With casual spring training games already underway, the sports betting site Bovada recently released its over/under figures for each MLB team's 2014 win total. The numbers set rough outlines for how all 30 teams are expected to perform during the upcoming season. All of the over/unders are listed here, along with a prediction of whether each team will exceed their projected win total or fall short of it.
Arizona Diamondbacks
2013 Wins: 81
2014 Over/Under: 80.5
Nobody does mediocrity like the Diamondbacks. For two years running, Arizona has finished with 81 wins and 81 losses. Their moves this offseason -- like trading for Mark Trumbo and assembling a rotation made up of exclusively #3 starters -- suggest a third straight .500 season could be on tap. When you give Bronson Arroyo an average annual salary of $11 million, why should you expect anything else? Under 80.5 wins.
Atlanta Braves
2013 Wins: 96
2014 Over/Under: 87.5
The Braves spent over a quarter of a billion dollars this winter, and their biggest free agent acquisition was Freddy Garcia. The rest of the money was spent on locking up the young players already on the roster -- Freddie Freeman, Craig Kimbrel, Andrelton Simmons, and Julio Teheran. Brian McCann is a significant loss, but the Braves still have one of the most complete and well-rounded rosters in the league. Even with B.J. Upton and Dan Uggla clogging up payroll space. Over 87.5 wins.
Baltimore Orioles
2013 Wins: 85
2014 Over/Under: 80.5
For two straight years, the Orioles have overperformed relative to expectations (and the talent on the team). Why not make it three? Sure, it would be nice to have a major-league second baseman on the roster (the depth chart at the position currently reads: Weeks, Casilla, Flaherty, Schoop). But the free-agent additions of Ubaldo Jimenez and Nelson Cruz filled much-needed holes. And it's hard to find a young core of position players that's more solid than Chris Davis, Adam Jones, and Manny Machado. Over 80.5 wins.
Boston Red Sox
2013 Wins: 97
2014 Over/Under: 87.5
The defending champions did almost nothing to strengthen their team on the free agent market, and instead bid farewell to Jacoby Ellsbury, Stephen Drew, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia. But the Red Sox aren't being complacent; they're just confident in their in-house replacements. Xander Bogaerts could be a huge offensive upgrade at shortstop and Jackie Bradley Jr. will add excellent defense in center field. And A.J. Pierzynski is technically still capable of being a major-league catcher even if he remains a loathsome human being. A starting rotation fronted by Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz, John Lackey, and Jake Peavy should be reliable, and it benefits even more from the loss of Ryan Dempster, a classic addition-by-subtraction move. The 2013 World Series champions are still very good, and there's some crack analysis. Over 87.5 wins.
Chicago Cubs
2013 Wins: 66
2014 Over/Under: 69.5
The good news for Cubs fans is that their system is full of promising young talent. The worse news is that none of it is on the major league roster yet. This is a bad team, and there's no reason to believe that it will be better than last year's 66-win club. Starlin Castro, once a bright spot, was absolutely useless in 2013. The starting outfield might consist of Junior Lake, Justin Ruggiano, and Nate Schierholtz. And the team's best pitcher, Jeff Samardzija, could be traded at any time. Bad baseball team. Under 69.5 wins.
Chicago White Sox
2013 Wins: 63
2014 Over/Under: 75.5
Setting the over/under for the 2014 White Sox at 75-and-a-half seems ridiculously optimistic. The offense should once again be dreadful, especially if Paul Konerko's last season (he plans on retiring) looks anything like his second-to-last season. Chris Sale is a freak of nature, but he's got absolutely no help on the pitching staff. The addition of intriguing Cuban slugger Jose Abreu is virtually the only reason to watch this team on the days when Sale isn't pitching. Under 75.5 wins.
Cincinnati Reds
2013 Wins: 90
2014 Over/Under: 84.5
It's hard to think of a team that had a more disastrous, frustrating offseason than the Reds. Mat Latos tore his meniscus on the first day of spring training; the pitching depth was already hurting with Bronson Arroyo's departure. Shin-Soo Choo, so valuable last year, is gone. He'll likely be replaced by the impossibly-fast Billy Hamilton, who could either revolutionize the game with his speed or never get on base enough to use it. All of Cincinnati's infielders not named Joey Votto are awful hitters, a well-known fact that the front office did nothing to address. In division led by the Cardinals, the Reds may pay for their inaction. Under 84.5 wins.
Cleveland Indians
2013 Wins: 92
2014 Over/Under: 80.5
It's almost impossible to have a quieter 90-win season than the Indians enjoyed last year. Unfortunately, it will be nearly impossible for them to repeat that success after the losses of Ubaldo Jimenez and Scott Kazmir to free agency. The pitching simply isn't here -- any team that lists Shaun Marcum as its fifth starter on the depth chart has issues. But the offense should be strong enough to keep the Indians from regressing too much. They're loaded with above-average hitters at almost every spot on the diamond, along with the positional flexibility to exploit matchups. Carlos Santana's move to third base opens up a place behind the plate for Yan Gomes, who was a revelation in limited time last year. Cleveland should be better than .500. Over 80.5.
Colorado Rockies
2013 Wins: 74
2014 Over/Under: 76.5
Colorado has to be one of the most bizarre professional franchises in sports. The Rockies seemingly want to compete for the playoffs now -- they gave millions of dollars to Justin Morneau (??), refused to trade Michael Cuddyer, and brought in Brett Anderson. Yet they also traded away Dexter Fowler and did nothing notable in free agency beyond minor tinkering like Morneau and Drew Stubbs. The Coors Field effect on Rockies pitchers remains a massive issue that the front office isn't addressing. And it's tough to take the 'over' on a team that relies so heavily on two stars -- Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez -- who struggle to remain healthy. Under 76.5.
Detroit Tigers
2013 Wins: 93
2014 Over/Under: 89.5
Trading away Prince Fielder's onerous contract for Ian Kinsler was supposed to open things up financially for the Tigers. Strangely, that hasn't been the case, and the on-field product may suffer as a result. The team seems content to roll with Andy Dirks and Rajai Davis in left field rather than splurging on a free agent like Shin-Soo Choo. Unproven rookie Nick Castellanos appears to be the one and only option at third base. Dumping the eternally-underrated Doug Fister on the Nationals was a head-scratcher. If the Tigers do have budget concerns, then spending $10 million in annual salary on Joe Nathan might not have been the wisest move. This team didn't get better over the last few months. Under 89.5.
Houston Astros
2013 Wins: 51
2014 Over/Under: 62.5
In 2013, the Astros fielded one of the most miserable baseball teams in recent memory (51 wins!). They'll be better in 2014 just by default. But twelve wins better? There are maybe five or six major league players on this 25-man roster. Taking the over on the Astros feels like being on the wrong side of history. Under 62.5.
Kansas City Royals
2013 Wins: 86
2014 Over/Under: 82.5
By trading for Norichika Aoki and signing Omar Infante, the Royals suddenly have respectable major league players at almost every position. They might be a pitcher or two short of where they'd like to be, but they've also got an embarrassment of hard-throwing riches in their stacked bullpen to help cover for the starters. Leaps to stardom by Eric Hosmer or Salvador Perez could make this team the 2014 version of last year's Pirates. Over 82.5.
Los Angeles Angels
2013 Wins: 78
2014 Over/Under: 86.5
No team needed to improve its pitching staff more than the Angels (reminder: they gave a combined 58 starts to Jerome Williams, Joe Blanton, and Tommy Hanson last year). The front office had to add a proven starter or two, even if it meant overpaying Masahiro Tanaka, Matt Garza, or Ubaldo Jimenez. Instead, the Angels did nothing, and now their starting five includes Tyler Skaggs, Garrett Richards, and Hector Santiago. Wasting Mike Trout's prime years like this is downright criminal. Under 86.5.
Los Angeles Dodgers
2013 Wins: 92
2014 Over/Under: 92.5
Setting a team's over/under at 92-and-a-half is stunningly optimistic, and yet it might be warranted in the Dodgers' case. The team with more money than some small nations has 11 players making at least $10 million in 2014. Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Dan Haren, and Hyun-Jin Ryu is a nasty front four, with Paul Maholm and Josh Beckett jostling for the fifth slot. Even if Matt Kemp never gets healthy, the outfield is already full with Carl Crawford, Andre Ethier, and Yasiel Puig. Second base could be a hole, but the Dodgers have proven their willingness to upgrade midseason, at any cost. The 'under' might be the smart play here, if only because 92.5 is such a high number, and guys like Crawford, Kemp, and Hanley Ramirez are injury concerns. Even so, that's not an indictment of this team; the Dodgers are probably the early favorites to win the World Series. Under 92.5 wins.
Miami Marlins
2013 Wins: 62
2014 Over/Under: 69.5
Like the Astros, this team is going to improve in 2014 just by default. In fact, there are some downright exciting names on this roster, especially in the outfield. A healthy season from Giancarlo Stanton could be worth a few extra wins and Jarrod Saltalamacchia was a bargain of an upgrade at catcher. Still ... Rafael Furcal is slated to be the starting second baseman. 70 wins might be too tall an order this soon. Under 69.5 wins.
Milwaukee Brewers
2013 Wins: 74
2014 Over/Under: 79.5
The 2013 Brewers gave 400 plate appearances to Yuniesky Betancourt (his OBP was .240). Improvement in 2014 is almost guaranteed, and not just because Betancourt is now in Japan. Ryan Braun is back from his suspension after only playing in 61 games last year. Matt Garza solidifies a suddenly-decent starting rotation. Khris (not Chris) Davis showed some exciting things at the plate last year. And Carlos Gomez, Jean Segura, and Jonathan Lucroy have emerged as a strong up-the-middle core. A .500 season or better should be expected. Over 79.5 wins.
Minnesota Twins
2013 Wins: 66
2014 Over/Under: 70.5
The Twins are paying Ricky Nolasco, Phil Hughes, and Mike Pelfrey over $22 million in combined salary in 2014. Instead of taking that lump sum of money and competing for a top-of-the-line starter, they divided it up and got three of the most uninspiring pitchers on the market. The Twins, man. Even if the rotation is less leaky, the offense will once again be one of the worst in baseball. Looking forward to Joe Mauer not making the Hall of Fame because of the Twins' dysfunction. Under 70.5 wins.
New York Mets
2013 Wins: 74
2014 Over/Under: 74.5
The loss of Matt Harvey for the season is likely what's deflating the Mets' over/under here. But the team actually did a solid job grabbing bargains on the free agent market. Flanking Juan Lagares in center field with Curtis Granderson and Chris Young gives the Mets an elite defensive outfield without sacrificing power at the plate. Convincing Bartolo Colon to come to the National League was a savvy move, if only for the hilarity that will surely ensue when he's forced to bat and jog to first a couple times per start. Zack Wheeler could do a decent Harvey impersonation in his first full season. The Mets are headed in the right direction. Over 74.5 wins.
New York Yankees
2013 Wins: 85
2014 Over/Under: 86.5
The good news is that Brian McCann, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Carlos Beltran all represent significant offensive upgrades over the dreck this team was sending to the plate last year. Those specific additions also show that the team is actively exploiting its stadium's short right-field porch. Still, half a billion dollars of spending later, the Opening Day lineup is projected to include both Brian Roberts and Kelly Johnson. Throw in injury/age concerns surrounding Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira, and the Yankees' infield looks dangerously shaky. Masahiro Tanaka was the key pick-up who could tip the scales, but the over would be a much safer play if New York signed Stephen Drew. Over 86.5 wins.
Oakland Athletics
2013 Wins: 96
2014 Over/Under: 88.5
The team that's won the ultra-competitive AL West for two straight seasons is back again, with only minor changes. Going from Bartolo Colon and Grant Balfour to Scott Kazmir and Jim Johnson may be a small downgrade, but the potential for breakouts from Yoenis Cespedes and Sonny Gray offers upside. The A's have turned themselves into a perennial contender with a deep lineup, nasty bullpen, and young starting rotation. Over 88.5 wins.
Philadelphia Phillies
2013 Wins: 73
2014 Over/Under: 76.5
The Phillies probably aren't a playoff team. They might not even be a .500 team. But they can certainly win 77 games, especially with a rotation that includes Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, and A.J. Burnett. Chase Utley is quietly still playing at an elite level. Ryan Howard doesn't have to return to superstar status to be a useful role player. The backlash against the Phillies appears to have gone a bit too far. Over 76.5 wins.
Pittsburgh Pirates
2013 Wins: 94
2014 Over/Under: 83.5
Pittsburgh is the prime candidate for significant regression in 2014, and this pessimistic over/under total reflects that fact. Although they won 94 games last year, they were closer in quality to an 88-win team according to their total runs scored and allowed. A.J. Burnett left and wasn't replaced. Francisco Liriano won't repeat the ridiculous numbers he posted during his comeback campaign. Any dropoff from the team's lone star player, reigning MVP Andrew McCutchen, would be difficult for this overachieving team to overcome. Under 83.5 wins.
San Diego Padres
2013 Wins: 76
2014 Over/Under: 78.5
It's hard to come up with a professional sports franchise more irrelevant than the Padres, who are never good enough to contend but never as entertainingly dysfunctional as a team like the Marlins. This year, at least, there's some hope for a Pirates-like run. Shortstop Everth Cabrera is a solid pick to lead the majors in stolen bases; Will Venable is coming off a 20-20 season; and a healthy Chase Headley could return to All-Star status. Reclamation projects like Josh Johnson and Ian Kennedy offer potential in Petco Park's pitching friendly environment. There's reason for optimism here. Over 78.5 wins.
San Francisco Giants
2013 Wins: 76
2014 Over/Under: 86.5
After an out-of-nowhere awful season in 2013, the Giants can expect a rebound in 2014. Angel Pagan and Ryan Vogelsong are back from injuries. The rotation should be better with a rebound year from the ultra-reliable Matt Cain as well as the addition of Tim Hudson. The mercurial Pablo Sandoval -- in a contract year -- might show up in shape and motivated. Brandon Belt has grown into an excellent first baseman. Knowing the Giants' history of reviving the careers of washed-up veterans, they'll probably get 30 homers out of Mike Morse, too. Over 86.5 wins.
Seattle Mariners
2013 Wins: 71
2014 Over/Under: 81.5
The Mariners fancy themselves contenders, and signing Robinson Cano was an excellent start down that path. But that acquisition alone wasn't enough to turn a 71-win club into a playoff team, or even a .500 team. The rest of the Mariners' moves were uninspiring -- like filling their glaring holes at "offense-friendly" positions with the oft-injured Corey Hart and failed prospect Logan Morrison. Plus, early injuries to Hisashi Iwakuma and Taijuan Walker have punched holes in a flimsy pitching staff. This team desperately needs to sign Ervin Santana, or else a .500 season might be out of reach, let alone a playoff berth. Under 81.5 wins.
St. Louis Cardinals
2013 Wins: 97
2014 Over/Under: 90.5
The defending NL champions only had two glaring holes exposed during the World Series: shortstop and center field. In response, they brought in Jhonny Peralta to provide a huge offensive upgrade at short, and flipped David Freese to the Angels to get Peter Bourjos' great defense in center. Done and done. The rest of the roster's needs were filled internally thanks to the Cardinals' ridiculous depth. The presence of Kolten Wong at second base allows Matt Carpenter to replace Freese at third base. And Allen Craig can move into right field to replace Carlos Beltran, allowing Matt Adams to take over at first base. On the mound, the Cardinals' treasure chest of young arms is loaded thanks to the young foursome of Shelby Miller, Michael Wacha, Trevor Rosenthal, and Carlos Martinez. Out of all the teams in baseball, the Cardinals have the best chance of winning their division. Along with the Spurs and the Patriots, this might be the best-run franchise in sports. Over 90.5 wins.
