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
Showing posts with label Jeff Bagwell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeff Bagwell. Show all posts
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Friday, November 1, 2013
David Ortiz and Cooperstown's Double Standard
Based on what's been written in the wake of his third World Series title, it appears as though this latest round of postseason heroics has pushed David Ortiz over the hypothetical Hall of Fame threshold. He's certainly not a bad choice. In almost 2,000 career games, Ortiz has hit .287/.381/.549 with 431 home runs and a 139 OPS+. Remove his unspectacular stint with the Minnesota Twins and those numbers look even better. And in 82 career playoff games, he owns a .939 OPS, two walk-off home runs, and a host of other memorable clutch moments. But what makes Ortiz's case even more engrossing is his connection to performance-enhancing drugs.
Unlike Manny Ramirez and Rafael Palmeiro, Ortiz has never officially tested positive for a banned substance. He falls into the same category as Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza (and, technically, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens), in that the evidence against him is purely circumstantial:
1. A New York Times report in 2009 claimed that Ortiz was one of the 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs during "anonymous" survey testing in 2003, before the current testing system was installed. That famous list reportedly also implicates Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, and Sammy Sosa. Not the best company. It doesn't help that Ortiz was Ramirez's teammate for a number of years.
2. Ortiz's OPS with the Minnesota Twins, from 1997 to 2002, was .809. Since joining the Red Sox in 2003, his OPS has been .962.
3. Ortiz looked like toast in 2009, when he got off to a painfully slow start and hit just .238 for the season. It looked like he might retire at the beginning of 2010, when he hit .143 in April as a 34-year old. In the three years since then, he's recovered in a huge way to hit .311/.401/.571.
These are the indicators that the overly-suspicious baseball community has decided upon as the telltale signs of illicit drug use. They're all there: the unsubstantiated reports, the compromised teammates, the quantum leap in production, the late-30s career renaissance. There's far more "evidence" implicating Ortiz than there is against, say, Mike Piazza, and Piazza was rejected by the Hall of Fame voters last year purely based on skepticism and suspicion. For the sake of intellectual consistency, shouldn't Ortiz get the same treatment?
Spoiler alert: he won't. Ortiz isn't subject to the same level of scrutiny as other Hall candidates. And that tells you everything you need to know about how twisted this process has become.
The best illustration of this double standard comes from Jon Heyman, a CBS Sports analyst with a Hall of Fame vote. His Friday column covered Ortiz's case for Cooperstown, and performance-enhancing drugs was one of the key points he addressed. In the past, Heyman has proudly announced his refusal to vote for players even tangentially connected to steroids (not just Bonds and Clemens, but Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza too). So it was good to see the following paragraph, which suggested he would hold Ortiz to the same tough standard to which he has held others:
"Ortiz is no A-Rod, as anyone reasonably can conclude. But that doesn't mean he gets a free pass, either, not without a serious consideration of the facts. With even more accomplished players than Ortiz such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and others omitted from Cooperstown to date, it wouldn't be right not to at least consider the case against Ortiz. A great nickname, way with words and penchant for maximizing the moment doesn't win Big Papi a free pass. So the case against must be considered."
Very reasonable. Heyman isn't letting Ortiz's narrative affect his broader evaluative method. He then goes on to acknowledge a few of the links between Ortiz and drugs:
"Ortiz was one of 104 players to fail MLB's 2003 steroid survey test ... Ortiz was a marginal player until he got [to] the Red Sox in his late 20s, then took a giant leap to become Manny Ramirez's co-equal runningmate, and he has remained great even into his late 30s after looking like he might be nearing the end at least a couple different times a half-decade ago ... A giant bear of a man, he once seemed like the nicest guy in the world, but more recently has shown occasional signs of surliness and one classic fit of temper ... He knows Manny well."
It's important to note at this juncture that these are all ridiculous reasons to exclude Ortiz from the Hall. One unconfirmed report, some statistical fluctuation, and "signs of surliness" aren't evidence of drug use. That's not the point here. The point is that Heyman -- a Hall of Fame voter -- has a well-established history of withholding his vote from players who have been loosely connected to drugs. Here, he appears to be willing to apply that tough standard to the eminently-lovable Ortiz. That's what's important -- intellectual consistency. Even if I don't agree with Heyman's Hall standard, at least he's got a philosophy that he wields fairly across the board. In his own words:
"... it isn't necessarily unreasonable to omit Ortiz based on this one serious mistake. Players who took steroids or even laced supplements gained an unfair advantage, and I have never voted for anyone linked to steroids."
