The Hall of Fame's voting process has numerous problems, but perhaps the most pressing one is the growing number of deserving names on an increasingly-crowded ballot. There are at least 15 candidates that warrant discussion this year, but the baseball writers are limited to voting for a maximum of just ten. Because of that restricting rule, there will inevitably be a handful of worthy players at the bottom of the ballot who won't get the support they deserve. The following four players, for instance, will all fall significantly short of election to the Hall of Fame in 2014 -- but each of them has a strong case for induction.
Tim Raines
Raines had two elite skills that made him one of the best players of the 1980s and a productive player into the 1990s. The first was his ability to get on base, which he did at a career .385 rate, better than some of his more notable peers at his position (including Carl Yastrzemski, Willie Stargell, and Jim Rice). The second was his baserunning ability: he stole at least 70 bases six different times and led the league in that category four of those times. He has the fifth-most career steals ever (808), and perhaps more impressively, he was only caught 146 times. That 84.7% success rate ranks as the second-best ever among all base-stealers with at least 300 attempts.
And though he was a historically-good baserunner, Raines was not a stereotypical slap hitter. He hit 430 career doubles, more than Willie Stargell or Mike Schmidt. With a career OPS+ of 123, his offensive production was comparable to that of Ernie Banks and Paul Molitor. From 1981 to 1987, he hit .310/.396/.448 while averaging 72 steals, 79 walks, and 103 runs scored per season. The result of all this production: a career worth almost 70 Wins Above Replacement. The only left fielders with significantly more WAR than Tim Raines are Barry Bonds, Ted Williams, Rickey Henderson, and Carl Yastrzemski.
Perhaps the best way to visualize the value of Raines' career is a straight-up comparison to another corner outfielder who was elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot: Tony Gwynn. Unlike Raines, Gwynn earned glory with a .338 batting average, eight batting titles, and over 3,000 hits. But their total production is eerily similar. Gwynn had a career .388 OBP and reached base 3,955 times; Raines had a .385 OBP and reached base 3,977 times in a similar number of games. Gwynn had a seemingly large edge in total bases, but that statistic does not include walks, hit by pitches, or net stolen bases. If you factor in those numbers, Raines actually gained more bases in his career (5,805) than Gwynn (5,267).
Raines is the second-best leadoff hitter of all time and one of the best left fielders and base-stealers ever. He can be reasonably compared to Tony Gwynn, a first-ballot Hall of Famer. But only half of the BBWAA electorate voted for him last year. That needs to change.
Edgar Martinez
There are only 18 players in baseball history with a career batting average over .300, career on-base percentage over .400, and career slugging percentage over .500 (in a minimum of 8,000 plate appearances). Edgar Martinez is one of them, thanks to his .312/.418/.515 line. Additionally: among all hitters in baseball history with at least 2,000 games played, Edgar Martinez has the 12th-best on-base percentage. Of the 11 players with a higher OBP, nine are already in the Hall of Fame and the other two (Barry Bonds and Frank Thomas) should be headed there. Martinez ranks ahead of hitters like Stan Musial, Mel Ott, Manny Ramirez, and Albert Pujols in this category.
He was also one of the best hitters in baseball for over a decade. Between 1990 and 2003, the only players who got on base at a higher rate than Martinez were Barry Bonds and Frank Thomas. He had eleven seasons with an OBP over .400, leading the league in that category three times. His career OPS of .933 is tied for the 33rd-best mark ever, higher than Hank Aaron's and Frank Robinson's. His career OPS+ of 147 is equal to Mike Schmidt's and Willie McCovey's. Martinez was indisputably one of the best hitters of his era and one of the 30 or 40 best hitters of all time.
Yet support for his Hall of Fame candidacy hasn't budged upwards since his debut on the ballot four years ago. The reason is both singular and obvious: he was a designated hitter. He provided no defensive (or baserunning) value, and was therefore a "one-dimensional" player. While this is a valid counter-argument, it's just not enough to keep Martinez out of the Hall. First of all: his "one-dimensional" career still produced 68 Wins Above Replacement, roughly the same value provided by Eddie Murray and Ernie Banks. Second: Paul Molitor is already in the Hall despite having spent almost half of his career at DH, and Frank Thomas is about to get in despite having spent over half of his career at DH; those precedents should help Martinez's case. And third: the Hall has already inducted five relief pitchers, which are even more specialized and "one-dimensional" than designated hitters. A hitter as good as Martinez just belongs in the Hall, regardless of what position he did or didn't play.