Tampa Bay Rays
2013 Wins: 92
2014 Over/Under: 88.5
The typically-savvy Rays made some uncharacteristically questionable moves this offseason, like willingly trading for Heath Bell and re-signing James Loney to a three-year contract. But they also made some classic Rays moves that should pay solid dividends, like signing Grant Balfour on the cheap, bringing back the underrated David DeJesus, and trading for pitch-framing savant Ryan Hanigan. These supplements to the established core of talent in Tampa Bay should be enough to get this team back to the playoffs yet again. Over 88.5 wins.
Texas Rangers
2013 Wins: 91
2014 Over/Under: 86.5
If nothing else, the Rangers can be sure of one thing: they're going to score buckets and buckets of runs. Shin-Soo Choo getting on base in front of Adrian Beltre and Prince Fielder is a formula that's going to work just fine. Fielder in particular could experience a career renaissance in Texas' hitter-friendly ballpark. Jurickson Profar taking over the second base job permanently is another key development to watch. This dynamic offense should be good enough to alleviate concerns about the starting rotation, which is a little thin after Yu Darvish. Over 86.5 wins.
Toronto Blue Jays
2013 Wins: 74
2014 Over/Under: 80.5
In the AL East, sitting tight during the offseason just doesn't work. While the Yankees, Orioles, and Rays all actively sought upgrades to compete with the Red Sox for the division title, the Blue Jays did almost nothing to strengthen a roster that fell apart in 2013. To some extent, Toronto is banking on internal improvement just based on health, because Jose Bautista, Jose Reyes, Brett Lawrie, Melky Cabrera, and Brandon Morrow were all hurt last year. That's a reasonable strategy, but even a fully healthy version of their rotation won't be good enough. Here's another team that really needs to sign Ervin Santana. Under 80.5 wins.
Washington Nationals
2013 Wins: 86
2014 Over/Under: 88.5
Universally pegged as the best team in baseball this time last year, the Nationals struggled with inconsistency and didn't make the playoffs. They should return to form in 2014. Corner outfielders Bryce Harper and Jayson Werth both spent time on the DL and appear to be fully healthy now. A loaded rotation that already boasted Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez, and Jordan Zimmermann now adds Doug Fister. Ian Desmond is suddenly one of the best shortstops in baseball. The only glaring issues here are Ryan Zimmerman's throwing and Adam LaRoche, two problems that could both be fixed simply by moving Zimmerman to first base permanently. Even if the Nats don't go that route, they'll compete with the Braves for the NL East title. Over 88.5 wins.
Showing posts with label MLB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MLB. Show all posts
Monday, March 3, 2014
Sunday, February 2, 2014
A.J. Burnett is the Prettiest Girl at the Dance
Several days ago, baseball's stagnant free agent market was finally shaken into action by some potentially game-changing news. Reports indicated that A.J. Burnett has decided to return to the mound in 2014 rather than retire, and contrary to statements he made several months ago, it appears as though he will entertain all offers instead of negotiating exclusively with his Pittsburgh Pirates. Overnight, A.J. Burnett has suddenly become the most enticing free agent in a thin market.
A few years ago that statement would have seemed preposterous. Burnett was terrible in his final two seasons with the Yankees, posting a 5.20 ERA in his last 66 appearances with the team despite earning an annual salary of $16.5 million. After 2011, the Yankees were so eager to get rid of him that they dumped him on Pittsburgh and agreed to pay $20 million of the $33 million still on his contract. Much like David Justice in "Moneyball," Burnett was being paid by the Yankees to play for somebody else.
But somewhat unsurprisingly, Burnett enjoyed a career renaissance in Pittsburgh. Not only did he escape the brutal AL East for the more forgiving NL Central; on top of that, his new team offered a far more pitcher-friendly ballpark and one of the smartest shifting defenses in baseball. From 2012 to 2013, Burnett made 61 starts for his new team, threw almost 400 innings, and posted a 3.41 ERA. Last year, he led the league in strikeout rate and helped the Pirates reach the playoffs for the first time in a generation. Though he once carried the "injury-prone" label, he has actually made at least 30 starts in every season since 2008. Burnett's combination of performance and durability has transformed him back into a desirable asset.
Yet what really sets Burnett apart on the free agent market is the contract he'll be willing to sign. As a 37-year-old who flirted with retirement this winter, he's unlikely to command (or even want) a long-term commitment. A one- or two- year deal for Burnett carries virtually no risk, unlike the seven-year deal for Masahiro Tanaka or the four-year deal for Matt Garza. Plus, the Pirates did not extend Burnett a qualifying offer, which means the team that ultimately signs him will not have to give up their first-round draft pick. That makes Burnett a relatively safe investment who will require no long-term sacrifices.
The list of suitors for Burnett should be long. Any team that doesn't have a complete roster yet but still has designs on making the playoffs in 2014 should be calling his agent. That includes franchises like the Orioles, Mariners, Diamondbacks, Phillies, and Pirates. There should be a sense of urgency in this situation, because whoever misses out on Burnett will be stuck with choosing from the leftovers wasting away on the free agent scrap heap. And there's virtually nothing attractive out there; the "best" hitters and pitchers still available outside of Burnett are:
Ervin Santana, who apparently wants a four- or five- year deal even though he is just one season removed from a 5.16 ERA with the Angels ... and whoever signs him will need to give up their first-round draft pick.
Ubaldo Jimenez, who is even less trustworthy than Santana; who is also demanding a long-term contract; and who will also require the surrendering of a first-round pick.
Kendrys Morales, a first-baseman/DH who hasn't posted an OPS over .800 since 2010, and who will also require his team to give up a first-rounder.
Or (best of all) there's always Nelson Cruz, who supposedly wanted $75 million earlier in the offseason even though he's a 33-year-old corner outfielder coming off a drug suspension who can't play defense and owns a three-year cumulative on-base percentage of .319 ... and, yes, will also require a first-round draft pick.
There's only one free agent available right now who can safely provide high-quality value in 2014 without a long-term commitment or a draft pick price tag, and that's A.J. Burnett. He can be a godsend for a team like the Orioles by both bolstering their rotation and keeping them from throwing stupid desperate money at Nelson Cruz. Given the poor quality of the alternatives and the impending arrival of spring training, the bidding war should be fast-paced and intense. A.J. Burnett is the prettiest girl at the dance right now, and considering how dead his career looked a couple of years ago, he's probably enjoying every second of it.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Reacting to the Hall of Fame Results
For the first time since 1999, a Hall of Fame class will feature three first-ballot selections. Compared to last year's lackluster results, this 2014 election cycle was a heartening development. But a closer examination of the percentages reveals some puzzling issues and inconsistencies.
Greg Maddux (97.2%): So we won't have a unanimous Hall of Fame selection until Mike Trout.
Tom Glavine (91.9%): He obviously deserves this honor, but hypothetically, if Glavine, Curt Schilling, and Mike Mussina had all played for the same team, Glavine would have been the third-best pitcher in that rotation.
Frank Thomas (83.7%): He spent more than half of his career games as a designated hitter and he's a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Edgar Martinez is confused.
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Craig Biggio (74.8%): Agonizingly, he fell just two votes short of making it. His induction is, and always has been, an inevitability -- so what is being accomplished by forcing him to wait another twelve months?
Mike Piazza (62.2%): He and Biggio were the only two holdover candidates to actually see their vote totals increase, so Piazza is headed in the right direction. He's the only player on this ballot besides the three inductees who actually got good news.
Jack Morris (61.5%): He falls off the ballot after exhausting his 15 years of eligibility. To some extent, this is just delaying the inevitable -- Morris is basically a lock to be inducted by the Veteran's Committee in a few years. But this way, the BBWAA's high standards.haven't been compromised. It's a win-win result: Morris will get his plaque without lowering the bar for future candidates.
Jeff Bagwell (54.3%): Ridiculously, support for Bagwell dropped by five percent. There is no proof that he ever used a banned substance. He never failed a drug test and wasn't mentioned in the Mitchell Report. So nearly half of the baseball writers appear willing to exclude a player from the Hall of Fame based on nothing but speculation and rumor. That's the most significant (and disappointing) takeaway from this year's voting.
Tim Raines (46.1%): Fell back under 50%, but he has eight more years of eligibility. Raines' case is gathering momentum.
Roger Clemens (35.4%): Even fewer votes than last year. So the people in charge of honoring the best players in the history of baseball are just flat-out refusing to honor two of the best players in the history of baseball.
Barry Bonds (34.7%): Apparently Barry Bonds did more to "damage the integrity of the sport" than Hall of Fame racists like Ty Cobb and Cap Anson, who helped perpetuate the segregationist policies that denied Satchel Paige and Oscar Charleston and Josh Gibson the right to play major league baseball.
Lee Smith (29.9%): Relief pitchers have the easiest job in baseball, so the Hall's standard at the position should be extremely high. Smith doesn't meet that standard.
Curt Schilling (29.2%): Twice the pitcher Jack Morris was; half the votes Jack Morris got.
Edgar Martinez (25.2%): The year Frank Thomas was elected on the first ballot, Martinez's support dropped by ten percentage points. Figure that one out.
Alan Trammell (20.8%): He deserves more than this. Trammell had a higher career on-base percentage than Cal Ripken Jr., Ernie Banks, and Robin Yount; he had eight excellent offensive seasons and was the league's best position player in 1987. He should be one of the most-debated candidates on the ballot. Instead, he's just a footnote.
Mike Mussina (20.3%): This result was the one most disconnected from reality. Why will it take Mussina a decade longer to reach Cooperstown than Glavine? There's no good answer to that question.
Jeff Kent (15.2%): Like Trammell, Kent was almost completely overlooked in this crowded field. He has a solid case, but those calling him the best offensive second baseman ever are incorrectly placing him ahead of Rogers Hornsby, Jackie Robinson, Nap Lajoie, and maybe even a few others.
Fred McGriff (11.7%): Very close, but only one season with an OPS over 1.000 during this hitter-friendly era? Not going to cut it at the first base position.
Mark McGwire (11.0%): He's the only notable name from the Steroid Era to openly admit the truth about his drug use. And he's being completely ignored by a voting bloc that claims to care about morality and character. What kind of message does that send?
Larry Walker (10.2%): His ludicrous 1997 season alone is worth 10.2% of the vote. The writers aren't doing their homework on Walker.
Don Mattingly (8.2%): On this stacked ballot, even 8.2% for Mattingly is too much.
Sammy Sosa (7.2%): Among the voters, his connections to performance-enhancing drugs render his 609 career homers irrelevant. But Sosa's exile isn't nearly the same as Bonds' or Clemens'. Though his peak was incredible, his cumulative performance was borderline at best for the Hall of Fame. His career OBP (.344), OPS (.878), and OPS+ (128) weren't elite for a corner outfielder in the Steroid Era who didn't provide much value away from the plate. Larry Walker, for example, easily bests Sosa in each of those three categories (.400, .965, 141) with a similar peak and better defense and baserunning. Sosa wouldn't be a slam-dunk candidate even if he had been clean.
Rafael Palmeiro (4.4%): Despite being one of only four players with at least 3,000 hits and 500 homers, Palmeiro has now fallen off the ballot entirely by receiving less than 5% of the vote, thanks to an infamous failed drug test. But like Sosa, Palmeiro might not be worthy of the Hall just based on performance alone. He never had a significant peak -- like McGriff, he only had one season with an OPS over 1.000. He played his entire career in hitter-friendly home ballparks. And his career OPS (.885) and OPS+ (132) aren't impressive relative to his contemporaries, especially at his position. It's too easy to name other first basemen and DHs from his era who were significantly better: Frank Thomas, Albert Pujols, Jeff Bagwell, Jim Thome, Edgar Martinez, and Mark McGwire, for instance. Palmeiro is the perfect example of why arbitrary milestones like 3,000 hits and 500 homers should not be treated like magic numbers when it comes to the Hall of Fame.
Greg Maddux (97.2%): So we won't have a unanimous Hall of Fame selection until Mike Trout.
Tom Glavine (91.9%): He obviously deserves this honor, but hypothetically, if Glavine, Curt Schilling, and Mike Mussina had all played for the same team, Glavine would have been the third-best pitcher in that rotation.
Frank Thomas (83.7%): He spent more than half of his career games as a designated hitter and he's a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Edgar Martinez is confused.
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Craig Biggio (74.8%): Agonizingly, he fell just two votes short of making it. His induction is, and always has been, an inevitability -- so what is being accomplished by forcing him to wait another twelve months?
Mike Piazza (62.2%): He and Biggio were the only two holdover candidates to actually see their vote totals increase, so Piazza is headed in the right direction. He's the only player on this ballot besides the three inductees who actually got good news.
Jack Morris (61.5%): He falls off the ballot after exhausting his 15 years of eligibility. To some extent, this is just delaying the inevitable -- Morris is basically a lock to be inducted by the Veteran's Committee in a few years. But this way, the BBWAA's high standards.haven't been compromised. It's a win-win result: Morris will get his plaque without lowering the bar for future candidates.
Jeff Bagwell (54.3%): Ridiculously, support for Bagwell dropped by five percent. There is no proof that he ever used a banned substance. He never failed a drug test and wasn't mentioned in the Mitchell Report. So nearly half of the baseball writers appear willing to exclude a player from the Hall of Fame based on nothing but speculation and rumor. That's the most significant (and disappointing) takeaway from this year's voting.
Tim Raines (46.1%): Fell back under 50%, but he has eight more years of eligibility. Raines' case is gathering momentum.
Roger Clemens (35.4%): Even fewer votes than last year. So the people in charge of honoring the best players in the history of baseball are just flat-out refusing to honor two of the best players in the history of baseball.
Barry Bonds (34.7%): Apparently Barry Bonds did more to "damage the integrity of the sport" than Hall of Fame racists like Ty Cobb and Cap Anson, who helped perpetuate the segregationist policies that denied Satchel Paige and Oscar Charleston and Josh Gibson the right to play major league baseball.
Lee Smith (29.9%): Relief pitchers have the easiest job in baseball, so the Hall's standard at the position should be extremely high. Smith doesn't meet that standard.
Curt Schilling (29.2%): Twice the pitcher Jack Morris was; half the votes Jack Morris got.
Edgar Martinez (25.2%): The year Frank Thomas was elected on the first ballot, Martinez's support dropped by ten percentage points. Figure that one out.
Alan Trammell (20.8%): He deserves more than this. Trammell had a higher career on-base percentage than Cal Ripken Jr., Ernie Banks, and Robin Yount; he had eight excellent offensive seasons and was the league's best position player in 1987. He should be one of the most-debated candidates on the ballot. Instead, he's just a footnote.
Mike Mussina (20.3%): This result was the one most disconnected from reality. Why will it take Mussina a decade longer to reach Cooperstown than Glavine? There's no good answer to that question.
Jeff Kent (15.2%): Like Trammell, Kent was almost completely overlooked in this crowded field. He has a solid case, but those calling him the best offensive second baseman ever are incorrectly placing him ahead of Rogers Hornsby, Jackie Robinson, Nap Lajoie, and maybe even a few others.
