Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus (subscription required) compares Cal Ripken and Miguel Tejada through age 29. To his surprise, Ripken blows Tejada out of the water on both sides of the ball.

That Miguel Tejada isn't a match for Cal Ripken doesn't tell us much more than that I shouldn't get column ideas from half a radio interview. The lesson we can take from this, however, is that the difference between pre-1993 baseball and post-1993 baseball is something to be taken seriously. We pay lip service to the notion that players who played in the high-offense era have to have their accomplishments put into context, but as you can see, the run environment of the two eras is so different that it can make players who weren't comparable seem so.

Their OBA's should have really tipped people off. Ripken had a .347 OBA from the start of his career through 1990, his age 29 year. Tejada's OBA in the same age period (through yesterday, actually) was .337.

More than that, the MLB OBA from the day Ripken started to the end of the 1990 season was .324. For Tejada, the MLB average is .336. So Ripken was well above average in OBA, while Tejada was just average.