Larry Walker
Like Edgar Martinez, Larry Walker is one of the 18 members of the career .300/.400/.500 club. The proud owner of a .313/.400/.565 batting line, Walker also owns the 16th-best OPS of all time, just a shade behind Frank Thomas and Stan Musial. He has the 11th-most WAR among all right fielders and the top ten are all in the Hall of Fame. He was a complete all-around player with 230 career stolen bases at a 75% success rate, seven Gold Gloves in right field, and an elite throwing arm. During his extended peak between 1994 and 2004, his OPS was 1.036 and he won three batting titles. In 1997, he earned the MVP award by hitting a ridiculous .366/.452/.720 with 49 homers, 33 steals, 130 RBIs, 143 runs scored, 409 total bases, and a league-leading 9.8 WAR. Despite all these remarkable achievements, he is unlikely to ever make the Hall of Fame.
Walker's candidacy -- and entire career -- is compromised in the eyes of some because he spent the heart of his playing days in mile-high Coors Field before the humidor was installed. Like most other Colorado Rockies of the era, Walker's numbers were therefore inflated by the hyper-friendly offensive environment in which he played. Roughly 31% of his career plate appearances came at Coors, and his cumulative numbers there look like they belong in a video game: a .381 batting average, .462 on-base percentage, and .710 slugging percentage. That's Babe Ruth with a higher batting average. Because those numbers look so utterly cartoonish, many Hall voters can't take Walker's case seriously.But that's not really fair, for a number of reasons:
1. Walker's career numbers away from Coors are still very good (.282/.372/.501, equivalent to or better than the overall numbers of right fielders like Reggie Jackson and Al Kaline).
2. Walker had seasons in which his stats away from Coors were just as good as his home stats (in his 1997 MVP campaign, for example, his home OPS was 1.169 and his road OPS was 1.176).
3. Walker played two full seasons in Coors after the humidor was installed, and his numbers there were still elite even after the change: a 1.124 home OPS in 2002 and a 1.021 home OPS in 2003.
4. Walker's context-neutral statistics, which adjust for the inflation caused by Coors, are still excellent. His 141 OPS+ is in the same neighborhood as Vladimir Guerrero (140) and Reggie Jackson (139). Baseball Reference's neutralized batting line for Walker (putting his numbers into the context of an average offensive environment) is .294/.378/.530. Still Hall of Fame numbers, especially for a five-tool right fielder.
5. Perhaps most importantly, the Hall has never used home-road splits as an excuse to keep players out. Hitters like Jim Rice, Carl Yastrzemski, Billy Williams, and Chuck Klein all benefited from their friendly home ballparks, but all have plaques in Cooperstown. Excluding Walker from Cooperstown because of Coors Field would be inconsistent. He should be in.
Mark McGwire
Only nine players in baseball history have a higher career OPS (.982) than Mark McGwire. Only ten players have a higher career OPS+ (163). Only seven have a higher career slugging percentage (.588). Only nine hit more home runs (583). And no one has ever hit home runs at a higher rate (one per 10.6 at-bats). It's easy to marginalize McGwire's career because he has admitted using performance-enhancing drugs, and he may be in risk of falling off the ballot this year entirely. But his achievements cannot be overlooked.
As a 23-year-old rookie in 1987, he led the league in home runs (49) and slugging percentage (.618) along with a .987 OPS. From 1988 to 1991, he only hit .233 but still managed to be valuable by averaging 32 homers and 90 walks per season. In 1992, he led the league in slugging percentage and OPS+, but two injury-plagued years followed. Then, from 1995 to 2000, he was unstoppable. His cumulative line across those six seasons was .289/.442/.706 with a 192 OPS+ and an average of 53 homers and 113 walks per season. He broke Roger Maris' single-season record for home runs, with 70; he also hit 65, and 58, and 52. Then he abruptly fell off a cliff in 2001, and retired. The career was short -- not even 2,000 games or 8,000 plate appearances. However, he achieved a degree of offensive dominance that has hardly ever been matched in the history of the sport. He will never be in the Hall of Fame, but like Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez, and Larry Walker, his on-the-field record suggests he belongs regardless of whether or not the baseball writers actually put him there.