Fred McGriff (11.7%): Very close, but only one season with an OPS over 1.000 during this hitter-friendly era? Not going to cut it at the first base position.
Mark McGwire (11.0%): He's the only notable name from the Steroid Era to openly admit the truth about his drug use. And he's being completely ignored by a voting bloc that claims to care about morality and character. What kind of message does that send?
Larry Walker (10.2%): His ludicrous 1997 season alone is worth 10.2% of the vote. The writers aren't doing their homework on Walker.
Don Mattingly (8.2%): On this stacked ballot, even 8.2% for Mattingly is too much.
Sammy Sosa (7.2%): Among the voters, his connections to performance-enhancing drugs render his 609 career homers irrelevant. But Sosa's exile isn't nearly the same as Bonds' or Clemens'. Though his peak was incredible, his cumulative performance was borderline at best for the Hall of Fame. His career OBP (.344), OPS (.878), and OPS+ (128) weren't elite for a corner outfielder in the Steroid Era who didn't provide much value away from the plate. Larry Walker, for example, easily bests Sosa in each of those three categories (.400, .965, 141) with a similar peak and better defense and baserunning. Sosa wouldn't be a slam-dunk candidate even if he had been clean.
Rafael Palmeiro (4.4%): Despite being one of only four players with at least 3,000 hits and 500 homers, Palmeiro has now fallen off the ballot entirely by receiving less than 5% of the vote, thanks to an infamous failed drug test. But like Sosa, Palmeiro might not be worthy of the Hall just based on performance alone. He never had a significant peak -- like McGriff, he only had one season with an OPS over 1.000. He played his entire career in hitter-friendly home ballparks. And his career OPS (.885) and OPS+ (132) aren't impressive relative to his contemporaries, especially at his position. It's too easy to name other first basemen and DHs from his era who were significantly better: Frank Thomas, Albert Pujols, Jeff Bagwell, Jim Thome, Edgar Martinez, and Mark McGwire, for instance. Palmeiro is the perfect example of why arbitrary milestones like 3,000 hits and 500 homers should not be treated like magic numbers when it comes to the Hall of Fame.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Cooperstown Candidates: The Best of the Rest
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.
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.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Cooperstown Candidates: Craig Biggio and Mike Piazza
Compared to some of the other hitters on the Hall of Fame ballot, Craig Biggio and Mike Piazza don't exactly have overwhelming offensive numbers. The two of them combined for exactly zero MVP awards, zero batting crowns, and zero home run titles. Neither of them led their league in WAR in any season. A whopping 17 players on this ballot have a higher career OPS than Biggio, and 15 have a higher career WAR than Piazza. And yet you'd still be hard-pressed to find a reason to keep either of them out of the Hall of Fame.
Biggio's offense isn't impressive in a vacuum: a career .281/.363/.433 hitter with an OPS just below .800. But for a player who spent almost 2,000 games at second base (plus another 800 combined at catcher and the outfield), that production was elite. His .796 OPS and 112 OPS+ are comparable to the career marks of Ryne Sandberg (.795 and 114) and Roberto Alomar (.814 and 116), both of whom were recently inducted into the Hall as second basemen. Biggio also played more games than any other second baseman in history, an impressive feat considering that position's notoriously detrimental impact on career length.
It was this longevity that helped Biggio reach the fabled 3,000-hit milestone, a number attained by only three other second basemen ever (and just 28 players total). And it's not as though he reached that mark by beating out singles for 20 years. Biggio ranks 32nd all-time in career extra-base hits with 1,014, the most by any second baseman. Comparatively, that's only 27 fewer than Pete Rose, who had the benefit of 1,200 additional hits and 3,000 additional plate appearances. Biggio's career home run total of 291 isn't mind-boggling, but it's the third-highest home run total among all second basemen. Most notably of all, he ranks fifth all-time in career doubles among all players ever, trailing only Tris Speaker, Pete Rose, Stan Musial, and Ty Cobb in that category. For a middle infielder who derived much of his value from longevity, he produced excellent power numbers.
Along with extra-base hits, Biggio offered a wide array of skills that have traditionally been overlooked. He scored 1,844 career runs, most among all second basemen and the 15th-highest total among all players ever. He stole 414 bases at a solid 77% success rate. He was bizarrely good at avoiding double plays; once, in 1997, he came to the plate 744 times and didn't ground into a single one. And he perfected the art of reaching base by the hit-by-pitch -- he accumulated the second-most HBPs ever, and led the league in that category five times.
It's misleading to suggest that Biggio was merely a good-but-never-elite player whose performance never rose to Hall of Fame standards. Across the nine seasons between 1991 and 1999, he hit .299/.391/.451 and was one of the five most valuable players in baseball. In both 1997 and 1998, he posted an OPS over .900, stole at least 47 bases, hit at least 20 homers, and was a top-five MVP candidate. He played key defensive positions for two decades and accumulated over 3,000 hits, a third of which went for extra bases. As one of the best up-the-middle players of the last two decades, Craig Biggio is a fairly obvious selection for the Hall of Fame.
And using that same logic, so is Mike Piazza. Like Biggio, Piazza was a valuable player because of the excellent offense he produced at a position typically occupied by poor hitters (in this case, catcher). But unlike Biggio, Piazza is actually the best offensive player that his position has ever seen. No catcher can match his career home run total of 427, or his .545 slugging percentage, or his .922 OPS, or his 143 OPS+. Those are all records among catchers, all held by Piazza, most by a fairly wide margin. His 1997 season ranks as the single best offensive campaign any catcher has ever had. His career line of .308/.377/.545 would make him elite at any position; at catcher, it makes him a god.
At his peak, Piazza was not merely the best-hitting catcher in baseball -- he was one of the league's best hitters, period. During the ten-year period from 1993 to 2002, Piazza ranked as the third-most valuable player in baseball (behind only Barry Bonds and Jeff Bagwell) because of a cumulative .322/.389/.579 line and an average of 35 homers per season. Not once during that decade did his OPS slip below .900. In 1995, he was the best offensive player in the league (he hit .346/.400/.606 with 32 homers and led the league in OPS+). The same was true in 1997 (he hit .362/.431/.638 with 40 homers and led the league in OPS+ again). He finished in the top four in MVP voting four different times, including two second-place finishes.
Piazza's candidacy is far from flawless, thanks to defensive shortcomings and a shorter career that failed to last 2,000 games. But thanks to his incredible bat, Piazza still ranks as the fifth-best catcher of all time according to WAR, in a virtual tie with Yogi Berra. He trails only Johnny Bench, Gary Carter, Ivan Rodriguez, and Carlton Fisk, all of whom had the benefit of several hundred additional games. And not one of those four had a career OPS within 100 points of Piazza's. When you redefine expectations for offense at your position, you should be a Hall of Famer. Piazza's Cooperstown credentials should not be in question.
Both Biggio and Piazza were among the best players in the league during their era and among the best players at their positions historically. That is literally the definition of a Hall of Famer. Yet somehow, neither one was elected to the Hall of Fame last year. That's a wrong that needs to be corrected in 2014. Second basemen aren't supposed to thrive as long as Biggio did. Catchers aren't supposed to hit as well as Piazza did. Greatness of that caliber deserves to be recognized, and better late than never.
My Ballot:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Greg Maddux
4. Jeff Bagwell
5. Frank Thomas
6. Mike Mussina
7. Tom Glavine
8. Curt Schilling
9. Mike Piazza
10. Craig Biggio
Biggio's offense isn't impressive in a vacuum: a career .281/.363/.433 hitter with an OPS just below .800. But for a player who spent almost 2,000 games at second base (plus another 800 combined at catcher and the outfield), that production was elite. His .796 OPS and 112 OPS+ are comparable to the career marks of Ryne Sandberg (.795 and 114) and Roberto Alomar (.814 and 116), both of whom were recently inducted into the Hall as second basemen. Biggio also played more games than any other second baseman in history, an impressive feat considering that position's notoriously detrimental impact on career length.
It was this longevity that helped Biggio reach the fabled 3,000-hit milestone, a number attained by only three other second basemen ever (and just 28 players total). And it's not as though he reached that mark by beating out singles for 20 years. Biggio ranks 32nd all-time in career extra-base hits with 1,014, the most by any second baseman. Comparatively, that's only 27 fewer than Pete Rose, who had the benefit of 1,200 additional hits and 3,000 additional plate appearances. Biggio's career home run total of 291 isn't mind-boggling, but it's the third-highest home run total among all second basemen. Most notably of all, he ranks fifth all-time in career doubles among all players ever, trailing only Tris Speaker, Pete Rose, Stan Musial, and Ty Cobb in that category. For a middle infielder who derived much of his value from longevity, he produced excellent power numbers.
Along with extra-base hits, Biggio offered a wide array of skills that have traditionally been overlooked. He scored 1,844 career runs, most among all second basemen and the 15th-highest total among all players ever. He stole 414 bases at a solid 77% success rate. He was bizarrely good at avoiding double plays; once, in 1997, he came to the plate 744 times and didn't ground into a single one. And he perfected the art of reaching base by the hit-by-pitch -- he accumulated the second-most HBPs ever, and led the league in that category five times.
It's misleading to suggest that Biggio was merely a good-but-never-elite player whose performance never rose to Hall of Fame standards. Across the nine seasons between 1991 and 1999, he hit .299/.391/.451 and was one of the five most valuable players in baseball. In both 1997 and 1998, he posted an OPS over .900, stole at least 47 bases, hit at least 20 homers, and was a top-five MVP candidate. He played key defensive positions for two decades and accumulated over 3,000 hits, a third of which went for extra bases. As one of the best up-the-middle players of the last two decades, Craig Biggio is a fairly obvious selection for the Hall of Fame.
And using that same logic, so is Mike Piazza. Like Biggio, Piazza was a valuable player because of the excellent offense he produced at a position typically occupied by poor hitters (in this case, catcher). But unlike Biggio, Piazza is actually the best offensive player that his position has ever seen. No catcher can match his career home run total of 427, or his .545 slugging percentage, or his .922 OPS, or his 143 OPS+. Those are all records among catchers, all held by Piazza, most by a fairly wide margin. His 1997 season ranks as the single best offensive campaign any catcher has ever had. His career line of .308/.377/.545 would make him elite at any position; at catcher, it makes him a god.
At his peak, Piazza was not merely the best-hitting catcher in baseball -- he was one of the league's best hitters, period. During the ten-year period from 1993 to 2002, Piazza ranked as the third-most valuable player in baseball (behind only Barry Bonds and Jeff Bagwell) because of a cumulative .322/.389/.579 line and an average of 35 homers per season. Not once during that decade did his OPS slip below .900. In 1995, he was the best offensive player in the league (he hit .346/.400/.606 with 32 homers and led the league in OPS+). The same was true in 1997 (he hit .362/.431/.638 with 40 homers and led the league in OPS+ again). He finished in the top four in MVP voting four different times, including two second-place finishes.
Piazza's candidacy is far from flawless, thanks to defensive shortcomings and a shorter career that failed to last 2,000 games. But thanks to his incredible bat, Piazza still ranks as the fifth-best catcher of all time according to WAR, in a virtual tie with Yogi Berra. He trails only Johnny Bench, Gary Carter, Ivan Rodriguez, and Carlton Fisk, all of whom had the benefit of several hundred additional games. And not one of those four had a career OPS within 100 points of Piazza's. When you redefine expectations for offense at your position, you should be a Hall of Famer. Piazza's Cooperstown credentials should not be in question.
Both Biggio and Piazza were among the best players in the league during their era and among the best players at their positions historically. That is literally the definition of a Hall of Famer. Yet somehow, neither one was elected to the Hall of Fame last year. That's a wrong that needs to be corrected in 2014. Second basemen aren't supposed to thrive as long as Biggio did. Catchers aren't supposed to hit as well as Piazza did. Greatness of that caliber deserves to be recognized, and better late than never.
My Ballot:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Greg Maddux
4. Jeff Bagwell
5. Frank Thomas
6. Mike Mussina
7. Tom Glavine
8. Curt Schilling
9. Mike Piazza
10. Craig Biggio
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Cooperstown Candidate: Curt Schilling
Curt Schilling is in serious danger of being lost in the shuffle on an increasingly-crowded Hall of Fame ballot. After a disappointing debut last year (he was supported by fewer than 40% of the writers), he now has to contend for votes with newcomers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Mike Mussina, with Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, and John Smoltz all set to join the field next year, and Roger Clemens still hanging around. Schilling's low career win total (216) may force him to wait for years at the back of this growing queue for induction. But even among this distinguished company, he still clearly stands out as a pitcher worthy of a plaque in Cooperstown.
What Schilling lacked in quantity (only 216 wins and 3,261 innings), he made up for in quality. Few Hall of Famers can match the efficiency of his production. His career WHIP of 1.14 ranks 47th all-time, ahead of all the other greats on this year's ballot (Clemens, Maddux, Glavine, and Mussina). His strikeout rate of 8.6 per nine innings ranks as the 12th-best mark among all non-active pitchers. And because he walked fewer than two batters per nine innings for his career, he retired with the best strikeout-to-walk ratio in modern baseball history (4.38). This ability to maximize strikeouts while limiting baserunners helped Schilling post a career 3.46 ERA and 127 ERA+ (both of which are better than the career marks of Glavine and Mussina) across 20 seasons that spanned the entirety of the Steroid Era.
Schilling also enjoyed one of the most impressive peaks of any pitcher in recent memory. During the full decade between 1995 and 2004, he posted a 3.25 ERA and 1.07 WHIP in about 212 innings per season. He threw 64 complete games during this stretch, the most in baseball, and struck out more than 300 hitters three times, a feat equaled only by Randy Johnson, Nolan Ryan, and Sandy Koufax. He didn't win a Cy Young but finished as the runner-up in the voting three times, losing to teammate Randy Johnson (twice) and Johan Santana. These ten seasons were worth a total of about 60 Wins Above Replacement, roughly the value of Andy Pettitte's entire 18-year career.
Schilling's stellar regular season production is augmented by his work in the postseason, which is almost unmatched in baseball history. He made a total of 19 playoff starts (133.1 innings) and allowed two runs or fewer in 16 of them (with a 2.33 ERA overall). Five times, Schilling started a postseason elimination game; his ERA in those starts was 1.37 and his team won all five of them. That includes his outing in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, as well as his famous "bloody sock" performance in Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS. Schilling won three titles, earned a World Series MVP award, and saw virtually all of his numbers improve drastically in the playoffs relative to the regular season. If anyone's Hall of Fame candidacy deserves a boost from glory won in October, it's Schilling.
Ultimately, the only way to nitpick his career is to point out that it wasn't as good as Greg Maddux's or Roger Clemens'. But that's not exactly fair, because nobody besides Maddux and Clemens can meet that impossible standard. Schilling comfortably belongs to the elite tier occupied by the likes of Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine -- not historically dominant, yet still markedly better than the average Hall of Famer. Schilling accumulated 80 WAR in his career, a total achieved by only 20 pitchers in the Hall of Fame. He had a decade-long run of excellence at the height of the most hitter-friendly era in history. He is one of only 16 pitchers with at least 3,000 career strikeouts. And few players can claim to match his impact on the outcomes of multiple playoff series and championships. If that isn't a Hall of Fame career, then really, what is?