Again, I disagree with this position, but it's hard not to respect Heyman for sticking to his ideological guns, even when faced with an appealing baseball character like Ortiz.
Except at the very end of this column, Heyman does a complete about-face that highlights the Ortiz double standard:
"Some Hall of Fame voters will exclude players with any link to steroids, no matter how strong that link is, but in this case it fairly boils down to one un-sourced report involving a test for survey purposes.
Is that enough to exclude? Not here it isn't.
Cooperstown it is."
I mean ... what? After all that, Heyman is endorsing Ortiz for the Hall? Here's how the logic of this column breaks down:
1. I, Jon Heyman, have never voted for anyone linked to steroids.
2. Here is a bunch of evidence linking David Ortiz to steroids.
3. I support David Ortiz for Cooperstown!
So much for a reasonably-applied standard. Heyman's voting principles are now completely compromised. Just a year ago, his official Hall of Fame ballot did not include Jeff Bagwell. It did not include Mike Piazza. Both of those players had twice the careers that Ortiz had, but Heyman did not vote for them because of unconfirmed reports and rumors about their drug use. Yet in Ortiz's case, Heyman is suddenly willing to acknowledge nuance and look past the unconfirmed reports and rumors. This confirms exactly what we have come to expect -- baseball writers aren't making Hall of Fame decisions based on reason and logic and sound criteria. They're voting on narratives and personal biases. Bagwell and Piazza? They never won a championship, did anything memorable, or played for great teams, so they probably used drugs. They're out. Ortiz? He's a fun dude with a cool nickname, some clutch moments, and three titles for a historic franchise, so he probably didn't use drugs. He's in.
This is not David Ortiz's fault. He may very well be a Hall of Famer, and his tenuous connection to drugs should not be a factor when the time comes to make that decision. It is encouraging to see an actual voter like Jon Heyman promoting that view. It would just be great if Heyman could provide other suspected users like Bagwell and Piazza with the same benefit of the doubt that Ortiz has apparently earned.
There's a second aspect of the Ortiz double standard that isn't drug-related. It has to do with another designated hitter: Edgar Martinez. Martinez has been on the Hall of Fame ballot for four years now, and hasn't yet crossed the 40% threshold, suggesting that his chances of induction aren't good at all. But if Ortiz is now being considered a Hall of Famer, then the voters had better take a second look at Martinez, because the gap between these players is striking.
Martinez had the better slash line (.312/.418/.515), his on-base advantage trumping Ortiz's edge in power (.287/.381/.549). Martinez has the better OPS+ (147 to 138). They have similar career games played and plate appearance totals, yet Baseball Reference has Ortiz's career value at 44.2 WAR and Martinez's at 68.3, thanks in part to Ortiz's forgettable stint with Twins. Both were DHs, but Martinez actually spent less of his time there (74%) than Ortiz (86%). Fangraphs.com grades Ortiz as the inferior baserunner and defender. Martinez actually played some third base, which Ortiz probably can't even do in his own imagination. Granted, Ortiz has the postseason accomplishments, but ... what am I missing here? Until he tacks on a few more seasons of elite production, he can't be considered Martinez's equal.
So how can Jon Heyman support Ortiz for the Hall when he didn't vote for Martinez last year? Well, this is what he wrote about Edgar last January:
"Had that pretty slash line of .312/.418/.515. But since he was mostly a DH, I would have liked a bit more power, longevity or speed. Great, but pretty one-dimensional."