Showing posts with label Edgar Martinez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edgar Martinez. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Friday, November 1, 2013
David Ortiz and Cooperstown's Double Standard
Based on what's been written in the wake of his third World Series title, it appears as though this latest round of postseason heroics has pushed David Ortiz over the hypothetical Hall of Fame threshold. He's certainly not a bad choice. In almost 2,000 career games, Ortiz has hit .287/.381/.549 with 431 home runs and a 139 OPS+. Remove his unspectacular stint with the Minnesota Twins and those numbers look even better. And in 82 career playoff games, he owns a .939 OPS, two walk-off home runs, and a host of other memorable clutch moments. But what makes Ortiz's case even more engrossing is his connection to performance-enhancing drugs.
Unlike Manny Ramirez and Rafael Palmeiro, Ortiz has never officially tested positive for a banned substance. He falls into the same category as Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza (and, technically, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens), in that the evidence against him is purely circumstantial:
1. A New York Times report in 2009 claimed that Ortiz was one of the 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs during "anonymous" survey testing in 2003, before the current testing system was installed. That famous list reportedly also implicates Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, and Sammy Sosa. Not the best company. It doesn't help that Ortiz was Ramirez's teammate for a number of years.
2. Ortiz's OPS with the Minnesota Twins, from 1997 to 2002, was .809. Since joining the Red Sox in 2003, his OPS has been .962.
3. Ortiz looked like toast in 2009, when he got off to a painfully slow start and hit just .238 for the season. It looked like he might retire at the beginning of 2010, when he hit .143 in April as a 34-year old. In the three years since then, he's recovered in a huge way to hit .311/.401/.571.
These are the indicators that the overly-suspicious baseball community has decided upon as the telltale signs of illicit drug use. They're all there: the unsubstantiated reports, the compromised teammates, the quantum leap in production, the late-30s career renaissance. There's far more "evidence" implicating Ortiz than there is against, say, Mike Piazza, and Piazza was rejected by the Hall of Fame voters last year purely based on skepticism and suspicion. For the sake of intellectual consistency, shouldn't Ortiz get the same treatment?
Spoiler alert: he won't. Ortiz isn't subject to the same level of scrutiny as other Hall candidates. And that tells you everything you need to know about how twisted this process has become.
The best illustration of this double standard comes from Jon Heyman, a CBS Sports analyst with a Hall of Fame vote. His Friday column covered Ortiz's case for Cooperstown, and performance-enhancing drugs was one of the key points he addressed. In the past, Heyman has proudly announced his refusal to vote for players even tangentially connected to steroids (not just Bonds and Clemens, but Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza too). So it was good to see the following paragraph, which suggested he would hold Ortiz to the same tough standard to which he has held others:
"Ortiz is no A-Rod, as anyone reasonably can conclude. But that doesn't mean he gets a free pass, either, not without a serious consideration of the facts. With even more accomplished players than Ortiz such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and others omitted from Cooperstown to date, it wouldn't be right not to at least consider the case against Ortiz. A great nickname, way with words and penchant for maximizing the moment doesn't win Big Papi a free pass. So the case against must be considered."
Very reasonable. Heyman isn't letting Ortiz's narrative affect his broader evaluative method. He then goes on to acknowledge a few of the links between Ortiz and drugs:
"Ortiz was one of 104 players to fail MLB's 2003 steroid survey test ... Ortiz was a marginal player until he got [to] the Red Sox in his late 20s, then took a giant leap to become Manny Ramirez's co-equal runningmate, and he has remained great even into his late 30s after looking like he might be nearing the end at least a couple different times a half-decade ago ... A giant bear of a man, he once seemed like the nicest guy in the world, but more recently has shown occasional signs of surliness and one classic fit of temper ... He knows Manny well."
It's important to note at this juncture that these are all ridiculous reasons to exclude Ortiz from the Hall. One unconfirmed report, some statistical fluctuation, and "signs of surliness" aren't evidence of drug use. That's not the point here. The point is that Heyman -- a Hall of Fame voter -- has a well-established history of withholding his vote from players who have been loosely connected to drugs. Here, he appears to be willing to apply that tough standard to the eminently-lovable Ortiz. That's what's important -- intellectual consistency. Even if I don't agree with Heyman's Hall standard, at least he's got a philosophy that he wields fairly across the board. In his own words:
"... it isn't necessarily unreasonable to omit Ortiz based on this one serious mistake. Players who took steroids or even laced supplements gained an unfair advantage, and I have never voted for anyone linked to steroids."