My Ballot So Far:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Greg Maddux
4. Jeff Bagwell
5. Frank Thomas
6. Mike Mussina
7. Tom Glavine
8. Curt Schilling
What Schilling lacked in quantity (only 216 wins and 3,261 innings), he made up for in quality. Few Hall of Famers can match the efficiency of his production. His career WHIP of 1.14 ranks 47th all-time, ahead of all the other greats on this year's ballot (Clemens, Maddux, Glavine, and Mussina). His strikeout rate of 8.6 per nine innings ranks as the 12th-best mark among all non-active pitchers. And because he walked fewer than two batters per nine innings for his career, he retired with the best strikeout-to-walk ratio in modern baseball history (4.38). This ability to maximize strikeouts while limiting baserunners helped Schilling post a career 3.46 ERA and 127 ERA+ (both of which are better than the career marks of Glavine and Mussina) across 20 seasons that spanned the entirety of the Steroid Era.
Schilling also enjoyed one of the most impressive peaks of any pitcher in recent memory. During the full decade between 1995 and 2004, he posted a 3.25 ERA and 1.07 WHIP in about 212 innings per season. He threw 64 complete games during this stretch, the most in baseball, and struck out more than 300 hitters three times, a feat equaled only by Randy Johnson, Nolan Ryan, and Sandy Koufax. He didn't win a Cy Young but finished as the runner-up in the voting three times, losing to teammate Randy Johnson (twice) and Johan Santana. These ten seasons were worth a total of about 60 Wins Above Replacement, roughly the value of Andy Pettitte's entire 18-year career.
Schilling's stellar regular season production is augmented by his work in the postseason, which is almost unmatched in baseball history. He made a total of 19 playoff starts (133.1 innings) and allowed two runs or fewer in 16 of them (with a 2.33 ERA overall). Five times, Schilling started a postseason elimination game; his ERA in those starts was 1.37 and his team won all five of them. That includes his outing in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, as well as his famous "bloody sock" performance in Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS. Schilling won three titles, earned a World Series MVP award, and saw virtually all of his numbers improve drastically in the playoffs relative to the regular season. If anyone's Hall of Fame candidacy deserves a boost from glory won in October, it's Schilling.
Ultimately, the only way to nitpick his career is to point out that it wasn't as good as Greg Maddux's or Roger Clemens'. But that's not exactly fair, because nobody besides Maddux and Clemens can meet that impossible standard. Schilling comfortably belongs to the elite tier occupied by the likes of Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine -- not historically dominant, yet still markedly better than the average Hall of Famer. Schilling accumulated 80 WAR in his career, a total achieved by only 20 pitchers in the Hall of Fame. He had a decade-long run of excellence at the height of the most hitter-friendly era in history. He is one of only 16 pitchers with at least 3,000 career strikeouts. And few players can claim to match his impact on the outcomes of multiple playoff series and championships. If that isn't a Hall of Fame career, then really, what is?
My Ballot So Far:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Greg Maddux
4. Jeff Bagwell
5. Frank Thomas
6. Mike Mussina
7. Tom Glavine
8. Curt Schilling
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Cooperstown Candidates: Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina
Though he didn't achieve historical dominance, Tom Glavine is universally accepted as a Hall of Fame pitcher. He won 305 games in a career that spanned over two decades and almost 4,500 innings. He had a 3.30 ERA in 35 postseason starts. He was a two-time Cy Young Award winner and the 1995 World Series MVP. He was an excellent pitcher for a long time, and chances are he's about to become a first-ballot Hall of Famer, inducted alongside former teammate Greg Maddux and former manager Bobby Cox.
Objectively, Mike Mussina was just as good as Tom Glavine. He may have been even better. And yet, it will be years before Mussina makes it to Cooperstown, if he ever gets there at all.
There are three likely reasons for this discrepancy in perception between these two pitchers, and not one is satisfactory:
Career Wins
Glavine: 305
Mussina: 270
Cy Young Awards
Glavine: 2
Mussina: 0
World Series Titles
Glavine: 1
Mussina: 0
First of all: the wins. Glavine having more of them doesn't make him the better pitcher. Glavine has 35 more wins because he pitched almost 1,000 more innings than Mussina. And those innings have value. But the higher win total reflects a longer career, not a better career. Consider the fact that Mussina's winning percentage (.638) was better than Glavine's (.600), and better than most Hall of Fame pitchers, too.
Similarly, Glavine had five seasons in which he won at least 20 games; Mussina only had one such year. Again, this would seem to imply that Glavine was better, when actually, Mussina was just terribly unlucky. In the two strike-shortened seasons ('94 and '95), Mussina won 16 and 19 games. Had those been full seasons, he almost certainly would have reached the arbitrary plateau of 20. He won at least 18 games in four other seasons. A few breaks here and there, and Mussina could've easily had as many 20-win seasons as Glavine.
Then there's the Cy Young issue. Glavine won twice, and Mussina never won. There are a couple of problems here. One: Glavine only deserved one of those Cy Youngs (1991). In 1998, he only ranked fifth in the league in pitching WAR, and fourth in ERA. Along the same lines, Mussina probably should have won the Cy Young in 2001, when he led the league in pitching WAR and ranked second in ERA. Instead, Roger Clemens got the award because he won 20 games. So had the Cy Young Awards been doled out fairly, Glavine and Mussina would have each won one.
And lastly: the postseason. Glavine boasts an illustrious playoff career, including a 3.30 ERA in 35 postseason starts and the 1995 World Series MVP. Mussina's October record is mostly ignored. But it exists, and it's worth discussion. His 1997 playoff performance, for instance, was legendary. In four starts for the Orioles, he gave up a total of just four runs across 29 innings pitched, striking out 41 hitters. Those four starts came against the Seattle Mariners (their lineup included Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez, and Alex Rodriguez) and the Cleveland Indians (their lineup included Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome). The Orioles somehow lost both of Mussina's starts in the ALCS -- even though he surrendered just one run total across 15 innings -- so the impressive streak could not continue into the World Series.
With the Yankees, Mussina quietly enabled two of the most memorable postseason moments in baseball history. Derek Jeter's famous flip play, which preserved a 1-0 lead in Game 3 of the 2001 ALDS, would have had no meaning without Mussina's seven scoreless innings. And Aaron Boone's walk-off home run in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS might have never happened without Mussina, who threw three scoreless innings out of the bullpen in the first relief appearance of his career. Altogether, he had a 3.42 ERA in 21 playoff starts (23 appearances) -- a better postseason ERA than the likes of Andy Pettitte and Jack Morris.
Glavine's only legitimate edge over Mussina is career length. He threw about 900 more innings. But Mussina's innings were of a higher quality. He struck out 7.1 batters per nine innings; Glavine only struck out 5.3. So despite Glavine's large innings advantage, Mussina actually had more career strikeouts (2,813 to 2,607). Mussina also had the better walk rate (2.0 to 3.1) and the better WHIP (1.19 to 1.31).
Even though Mussina was clearly better at notching strikeouts and preventing baserunners, Glavine's ERA (3.54) was nominally better than Mussina's (3.68). That's not unexpected, given the contexts in which they pitched. Mussina spent his entire career in the brutal AL East; Glavine had the benefit of facing the pitcher every time through the order, and Andruw Jones was his center fielder for over a decade. Unsurprisingly, Mussina had the slightly-better ERA+ (123 to 118), confirming the idea that he was likely the better pitcher.
That 3.68 career ERA may not look Hall of Fame-worthy at first. But for a pitcher who spent his entire career in the AL East during the Steroid Era, it's an excellent number. In 2000, for example, Mussina's ERA was 3.79 -- not a spectacular figure by normal standards. But in 2000, that was the third-best ERA in the league; the average ERA in the AL that year was close to 5.00. Mussina's ERA ranked in the top five in the league seven different times; Glavine, five times. Mussina's ERA ranked in the top ten in the league 11 different times; Glavine, eight times.
After factoring in everything, Baseball Reference prefers Mussina's career:
Career WAR
Mussina: 82.7
Glavine: 74
Mike Mussina is the pitching version of Jeff Bagwell on this Hall of Fame ballot. He's vastly underrated, mostly because he was plagued by terrible luck. He spent his entire career pitching against good offenses in small ballparks during the most hitter-friendly era in history. He didn't win the Cy Young he deserved. He finished tantalizingly short of 20-win seasons on multiple occasions, partly because of the untimely strike. He had a historically good winning percentage, yet never won a World Series. The year he pitched well enough to carry his team to a championship, his offense forgot to score runs for him. The Yankees won titles in 2000 and 2009 but Mussina was a Yankee from 2001 to 2008. Once, he even came within one strike of finishing a perfect game at Fenway Park -- until Carl Everett's last-second single:
Mussina and Glavine were both consistent, durable, and excellent pitchers throughout an era dominated by hitters. They should both be inducted into the Hall of Fame as soon as possible. But knowing Mussina's luck, he probably shouldn't hold his breath.
My Ballot So Far:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Greg Maddux
4. Jeff Bagwell
5. Frank Thomas
6. Mike Mussina
7. Tom Glavine
Objectively, Mike Mussina was just as good as Tom Glavine. He may have been even better. And yet, it will be years before Mussina makes it to Cooperstown, if he ever gets there at all.
There are three likely reasons for this discrepancy in perception between these two pitchers, and not one is satisfactory:
Career Wins
Glavine: 305
Mussina: 270
Cy Young Awards
Glavine: 2
Mussina: 0
World Series Titles
Glavine: 1
Mussina: 0
First of all: the wins. Glavine having more of them doesn't make him the better pitcher. Glavine has 35 more wins because he pitched almost 1,000 more innings than Mussina. And those innings have value. But the higher win total reflects a longer career, not a better career. Consider the fact that Mussina's winning percentage (.638) was better than Glavine's (.600), and better than most Hall of Fame pitchers, too.
Similarly, Glavine had five seasons in which he won at least 20 games; Mussina only had one such year. Again, this would seem to imply that Glavine was better, when actually, Mussina was just terribly unlucky. In the two strike-shortened seasons ('94 and '95), Mussina won 16 and 19 games. Had those been full seasons, he almost certainly would have reached the arbitrary plateau of 20. He won at least 18 games in four other seasons. A few breaks here and there, and Mussina could've easily had as many 20-win seasons as Glavine.
Then there's the Cy Young issue. Glavine won twice, and Mussina never won. There are a couple of problems here. One: Glavine only deserved one of those Cy Youngs (1991). In 1998, he only ranked fifth in the league in pitching WAR, and fourth in ERA. Along the same lines, Mussina probably should have won the Cy Young in 2001, when he led the league in pitching WAR and ranked second in ERA. Instead, Roger Clemens got the award because he won 20 games. So had the Cy Young Awards been doled out fairly, Glavine and Mussina would have each won one.
And lastly: the postseason. Glavine boasts an illustrious playoff career, including a 3.30 ERA in 35 postseason starts and the 1995 World Series MVP. Mussina's October record is mostly ignored. But it exists, and it's worth discussion. His 1997 playoff performance, for instance, was legendary. In four starts for the Orioles, he gave up a total of just four runs across 29 innings pitched, striking out 41 hitters. Those four starts came against the Seattle Mariners (their lineup included Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez, and Alex Rodriguez) and the Cleveland Indians (their lineup included Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome). The Orioles somehow lost both of Mussina's starts in the ALCS -- even though he surrendered just one run total across 15 innings -- so the impressive streak could not continue into the World Series.
With the Yankees, Mussina quietly enabled two of the most memorable postseason moments in baseball history. Derek Jeter's famous flip play, which preserved a 1-0 lead in Game 3 of the 2001 ALDS, would have had no meaning without Mussina's seven scoreless innings. And Aaron Boone's walk-off home run in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS might have never happened without Mussina, who threw three scoreless innings out of the bullpen in the first relief appearance of his career. Altogether, he had a 3.42 ERA in 21 playoff starts (23 appearances) -- a better postseason ERA than the likes of Andy Pettitte and Jack Morris.
Glavine's only legitimate edge over Mussina is career length. He threw about 900 more innings. But Mussina's innings were of a higher quality. He struck out 7.1 batters per nine innings; Glavine only struck out 5.3. So despite Glavine's large innings advantage, Mussina actually had more career strikeouts (2,813 to 2,607). Mussina also had the better walk rate (2.0 to 3.1) and the better WHIP (1.19 to 1.31).
Even though Mussina was clearly better at notching strikeouts and preventing baserunners, Glavine's ERA (3.54) was nominally better than Mussina's (3.68). That's not unexpected, given the contexts in which they pitched. Mussina spent his entire career in the brutal AL East; Glavine had the benefit of facing the pitcher every time through the order, and Andruw Jones was his center fielder for over a decade. Unsurprisingly, Mussina had the slightly-better ERA+ (123 to 118), confirming the idea that he was likely the better pitcher.
That 3.68 career ERA may not look Hall of Fame-worthy at first. But for a pitcher who spent his entire career in the AL East during the Steroid Era, it's an excellent number. In 2000, for example, Mussina's ERA was 3.79 -- not a spectacular figure by normal standards. But in 2000, that was the third-best ERA in the league; the average ERA in the AL that year was close to 5.00. Mussina's ERA ranked in the top five in the league seven different times; Glavine, five times. Mussina's ERA ranked in the top ten in the league 11 different times; Glavine, eight times.
After factoring in everything, Baseball Reference prefers Mussina's career:
Career WAR
Mussina: 82.7
Glavine: 74
Mike Mussina is the pitching version of Jeff Bagwell on this Hall of Fame ballot. He's vastly underrated, mostly because he was plagued by terrible luck. He spent his entire career pitching against good offenses in small ballparks during the most hitter-friendly era in history. He didn't win the Cy Young he deserved. He finished tantalizingly short of 20-win seasons on multiple occasions, partly because of the untimely strike. He had a historically good winning percentage, yet never won a World Series. The year he pitched well enough to carry his team to a championship, his offense forgot to score runs for him. The Yankees won titles in 2000 and 2009 but Mussina was a Yankee from 2001 to 2008. Once, he even came within one strike of finishing a perfect game at Fenway Park -- until Carl Everett's last-second single:
Mussina and Glavine were both consistent, durable, and excellent pitchers throughout an era dominated by hitters. They should both be inducted into the Hall of Fame as soon as possible. But knowing Mussina's luck, he probably shouldn't hold his breath.
My Ballot So Far:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Greg Maddux
4. Jeff Bagwell
5. Frank Thomas
6. Mike Mussina
7. Tom Glavine
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Cooperstown Candidates: Jeff Bagwell and Frank Thomas
Frank Thomas deserves to be in the Hall of Fame based solely on his first seven full seasons in the majors and nothing else. From 1991 to 1997, he was one of the three best players in baseball despite offering no defensive or baserunning value -- because he literally hit like Lou Gehrig:
Thomas, 1991-97: .330/.452/.604, 182 OPS+
Lou Gehrig, career: .340/.447/.632, 179 OPS+
In those seven seasons, Thomas was worth 44.5 Wins Above Replacement, roughly equivalent to the value of David Ortiz's entire career. He hit 250 home runs, won back-to-back MVPs in '93 and '94, and led the league in OPS, OBP, and walks four times each. His worst OPS during this stretch was .975, and that figure still led the league in 1992. Much like Sandy Koufax, it's possible that Thomas could have retired after 1997 and still been elected to the Hall of Fame anyway, given the absurd dominance he achieved immediately upon reaching the major leagues.