Reading that blurb now is devastatingly ironic considering Heyman's more recent endorsement of Ortiz. If he didn't vote for Martinez because he was a slow and one-dimensional DH without enough longevity, how can he possibly justify a future vote for Ortiz, who's an even-slower and even-more-one-dimensional DH with an even shorter career? Again, it's the same illogical approach discussed above. It clearly doesn't have anything to do with merit. It's because Martinez didn't have an outgoing personality or a badass nickname like "Big Papi" or the good fortune to play for great teams in three World Series. It's about narrative. Baseball writers love narrative -- they write it and promote it for a living -- so it's no surprise that narrative has become the most important means of judging a player's ultimate career value. This is not the objective analysis that baseball -- more rooted in statistics than any other sport -- deserves.
Based on Heyman's voting record with respect to Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, and Edgar Martinez, there was absolutely no rational reason to expect him to support David Ortiz's candidacy as a one-dimensional DH with connections to performance-enhancing drugs. And yet he still wrote that column endorsing Ortiz. It's just another example of how broken Cooperstown's voting process really is. As long as narrative, not merit, determines its membership, the Hall of Fame's relevance as a record of baseball greatness will be undermined.
Unlike Manny Ramirez and Rafael Palmeiro, Ortiz has never officially tested positive for a banned substance. He falls into the same category as Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza (and, technically, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens), in that the evidence against him is purely circumstantial:
1. A New York Times report in 2009 claimed that Ortiz was one of the 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs during "anonymous" survey testing in 2003, before the current testing system was installed. That famous list reportedly also implicates Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, and Sammy Sosa. Not the best company. It doesn't help that Ortiz was Ramirez's teammate for a number of years.
2. Ortiz's OPS with the Minnesota Twins, from 1997 to 2002, was .809. Since joining the Red Sox in 2003, his OPS has been .962.
3. Ortiz looked like toast in 2009, when he got off to a painfully slow start and hit just .238 for the season. It looked like he might retire at the beginning of 2010, when he hit .143 in April as a 34-year old. In the three years since then, he's recovered in a huge way to hit .311/.401/.571.
These are the indicators that the overly-suspicious baseball community has decided upon as the telltale signs of illicit drug use. They're all there: the unsubstantiated reports, the compromised teammates, the quantum leap in production, the late-30s career renaissance. There's far more "evidence" implicating Ortiz than there is against, say, Mike Piazza, and Piazza was rejected by the Hall of Fame voters last year purely based on skepticism and suspicion. For the sake of intellectual consistency, shouldn't Ortiz get the same treatment?
Spoiler alert: he won't. Ortiz isn't subject to the same level of scrutiny as other Hall candidates. And that tells you everything you need to know about how twisted this process has become.
The best illustration of this double standard comes from Jon Heyman, a CBS Sports analyst with a Hall of Fame vote. His Friday column covered Ortiz's case for Cooperstown, and performance-enhancing drugs was one of the key points he addressed. In the past, Heyman has proudly announced his refusal to vote for players even tangentially connected to steroids (not just Bonds and Clemens, but Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza too). So it was good to see the following paragraph, which suggested he would hold Ortiz to the same tough standard to which he has held others:
"Ortiz is no A-Rod, as anyone reasonably can conclude. But that doesn't mean he gets a free pass, either, not without a serious consideration of the facts. With even more accomplished players than Ortiz such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and others omitted from Cooperstown to date, it wouldn't be right not to at least consider the case against Ortiz. A great nickname, way with words and penchant for maximizing the moment doesn't win Big Papi a free pass. So the case against must be considered."
Very reasonable. Heyman isn't letting Ortiz's narrative affect his broader evaluative method. He then goes on to acknowledge a few of the links between Ortiz and drugs:
"Ortiz was one of 104 players to fail MLB's 2003 steroid survey test ... Ortiz was a marginal player until he got [to] the Red Sox in his late 20s, then took a giant leap to become Manny Ramirez's co-equal runningmate, and he has remained great even into his late 30s after looking like he might be nearing the end at least a couple different times a half-decade ago ... A giant bear of a man, he once seemed like the nicest guy in the world, but more recently has shown occasional signs of surliness and one classic fit of temper ... He knows Manny well."