Again, I disagree with this position, but it's hard not to respect Heyman for sticking to his ideological guns, even when faced with an appealing baseball character like Ortiz.
Except at the very end of this column, Heyman does a complete about-face that highlights the Ortiz double standard:
"Some Hall of Fame voters will exclude players with any link to steroids, no matter how strong that link is, but in this case it fairly boils down to one un-sourced report involving a test for survey purposes.
Is that enough to exclude? Not here it isn't.
Cooperstown it is."
I mean ... what? After all that, Heyman is endorsing Ortiz for the Hall? Here's how the logic of this column breaks down:
1. I, Jon Heyman, have never voted for anyone linked to steroids.
2. Here is a bunch of evidence linking David Ortiz to steroids.
3. I support David Ortiz for Cooperstown!
So much for a reasonably-applied standard. Heyman's voting principles are now completely compromised. Just a year ago, his official Hall of Fame ballot did not include Jeff Bagwell. It did not include Mike Piazza. Both of those players had twice the careers that Ortiz had, but Heyman did not vote for them because of unconfirmed reports and rumors about their drug use. Yet in Ortiz's case, Heyman is suddenly willing to acknowledge nuance and look past the unconfirmed reports and rumors. This confirms exactly what we have come to expect -- baseball writers aren't making Hall of Fame decisions based on reason and logic and sound criteria. They're voting on narratives and personal biases. Bagwell and Piazza? They never won a championship, did anything memorable, or played for great teams, so they probably used drugs. They're out. Ortiz? He's a fun dude with a cool nickname, some clutch moments, and three titles for a historic franchise, so he probably didn't use drugs. He's in.
This is not David Ortiz's fault. He may very well be a Hall of Famer, and his tenuous connection to drugs should not be a factor when the time comes to make that decision. It is encouraging to see an actual voter like Jon Heyman promoting that view. It would just be great if Heyman could provide other suspected users like Bagwell and Piazza with the same benefit of the doubt that Ortiz has apparently earned.
There's a second aspect of the Ortiz double standard that isn't drug-related. It has to do with another designated hitter: Edgar Martinez. Martinez has been on the Hall of Fame ballot for four years now, and hasn't yet crossed the 40% threshold, suggesting that his chances of induction aren't good at all. But if Ortiz is now being considered a Hall of Famer, then the voters had better take a second look at Martinez, because the gap between these players is striking.
Martinez had the better slash line (.312/.418/.515), his on-base advantage trumping Ortiz's edge in power (.287/.381/.549). Martinez has the better OPS+ (147 to 138). They have similar career games played and plate appearance totals, yet Baseball Reference has Ortiz's career value at 44.2 WAR and Martinez's at 68.3, thanks in part to Ortiz's forgettable stint with Twins. Both were DHs, but Martinez actually spent less of his time there (74%) than Ortiz (86%). Fangraphs.com grades Ortiz as the inferior baserunner and defender. Martinez actually played some third base, which Ortiz probably can't even do in his own imagination. Granted, Ortiz has the postseason accomplishments, but ... what am I missing here? Until he tacks on a few more seasons of elite production, he can't be considered Martinez's equal.
So how can Jon Heyman support Ortiz for the Hall when he didn't vote for Martinez last year? Well, this is what he wrote about Edgar last January:
"Had that pretty slash line of .312/.418/.515. But since he was mostly a DH, I would have liked a bit more power, longevity or speed. Great, but pretty one-dimensional."
Reading that blurb now is devastatingly ironic considering Heyman's more recent endorsement of Ortiz. If he didn't vote for Martinez because he was a slow and one-dimensional DH without enough longevity, how can he possibly justify a future vote for Ortiz, who's an even-slower and even-more-one-dimensional DH with an even shorter career? Again, it's the same illogical approach discussed above. It clearly doesn't have anything to do with merit. It's because Martinez didn't have an outgoing personality or a badass nickname like "Big Papi" or the good fortune to play for great teams in three World Series. It's about narrative. Baseball writers love narrative -- they write it and promote it for a living -- so it's no surprise that narrative has become the most important means of judging a player's ultimate career value. This is not the objective analysis that baseball -- more rooted in statistics than any other sport -- deserves.