Unfortunately, Thomas could not maintain this torrid pace beyond those seven years (or we'd obviously be talking about him as one of the greatest players of all time). Over the final 11 seasons of his career, he never again led the league in a major statistical category, and he only had one more MVP-caliber year (he finished 2nd in the voting in 2000). During this injury-plagued decade, he hit like a mere mortal: .276/.389/.515 cumulatively, essentially matching Fred McGriff's career line. He spent most of this part of his career as a DH, continuing to offer no defensive value. He did at least last long enough to hit 521 home runs, thus surpassing that critical milestone.
So Thomas' case is ultimately very simple. For the first 1,000 games of his career, he hit like Lou Gehrig; for the final 1,200 games, he hit like Fred McGriff. That's more than enough to warrant a plaque in the Hall. It doesn't matter that he didn't provide any defensive or baserunning value along the way; his bat alone fueled a career worth over 70 WAR, a total that 13 of the 18 Hall of Fame first basemen did not reach. His final batting line was an exceptional .301/.419/.555 and his .974 OPS ranks 14th among all hitters ever (in a virtual tie with Stan Musial). Thomas was one of the best hitters in a generation of great hitters. Even though this is his first appearance on the ballot, he's got an excellent shot at being elected to Cooperstown a month from now. Especially considering his outspoken comments against steroid use during his playing days, which will appeal to the moral arbiters within the voting body. Like Greg Maddux, Thomas is a slam-dunk statistical case who also boasts a clean personal reputation.
If Thomas does in fact get his plaque this year, the voters will be passing over another first baseman on the ballot who has been patiently waiting his turn: Jeff Bagwell. He's already been voted on and rejected three times, and this year won't produce a better result. He's bound to be leapfrogged by Thomas. Based on this clear-cut gap in perception between Thomas (perhaps a first-ballot guy) and Bagwell (languishing in Cooperstown purgatory), one might assume that there's a corresponding gap between the respective quality of their careers. That's actually not the case -- in fact, it was Bagwell who had the more valuable career. He's just criminally underrated.
While Thomas generated all of his value with his bat, Bagwell was a far more well-rounded player. We don't have to pretend that he was a defensive whiz at first base, but he did play over 18,000 innings there in his career. Thomas, on the other hand, played just over 8,000 innings at first, with the rest of his time coming at DH. It's difficult to quantify, but there's significant value in the extra 10,000 innings that Bagwell spent on the field over Thomas.
Bagwell also had a huge edge on the basepaths. Thomas, not a small man, was one of the worst baserunners of all time. But Bagwell stole 202 bases in his career and had two 30-steal seasons. He led the league in runs scored three times.
And Bagwell was the more durable player. He was a healthy, above-average hitter in 14 of his 15 seasons, the lone exception being his injury-plagued 2005 in which he was diagnosed with an arthritic shoulder that forced his retirement. Bagwell was worth at least 3 WAR in 14 different seasons; Thomas only managed 11 such seasons despite a longer career. Yes, Bagwell's baseball life span was relatively short, but that fact is mitigated by how hyper-productive he was throughout his playing days.
Thomas was better offensively, but Bagwell wasn't far behind: a .297/.408/.540 hitter with a .948 OPS that ranks 21st all-time, just ahead of Mel Ott. Bagwell more than compensates for Thomas' small edge in offense with his added value in the field and on the basepaths. Their respective career WAR totals reflect this fact:
Bagwell: 79.5 WAR in 2,150 games
Thomas: 73.6 WAR in 2,322 games
Possibly the most common criticism of Bagwell is the claim that he was merely a consistently good player who failed to achieve the kind of "greatness" that Frank Thomas did. Well, Bagwell actually had a dominant seven-year stretch of his own that was literally just as good as Thomas' legendary run:
Thomas, 1991-97: 44.5 WAR
Bagwell, 1994-2000: 44.6 WAR
Furthermore, Bagwell's best season was eerily similar to Thomas' best season (both came in the strike-shortened 1994 season, when they each won their league's MVP award):
Thomas, 1994: .353/.487/.729, 212 OPS+, 38 HRs
Bagwell, 1994: .368/.451/.750, 213 OPS+, 39 HRs
So yes, both Thomas and Bagwell achieved greatness. They just went about it in different ways. And they're both no-brainer Hall of Famers.
My Ballot So Far:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Greg Maddux
4. Jeff Bagwell
5. Frank Thomas
Thomas, 1991-97: .330/.452/.604, 182 OPS+
Lou Gehrig, career: .340/.447/.632, 179 OPS+
In those seven seasons, Thomas was worth 44.5 Wins Above Replacement, roughly equivalent to the value of David Ortiz's entire career. He hit 250 home runs, won back-to-back MVPs in '93 and '94, and led the league in OPS, OBP, and walks four times each. His worst OPS during this stretch was .975, and that figure still led the league in 1992. Much like Sandy Koufax, it's possible that Thomas could have retired after 1997 and still been elected to the Hall of Fame anyway, given the absurd dominance he achieved immediately upon reaching the major leagues.
Unfortunately, Thomas could not maintain this torrid pace beyond those seven years (or we'd obviously be talking about him as one of the greatest players of all time). Over the final 11 seasons of his career, he never again led the league in a major statistical category, and he only had one more MVP-caliber year (he finished 2nd in the voting in 2000). During this injury-plagued decade, he hit like a mere mortal: .276/.389/.515 cumulatively, essentially matching Fred McGriff's career line. He spent most of this part of his career as a DH, continuing to offer no defensive value. He did at least last long enough to hit 521 home runs, thus surpassing that critical milestone.
So Thomas' case is ultimately very simple. For the first 1,000 games of his career, he hit like Lou Gehrig; for the final 1,200 games, he hit like Fred McGriff. That's more than enough to warrant a plaque in the Hall. It doesn't matter that he didn't provide any defensive or baserunning value along the way; his bat alone fueled a career worth over 70 WAR, a total that 13 of the 18 Hall of Fame first basemen did not reach. His final batting line was an exceptional .301/.419/.555 and his .974 OPS ranks 14th among all hitters ever (in a virtual tie with Stan Musial). Thomas was one of the best hitters in a generation of great hitters. Even though this is his first appearance on the ballot, he's got an excellent shot at being elected to Cooperstown a month from now. Especially considering his outspoken comments against steroid use during his playing days, which will appeal to the moral arbiters within the voting body. Like Greg Maddux, Thomas is a slam-dunk statistical case who also boasts a clean personal reputation.
If Thomas does in fact get his plaque this year, the voters will be passing over another first baseman on the ballot who has been patiently waiting his turn: Jeff Bagwell. He's already been voted on and rejected three times, and this year won't produce a better result. He's bound to be leapfrogged by Thomas. Based on this clear-cut gap in perception between Thomas (perhaps a first-ballot guy) and Bagwell (languishing in Cooperstown purgatory), one might assume that there's a corresponding gap between the respective quality of their careers. That's actually not the case -- in fact, it was Bagwell who had the more valuable career. He's just criminally underrated.
While Thomas generated all of his value with his bat, Bagwell was a far more well-rounded player. We don't have to pretend that he was a defensive whiz at first base, but he did play over 18,000 innings there in his career. Thomas, on the other hand, played just over 8,000 innings at first, with the rest of his time coming at DH. It's difficult to quantify, but there's significant value in the extra 10,000 innings that Bagwell spent on the field over Thomas.
Bagwell also had a huge edge on the basepaths. Thomas, not a small man, was one of the worst baserunners of all time. But Bagwell stole 202 bases in his career and had two 30-steal seasons. He led the league in runs scored three times.
And Bagwell was the more durable player. He was a healthy, above-average hitter in 14 of his 15 seasons, the lone exception being his injury-plagued 2005 in which he was diagnosed with an arthritic shoulder that forced his retirement. Bagwell was worth at least 3 WAR in 14 different seasons; Thomas only managed 11 such seasons despite a longer career. Yes, Bagwell's baseball life span was relatively short, but that fact is mitigated by how hyper-productive he was throughout his playing days.
Thomas was better offensively, but Bagwell wasn't far behind: a .297/.408/.540 hitter with a .948 OPS that ranks 21st all-time, just ahead of Mel Ott. Bagwell more than compensates for Thomas' small edge in offense with his added value in the field and on the basepaths. Their respective career WAR totals reflect this fact:
Bagwell: 79.5 WAR in 2,150 games
Thomas: 73.6 WAR in 2,322 games
Possibly the most common criticism of Bagwell is the claim that he was merely a consistently good player who failed to achieve the kind of "greatness" that Frank Thomas did. Well, Bagwell actually had a dominant seven-year stretch of his own that was literally just as good as Thomas' legendary run:
Thomas, 1991-97: 44.5 WAR
Bagwell, 1994-2000: 44.6 WAR
Furthermore, Bagwell's best season was eerily similar to Thomas' best season (both came in the strike-shortened 1994 season, when they each won their league's MVP award):
Thomas, 1994: .353/.487/.729, 212 OPS+, 38 HRs
Bagwell, 1994: .368/.451/.750, 213 OPS+, 39 HRs
So yes, both Thomas and Bagwell achieved greatness. They just went about it in different ways. And they're both no-brainer Hall of Famers.
My Ballot So Far:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Greg Maddux
4. Jeff Bagwell
5. Frank Thomas
Monday, December 9, 2013
Cooperstown Candidates: Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux
As is the case with Barry Bonds, the candidacies of Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux require almost no critical thinking. Their Hall of Fame credentials aren't in question: they dominated the mound for two decades despite pitching in the most hitter-friendly period in the sport's history. No matter which yardstick you use to evaluate their careers -- traditional numbers or modern sabermetrics, peak value or longevity -- the ultimate conclusion is the same regardless: they are the two best pitchers of the post-integration era.
First, some key milestones. Most notably, both Maddux and Clemens are top-ten pitchers all-time in terms of career wins and career strikeouts. Both won more than 350 games, joining Warren Spahn as the only pitchers to surpass that win total in the post-World War Two era. And both easily surpassed the 3,000-strikeout benchmark: Clemens had 4,672, the third-most ever, and Maddux had 3,371, the 10th-most ever. The only other pitcher in baseball history who ranks in the top ten in both wins and strikeouts is Walter Johnson, who obviously pitched well before integration.
Their long-term excellence is also reflected by their career Wins Above Replacement totals. According to Baseball Reference, Clemens owns the third-most career WAR among all pitchers, and Maddux owns the eighth-most. The only other post-World War Two pitcher in the top eight is Tom Seaver. Fangraphs.com views the duo even more favorably: there, Clemens ranks first in career WAR, and Maddux is fourth. Either way, Clemens and Maddux appear to be the two best pitchers since integration.
That might seem like a disputable claim at first, mostly because it doesn't appear to be supported by plain old Earned Run Average. The career ERAs of Clemens (3.12) and Maddux (3.16) don't exactly stand out when compared to other dominant pitchers of the last half-century:
Tom Seaver: 2.86
Bob Gibson: 2.91
Warren Spahn: 3.09
Gaylord Perry: 3.11
Clemens: 3.12
Maddux: 3.16
Nolan Ryan: 3.19
Steve Carlton: 3.22
So why were Clemens and Maddux demonstrably better than these guys? Because of the context in which they pitched. The conditions for pitchers during the 1990s and 2000s were more unfavorable than they have been at any other point in baseball history. In 1964, for example, the league-average ERA was 3.58. In 1974, it was 3.63. But in 1984, the year Clemens made his first career start, the average was up to 3.81. In 1994, it was 4.51. And it reached its nadir in 2000, when the average ERA was 4.77. The average ERA! 4.77! That season, Clemens' ERA was 3.70, which doesn't look great by our standards -- but it was the second-best ERA in the league. Context is everything. A combination of different factors -- including steroids, better strength programs, expansion, and some smaller ballparks -- drastically tipped the competitive scales in favor of hitters during that generation. Taking that into account, the excellence sustained by Clemens and Maddux across the so-called Steroid Era is all the more impressive.
This is where ERA+ comes in handy, which adjusts for context and compares pitchers to their contemporaries. Here are the same names listed above, but this time ranked by ERA+ rather than raw ERA:
Clemens: 143
Maddux: 132
Tom Seaver: 127
Bob Gibson: 127
Warren Spahn: 119
Gaylord Perry: 117
Steve Carlton: 115
Nolan Ryan: 112
Clemens and Maddux are clearly superior. In fact, only three Hall of Famers have a better ERA+ than Clemens, and only twelve rank ahead of Maddux. The great majority of those pitchers did not play after World War Two. So yes, when factoring in excellence, longevity, and context, Clemens and Maddux had the two best pitching careers in the post-integration era.
What really proves this point is their peak performances, which were extraordinary. Maddux's peak is easier to pinpoint because his best years were conveniently bunched together. Across the seven seasons between 1992 and 1998, he posted a 2.15 ERA, 190 ERA+, and 0.97 WHIP. He won four consecutive Cy Young awards (a feat equaled only by Randy Johnson) and four ERA titles. About a quarter of his starts were complete games. Contained within this seven-year peak was a two-year uber-peak in 1994 and 1995, in which his ERAs were, astoundingly, 1.56 and 1.63. According to ERA+, those were two of the five best pitching seasons ever.
Clemens' exact peak is more difficult to identify-- probably because he peaked three different times with three different teams, scattering his best seasons throughout his long career. From 1986 to 1992, Clemens had a seven-year stretch of Maddux-like dominance with the Red Sox; he averaged about 260 innings and 240 strikeouts per year with a 2.66 ERA, along with three Cy Young awards and an MVP. A few years later he had a brief, epic run with the Blue Jays, when in 1996 and 1997 he threw a combined 500 innings with a 2.33 ERA, winning the Cy Young in both seasons. And in three years with the Astros at the end of his career, he posted a cumulative ERA of 2.40, set a personal best in regular-season ERA (1.87), and won his final Cy Young -- all of which he did after his 40th birthday. His "worst" stretch as a pitcher was his stint with the Yankees, and he still won a Cy Young and a World Series with them. It all adds up to five strikeout titles, seven ERA titles, and a record seven Cy Young awards. He probably should have won ten.
Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux are the kind of Hall of Famers that make other Hall of Famers look bad. Both should be inducted unanimously. Unfortunately, only Maddux will be elected to Cooperstown this time around. Clemens will be ignored by the sanctimonious voting bloc for the second consecutive year, as some kind of punishment for whatever drugs he probably took. When the voters induct the "clean" guy (Maddux) while exiling the "dirty" one (Clemens), they'll likely frame it as a triumphant "statement" about the Hall of Fame's integrity. But ironically, they'll only be undermining the credibility of their institution. What's the point of a Baseball Hall of Fame that doesn't include Roger Clemens? And why should Greg Maddux value his membership in an organization that refuses to recognize his greatest contemporary?
My Ballot So Far:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Greg Maddux
First, some key milestones. Most notably, both Maddux and Clemens are top-ten pitchers all-time in terms of career wins and career strikeouts. Both won more than 350 games, joining Warren Spahn as the only pitchers to surpass that win total in the post-World War Two era. And both easily surpassed the 3,000-strikeout benchmark: Clemens had 4,672, the third-most ever, and Maddux had 3,371, the 10th-most ever. The only other pitcher in baseball history who ranks in the top ten in both wins and strikeouts is Walter Johnson, who obviously pitched well before integration.
Their long-term excellence is also reflected by their career Wins Above Replacement totals. According to Baseball Reference, Clemens owns the third-most career WAR among all pitchers, and Maddux owns the eighth-most. The only other post-World War Two pitcher in the top eight is Tom Seaver. Fangraphs.com views the duo even more favorably: there, Clemens ranks first in career WAR, and Maddux is fourth. Either way, Clemens and Maddux appear to be the two best pitchers since integration.
