Adam Dunn's Nose Runs and His Feet Smell

If you want a bust in Cooperstown, either dominate the game for six or seven years, or compete at a high level for 20. You might call these the Sandy Koufax and Don Sutton methods, respectively.

But this isn't about the Hall of Fame at all. It's about Adam Dunn.
 
One method of determining with numerical analysis whether a contender is Hall-worthy is to measure his peak value -- the value he added to his team over some arbitrary number of his best years. In his six transcendent seasons, Koufax posted 46.6 wins against replacement. That's all the more astonishing because his total career value is only 53.2 WAR.

That's because the six seasons in which his performance looked like this -- 25-5, 1.88 -- followed six seasons that looked like this -- 11-11, 4.48. His career was a deep valley bordering a high mountain.

Wait til you hear about Adam Dunn.

Sutton, on the other hand, was more like a mesa, a high, flat plain. His peak six seasons only produced 31 wins against replacement for the Dodgers but his career mark of 68.7 outshines Koufax's. Sutton's best season, 1972 (19-9, 2.08), didn't look extraordinarily different from a below average season, say 1982 (13-8, 3.00).

Which brings us, mercifully, to Adam Dunn. The Big Donkey will see himself in Cooperstown only after purchasing admittance and looking in the bathroom mirror. What makes him special is his peak and career value.

Dunn is one of the very few players in baseball history whose peak value is higher than his career value. Dunn's top seven seasons (that's the number chosen for peak value by the respected JAWS system, developed by and named for former Baseball Prospectus writer Jay Jaffe) produced 16.5 wins. In his salad days, Dunn's batting average hovered around .250, he walked 100+ times and he socked 38 or more homers eight times. That was enough to overcome the face plant he did in the field. 

In his six worst seasons, Dunn has been an albatross, most notably in 2011, when he batted .159 with 11 homers in 496 plate appearances that made women and children weep. He cost the White Sox three wins that year compared to a Triple-A DH/left-fielder.

Adam Dunn is no stranger to nose-run/feet-smell kinds of results. Five times in his career (2004, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012) Dunn has compiled more extra base hits than singles. As of last year, only five players in baseball history with 1000+ plate appearances had more extra base hits than singles for their career, including Dunn. Sadly, he fell of the list in 2013 by banging just 49 of his 115 hits for multiple bases. (Giancarlo Stanton also exited the august group, which means the list is down to three.)

Here's another Escher drawing of Dunn's career: in 2011, Dunn walked more often than he hit safely. (In 2008 he walked exactly as often.) In the last 40 years, that has been accomplished just 23 times (minimum 450 plate appearances), most notably by Barry Bonds, six times between '01 and '07. 

Here's one that very possibly stands alone in the annals of the game. In 2009, the giant righty slugged 38 home runs for the Washington Nationals, got on base just under 40% of the time, produced an OPS 44% above league average and added four wins of value at the plate. And produced below-replacement value overall. How hard is that? He stole no bases, needed a triple to advance from first to second, and displayed all the defensive range of a cactus. For his career, Adam Dunn has cost his teams 28 wins in the field, despite DHing the last three years.

We'll not see quite the likes of Adam Dunn again. This is a ballplayer who made the All-Star team one year while batting .204 (yet nonetheless producing an above-average on base percentage). He  slammed 206 homers over five years and never finished in the top 25 in MVP voting. He racked up 58 extra base hits in 2002 but only 75 RBI. He's walked, fanned or homered -- in other words did not put the ball in play -- more than half the time in his nearly 8,000 career plate appearances.

Funn with Dunn. Enjoy it while you can.