is a park- and era-adjusted number that expresses a player’s total offensive and defensive contribution as compared to a freely available contemporary at the same position, such as the 2004 version of Jason Phillips.In general,WARP calculates a win as equivalent to 10 runs created or saved.

The WARP system broadly agrees with similar measures like Bill James’s win shares and the Baseball Encyclopedia’s batting-fielding wins, but I find it more reliable because it does not compare players to nothing, as James does, or to the average, as the Encyclopedia does.

In Palmeiro’s three best seasons he totaled 32.6 WARP, the same as two-time MVP Frank Thomas. As great a hitter as Thomas was in the early 1990s, he was routinely costing his team 10 runs a season with his awful glovework, while Palmeiro was routinely saving his team 15 runs. The gap in their baserunning skills is harder to measure, but was also a real advantage for Palmeiro.

The same holds true when Palmeiro is compared to other great first basemen. His three best years were comparable to or better than those of Mark McGwire,Willie McCovey,Johnny Mize, and Eddie Murray.

Nor is Palmeiro’s peak his real strength.That would be his durability. One good way to measure that is simply to look at career totals. Palmeiro ranks third all-time in WARP among first basemen.

To get another view, count up the seasons in which a player totaled more than 8 WARP. This is an exacting standard; Derek Jeter, for example, has only met it twice in his career. Palmeiro has met it nine times, less than Bagwell but more than Thomas, McGwire, McCovey, and Murray.To get still another view, just look at his place on the all-time hitting lists, where he ranks in the top 20 all-time in everything ranging from total bases to sacrifice flies.

An honest appraisal of Palmeiro’s value, both at his best and over his career, shows him to be among the six best first baseman to ever live. Gehrig and Foxx are clearly better; Mize and Greenberg were both higher in peak value and fall behind in career value only because they fought in wars; Bagwell had a higher peak and is close enough in career value that he will almost certainly surpass Palmeiro.The rest of the best – Murray, McGwire, McCovey, and Thomas – all had less value both at their peak and over their career than Palmeiro. (Thomas, of course, may yet pass him.)

Palmeiro has not been viewed well by his contemporaries. The great marks against him are that he has played in only four All-Star Games and that his performace in the MVP balloting has probably been the worst for any player of his caliber. At some point, though, his achievement must outweigh the inability of Palmeiro’s contemporaries to appreciate it. His greatness should not inspire anger; it should inspire celebration.