That might seem like a disputable claim at first, mostly because it doesn't appear to be supported by plain old Earned Run Average. The career ERAs of Clemens (3.12) and Maddux (3.16) don't exactly stand out when compared to other dominant pitchers of the last half-century:
Tom Seaver: 2.86
Bob Gibson: 2.91
Warren Spahn: 3.09
Gaylord Perry: 3.11
Clemens: 3.12
Maddux: 3.16
Nolan Ryan: 3.19
Steve Carlton: 3.22
So why were Clemens and Maddux demonstrably better than these guys? Because of the context in which they pitched. The conditions for pitchers during the 1990s and 2000s were more unfavorable than they have been at any other point in baseball history. In 1964, for example, the league-average ERA was 3.58. In 1974, it was 3.63. But in 1984, the year Clemens made his first career start, the average was up to 3.81. In 1994, it was 4.51. And it reached its nadir in 2000, when the average ERA was 4.77. The average ERA! 4.77! That season, Clemens' ERA was 3.70, which doesn't look great by our standards -- but it was the second-best ERA in the league. Context is everything. A combination of different factors -- including steroids, better strength programs, expansion, and some smaller ballparks -- drastically tipped the competitive scales in favor of hitters during that generation. Taking that into account, the excellence sustained by Clemens and Maddux across the so-called Steroid Era is all the more impressive.
This is where ERA+ comes in handy, which adjusts for context and compares pitchers to their contemporaries. Here are the same names listed above, but this time ranked by ERA+ rather than raw ERA:
Clemens: 143
Maddux: 132
Tom Seaver: 127
Bob Gibson: 127
Warren Spahn: 119
Gaylord Perry: 117
Steve Carlton: 115
Nolan Ryan: 112
Clemens and Maddux are clearly superior. In fact, only three Hall of Famers have a better ERA+ than Clemens, and only twelve rank ahead of Maddux. The great majority of those pitchers did not play after World War Two. So yes, when factoring in excellence, longevity, and context, Clemens and Maddux had the two best pitching careers in the post-integration era.
What really proves this point is their peak performances, which were extraordinary. Maddux's peak is easier to pinpoint because his best years were conveniently bunched together. Across the seven seasons between 1992 and 1998, he posted a 2.15 ERA, 190 ERA+, and 0.97 WHIP. He won four consecutive Cy Young awards (a feat equaled only by Randy Johnson) and four ERA titles. About a quarter of his starts were complete games. Contained within this seven-year peak was a two-year uber-peak in 1994 and 1995, in which his ERAs were, astoundingly, 1.56 and 1.63. According to ERA+, those were two of the five best pitching seasons ever.
Clemens' exact peak is more difficult to identify-- probably because he peaked three different times with three different teams, scattering his best seasons throughout his long career. From 1986 to 1992, Clemens had a seven-year stretch of Maddux-like dominance with the Red Sox; he averaged about 260 innings and 240 strikeouts per year with a 2.66 ERA, along with three Cy Young awards and an MVP. A few years later he had a brief, epic run with the Blue Jays, when in 1996 and 1997 he threw a combined 500 innings with a 2.33 ERA, winning the Cy Young in both seasons. And in three years with the Astros at the end of his career, he posted a cumulative ERA of 2.40, set a personal best in regular-season ERA (1.87), and won his final Cy Young -- all of which he did after his 40th birthday. His "worst" stretch as a pitcher was his stint with the Yankees, and he still won a Cy Young and a World Series with them. It all adds up to five strikeout titles, seven ERA titles, and a record seven Cy Young awards. He probably should have won ten.
Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux are the kind of Hall of Famers that make other Hall of Famers look bad. Both should be inducted unanimously. Unfortunately, only Maddux will be elected to Cooperstown this time around. Clemens will be ignored by the sanctimonious voting bloc for the second consecutive year, as some kind of punishment for whatever drugs he probably took. When the voters induct the "clean" guy (Maddux) while exiling the "dirty" one (Clemens), they'll likely frame it as a triumphant "statement" about the Hall of Fame's integrity. But ironically, they'll only be undermining the credibility of their institution. What's the point of a Baseball Hall of Fame that doesn't include Roger Clemens? And why should Greg Maddux value his membership in an organization that refuses to recognize his greatest contemporary?
My Ballot So Far:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Greg Maddux
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Cooperstown Candidate: Barry Lamar Bonds
Barry Bonds' statistical record is mostly ignored when it comes to his Hall of Fame case. The debate over his candidacy has devolved into an argument about morality, not merit. As a result of this distracting steroids narrative, the baseball world is failing to appreciate Bonds' tremendous career and its place in history. Judging only by his on-the-field production, he's more than just a Hall of Famer -- he belongs in the pantheon reserved only for a handful of the sport's most dominant players. And here are the basic arguments for why that's true.
1. Bonds accumulated the second-most career Wins Above Replacement among all position players in baseball history, trailing only Babe Ruth. According to WAR, he was the best position player in his league in 11 different seasons. He reached base more times in his career than any other player in baseball history (5,599) except for Pete Rose, who had the benefit of more than 3,000 additional plate appearances. He has the third-most career runs scored (2,227). He has the fourth-most career runs batted in (1,996). And he has the fourth-most total bases (5,976).
2. Bonds is perhaps most (in)famous for hitting home runs. Lots of them. His holds the career record (762) and the single-season record (73 in 2001) for home runs. He hit 30 or more of them 14 times, and he hit 40 or more eight times. On average, he hit a home run once every 12.9 at-bats, the third-best rate all-time.
3. Bonds owns the 6th-best career on-base percentage (.444) in baseball history. He had the highest single-season OBP ever (.609 in 2004), as well as the second-highest (.581 in 2002). It bears repeating -- maybe you missed this statistic, because it was hidden within parentheses in the previous sentence -- that Bonds once had a single-season OBP of .609. As in, he got on base more than 60% of the time for an entire season. He also led the league in OBP ten times.
4. Bonds owns the 5th-best career slugging percentage (.607) in baseball history. He had the highest single-season slugging percentage ever (.863 in 2001), as well as the fourth-highest (.812 in 2004) and the fifth-highest (.800 in 2002). He also led the league in slugging seven times.
5. Bonds owns the 4th-best career on-base-plus-slugging percentage (1.051) in baseball history. In this category, he trails only the three best hitters to ever live: Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Lou Gehrig. He had the highest single-season OPS ever (1.421 in 2004), as well as the second-highest (1.381 in 2002), the fourth-highest (1.379 in 2004), and the eighth-highest (1.278 in 2003).
6. The significance of the last sentence in the previous paragraph is this: from 2001 to 2004, Bonds produced four of the eight best offensive seasons of all time (according to OPS). His cumulative triple-slash line for those four seasons was .349/.559/.809. In that four-year stretch, he won more MVP awards (four) than any player has ever won in his entire career. Bonds' ages during those four seasons: 36, 37, 38, 39.
7. Bonds' career adjusted-OPS (OPS+) is 182, meaning he was 82% better than the average hitter during his career. That figure ranks third-best all-time, behind only Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. He also had the best single-season OPS+ ever (268 in 2002), as well as the second-best (263 in 2004) and the third-best (259 in 2001). So according to OPS+, Bonds produced the three best offensive seasons of all time.
8. Bonds has more career walks than any player in baseball history (2,558, almost 400 more than anyone else). He owns the single-season record for walks (232 in 2004), as well as the record for second-most (198 in 2002) and third-most (177 in 2001). So Bonds produced the three most prolific walk seasons of all time. He also led the league in walks twelve times.
9. Bonds has more career intentional walks than any player in baseball history by a country mile (688, far ahead of Hank Aaron's 293 in second place). He owns the single-season record for intentional walks (120 in 2004), as well as the record for second-most (68 in 2002) and the record for third-most (61 in 2003). The most times any non-Bonds player has been intentionally walked in a season is just 45. He also led the league in intentional walks twelve times. Once, he was intentionally walked in the bottom of the ninth -- with the bases loaded.
10. Bonds is sometimes thought of exclusively as a San Francisco Giant. But his seven-year stint with the Pittsburgh Pirates was worth 50 WAR, roughly equal to the value of Orlando Cepeda's entire career.
11. Bonds is sometimes thought of exclusively as a slow, plodding, "one-dimensional" power hitter. That couldn't be further from the truth. His career batting average was .298 and he finished his career with 2,935 hits. He won two batting titles by hitting .370 and .362. He stole 514 bases in his career (the 33rd-most all-time, ahead of Ichiro Suzuki and Roberto Alomar) at a pretty good 78% success rate. He won seven Gold Gloves in the outfield and he led the league in assists by a left fielder six different times.
12. In 1996, Bonds joined the single-season 40-40 club by hitting 42 home runs and stealing 40 bases, a feat matched by only three other players. He's also a member of the career 300-homer/300-steal club, along with only seven other players. He's the only member of the 400-400 club. And he's the only member of the 500-500 club.
13. In the 2002 playoffs, Bonds set the record for most home runs in a single postseason with eight (which has since been tied by Carlos Beltran and Nelson Cruz), including four in the World Series. He hit so well that opposing teams just refused to pitch to him, so he also set the record for most walks in a single postseason with 27. His OBP in those playoffs was .608. His OPS in that World Series was 1.994.
14. In his final season in 2007, in which he turned 43 years old, Bonds led the league in OBP (.480), walks (132), and intentional walks (43), with an OPS of 1.045. Bonds never declined -- he just stopped playing.
15. Bonds won seven MVP awards in his career. Nobody else has ever won more than three.
The sport has never seen a player like Barry Bonds. He hit for average, hit for power, and got on base. He hit more home runs than anybody else and walked more than anybody else. He was a strong defensive outfielder and an efficient base-stealer. At his peak, he was the most dominant player the sport has ever seen -- but his career also lasted for 22 seasons and he accumulated strong longevity numbers without ever becoming a below-average player. He was so good that his opponents conceded first base to him at an unprecedented rate. He had a transcendent postseason run. He won more than twice as many MVP awards as anyone else ever did.
Bonds is not "just" a Hall of Famer. He's easily the best baseball player since Willie Mays. Conservatively, he's one of the top five players of all time. It's not at all crazy to suggest that he might be the best player ever, period.
He also won't make the Hall of Fame this year because he may have taken some drugs. Cool story.
If I could submit my own Hall of Fame ballot, here's what it might look like:
1. Barry Bonds
2. B. Bonds
3. Bobby Bonds' son
4. Barry
5. Bartholomew Lamar Bonds
6. The all-time leader in home runs
7. The all-time leader in walks
8. The only member of the 400-400 and 500-500 clubs
9. The only seven-time MVP
10. BARRY BONDS
1. Bonds accumulated the second-most career Wins Above Replacement among all position players in baseball history, trailing only Babe Ruth. According to WAR, he was the best position player in his league in 11 different seasons. He reached base more times in his career than any other player in baseball history (5,599) except for Pete Rose, who had the benefit of more than 3,000 additional plate appearances. He has the third-most career runs scored (2,227). He has the fourth-most career runs batted in (1,996). And he has the fourth-most total bases (5,976).
2. Bonds is perhaps most (in)famous for hitting home runs. Lots of them. His holds the career record (762) and the single-season record (73 in 2001) for home runs. He hit 30 or more of them 14 times, and he hit 40 or more eight times. On average, he hit a home run once every 12.9 at-bats, the third-best rate all-time.
3. Bonds owns the 6th-best career on-base percentage (.444) in baseball history. He had the highest single-season OBP ever (.609 in 2004), as well as the second-highest (.581 in 2002). It bears repeating -- maybe you missed this statistic, because it was hidden within parentheses in the previous sentence -- that Bonds once had a single-season OBP of .609. As in, he got on base more than 60% of the time for an entire season. He also led the league in OBP ten times.
4. Bonds owns the 5th-best career slugging percentage (.607) in baseball history. He had the highest single-season slugging percentage ever (.863 in 2001), as well as the fourth-highest (.812 in 2004) and the fifth-highest (.800 in 2002). He also led the league in slugging seven times.
5. Bonds owns the 4th-best career on-base-plus-slugging percentage (1.051) in baseball history. In this category, he trails only the three best hitters to ever live: Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Lou Gehrig. He had the highest single-season OPS ever (1.421 in 2004), as well as the second-highest (1.381 in 2002), the fourth-highest (1.379 in 2004), and the eighth-highest (1.278 in 2003).
6. The significance of the last sentence in the previous paragraph is this: from 2001 to 2004, Bonds produced four of the eight best offensive seasons of all time (according to OPS). His cumulative triple-slash line for those four seasons was .349/.559/.809. In that four-year stretch, he won more MVP awards (four) than any player has ever won in his entire career. Bonds' ages during those four seasons: 36, 37, 38, 39.
7. Bonds' career adjusted-OPS (OPS+) is 182, meaning he was 82% better than the average hitter during his career. That figure ranks third-best all-time, behind only Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. He also had the best single-season OPS+ ever (268 in 2002), as well as the second-best (263 in 2004) and the third-best (259 in 2001). So according to OPS+, Bonds produced the three best offensive seasons of all time.
8. Bonds has more career walks than any player in baseball history (2,558, almost 400 more than anyone else). He owns the single-season record for walks (232 in 2004), as well as the record for second-most (198 in 2002) and third-most (177 in 2001). So Bonds produced the three most prolific walk seasons of all time. He also led the league in walks twelve times.
9. Bonds has more career intentional walks than any player in baseball history by a country mile (688, far ahead of Hank Aaron's 293 in second place). He owns the single-season record for intentional walks (120 in 2004), as well as the record for second-most (68 in 2002) and the record for third-most (61 in 2003). The most times any non-Bonds player has been intentionally walked in a season is just 45. He also led the league in intentional walks twelve times. Once, he was intentionally walked in the bottom of the ninth -- with the bases loaded.
10. Bonds is sometimes thought of exclusively as a San Francisco Giant. But his seven-year stint with the Pittsburgh Pirates was worth 50 WAR, roughly equal to the value of Orlando Cepeda's entire career.
11. Bonds is sometimes thought of exclusively as a slow, plodding, "one-dimensional" power hitter. That couldn't be further from the truth. His career batting average was .298 and he finished his career with 2,935 hits. He won two batting titles by hitting .370 and .362. He stole 514 bases in his career (the 33rd-most all-time, ahead of Ichiro Suzuki and Roberto Alomar) at a pretty good 78% success rate. He won seven Gold Gloves in the outfield and he led the league in assists by a left fielder six different times.
12. In 1996, Bonds joined the single-season 40-40 club by hitting 42 home runs and stealing 40 bases, a feat matched by only three other players. He's also a member of the career 300-homer/300-steal club, along with only seven other players. He's the only member of the 400-400 club. And he's the only member of the 500-500 club.
13. In the 2002 playoffs, Bonds set the record for most home runs in a single postseason with eight (which has since been tied by Carlos Beltran and Nelson Cruz), including four in the World Series. He hit so well that opposing teams just refused to pitch to him, so he also set the record for most walks in a single postseason with 27. His OBP in those playoffs was .608. His OPS in that World Series was 1.994.
14. In his final season in 2007, in which he turned 43 years old, Bonds led the league in OBP (.480), walks (132), and intentional walks (43), with an OPS of 1.045. Bonds never declined -- he just stopped playing.