Based on Heyman's voting record with respect to Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, and Edgar Martinez, there was absolutely no rational reason to expect him to support David Ortiz's candidacy as a one-dimensional DH with connections to performance-enhancing drugs. And yet he still wrote that column endorsing Ortiz. It's just another example of how broken Cooperstown's voting process really is. As long as narrative, not merit, determines its membership, the Hall of Fame's relevance as a record of baseball greatness will be undermined.
Unlike Manny Ramirez and Rafael Palmeiro, Ortiz has never officially tested positive for a banned substance. He falls into the same category as Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza (and, technically, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens), in that the evidence against him is purely circumstantial:
1. A New York Times report in 2009 claimed that Ortiz was one of the 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs during "anonymous" survey testing in 2003, before the current testing system was installed. That famous list reportedly also implicates Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, and Sammy Sosa. Not the best company. It doesn't help that Ortiz was Ramirez's teammate for a number of years.
2. Ortiz's OPS with the Minnesota Twins, from 1997 to 2002, was .809. Since joining the Red Sox in 2003, his OPS has been .962.
3. Ortiz looked like toast in 2009, when he got off to a painfully slow start and hit just .238 for the season. It looked like he might retire at the beginning of 2010, when he hit .143 in April as a 34-year old. In the three years since then, he's recovered in a huge way to hit .311/.401/.571.
These are the indicators that the overly-suspicious baseball community has decided upon as the telltale signs of illicit drug use. They're all there: the unsubstantiated reports, the compromised teammates, the quantum leap in production, the late-30s career renaissance. There's far more "evidence" implicating Ortiz than there is against, say, Mike Piazza, and Piazza was rejected by the Hall of Fame voters last year purely based on skepticism and suspicion. For the sake of intellectual consistency, shouldn't Ortiz get the same treatment?
Spoiler alert: he won't. Ortiz isn't subject to the same level of scrutiny as other Hall candidates. And that tells you everything you need to know about how twisted this process has become.
The best illustration of this double standard comes from Jon Heyman, a CBS Sports analyst with a Hall of Fame vote. His Friday column covered Ortiz's case for Cooperstown, and performance-enhancing drugs was one of the key points he addressed. In the past, Heyman has proudly announced his refusal to vote for players even tangentially connected to steroids (not just Bonds and Clemens, but Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza too). So it was good to see the following paragraph, which suggested he would hold Ortiz to the same tough standard to which he has held others:
"Ortiz is no A-Rod, as anyone reasonably can conclude. But that doesn't mean he gets a free pass, either, not without a serious consideration of the facts. With even more accomplished players than Ortiz such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and others omitted from Cooperstown to date, it wouldn't be right not to at least consider the case against Ortiz. A great nickname, way with words and penchant for maximizing the moment doesn't win Big Papi a free pass. So the case against must be considered."
Very reasonable. Heyman isn't letting Ortiz's narrative affect his broader evaluative method. He then goes on to acknowledge a few of the links between Ortiz and drugs:
"Ortiz was one of 104 players to fail MLB's 2003 steroid survey test ... Ortiz was a marginal player until he got [to] the Red Sox in his late 20s, then took a giant leap to become Manny Ramirez's co-equal runningmate, and he has remained great even into his late 30s after looking like he might be nearing the end at least a couple different times a half-decade ago ... A giant bear of a man, he once seemed like the nicest guy in the world, but more recently has shown occasional signs of surliness and one classic fit of temper ... He knows Manny well."
It's important to note at this juncture that these are all ridiculous reasons to exclude Ortiz from the Hall. One unconfirmed report, some statistical fluctuation, and "signs of surliness" aren't evidence of drug use. That's not the point here. The point is that Heyman -- a Hall of Fame voter -- has a well-established history of withholding his vote from players who have been loosely connected to drugs. Here, he appears to be willing to apply that tough standard to the eminently-lovable Ortiz. That's what's important -- intellectual consistency. Even if I don't agree with Heyman's Hall standard, at least he's got a philosophy that he wields fairly across the board. In his own words:
"... it isn't necessarily unreasonable to omit Ortiz based on this one serious mistake. Players who took steroids or even laced supplements gained an unfair advantage, and I have never voted for anyone linked to steroids."
Again, I disagree with this position, but it's hard not to respect Heyman for sticking to his ideological guns, even when faced with an appealing baseball character like Ortiz.