It's important to note at this juncture that these are all ridiculous reasons to exclude Ortiz from the Hall. One unconfirmed report, some statistical fluctuation, and "signs of surliness" aren't evidence of drug use. That's not the point here. The point is that Heyman -- a Hall of Fame voter -- has a well-established history of withholding his vote from players who have been loosely connected to drugs. Here, he appears to be willing to apply that tough standard to the eminently-lovable Ortiz. That's what's important -- intellectual consistency. Even if I don't agree with Heyman's Hall standard, at least he's got a philosophy that he wields fairly across the board. In his own words:
"... it isn't necessarily unreasonable to omit Ortiz based on this one serious mistake. Players who took steroids or even laced supplements gained an unfair advantage, and I have never voted for anyone linked to steroids."
Again, I disagree with this position, but it's hard not to respect Heyman for sticking to his ideological guns, even when faced with an appealing baseball character like Ortiz.
Except at the very end of this column, Heyman does a complete about-face that highlights the Ortiz double standard:
"Some Hall of Fame voters will exclude players with any link to steroids, no matter how strong that link is, but in this case it fairly boils down to one un-sourced report involving a test for survey purposes.
Is that enough to exclude? Not here it isn't.
Cooperstown it is."
I mean ... what? After all that, Heyman is endorsing Ortiz for the Hall? Here's how the logic of this column breaks down:
1. I, Jon Heyman, have never voted for anyone linked to steroids.
2. Here is a bunch of evidence linking David Ortiz to steroids.
3. I support David Ortiz for Cooperstown!
So much for a reasonably-applied standard. Heyman's voting principles are now completely compromised. Just a year ago, his official Hall of Fame ballot did not include Jeff Bagwell. It did not include Mike Piazza. Both of those players had twice the careers that Ortiz had, but Heyman did not vote for them because of unconfirmed reports and rumors about their drug use. Yet in Ortiz's case, Heyman is suddenly willing to acknowledge nuance and look past the unconfirmed reports and rumors. This confirms exactly what we have come to expect -- baseball writers aren't making Hall of Fame decisions based on reason and logic and sound criteria. They're voting on narratives and personal biases. Bagwell and Piazza? They never won a championship, did anything memorable, or played for great teams, so they probably used drugs. They're out. Ortiz? He's a fun dude with a cool nickname, some clutch moments, and three titles for a historic franchise, so he probably didn't use drugs. He's in.
This is not David Ortiz's fault. He may very well be a Hall of Famer, and his tenuous connection to drugs should not be a factor when the time comes to make that decision. It is encouraging to see an actual voter like Jon Heyman promoting that view. It would just be great if Heyman could provide other suspected users like Bagwell and Piazza with the same benefit of the doubt that Ortiz has apparently earned.
------------
There's a second aspect of the Ortiz double standard that isn't drug-related. It has to do with another designated hitter: Edgar Martinez. Martinez has been on the Hall of Fame ballot for four years now, and hasn't yet crossed the 40% threshold, suggesting that his chances of induction aren't good at all. But if Ortiz is now being considered a Hall of Famer, then the voters had better take a second look at Martinez, because the gap between these players is striking.
Martinez had the better slash line (.312/.418/.515), his on-base advantage trumping Ortiz's edge in power (.287/.381/.549). Martinez has the better OPS+ (147 to 138). They have similar career games played and plate appearance totals, yet Baseball Reference has Ortiz's career value at 44.2 WAR and Martinez's at 68.3, thanks in part to Ortiz's forgettable stint with Twins. Both were DHs, but Martinez actually spent less of his time there (74%) than Ortiz (86%). Fangraphs.com grades Ortiz as the inferior baserunner and defender. Martinez actually played some third base, which Ortiz probably can't even do in his own imagination. Granted, Ortiz has the postseason accomplishments, but ... what am I missing here? Until he tacks on a few more seasons of elite production, he can't be considered Martinez's equal.
So how can Jon Heyman support Ortiz for the Hall when he didn't vote for Martinez last year? Well, this is what he wrote about Edgar last January:
"Had that pretty slash line of .312/.418/.515. But since he was mostly a DH, I would have liked a bit more power, longevity or speed. Great, but pretty one-dimensional."