15. Bonds won seven MVP awards in his career. Nobody else has ever won more than three.
The sport has never seen a player like Barry Bonds. He hit for average, hit for power, and got on base. He hit more home runs than anybody else and walked more than anybody else. He was a strong defensive outfielder and an efficient base-stealer. At his peak, he was the most dominant player the sport has ever seen -- but his career also lasted for 22 seasons and he accumulated strong longevity numbers without ever becoming a below-average player. He was so good that his opponents conceded first base to him at an unprecedented rate. He had a transcendent postseason run. He won more than twice as many MVP awards as anyone else ever did.
Bonds is not "just" a Hall of Famer. He's easily the best baseball player since Willie Mays. Conservatively, he's one of the top five players of all time. It's not at all crazy to suggest that he might be the best player ever, period.
He also won't make the Hall of Fame this year because he may have taken some drugs. Cool story.
If I could submit my own Hall of Fame ballot, here's what it might look like:
1. Barry Bonds
2. B. Bonds
3. Bobby Bonds' son
4. Barry
5. Bartholomew Lamar Bonds
6. The all-time leader in home runs
7. The all-time leader in walks
8. The only member of the 400-400 and 500-500 clubs
9. The only seven-time MVP
10. BARRY BONDS
Monday, December 2, 2013
The Three Problems With Hall of Fame Voting
The 2014 Hall of Fame ballot was revealed last week, setting the stage for the next month of baseball discourse. Unfortunately, what should be a stimulating debate about the relative strength of some phenomenal careers is going to be undermined by three critical flaws in the voting process.
1. The "first-ballot" distinction. Some Hall of Fame voters (tenured members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America) will acknowledge that a player is eventually worthy of induction into the Hall, but somehow not worthy of being inducted on their first year of eligibility. This is a dumb idea that somebody just made up one day, and it's caught on, to the detriment of the process. The forty-something first-ballot Hall of Famers don't actually represent an 'upper echelon' of talent like some people believe (the group includes Kirby Puckett, Dave Winfield, and Eddie Murray, but excludes Jimmie Foxx, Yogi Berra, and Cy MotherEffing Young). This false distinction probably has its origins in the 1950s, when great players like Joe DiMaggio and Rogers Hornsby didn't make the Hall on the first try because there was a ton of backlog on the ballot. Some writers didn't vote for Craig Biggio last year, because, they apparently reasoned, "if Joe DiMaggio wasn't a first-ballot Hall of Famer, then Biggio isn't!" Of all the stupid reasons to withhold your vote from a player, this is among the stupidest.
The whole point of the Hall of Fame is that once you're in, you're on equal footing with everybody. Regardless of what ballot you came in on. All inductees have the same plaque in the same gallery. Willie Mays enjoys the same status as Jim Rice. Ralph Kiner probably said it best:
2. Backlog, thanks to the 10-man limit. For some reason, writers still aren't allowed to vote for more than ten players in a single election cycle. For a long time, this hasn't been an issue, because it's rare for more than ten Hall of Famers to accumulate on the ballot at the same time. But now it's suddenly a huge problem. The writers' stubborn selectivity when it comes to voting in players on their first ballots, coupled with a new wave of eligible players from the talent-rich 1990s, has stacked this year's ballot with at least twenty players who deserve to have their Hall of Fame credentials debated:
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Greg Maddux
Jeff Bagwell
Frank Thomas
Curt Schilling
Mike Mussina
Tom Glavine
Mike Piazza
Tim Raines
Craig Biggio
Rafael Palmeiro
Mark McGwire
Sammy Sosa
Edgar Martinez
Larry Walker
Alan Trammell
Fred McGriff
Jack Morris
Jeff Kent
Lee Smith
There are undoubtedly many writers out there who would vote for more than ten of these players if they were allowed to. But the 10-man limit prevents them from doing so. As a result, those writers suddenly have to make strategic decisions on which ten players to vote for. Choose the ten most deserving names strictly based on merit? Or cleverly leave off someone who's a cinch to get elected anyway (like Greg Maddux) in favor of a player who desperately needs the support (like Edgar Martinez)? Either way, genuinely worthy players are going to be left off of ballots -- not by voter choice, but because of the mandated 10-man limit. Those players will end up with artificially-low vote totals, keeping them on the ballot for the foreseeable future ... and exacerbating the backlog even more.
This problem isn't going away by itself. In fact, without a change to this restriction, the ballot is about to become even more clogged than it already is. Next year, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, and Gary Sheffield will join the field. The following year: Ken Griffey Jr. and Jim Edmonds. After that: Ivan Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, and Vladimir Guerrero. Great players are becoming eligible for the Hall faster than the writers can induct them.
The rule limiting voters to ten names per ballot was dreamed up all the way back in 1936 when the Hall of Fame was first established. Since then, the number of teams has doubled and the pool of eligible players has expanded to include more racial groups and nationalities. It's just logical to expect more Hall of Famers now. The 10-man restriction is a relic of an earlier time, and it needs to go if the ballot is going to be unclogged anytime soon.
3. The obsession with performance-enhancing drugs. Arguably the best position player and the best pitcher in baseball history were both eligible for Hall of Fame induction last year. Yet only about a third of the writers voted for them, leaving them astoundingly short of the 75% threshold needed for enshrinement.
The only reason why Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens aren't in the Hall of Fame right now is their connections to performance-enhancing drugs. The same can be said of Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, and perhaps even the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa/Rafael Palmeiro trio. This is an understandable emotional response to their assumed cheating, but ultimately it's a misguided and unprecedented reason to exclude these players from the Hall. Logically speaking, there are three possible justifications for keeping suspected drug users out, and none of them hold up to serious scrutiny.
Justification #1: PEDs violate the character clause.
Here are the official criteria that the baseball writers are instructed to consider when filling out their ballots:
This is the weakest of all the logical justifications -- because the baseball writers have never used the character clause to exclude a player from the Hall until, conveniently, right now. In fact, they've never hesitated to induct players whose crimes were far more immoral than drug use. Ty Cobb, the classic example, was a well-known racist whose off-the-field altercations with African-Americans ultimately led to a an attempted murder charge. It has been speculated that Cobb, perhaps along with Tris Speaker and Rogers Hornsby, were members of the Ku Klux Klan. Cap Anson helped perpetuate racial segregation within baseball by refusing to take the field with African-American players. So did Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first commissioner of baseball. All of these people are enshrined in the Hall of Fame. So too are countless drunks, addicts, abusive spouses, and petty criminals. The sudden interest in judging the 'integrity' of Cooperstown candidates rings hollow given the current moral state of the institution's membership.
Justification #2: PEDs represent a violation of sportsmanship and a mockery of baseball rules.
This argument rests on a more nuanced interpretation of the character clause. Some writers claim that the transgressions of racists and criminals aren't relevant to Hall of Fame voting because they took place off the field. Instead, they would argue that the character clause only applies to conduct and integrity on the field -- in a word, sportsmanship. By this logic, a writer could withhold his support for cheaters like Bonds and Clemens strictly because of their violations of baseball rules, thus keeping their crimes separate from those committed by racists and criminals (which might be morally worse in a vacuum but did not affect baseball's level playing field).
But this justification doesn't work either, because there are already confirmed cheaters and drug users in the Hall of Fame. Gaylord Perry, a member of the 300-win and 3,000 strikeout clubs, admitted that he doctored baseballs during his career (with substances ranging from saliva and dirt to Vaseline and fishing line wax). Don Sutton and Whitey Ford cut and scuffed baseballs. The George Brett pine-tar incident is remembered fondly, but technically represents another instance of cheating. Dozens of hitters have corked their bats (including, allegedly, Babe Ruth). The 1951 Giants won the pennant thanks to an elaborate sign-stealing system.
The cheating extends to drug use, too. It dates all the way back to Hall of Famer Pud Galvin, whose drug of choice in the 1880s was monkey testosterone. More relevantly, legends like Mike Schmidt, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle all used amphetamines, or "greenies." Willie Stargell allegedly passed them out to his Pittsburgh Pirates teammates. It is naive to believe that steroids in the 1990s was the first instance of widespread performance-enhancing drug use in baseball.
Clearly the writers have never cared about cheating in baseball when it comes to the Hall of Fame, until now. The only difference between a player using amphetamines in 1970 and using steroids in 2000 is that steroids were probably more effective. Both substances provide a boost to performance, both were illegal without prescription in the United States, both were simply part of baseball culture, and both were eventually banned by the commissioner's office. Condoning amphetamines while condemning steroids is a logically inconsistent position. Any writer who does that is basically saying that certain degrees of cheating are acceptable while others are not. Who draws the line? And where is it?
It's not like baseball players in the 1990s were more corruptible or more nefarious than their counterparts in the 1970s. Earlier players just didn't have access to the really good drugs. The realities of human nature suggest that if stars in the 1970s knew about steroids, they would have taken them, too. Here's what Bob Gibson said about that hypothetical:
And finally -- what happens if a player currently in the Hall is revealed to be a steroid user? Is that player expelled from Cooperstown? Or is he allowed to stay while other cheaters are kept out? Neither of those scenarios are particularly compelling.
Justification #3: PEDs make it impossible to objectively judge a player's career.
This is the most nuanced position on PED users, and one that doesn't rely on crutches like character or morality. Basically, some writers don't have an ethical issue with players who used steroids. But they assume that the huge impact of steroids on the statistics of those players makes it impossible to know whether or not that player deserves to be a Hall of Famer. How many home runs would Mark McGwire have hit without the help of drugs? Because the answer to that question is unknown, some writers withhold their votes from PED users just because their true talent level is impossible to discern.
Here's the thing -- we don't know enough about steroids, scientifically, to assume that they had the huge impact everyone assumes they had. Did steroids help McGwire more than the spitball helped Gaylord Perry? Are steroids the only thing responsible for Barry Bonds' transformation from "All-Time Great" into "Maybe The Best Player Ever"? If steroids are an instant talent-giving elixir, then why did so many mediocre-to-bad players see little-to-no boost in their performance after taking them? Because the extent to which PEDs actually enhance performance is unknown, it's unfair to just assume without any evidence that Bonds or Clemens or McGwire could not have achieved their Hall of Fame credentials without artificial assistance.
There are seven players on this year's ballot with varying connections to PEDs: Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Mike Piazza, and Jeff Bagwell. Not voting for McGwire, Sosa, or Palmeiro because of steroids is understandable, because statistically they aren't slam-dunk Hall of Famers anyway -- McGwire wasn't very durable, Sosa had a crazy-high peak but little else, and Palmeiro had no real peak to speak of. But there is no excuse for any writer to withhold a vote from Bonds, Clemens, Piazza, or Bagwell. They were simply too damn good at baseball to be chemical mirages created by magical drugs. And a Hall of Fame that excludes four all-time greats because of some flawed notion of morality or purity will become an institution without any credibility or relevance.
1. The "first-ballot" distinction. Some Hall of Fame voters (tenured members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America) will acknowledge that a player is eventually worthy of induction into the Hall, but somehow not worthy of being inducted on their first year of eligibility. This is a dumb idea that somebody just made up one day, and it's caught on, to the detriment of the process. The forty-something first-ballot Hall of Famers don't actually represent an 'upper echelon' of talent like some people believe (the group includes Kirby Puckett, Dave Winfield, and Eddie Murray, but excludes Jimmie Foxx, Yogi Berra, and Cy MotherEffing Young). This false distinction probably has its origins in the 1950s, when great players like Joe DiMaggio and Rogers Hornsby didn't make the Hall on the first try because there was a ton of backlog on the ballot. Some writers didn't vote for Craig Biggio last year, because, they apparently reasoned, "if Joe DiMaggio wasn't a first-ballot Hall of Famer, then Biggio isn't!" Of all the stupid reasons to withhold your vote from a player, this is among the stupidest.
The whole point of the Hall of Fame is that once you're in, you're on equal footing with everybody. Regardless of what ballot you came in on. All inductees have the same plaque in the same gallery. Willie Mays enjoys the same status as Jim Rice. Ralph Kiner probably said it best:
"It's not like the guys who get elected in their first year get Cadillacs and the rest of us get Chevys."Refusing to vote in deserving candidates on the first ballot only contributes to the second problem:
2. Backlog, thanks to the 10-man limit. For some reason, writers still aren't allowed to vote for more than ten players in a single election cycle. For a long time, this hasn't been an issue, because it's rare for more than ten Hall of Famers to accumulate on the ballot at the same time. But now it's suddenly a huge problem. The writers' stubborn selectivity when it comes to voting in players on their first ballots, coupled with a new wave of eligible players from the talent-rich 1990s, has stacked this year's ballot with at least twenty players who deserve to have their Hall of Fame credentials debated:
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Greg Maddux
Jeff Bagwell
Frank Thomas
Curt Schilling
Mike Mussina
Tom Glavine
Mike Piazza
Tim Raines
Craig Biggio
Rafael Palmeiro
Mark McGwire
Sammy Sosa
Edgar Martinez
Larry Walker
Alan Trammell
Fred McGriff
Jack Morris
Jeff Kent
Lee Smith
There are undoubtedly many writers out there who would vote for more than ten of these players if they were allowed to. But the 10-man limit prevents them from doing so. As a result, those writers suddenly have to make strategic decisions on which ten players to vote for. Choose the ten most deserving names strictly based on merit? Or cleverly leave off someone who's a cinch to get elected anyway (like Greg Maddux) in favor of a player who desperately needs the support (like Edgar Martinez)? Either way, genuinely worthy players are going to be left off of ballots -- not by voter choice, but because of the mandated 10-man limit. Those players will end up with artificially-low vote totals, keeping them on the ballot for the foreseeable future ... and exacerbating the backlog even more.
This problem isn't going away by itself. In fact, without a change to this restriction, the ballot is about to become even more clogged than it already is. Next year, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, and Gary Sheffield will join the field. The following year: Ken Griffey Jr. and Jim Edmonds. After that: Ivan Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, and Vladimir Guerrero. Great players are becoming eligible for the Hall faster than the writers can induct them.
The rule limiting voters to ten names per ballot was dreamed up all the way back in 1936 when the Hall of Fame was first established. Since then, the number of teams has doubled and the pool of eligible players has expanded to include more racial groups and nationalities. It's just logical to expect more Hall of Famers now. The 10-man restriction is a relic of an earlier time, and it needs to go if the ballot is going to be unclogged anytime soon.
3. The obsession with performance-enhancing drugs. Arguably the best position player and the best pitcher in baseball history were both eligible for Hall of Fame induction last year. Yet only about a third of the writers voted for them, leaving them astoundingly short of the 75% threshold needed for enshrinement.
The only reason why Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens aren't in the Hall of Fame right now is their connections to performance-enhancing drugs. The same can be said of Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, and perhaps even the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa/Rafael Palmeiro trio. This is an understandable emotional response to their assumed cheating, but ultimately it's a misguided and unprecedented reason to exclude these players from the Hall. Logically speaking, there are three possible justifications for keeping suspected drug users out, and none of them hold up to serious scrutiny.
Justification #1: PEDs violate the character clause.
Here are the official criteria that the baseball writers are instructed to consider when filling out their ballots:
Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.The integrity, sportsmanship, and character requirements are usually bundled up and referred to generally as the "character clause." The argument goes, then, that players who took steroids and other PEDs exhibited a lack of character that therefore disqualifies them from Hall of Fame consideration.
