Key to Getting in Hall of Fame? Hitting 500 Balls out of the Park

I'm a big fan of Bill James, but if this is his list, I think he's been smoking some of Steve Howe's stuff. How could a statistical analyst believe that Tony Gwynn has done more to deserve enshrinement than Rickey Henderson? Don't get me wrong, Gwynn was just as good as Rod Carew, and Carew got in on the first ballot, but Rickey Henderson was arguably the greatest player between Mike Schmidt and Barry Bonds. And Larry Walker and Edgar Martinez ahead of Frank Thomas, Fred McGriff and Tim Raines? Please. As for the pitchers, Dennis Martinez shouldn't be anywhere near the top of that list (although it includes a lot of non-HOF candidates such as Kevin Appier and Chuck Finley). Eckersley should be fourth on that list, Hershiser should be right behind Cone (both are borderline Hall of Famers), and where are Lee Smith and John Franco?

The only explanation that this ranking considers only the *likelihood* of getting elected, not how much they *deserve* to get elected. So perhaps James is taking into account the fact that Hall of Fame voters are relatively clueless (although they are still much better than HOF voters in basketball or football).

Musial, while an outstanding player, played the majority of his games in the outfield in only 12 of his 19 seasons. Williams, on the other hand, only made one of his career 2,152 defensive appearances out of left field.

The reason why Musial played 1B for 7 years is that the Cardinals had a surplus of outfielders, and Musial had enough flexibility to play 1B if needed. That's also the reason why he played CF one year and RF three or four years. But Musial was more of an outfielder than a 1B, and he was more of a LF than a RF or CF, so that's why I consider him a LF. And he was a much better defensive outfielder than Williams, in spite of Williams being limited to playing the outfield (minor nit: I believe Williams played mostly RF in 1939 and/or 1940).

The strike zone was actually quite small from the 1920s to around 1963. When they increased the strike zone in the 1960s, it became the second dead ball era. In 1969, they lowered the mound, and people started hitting again. So I don't think that the strike zone during Williams' time was any larger than today. I'm not saying that Williams isn't better at getting on base than Bonds, just that he didn't play in an adverse offensive environment. In fact, playing in Fenway Park from 1939 to 1960 is just about the best offensive environment one can think of.

The reason why I deemed it appropriate to consider MVP awards was that both Williams and Bonds were eligible to receive MVPs in every single season they played. Obviously one couldn't hold it against Ruth that he only one one MVP award, since there was no AL MVP from 1915-1921 (Ruth's first 7 seasons) and once he won it in 1923, he wasn't eligible to win another one until they founded the BBWAA MVP Award in 1931 (by which time he was no longer the dominant player in the game, although still a top-5 player). Had there been an MVP throughout Ruth's career, he would have probably won it in 1916 (as a pitcher), 1918 (as an OF/pitcher), 1920, 1921, 1923, 1924, 1926, 1927 (perhaps tied with Gehrig) and 1928. That's 9 MVP awards. Maybe he wouldn't have won every single one of those, but we'll never know.

Two comments. We have no way of knowing whether Josh Gibson was a greater hitter than Piazza, although newspaper writers of the time did consider Gibson to be comparable to Ruth as a slugger. As for the quality of play in the Negro Leagues during the 1930s and early 1940s (when Gibson played), I don't believe that James would say that the league as a whole was as good as the white National or American Leagues, but that the best players in the Negro Leagues were as good as the best players in the white leagues. But remember that every black baseball player who wanted to play pro ball was in the Negro Leagues, and that included 15-year-olds and others who would have been in the minors had they been white. Thus, while Gibson faced some fine pitchers who would be aces in the white leagues, he also faced pitchers who wouldn't be good enough to pitch in the PCL. Obviously the color line was organized baseball's greatest shame, and players such as Gibson are doubly affected because not only were they unable to prove to America during the 1930s that he was as good a hitter as any of those white boys, but 70 years later he is still harmed by the fact that we have to take his offensive exploits with a grain of salt. (BTW, Gibson's supposed 900 homers include homers he hit while barnstorming throughout the country, playing against local amateur or semi-pro teams---this resulted in playing over 200 "games" a year, only 50 or so against real Negro League teams.)