Except at the very end of this column, Heyman does a complete about-face that highlights the Ortiz double standard:
"Some Hall of Fame voters will exclude players with any link to steroids, no matter how strong that link is, but in this case it fairly boils down to one un-sourced report involving a test for survey purposes.
Is that enough to exclude? Not here it isn't.
Cooperstown it is."
I mean ... what? After all that, Heyman is endorsing Ortiz for the Hall? Here's how the logic of this column breaks down:
1. I, Jon Heyman, have never voted for anyone linked to steroids.
2. Here is a bunch of evidence linking David Ortiz to steroids.
3. I support David Ortiz for Cooperstown!
So much for a reasonably-applied standard. Heyman's voting principles are now completely compromised. Just a year ago, his official Hall of Fame ballot did not include Jeff Bagwell. It did not include Mike Piazza. Both of those players had twice the careers that Ortiz had, but Heyman did not vote for them because of unconfirmed reports and rumors about their drug use. Yet in Ortiz's case, Heyman is suddenly willing to acknowledge nuance and look past the unconfirmed reports and rumors. This confirms exactly what we have come to expect -- baseball writers aren't making Hall of Fame decisions based on reason and logic and sound criteria. They're voting on narratives and personal biases. Bagwell and Piazza? They never won a championship, did anything memorable, or played for great teams, so they probably used drugs. They're out. Ortiz? He's a fun dude with a cool nickname, some clutch moments, and three titles for a historic franchise, so he probably didn't use drugs. He's in.
This is not David Ortiz's fault. He may very well be a Hall of Famer, and his tenuous connection to drugs should not be a factor when the time comes to make that decision. It is encouraging to see an actual voter like Jon Heyman promoting that view. It would just be great if Heyman could provide other suspected users like Bagwell and Piazza with the same benefit of the doubt that Ortiz has apparently earned.
------------
There's a second aspect of the Ortiz double standard that isn't drug-related. It has to do with another designated hitter: Edgar Martinez. Martinez has been on the Hall of Fame ballot for four years now, and hasn't yet crossed the 40% threshold, suggesting that his chances of induction aren't good at all. But if Ortiz is now being considered a Hall of Famer, then the voters had better take a second look at Martinez, because the gap between these players is striking.
Martinez had the better slash line (.312/.418/.515), his on-base advantage trumping Ortiz's edge in power (.287/.381/.549). Martinez has the better OPS+ (147 to 138). They have similar career games played and plate appearance totals, yet Baseball Reference has Ortiz's career value at 44.2 WAR and Martinez's at 68.3, thanks in part to Ortiz's forgettable stint with Twins. Both were DHs, but Martinez actually spent less of his time there (74%) than Ortiz (86%). Fangraphs.com grades Ortiz as the inferior baserunner and defender. Martinez actually played some third base, which Ortiz probably can't even do in his own imagination. Granted, Ortiz has the postseason accomplishments, but ... what am I missing here? Until he tacks on a few more seasons of elite production, he can't be considered Martinez's equal.
So how can Jon Heyman support Ortiz for the Hall when he didn't vote for Martinez last year? Well, this is what he wrote about Edgar last January:
"Had that pretty slash line of .312/.418/.515. But since he was mostly a DH, I would have liked a bit more power, longevity or speed. Great, but pretty one-dimensional."
Reading that blurb now is devastatingly ironic considering Heyman's more recent endorsement of Ortiz. If he didn't vote for Martinez because he was a slow and one-dimensional DH without enough longevity, how can he possibly justify a future vote for Ortiz, who's an even-slower and even-more-one-dimensional DH with an even shorter career? Again, it's the same illogical approach discussed above. It clearly doesn't have anything to do with merit. It's because Martinez didn't have an outgoing personality or a badass nickname like "Big Papi" or the good fortune to play for great teams in three World Series. It's about narrative. Baseball writers love narrative -- they write it and promote it for a living -- so it's no surprise that narrative has become the most important means of judging a player's ultimate career value. This is not the objective analysis that baseball -- more rooted in statistics than any other sport -- deserves.
Based on Heyman's voting record with respect to Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, and Edgar Martinez, there was absolutely no rational reason to expect him to support David Ortiz's candidacy as a one-dimensional DH with connections to performance-enhancing drugs. And yet he still wrote that column endorsing Ortiz. It's just another example of how broken Cooperstown's voting process really is. As long as narrative, not merit, determines its membership, the Hall of Fame's relevance as a record of baseball greatness will be undermined.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Cooperstown Candidates: Edgar Martinez and Lee Smith
Continuing a series examining the candidates eligible for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The writers' ballots are due by December 31st and the Class of 2013 will be announced in early January.