This is the weakest of all the logical justifications -- because the baseball writers have never used the character clause to exclude a player from the Hall until, conveniently, right now. In fact, they've never hesitated to induct players whose crimes were far more immoral than drug use. Ty Cobb, the classic example, was a well-known racist whose off-the-field altercations with African-Americans ultimately led to a an attempted murder charge. It has been speculated that Cobb, perhaps along with Tris Speaker and Rogers Hornsby, were members of the Ku Klux Klan. Cap Anson helped perpetuate racial segregation within baseball by refusing to take the field with African-American players. So did Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first commissioner of baseball. All of these people are enshrined in the Hall of Fame. So too are countless drunks, addicts, abusive spouses, and petty criminals. The sudden interest in judging the 'integrity' of Cooperstown candidates rings hollow given the current moral state of the institution's membership.
Justification #2: PEDs represent a violation of sportsmanship and a mockery of baseball rules.
This argument rests on a more nuanced interpretation of the character clause. Some writers claim that the transgressions of racists and criminals aren't relevant to Hall of Fame voting because they took place off the field. Instead, they would argue that the character clause only applies to conduct and integrity on the field -- in a word, sportsmanship. By this logic, a writer could withhold his support for cheaters like Bonds and Clemens strictly because of their violations of baseball rules, thus keeping their crimes separate from those committed by racists and criminals (which might be morally worse in a vacuum but did not affect baseball's level playing field).
But this justification doesn't work either, because there are already confirmed cheaters and drug users in the Hall of Fame. Gaylord Perry, a member of the 300-win and 3,000 strikeout clubs, admitted that he doctored baseballs during his career (with substances ranging from saliva and dirt to Vaseline and fishing line wax). Don Sutton and Whitey Ford cut and scuffed baseballs. The George Brett pine-tar incident is remembered fondly, but technically represents another instance of cheating. Dozens of hitters have corked their bats (including, allegedly, Babe Ruth). The 1951 Giants won the pennant thanks to an elaborate sign-stealing system.
The cheating extends to drug use, too. It dates all the way back to Hall of Famer Pud Galvin, whose drug of choice in the 1880s was monkey testosterone. More relevantly, legends like Mike Schmidt, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle all used amphetamines, or "greenies." Willie Stargell allegedly passed them out to his Pittsburgh Pirates teammates. It is naive to believe that steroids in the 1990s was the first instance of widespread performance-enhancing drug use in baseball.
Clearly the writers have never cared about cheating in baseball when it comes to the Hall of Fame, until now. The only difference between a player using amphetamines in 1970 and using steroids in 2000 is that steroids were probably more effective. Both substances provide a boost to performance, both were illegal without prescription in the United States, both were simply part of baseball culture, and both were eventually banned by the commissioner's office. Condoning amphetamines while condemning steroids is a logically inconsistent position. Any writer who does that is basically saying that certain degrees of cheating are acceptable while others are not. Who draws the line? And where is it?
It's not like baseball players in the 1990s were more corruptible or more nefarious than their counterparts in the 1970s. Earlier players just didn't have access to the really good drugs. The realities of human nature suggest that if stars in the 1970s knew about steroids, they would have taken them, too. Here's what Bob Gibson said about that hypothetical:
"I'm just glad they didn't have steroids when I was playing. You know, I don't know what I would have done."Let's stop pretending that steroid users were the first cheaters or drug users in baseball history. The Hall of Fame has never policed against that stuff, and there's no reason why it should start now.
And finally -- what happens if a player currently in the Hall is revealed to be a steroid user? Is that player expelled from Cooperstown? Or is he allowed to stay while other cheaters are kept out? Neither of those scenarios are particularly compelling.
Justification #3: PEDs make it impossible to objectively judge a player's career.
This is the most nuanced position on PED users, and one that doesn't rely on crutches like character or morality. Basically, some writers don't have an ethical issue with players who used steroids. But they assume that the huge impact of steroids on the statistics of those players makes it impossible to know whether or not that player deserves to be a Hall of Famer. How many home runs would Mark McGwire have hit without the help of drugs? Because the answer to that question is unknown, some writers withhold their votes from PED users just because their true talent level is impossible to discern.
Here's the thing -- we don't know enough about steroids, scientifically, to assume that they had the huge impact everyone assumes they had. Did steroids help McGwire more than the spitball helped Gaylord Perry? Are steroids the only thing responsible for Barry Bonds' transformation from "All-Time Great" into "Maybe The Best Player Ever"? If steroids are an instant talent-giving elixir, then why did so many mediocre-to-bad players see little-to-no boost in their performance after taking them? Because the extent to which PEDs actually enhance performance is unknown, it's unfair to just assume without any evidence that Bonds or Clemens or McGwire could not have achieved their Hall of Fame credentials without artificial assistance.
There are seven players on this year's ballot with varying connections to PEDs: Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Mike Piazza, and Jeff Bagwell. Not voting for McGwire, Sosa, or Palmeiro because of steroids is understandable, because statistically they aren't slam-dunk Hall of Famers anyway -- McGwire wasn't very durable, Sosa had a crazy-high peak but little else, and Palmeiro had no real peak to speak of. But there is no excuse for any writer to withhold a vote from Bonds, Clemens, Piazza, or Bagwell. They were simply too damn good at baseball to be chemical mirages created by magical drugs. And a Hall of Fame that excludes four all-time greats because of some flawed notion of morality or purity will become an institution without any credibility or relevance.
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Fielder for Kinsler: The Ultimate Win-Win?
Imagine the Detroit Tigers and Texas Rangers are playing Go Fish. They both happen to have the same two cards in their respective hands: a seven and a ten. If they don't trade with each other, then neither team can get a pair and their cards will be worthless. But if the Tigers send their seven to the Rangers, and the Rangers send their ten to the Tigers, then both parties would have a pair and be better off.
That's the simple beauty of the Prince Fielder for Ian Kinsler swap that was finalized earlier in the week: mutual benefit. We typically think of trades as zero-sum games: upgrading one area of a roster demands a downgrade in another, and one team's improvement requires another team's decline. But in this case, a trade made two rosters unequivocally better off than they were before.
The Tigers and Rangers matched up so well for this trade because both were dealing with a significant logjam at different positions. For the Tigers, their issue was at the corner infield spots. They were committed to Fielder at first base for seven more years (and $168 million), and with Victor Martinez locked in as the designated hitter, Miguel Cabrera was stuck playing third base. There were a few major problems with this configuration that made it unacceptable:
1. Playing third almost certainly took a toll on Cabrera's health last season.
2. Playing Fielder and Cabrera at the corners every day makes for a truly miserable defensive infield.
3. Shoehorning Cabrera in at third blocked the Tigers' elite hitting prospect, Nick Castellanos, another third baseman.
4. The huge financial obligation to Fielder -- the source of this logjam in the first place -- may have prevented the Tigers from making other significant moves, like re-signing the reigning Cy Young winner, Max Scherzer.
The Rangers, meanwhile, had a similar positional bottleneck. Theirs was in the middle infield. They had awarded large extensions to shortstop Elvis Andrus and second baseman Ian Kinsler, keeping both under contract for the next four or five years, minimum. But those two commitments left no spot for top prospect Jurickson Profar, who's also under team control for the rest of the decade. Without a trade, the Rangers may have been forced to permanently move either Kinsler or Profar to the outfield. Not only would that have been a vastly inefficient use of resources -- it also may have kept the Rangers from signing the good-hitting outfielder that they need.
So the Tigers needed to trade a corner infielder and the Rangers needed to trade a middle infielder. It just so happened that each team also had a need for the asset that the other team was trying to dump. The Tigers didn't have a second baseman after Omar Infante's free agency, and could have used a defensive upgrade there. The Rangers had a gaping hole at first base -- they just gave 500 plate appearances to Mitch Moreland, who hit .232 with a .299 OBP. The solution, then, was too simple: the Rangers sent Ian Kinsler to the Tigers in exchange for Prince Fielder (along with $30 million to offset some of the difference between their contracts).
Immediately, both teams are in a much better place. The Tigers can now move Cabrera back to first base, protecting his health. They're a lot more flexible at third base: they can use Castellanos there, or sign a free agent like Stephen Drew. Either way, that's a significant defensive upgrade. So is the addition of Kinsler at second. Suddenly, the Tigers have a more-than-competent defensive infield. And they saved money in the process. Instead of paying Fielder $168 million over the next seven years, they'll pay Kinsler about $62 million over the next four and send $30 million to Texas. That's upwards of $70 million saved, which can be used toward a Max Scherzer extension or a free agent like Drew, Carlos Beltran, Shin-Soo Choo, or a closer. So the Tigers protected their star's health, upgraded at second base, drastically improved their infield defense, opened up third base for their best hitting prospect, and gained some long-term financial flexibility. Giving up Prince Fielder's hefty contract was certainly worth all that good stuff.
The trade had a similar impact on the Rangers. Which is the better infield: Elvis Andrus, Ian Kinsler, and Mitch Moreland, or Elvis Andrus, Jurickson Profar, and Prince Fielder? Exactly. Upgrading from Moreland to Fielder is significant, and the presence of Profar means that losing Kinsler almost doesn't even matter. Plus, they're not paying the sticker price for Fielder. Though he's owed $168 million over the next seven years, the Tigers are assuming $30 million of that total, along with the $62 million contract that the Rangers once owed Kinsler. So ultimately, the trade will only add about $76 million to the Rangers' existing financial commitments. In exchange, they made a huge upgrade at first base for a discounted price, opened up second base for their top prospect, and kept left field open for a potential free agent signing, like Jacoby Ellsbury. They dealt from their position of strength to address their most glaring weakness.
The Tigers had a square peg and round hole; the Rangers had a round peg and square hole. They just swapped pegs, and both teams got better. But the trade does not come without risk -- especially for Texas. Although Prince Fielder is just 29 years old and one of the most durable players in the game, his 2013 season was alarmingly subpar: a .279/.362/.457 line with 25 home runs, roughly comparable to what Adam Lind and Mike Napoli did. Because Fielder is a miserable defender and baserunner, his bat is the only source of his value. If 2013 was indicative of a larger trend, and Fielder really is in the midst of a steep offensive decline, then he's useless dead weight who's owed $138 million over the next seven years. In that scenario, he's about to become the most undesirable contract in baseball.
The Rangers are gambling that Fielder's down season was just an aberration, perhaps influenced by his divorce. The promise of a move to hitter-friendly Arlington offers additional hope for a return to his former self. If the Rangers are right, they just got one of the game's most elite and durable sluggers at less-than-full price. If Fielder really is declining, then they just acquired one of the most toxic assets in the sport, and what looks like a win-win deal today could eventually be perceived as one of the most lopsided trades ever.
That's the simple beauty of the Prince Fielder for Ian Kinsler swap that was finalized earlier in the week: mutual benefit. We typically think of trades as zero-sum games: upgrading one area of a roster demands a downgrade in another, and one team's improvement requires another team's decline. But in this case, a trade made two rosters unequivocally better off than they were before.
The Tigers and Rangers matched up so well for this trade because both were dealing with a significant logjam at different positions. For the Tigers, their issue was at the corner infield spots. They were committed to Fielder at first base for seven more years (and $168 million), and with Victor Martinez locked in as the designated hitter, Miguel Cabrera was stuck playing third base. There were a few major problems with this configuration that made it unacceptable:
1. Playing third almost certainly took a toll on Cabrera's health last season.
2. Playing Fielder and Cabrera at the corners every day makes for a truly miserable defensive infield.
3. Shoehorning Cabrera in at third blocked the Tigers' elite hitting prospect, Nick Castellanos, another third baseman.
4. The huge financial obligation to Fielder -- the source of this logjam in the first place -- may have prevented the Tigers from making other significant moves, like re-signing the reigning Cy Young winner, Max Scherzer.
The Rangers, meanwhile, had a similar positional bottleneck. Theirs was in the middle infield. They had awarded large extensions to shortstop Elvis Andrus and second baseman Ian Kinsler, keeping both under contract for the next four or five years, minimum. But those two commitments left no spot for top prospect Jurickson Profar, who's also under team control for the rest of the decade. Without a trade, the Rangers may have been forced to permanently move either Kinsler or Profar to the outfield. Not only would that have been a vastly inefficient use of resources -- it also may have kept the Rangers from signing the good-hitting outfielder that they need.
So the Tigers needed to trade a corner infielder and the Rangers needed to trade a middle infielder. It just so happened that each team also had a need for the asset that the other team was trying to dump. The Tigers didn't have a second baseman after Omar Infante's free agency, and could have used a defensive upgrade there. The Rangers had a gaping hole at first base -- they just gave 500 plate appearances to Mitch Moreland, who hit .232 with a .299 OBP. The solution, then, was too simple: the Rangers sent Ian Kinsler to the Tigers in exchange for Prince Fielder (along with $30 million to offset some of the difference between their contracts).
Immediately, both teams are in a much better place. The Tigers can now move Cabrera back to first base, protecting his health. They're a lot more flexible at third base: they can use Castellanos there, or sign a free agent like Stephen Drew. Either way, that's a significant defensive upgrade. So is the addition of Kinsler at second. Suddenly, the Tigers have a more-than-competent defensive infield. And they saved money in the process. Instead of paying Fielder $168 million over the next seven years, they'll pay Kinsler about $62 million over the next four and send $30 million to Texas. That's upwards of $70 million saved, which can be used toward a Max Scherzer extension or a free agent like Drew, Carlos Beltran, Shin-Soo Choo, or a closer. So the Tigers protected their star's health, upgraded at second base, drastically improved their infield defense, opened up third base for their best hitting prospect, and gained some long-term financial flexibility. Giving up Prince Fielder's hefty contract was certainly worth all that good stuff.
The trade had a similar impact on the Rangers. Which is the better infield: Elvis Andrus, Ian Kinsler, and Mitch Moreland, or Elvis Andrus, Jurickson Profar, and Prince Fielder? Exactly. Upgrading from Moreland to Fielder is significant, and the presence of Profar means that losing Kinsler almost doesn't even matter. Plus, they're not paying the sticker price for Fielder. Though he's owed $168 million over the next seven years, the Tigers are assuming $30 million of that total, along with the $62 million contract that the Rangers once owed Kinsler. So ultimately, the trade will only add about $76 million to the Rangers' existing financial commitments. In exchange, they made a huge upgrade at first base for a discounted price, opened up second base for their top prospect, and kept left field open for a potential free agent signing, like Jacoby Ellsbury. They dealt from their position of strength to address their most glaring weakness.
The Tigers had a square peg and round hole; the Rangers had a round peg and square hole. They just swapped pegs, and both teams got better. But the trade does not come without risk -- especially for Texas. Although Prince Fielder is just 29 years old and one of the most durable players in the game, his 2013 season was alarmingly subpar: a .279/.362/.457 line with 25 home runs, roughly comparable to what Adam Lind and Mike Napoli did. Because Fielder is a miserable defender and baserunner, his bat is the only source of his value. If 2013 was indicative of a larger trend, and Fielder really is in the midst of a steep offensive decline, then he's useless dead weight who's owed $138 million over the next seven years. In that scenario, he's about to become the most undesirable contract in baseball.
The Rangers are gambling that Fielder's down season was just an aberration, perhaps influenced by his divorce. The promise of a move to hitter-friendly Arlington offers additional hope for a return to his former self. If the Rangers are right, they just got one of the game's most elite and durable sluggers at less-than-full price. If Fielder really is declining, then they just acquired one of the most toxic assets in the sport, and what looks like a win-win deal today could eventually be perceived as one of the most lopsided trades ever.
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