Cooperstown Candidate: Larry Walker

If his candidacy was based solely on his accomplishments on the baseball field, Larry Walker would be an easy Hall of Fame selection.

He was the ultimate three-dimensional player, excelling at the plate, in the field, and on the basepaths. He was an excellent right fielder (his great arm helped him with seven Gold Gloves) and baserunner (he had 230 steals). His career line was fantastic: .313/.400/.565, along with 383 home runs. Among players with at least 1,000 games played, his career slugging percentage ranks 12th-best all-time and his career on-base-plus-slugging ranks 15th-best. He is one of the 21 players ever to retire with a career batting average over .300, a career on-base percentage over .400, and a career slugging percentage over .500. And he stands as the only member of that club with both 300 home runs and 200 steals.

Basically, Walker took Edgar Martinez's hitting tool and added speed and defense in right field. That's a tremendous baseball player. His Wins Above Replacement total reflects that fact -- he racked up almost 70 WAR in his career, placing him within the top ten all-time among right fielders.

Walker's peak was outstanding, too. He had an eleven-year stretch of excellence between 1994 and 2004, during which he hit a cumulative .331/.422/.614 with an OPS+ of 148. Shrink that down to his six best seasons, between 1997 and 2002: he hit a cumulative .353/.441/.648, won three batting titles, and averaged 30 homers per year with an OPS+ of 157. He won an MVP award for his best season, in 1997, when he hit a stunning .366/.452/.720 with an OPS+ of 178. He led the league in home runs (49), total bases (409), on-base-plus-slugging (1.172), and Wins Above Replacement (9.6), and he threw in 149 runs and 33 stolen bases for good measure. He nearly repeated that season in 1999 and 2001, but in fewer games. Walker enjoyed a decade of excellence, a half-decade of elite play, and two or three seasons of outrageous dominance.

His obstacle to getting into the Hall of Fame isn't his performance -- it's the perception that his performance was artificially enhanced. But not by steroids. The culprit here is Coors Field, where he played his home games with the Colorado Rockies for the majority of his career. That mile-high ballpark inflates offensive numbers more effectively than steroids ever could, and it shows in Walker's stats:

Walker at Coors: .381/.462/.710, 154 home runs (2,501 plate appearances)
Walker everywhere else: .282/.372/.501, 229 home runs (5,529 plate appearances)

The difference is startling. It's the best ammunition that Walker's detractors have. But he shouldn't be disqualified from Cooperstown consideration because of the Coors Factor, for several reasons.

1. His road numbers were still excellent. Walker's career OPS away from Coors Field was .873. That's better than the career OPS of several high-profile right fielders in the Hall of Fame, like Al Kaline, Tony Gwynn, Reggie Jackson, Roberto Clemente, and Dave Winfield.

2. Walker's context-neutral numbers were excellent, too. His career OPS+, which adjusts for the offensive inflation caused by Coors, was 141 (41% better than average). In other words, not as good as Frank Robinson (154), but comparable to Reggie Jackson (139) and better than Al Kaline (134) and Tony Gwynn (132).

3. Walker wasn't always worse on the road. In his 1997 MVP season, his home OPS was 1.169, and his road OPS was a sliver better at 1.179. It's not like inferior road numbers were an absolute for Walker.

4. There are precedents in the Hall of Fame. In the past, baseball writers haven't really had concerns about significant home/road splits. Members of the Boston Red Sox have benefited from Fenway Park's offense-friendly dimensions for decades. Carl Yastrzemski (career home OPS of .904 compared to .779 on the road) and Jim Rice (.920 at home, .789 OPS on the road) stand out as prime examples. Both are in the Hall. In the spirit of consistency, Walker shouldn't be held to a different standard than everyone else (especially when his non-Coors OPS was up at .873).

Sure, Walker isn't a slam-dunk Hall of Famer like many of the other players on the ballot. But most of the baseball writers have unfairly discarded his case simply because of the ballpark he played in. They've incorrectly assumed that Coors transformed Walker from a decent player into a star -- when in reality, Coors transformed Walker from a star into Babe Ruth:

Babe Ruth, career: .342/.474/.690
Larry Walker, career at Coors Field: .381/.462/.710

Of course Walker wasn't as good as Ruth. The point is that even after adjusting downwards for the Coors Effect, he still grades out as worthy of Cooperstown. He is one of the ten best players ever at his position; he was one of the game's top all-around performers for over a decade; and you can put his peak seasons up against anyone's in the history of the game. That's a Hall of Fame career, even if much of it happened a mile above sea level.

My Ballot, As of Now
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Mike Piazza
4. Craig Biggio
5. Jeff Bagwell
6. Mark McGwire
7. Edgar Martinez
8. Tim Raines
9. Curt Schilling
10. Larry Walker

Out: Sammy Sosa, Lee Smith, Rafael Palmeiro, Fred McGriff