The Hall of Fame cases presented by Edgar Martinez and Lee Smith revolve around the same crucial point. They both spent their baseball careers as specialists: Martinez as an all-hit, no-defense designated hitter and Smith as a relief pitcher who measured his appearances in outs, not innings.
Martinez was an adequate third baseman in the first few seasons of his 18-year career with the Seattle Mariners, but in a (successful) effort to preserve his health, he was quickly converted into a full-time DH. Without any defensive (or baserunning) value to his name, he built his whole career on the strength of his bat alone. Many baseball writers instantly discount Martinez for being "one-dimensional" or "a one-trick pony," which is one of the reasons why no DH has ever been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Edgar Martinez, however, deserves to be the first.
He didn't play a full season until he was 27 years old, so he's lacking in cumulative stats like hits (2,247) and home runs (309). However, his career line was majestic: .312/.418/.515. It grants him membership to a criminally underrated club. He is one of the 21 hitters in baseball history who maintained at least a .300 batting average, .400 on-base percentage, and .500 slugging percentage over the course of his entire career (minimum of 1,000 games played). Of the other 20 players in the .300/.400/.500 club, 13 are in the Hall, 6 have good cases for future induction, and one (Shoeless Joe Jackson) is ineligible. In other words, Martinez was legit.
There's more. His on-base percentage was over .400 in 11 different seasons. Across his entire career, he walked more times (1,283) than he struck out (1,202). As for his peak: during the seven years from 1995 to 2001, he hit .329/.446/.574 with a total of 38.4 Wins Above Replacement. That ranks him as the sixth-most valuable player in all of baseball during that seven-year stretch, despite not adding any value with defense. In 1995, he led the league in average, OBP, OPS, runs, and doubles, while being recognized with a third-place finish in the MVP voting -- again, without playing defense. His immense value at the plate transcended his defensive and baserunning deficiencies.
Martinez's numbers are Hall of Fame-worthy. The two biggest knocks against his candidacy aren't statistical. They are:
A) He didn't play in enough games (2,055).
B) He was a DH who didn't play defense, and no DH has ever been elected to the Hall.
Valid concerns, but it's not like there's no precedent to draw upon.
Career Games Played:
Ryne Sandberg: 2,164
Jim Rice: 2,089
Edgar Martinez: 2,055
Kirby Puckett: 1,783
Ralph Kiner: 1,472
Sandberg, Rice, Puckett, and Kiner are all in the Hall of Fame. Martinez should be fine here.
Percentage of Career Starts Made as a DH:
Edgar Martinez: 73%
Frank Thomas: 58%
Paul Molitor: 45%
Jim Thome: 39%
Paul Molitor played almost half of his career games as a DH, but he was elected to the Hall on his first try. The careers of Frank Thomas and Jim Thome were also buoyed by the DH and they're locks for Cooperstown. Not one of these players has been burdened by the stigma of the position like Martinez has, evidenced by his failure to win the support of even 40% of the baseball writers after three years on the ballot. When Frank Thomas gets in (it won't take long, he becomes eligible next year) he'll be the first Hall of Famer with more than half of his career games spent as a DH. That should pave the way for Martinez. He certainly deserves the honor.
And then there's Lee Smith, a closer who racked up 478 saves in his 18 seasons with eight different teams. Like Martinez, Smith's value as a player was limited by his role. As a relief pitcher, his job was both easier and less important than the heavier workloads undertaken by starters. His candidacy is mostly hinged on the fact that when he retired, he was the all-time saves leader. The significance of this is ... well, nonexistent. It's trivia. A guy named Jeff Reardon also once retired as the all-time saves leader, and I have no idea who that is. It hardly even matters anyway, as Smith has since been passed in career saves by Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman.
More importantly, Smith falls short when measured against the five relievers already in the Hall. Sure, his career ERA of 3.03 looks worthy compared to the ERAs of Dennis Eckersley (3.50) and Goose Gossage (3.01). But Smith threw less than 1,300 innings. Gossage threw over 1,800 and Eckersley, who was a starter for a while, exceeded 3,200. Hoyt Wilhelm and Rollie Fingers also threw more innings, and they were just better pitchers, period. The only one of the five enshrined relievers who's comparable to Smith is Bruce Sutter. But he is easily the worst of the bunch; the low-water mark. Smith has to be better than that. He wasn't, really.