Reading that blurb now is devastatingly ironic considering Heyman's more recent endorsement of Ortiz. If he didn't vote for Martinez because he was a slow and one-dimensional DH without enough longevity, how can he possibly justify a future vote for Ortiz, who's an even-slower and even-more-one-dimensional DH with an even shorter career? Again, it's the same illogical approach discussed above. It clearly doesn't have anything to do with merit. It's because Martinez didn't have an outgoing personality or a badass nickname like "Big Papi" or the good fortune to play for great teams in three World Series. It's about narrative. Baseball writers love narrative -- they write it and promote it for a living -- so it's no surprise that narrative has become the most important means of judging a player's ultimate career value. This is not the objective analysis that baseball -- more rooted in statistics than any other sport -- deserves.
Based on Heyman's voting record with respect to Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, and Edgar Martinez, there was absolutely no rational reason to expect him to support David Ortiz's candidacy as a one-dimensional DH with connections to performance-enhancing drugs. And yet he still wrote that column endorsing Ortiz. It's just another example of how broken Cooperstown's voting process really is. As long as narrative, not merit, determines its membership, the Hall of Fame's relevance as a record of baseball greatness will be undermined.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Cooperstown Candidate: Jeff Bagwell
Continuing a series examining the candidates eligible for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The writers' ballots are due by December 31st and the Class of 2013 will be announced in early January.
Out of all the first basemen who have debuted in the major leagues since 1950, only five have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Does Jeff Bagwell deserve to be the sixth?
The five who made the cut: Willie McCovey, Eddie Murray, Harmon Killebrew, Tony Perez, and Orlando Cepeda. Bagwell makes this exercise pretty easy, because he was better than all of them:
Career On-Base Plus Slugging: Career Wins Above Replacement:
Bagwell: .948 Bagwell: 76.7
McCovey: .889 Murray: 63.4
Killebrew: .884 McCovey: 60.7
Cepeda: .849 Killebrew: 55.8
Murray: .836 Perez: 50.1
Perez: .804 Cepeda: 46.1
In fact, Bagwell's career OPS would be 5th-best among all Hall of Fame first basemen, and his career WAR would be 7th-best. There was even a brief window during which he was able to call himself the best first baseman of the past half-century (a window that shut abruptly when Albert Pujols came along). Yet only 56% of the baseball writers voted for Bagwell last year, well short of the required 75% threshold. Here's a deeper look at his candidacy in an effort to unearth what the baseball writers don't like about him.
Bagwell spent his entire 15-year career with the Houston Astros, and for the first nine of those seasons, he played his home games in the Astrodome. Since that ballpark was one of the tougher hitting environments of the day, Bagwell's gaudy offensive numbers suddenly become all the more impressive. He hit an all-around-awesome .297/.408/.540 for his career, along with 449 homers and 1,401 walks. But he also used his speed to steal 202 bases and score 1,517 runs. He scored 152 runs in 2000, the highest single-season total for any player since the 1930s. Bagwell was the truly unique slugger who excelled at both driving in runs and scoring them, a rare combination only exhibited by inner-circle Hall of Famers like Rickey Henderson.
Bagwell did win an MVP Award, in 1994. He hit .368/.451/.750 with 39 homers, 116 RBIs, and 104 runs. Incredible numbers considering he only played in 110 games. That 1994 season was shortened due to the strike, which unfortunately overshadowed Bagwell's best year. He also put up MVP-caliber seasons in 1997 and 1999, finishing 3rd and 2nd, respectively, in the MVP voting those years. During his eight-year peak between the 1994 MVP and 2001, his cumulative line was .306/.428/.589, and he averaged 37 home runs, 120 RBIs, 110 walks, and 18 steals per season. Remarkably, over that eight-year stretch, he walked more times than he struck out (877 to 871), one of the telltale signs of an elite hitter.
Bagwell is clearly a slam-dunk Hall of Famer. Yet he's already appeared on the ballot twice, and both times he didn't receive enough votes to get inducted. There are two possible explanations for this oddity. One is the usual: suspicions of performance-enhancing drugs. Suspicions based on little more than, "well, he had big muscles." He wasn't named in the Mitchell Report and didn't fail a drug test. Letting rumors and hearsay dictate who gets into Cooperstown just demeans the institution.
The other possible explanation is Bagwell's short career length. He only played for 15 years before an arthritic condition in his shoulder forced him to retire. Old-school baseball writers might think that Bagwell isn't Cooperstown-worthy just because he didn't play long enough to reach a major milestone, having retired with "only" 449 home runs and 2,314 hits.