As for Pudge Rodriguez and his 10 All Star appearances, while I certainly agree that he's a Hall of Famer, I think it's important to mark the distinction that Rodriguez was a *deserving* All Star on 10 occasions. I believe that Steve Garvey was a 10-time All Star as well, but most of those appearances was when he was voted in by the fans because of his popularity and reputation, not because he deserved it. That's why Rodriguez is a Hall of Famer and Garvey isn't.

The reason why Musial played 1B for 7 years is that the Cardinals had a surplus of outfielders, and Musial had enough flexibility to play 1B if needed.

Makes sense, but it's moot. You (and Bill James, in fairness) ranked him as the second-greatest LF of all time and for a significant part of his career he didn't even play the position.

The strike zone was actually quite small from the 1920s to around 1963.

This I have a hard time with. Look, for just one example, at Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series, and see where his final pitch is. It's just below the shoulders. If Bonds ever got called out on a legitimate strike at the letters, there'd be a riot.

In fact, playing in Fenway Park from 1939 to 1960 is just about the best offensive environment one can think of.

Fenway is a good environment (except to center and the alley in right-center), but there are better today. And Williams "only" played half his games there. While I don't mean to understate Williams' home field, Bonds gets the advantage of all the new smaller parks all over baseball, including his own. Look at any of the new parks with the exception of Detroit's and you can see they're built for offense. And how would Williams have done if he could have hit at Coors Field?

The point I was making about MVPs was that if the best player ever only won one of them (for whatever reason), the politics alone in such a selection makes them a less than authoritative way of determining relative greatness.

Enjoying the heck out of this. I hope you are too!

Best regards,
Flagg

The only explanation that this ranking considers only the *likelihood* of getting elected, not how much they *deserve* to get elected.

I think that is the case. I believe it takes into account the fact that some things (home runs and strikeouts, for example) are usually weighted more heavily in the eyes of the voter, and that at some positions (SS, for example)players can into the Hall of Fame with offensive numbers that would be considered mediocre at other positions.

I found your comments about Gwynn and Henderson very interesting. If anything, I would have thought that Gwynn should have been much higher on the list than Henderson. While Henderson was (and still is) a great athlete, I never thought of him as a great ballplayer in a lot of respects.

Consider the following career highlights about Gwynn:

1. During a career that spanned 20 years from 1982 to 2001, he hit over .300 every year except his first (.289 in 1982).

2. During his 16-year peak from 1984 through 1999 (these are the years in which he had at least 400 at-bats), he was an All-Star every year except 1988.

3. Eight batting titles.

4. Hit .350 or greater seven times, and .370 or greater three times. His 1994 average of .394 was the highest in the major leagues in decades.

5. Five Gold Glove awards (relatively unforgotten among those of us who only know him from his pudgy later years).

6. Career batting average of .338, which ranks #20 on the all-time list and places him far ahead of recent inductees such as Rod Carew (.328), Kirby Puckett (318), and George Brett (.305).

7. 319 career stolen bases (again, it is easy to overlook these numbers). His 1987 season in which he hit .370, stole 56 bases, and won the second of his five Gold Glove awards will probably go down as one of the most unheralded "superstar" seasons in baseball history.

8. One of the toughest strikeouts of all time, striking out once every 21.4 at-bats over his career.

Henderson, on the other hand, put up a lot of numbers that are either inflated by his longevity (3,040 hits, for example), or over-emphasized because they are anomalies among players of his type (295 career home runs for a guy who was primarily a leadoff hitter, for example).

Overall, his most impressive statistic is his career total of 1,403 stolen bases. He's a career .279 hitter who only hit better than .300 seven times in 24 seasons and won a single Gold Glove award (in the strike-shortened 1981 season). He never had more than 200 hits in a season, and was known throughout his career as a rather inconsistent player.