Not only is Smith an inferior candidate when compared to the specialists already in the Hall; he isn't even the best specialist on this ballot. Edgar Martinez was the best DH of all time and the same can't be said about Smith as a reliever. What's more, Smith faced a hitter just 5,387 times in his career, while Martinez faced a pitcher 8,674 times. Martinez undoubtedly had more impact, and he wins my hypothetical vote. The DH position needs to be represented in Cooperstown.
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
Out: Sammy Sosa, Lee Smith
The Hall of Fame cases presented by Edgar Martinez and Lee Smith revolve around the same crucial point. They both spent their baseball careers as specialists: Martinez as an all-hit, no-defense designated hitter and Smith as a relief pitcher who measured his appearances in outs, not innings.
Martinez was an adequate third baseman in the first few seasons of his 18-year career with the Seattle Mariners, but in a (successful) effort to preserve his health, he was quickly converted into a full-time DH. Without any defensive (or baserunning) value to his name, he built his whole career on the strength of his bat alone. Many baseball writers instantly discount Martinez for being "one-dimensional" or "a one-trick pony," which is one of the reasons why no DH has ever been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Edgar Martinez, however, deserves to be the first.
There's more. His on-base percentage was over .400 in 11 different seasons. Across his entire career, he walked more times (1,283) than he struck out (1,202). As for his peak: during the seven years from 1995 to 2001, he hit .329/.446/.574 with a total of 38.4 Wins Above Replacement. That ranks him as the sixth-most valuable player in all of baseball during that seven-year stretch, despite not adding any value with defense. In 1995, he led the league in average, OBP, OPS, runs, and doubles, while being recognized with a third-place finish in the MVP voting -- again, without playing defense. His immense value at the plate transcended his defensive and baserunning deficiencies.
Martinez's numbers are Hall of Fame-worthy. The two biggest knocks against his candidacy aren't statistical. They are:
A) He didn't play in enough games (2,055).
B) He was a DH who didn't play defense, and no DH has ever been elected to the Hall.
Valid concerns, but it's not like there's no precedent to draw upon.
Career Games Played:
Ryne Sandberg: 2,164
Jim Rice: 2,089
Edgar Martinez: 2,055
Kirby Puckett: 1,783
Ralph Kiner: 1,472
Sandberg, Rice, Puckett, and Kiner are all in the Hall of Fame. Martinez should be fine here.
Percentage of Career Starts Made as a DH:
Edgar Martinez: 73%
Frank Thomas: 58%
Paul Molitor: 45%
Jim Thome: 39%
Paul Molitor played almost half of his career games as a DH, but he was elected to the Hall on his first try. The careers of Frank Thomas and Jim Thome were also buoyed by the DH and they're locks for Cooperstown. Not one of these players has been burdened by the stigma of the position like Martinez has, evidenced by his failure to win the support of even 40% of the baseball writers after three years on the ballot. When Frank Thomas gets in (it won't take long, he becomes eligible next year) he'll be the first Hall of Famer with more than half of his career games spent as a DH. That should pave the way for Martinez. He certainly deserves the honor.
More importantly, Smith falls short when measured against the five relievers already in the Hall. Sure, his career ERA of 3.03 looks worthy compared to the ERAs of Dennis Eckersley (3.50) and Goose Gossage (3.01). But Smith threw less than 1,300 innings. Gossage threw over 1,800 and Eckersley, who was a starter for a while, exceeded 3,200. Hoyt Wilhelm and Rollie Fingers also threw more innings, and they were just better pitchers, period. The only one of the five enshrined relievers who's comparable to Smith is Bruce Sutter. But he is easily the worst of the bunch; the low-water mark. Smith has to be better than that. He wasn't, really.
Not only is Smith an inferior candidate when compared to the specialists already in the Hall; he isn't even the best specialist on this ballot. Edgar Martinez was the best DH of all time and the same can't be said about Smith as a reliever. What's more, Smith faced a hitter just 5,387 times in his career, while Martinez faced a pitcher 8,674 times. Martinez undoubtedly had more impact, and he wins my hypothetical vote. The DH position needs to be represented in Cooperstown.
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
Out: Sammy Sosa, Lee Smith
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)