As you are no doubt aware, Albert Pujols entered the 500 HR club last week and then entered the 500+ HR club the next day. Prince Albert leads the AL in HR and slugging percentage at this very early stage, a welcome contrast to his last two seasons of decline and lost greatness.
Before that, of course, Pujols was a historically spectacular hitter for the first decade of his career, averaging .331/.426/.624 with 41 homers each year. Injuries and age have conspired to undermine him both at bat and afield just as he was inking a gargantuan new deal with Anaheim. Because he's been eclipsed by the likes of Cabrera, Trout and McCutchen, and because his team has sagged into mid-standings, we've been forgetting what an all-time great Pujols is even if he hangs up the uniform and forgoes the $189 million awaiting him through age 41.
In fact, when you start ranking first baseman, you get to Albert pretty fast. It's fair to say he is currently the third best cold cornerman of all time and might be second if he keeps this up.
The Iron Horse is in a class by himself, of course. In a career shortened by, well, death, Lou Gehrig added 112 wins against replacement, hit 79% better than average and finished in the top five in MVP voting eight times.
The careers of Jimmie Foxx and Johnny Mize overlapped with Gehrig's and they also towered over their contemporaries. Despite losing three prime seasons to WWII, likely worth about 20 WAR to his record, Mize piled up 71 WAR, hitting 58% above league average. You could make a good case fort Mize as fourth best all time.
Foxx, the quintessential slugger after Ruth and Gehrig, compiled 96 WAR and led the AL in OPS five times.
In fact, Foxx and Pujols are pretty good comparables:
Foxx -- .325/.428/.609
Pujols -- . 321/.409/.599 (so far)
Foxx -- OPS+ = 163; 96.4 WAR
Pujols -- OPS+ = 165; 94.2 WAR (so far)
Foxx -- MVPs - 3; MVP Top 5 - 4
Pujols -- MVPs - 3; MVP Top 5 - 10 (so far)
Best 10 Seasons
Foxx -- .335/.440/.635; 41 HR; 171 OPS+
Pujols -- .331/.426/.624; 41 HR; 172 OPS+
Pujols is a better fielder and baserunner but Foxx showed a glint of Ruthian pitching prowess. In 1939 he threw a hitless ninth in a game for the Red Sox, recording one strikeout. Then in 1945, the Phils let him pitch nine times. In 23 innings he limited batters to 13 hits and four earned runs for a 1.59 ERA. (Pay no attention to the 14 walks and 10 strikeouts.) Take your pick now but Albert has an opportunity to surpass Double-X in short order.
After them, it falls off quickly. Eddie Murray, Jeff Bagwell, Willie McCovery, Harmon Killebrew, Hank Greenberg, Frank Thomas and Mark McGwire are among the next group of greats, but Pujols has already eclipsed them all. Unless these few weeks have been the last embers of Phat Albert's fire and we're to be subjected to seven years of padding, he's entering the Hall of Fame as the second greatest first baseman ever.
Showing posts with label Lou Gehrig. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lou Gehrig. Show all posts
26 April 2014
30 November 2013
Stuffed Turkey of a Hall of Fame Ballot
The Hall of Fame ballot for 2014 has been released, in much the way hounds are released in a wild goose hunt, with 17 legitimate candidates on the list. With only 10 lines on the ballot, voters are going to be doing some triage.
Players on the ballot fall into five categories. The easy two are those who have earned shoo-in status to the Hall and those who merely played with guys who earned shoo-in status. (That's not to say that anyone actually is a shoo-ins; there's no accounting for taste and the ignorance of baseball writers.) We'll call them the "Lou Gehrig" division and the "Chico Ruiz" division. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Mike Mussina, Kurt Schilling, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, Frank Thomas, Tim Raines and Craig Biggio comprise the former group, about which no further discussion is really necessary. They're Famers.
Names such as Armando Benitez, J.T. Snow, Eric Gagne, Mike Timlin, Jacque Jones and Richie Sexson populate the list of merely good Major Leaguers. They will have to console themselves with fame, fortune and a boatload of frequent flyer miles.
Next we have the "Pete Rose" division: players whose membership in the Gehrig clan has been revoked because of drug use. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire could almost create their own wing in Cooperstown along with Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson. I would vote for all of these except Palmeiro, who failed a drug test. The rest were so unquestionably spectacular that our suspicions (not to mention a fair bit of evidence) might be overwhelmed the heft of their greatness. It's understandable that voters would exclude all or some of these, though it's not clear what the point of a Hall of Fame without Bonds and Clemens would be.
Then there's the "Sammy Sosa" division, whose members are: Sammy Sosa. Sosa probably took steroids, definitely corked his back and not withstanding all that might be a Hall of Famer. Mix up that witches' brew and there probably won't be much support for his candidacy.
The most taxing decisions concern those players whose numbers don't reflect how we felt about them. This is the "Bobby Grich" division. The advanced stats testify that Alan Trammel was a great-fielding shortstop with a highly respectable .285/.352/.415 slash line, 1200+ runs scored and an MVP season, worth 64 wins against replacement over a 20-year career. Certainly he was a good hitter for a shortstop but most of his career value grades out on the field, about which it's very hard not to be dubious.
Larry Walker hit .313/.400/.525 with 383 home runs and 1311 RBI. He also won Gold Gloves, though the number crunchers can't find any justification for them. On paper, that's a walk-through, but in Coors, there are a lot of questions. In Montreal, Walker was Clark Kent, climbing the corporate ladder slowly but surely with smart reporting and solid management skills. In the thin air of Denver, Walker became Superman, saving the world with his super-strength, flying cape and x-ray vision. In the six years between 1997 and 2002, he posted five amazing seasons, averaging .351/.439/.639. He's credited with 69 wins against replacement, which ordinarily is enough to buy real estate in Cooperstown. It's just that Coors turned Andres Galarraga and Dante Bichette into stars.