Here's why that's wrong. Despite his abbreviated career, Jeff Bagwell still accumulated a total of 76.7 Wins Above Replacement. Only 35 position players accumulated more WAR in baseball history. Of those 35, 30 are in the Hall of Fame. The other five are named Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Chipper Jones, and Ken Griffey Jr.
That company says it all.
My Ballot, As of Now:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Mike Piazza
4. Craig Biggio
5. Jeff Bagwell
Out of all the first basemen who have debuted in the major leagues since 1950, only five have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Does Jeff Bagwell deserve to be the sixth?
The five who made the cut: Willie McCovey, Eddie Murray, Harmon Killebrew, Tony Perez, and Orlando Cepeda. Bagwell makes this exercise pretty easy, because he was better than all of them:
Career On-Base Plus Slugging: Career Wins Above Replacement:
Bagwell: .948 Bagwell: 76.7
McCovey: .889 Murray: 63.4
Killebrew: .884 McCovey: 60.7
Cepeda: .849 Killebrew: 55.8
Murray: .836 Perez: 50.1
Perez: .804 Cepeda: 46.1
In fact, Bagwell's career OPS would be 5th-best among all Hall of Fame first basemen, and his career WAR would be 7th-best. There was even a brief window during which he was able to call himself the best first baseman of the past half-century (a window that shut abruptly when Albert Pujols came along). Yet only 56% of the baseball writers voted for Bagwell last year, well short of the required 75% threshold. Here's a deeper look at his candidacy in an effort to unearth what the baseball writers don't like about him.
Bagwell spent his entire 15-year career with the Houston Astros, and for the first nine of those seasons, he played his home games in the Astrodome. Since that ballpark was one of the tougher hitting environments of the day, Bagwell's gaudy offensive numbers suddenly become all the more impressive. He hit an all-around-awesome .297/.408/.540 for his career, along with 449 homers and 1,401 walks. But he also used his speed to steal 202 bases and score 1,517 runs. He scored 152 runs in 2000, the highest single-season total for any player since the 1930s. Bagwell was the truly unique slugger who excelled at both driving in runs and scoring them, a rare combination only exhibited by inner-circle Hall of Famers like Rickey Henderson.
Bagwell did win an MVP Award, in 1994. He hit .368/.451/.750 with 39 homers, 116 RBIs, and 104 runs. Incredible numbers considering he only played in 110 games. That 1994 season was shortened due to the strike, which unfortunately overshadowed Bagwell's best year. He also put up MVP-caliber seasons in 1997 and 1999, finishing 3rd and 2nd, respectively, in the MVP voting those years. During his eight-year peak between the 1994 MVP and 2001, his cumulative line was .306/.428/.589, and he averaged 37 home runs, 120 RBIs, 110 walks, and 18 steals per season. Remarkably, over that eight-year stretch, he walked more times than he struck out (877 to 871), one of the telltale signs of an elite hitter.
Bagwell is clearly a slam-dunk Hall of Famer. Yet he's already appeared on the ballot twice, and both times he didn't receive enough votes to get inducted. There are two possible explanations for this oddity. One is the usual: suspicions of performance-enhancing drugs. Suspicions based on little more than, "well, he had big muscles." He wasn't named in the Mitchell Report and didn't fail a drug test. Letting rumors and hearsay dictate who gets into Cooperstown just demeans the institution.
The other possible explanation is Bagwell's short career length. He only played for 15 years before an arthritic condition in his shoulder forced him to retire. Old-school baseball writers might think that Bagwell isn't Cooperstown-worthy just because he didn't play long enough to reach a major milestone, having retired with "only" 449 home runs and 2,314 hits.
Here's why that's wrong. Despite his abbreviated career, Jeff Bagwell still accumulated a total of 76.7 Wins Above Replacement. Only 35 position players accumulated more WAR in baseball history. Of those 35, 30 are in the Hall of Fame. The other five are named Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Chipper Jones, and Ken Griffey Jr.
That company says it all.
My Ballot, As of Now:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Mike Piazza
4. Craig Biggio
5. Jeff Bagwell
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