One particular statistic about Rickey Henderson comes to mind. Back in the mid-1980s Bill James came up with a statistic called "Baseball Intelligence" that was based on a number of factors including strikeout-to-walk ratio, stolen base percentage, consistency over time, and improvement over time. The year he described this statistic in his Baseball Abstract, Rickey Henderson graded out as the "dumbest" player in baseball (Ozzie Smith was the "smartest"), mainly due to his poor K-to-BB ratio, his surprisingly low stolen base percentage (the year he stole 130 bases, for example, he also broke Ty Cobb's record by getting caught 42 times), and a track record of inconsistency that saw his batting average rise and fall as much as 50 points from one season to the next.

I seriously doubt Rickey Henderson ever had a poor strikeout ot walk ratio. The man walked 100 times in 1980 (his first full season) and broke Ruth's career walk record two years ago. And while Gwynn's BA was .338 to Rickey's .279, Rickey's career OBP is still .402 even after playing out the string well past his prime. Gwynn's OBP, by the way, is .388, which is excellent but not as high as one would expect from a .338 hitter.

I agree with everything you say about Gwynn being a complete player. He was an excellent right fielder, a fine baserunner and basestealer and a very good RBI man. He was, in essence, a RF version of Rod Carew. If you take offensive stats for 10 of Carew's seasons and 10 of Gwynn's, it would be difficult to know who was who (the same holds true for Roberto Clemente and Kirby Puckett---try it out!). But Rickey is heads and shoulders above any other lead-off man in baseball history (Tim Raines comes closest, but can't match Rickey's longevity), and I would rank him above Gwynn.

Any decent leadoff hitter ought to have a BB-to-K ratio of 2-1 or better. Henderson never came close to that in his career -- he stood at 2,179 walks and 1,678 strikeouts as of the end of 2002.

Gwynn had a low OBP mainly because he was a #2 hitter for most of his career. He spent 20 years hitting behind runners and moving them around the bases; he rarely walked, but that wasn't a function of a poor batting eye -- he rarely struck out, too. He was also not a power hitter in any sense, so he wasn't the kind of batter who opposing teams would pitch around.

Having been a Yankee fan during the peak of Henderson's career, I think he also played out the string not only after his prime, but during it. Lou Brock once said that Henderson could steal 200 bases in a season if he put his mind to it. He was just too damned lazy to study opposing pitchers and get a better jump on them (I don't have a statistic available, but a substantial number of times he was caught stealing he was actually picked off first base).

Henderson also had the unique distinction of turning me off to baseball forever by threatening to hold out for a new contract in spring training without ever having played a single game under the old one. That's right -- he signed a contract in December one year making him the highest-paid player in major league baseball, but after a few other players passed him in January and February he decided it wasn't good enough. He's probably ranked right up there with Bobby Bonilla as the players who wore out their welcomes with more different teams during their careers. Ironically, it was an incident on the Mets a few years ago where they were caught playing cards in the clubhouse during a playoff game that ended up getting them both chased out of town.

My boyhood idol, Harmon Killebrew, cleared the left-field roof at at Tiger Stadium in 1962. He was also one of two players to reach the upper deck at the old Met Stadium in Bloomington, a homer also estimated (according to the Bill James Electronic Baseball Eneyclopedia) to have traveled 630 feet.

You probably already know this then, but just in case you don't - The Mall of America is built at the same location as Met Stadium. There is a plaque on the floor of the center court that shows where home plate was. Hanging from the ceiling, at the other end of the center court, is the chair that Killebrew hit on that home run.

I grew up a mile away from Met Stadium. The Twins in the late 60s had quite a team. Carew, Oliva, Killebrew, Tovar, Cardenes, Kaat, etc. I played ball with Oliva's and Carew's kids. I was pretty good friends with Zolio Versalle's daughter. I worked three summers as an usher/ticket taker at Met Stadium.

I seem to recall that one of Killebrew's greatest achievments was that he stole home once - which was very remarkable since he was one of the slowest runners in baseball.

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