By any second-base standards, Jeff Kent was a great hitter. He also wasn't a second baseman. But by first base standards, he was just another guy, posting a .290/.356/.500 line and smacking 377 home runs, including a string of 11 years with 20+ home runs. He knew that his only ticket to the Hall was remaining at the keystone even if his defense was handcuffing his teams. So Kent finished with 57 wins against replacement and a strong argument for inclusion. He makes my ballot with reservations.
On the flip side, Don Mattingly was an awesome hitter until his back began biting into his power. He finished with numbers insufficient for a first baseman to win election, tallying just 41 wins against replacement. Fred McGriff's 493 homers, .377 on base percentage and cool nickname should be enough to vault him to baseball immortality. He smacked 30+ big flies 10 different times. He also DH'd, did nothing on the bases and changed teams six times. The seamheads peg him at 57 wins against replacement, and that might have felt like enough if he'd played most of his career for one or two teams.
So here's my ballot, ignoring the 10-candidate limit, in roughly the order of their greatness:
Barry Bonds
Greg Maddux
Roger Clemens
Mike Piazza
Tim Raines
Frank Thomas
Mike Mussina
Curt Schilling
Tom Glavine
Jeff Bagwell
Craig Biggio
Jeff Kent*
Alan Trammel**
Fred McGriff**
Larry Walker**
Jack Morris***
*probably
**not now but I could be persuaded
***shut up
Players on the ballot fall into five categories. The easy two are those who have earned shoo-in status to the Hall and those who merely played with guys who earned shoo-in status. (That's not to say that anyone actually is a shoo-ins; there's no accounting for taste and the ignorance of baseball writers.) We'll call them the "Lou Gehrig" division and the "Chico Ruiz" division. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Mike Mussina, Kurt Schilling, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, Frank Thomas, Tim Raines and Craig Biggio comprise the former group, about which no further discussion is really necessary. They're Famers.
Names such as Armando Benitez, J.T. Snow, Eric Gagne, Mike Timlin, Jacque Jones and Richie Sexson populate the list of merely good Major Leaguers. They will have to console themselves with fame, fortune and a boatload of frequent flyer miles.
Next we have the "Pete Rose" division: players whose membership in the Gehrig clan has been revoked because of drug use. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire could almost create their own wing in Cooperstown along with Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson. I would vote for all of these except Palmeiro, who failed a drug test. The rest were so unquestionably spectacular that our suspicions (not to mention a fair bit of evidence) might be overwhelmed the heft of their greatness. It's understandable that voters would exclude all or some of these, though it's not clear what the point of a Hall of Fame without Bonds and Clemens would be.
Then there's the "Sammy Sosa" division, whose members are: Sammy Sosa. Sosa probably took steroids, definitely corked his back and not withstanding all that might be a Hall of Famer. Mix up that witches' brew and there probably won't be much support for his candidacy.
The most taxing decisions concern those players whose numbers don't reflect how we felt about them. This is the "Bobby Grich" division. The advanced stats testify that Alan Trammel was a great-fielding shortstop with a highly respectable .285/.352/.415 slash line, 1200+ runs scored and an MVP season, worth 64 wins against replacement over a 20-year career. Certainly he was a good hitter for a shortstop but most of his career value grades out on the field, about which it's very hard not to be dubious.
Larry Walker hit .313/.400/.525 with 383 home runs and 1311 RBI. He also won Gold Gloves, though the number crunchers can't find any justification for them. On paper, that's a walk-through, but in Coors, there are a lot of questions. In Montreal, Walker was Clark Kent, climbing the corporate ladder slowly but surely with smart reporting and solid management skills. In the thin air of Denver, Walker became Superman, saving the world with his super-strength, flying cape and x-ray vision. In the six years between 1997 and 2002, he posted five amazing seasons, averaging .351/.439/.639. He's credited with 69 wins against replacement, which ordinarily is enough to buy real estate in Cooperstown. It's just that Coors turned Andres Galarraga and Dante Bichette into stars.
By any second-base standards, Jeff Kent was a great hitter. He also wasn't a second baseman. But by first base standards, he was just another guy, posting a .290/.356/.500 line and smacking 377 home runs, including a string of 11 years with 20+ home runs. He knew that his only ticket to the Hall was remaining at the keystone even if his defense was handcuffing his teams. So Kent finished with 57 wins against replacement and a strong argument for inclusion. He makes my ballot with reservations.
On the flip side, Don Mattingly was an awesome hitter until his back began biting into his power. He finished with numbers insufficient for a first baseman to win election, tallying just 41 wins against replacement. Fred McGriff's 493 homers, .377 on base percentage and cool nickname should be enough to vault him to baseball immortality. He smacked 30+ big flies 10 different times. He also DH'd, did nothing on the bases and changed teams six times. The seamheads peg him at 57 wins against replacement, and that might have felt like enough if he'd played most of his career for one or two teams.
So here's my ballot, ignoring the 10-candidate limit, in roughly the order of their greatness:
Barry Bonds
Greg Maddux
Roger Clemens
Mike Piazza
Tim Raines
Frank Thomas
Mike Mussina
Curt Schilling
Tom Glavine
Jeff Bagwell
Craig Biggio
Jeff Kent*
Alan Trammel**
Fred McGriff**
Larry Walker**
Jack Morris***
*probably
**not now but I could be persuaded
***shut up
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