Rethinking Lou Brock's Hall of Fame Career

Lou Brock was a gentleman and a scholar. And a slap-hitting base thief. He is on the right side of one of the most lopsided trades in MLB history. As part of that second wave of black players to join the Majors -- his rookie season came 14 years after Jackie Robinson threw open the gates -- Brock brought style and panache to a 19-year career.

A stalwart of three World Series teams, Brock led the NL in base swipes eight times and at one point held the record for steals in a season with 118. He scored 100+ runs seven times and batted over .300 in eight seasons, finishing within three points or less three more times. 

For all this, Lou Brock's likeness smiles brightly upon visitors to Cooperstown, voted that honor in his second year of eligibility.

Tim Raines stands on the precipice of Hall induction in his last

year of eligibility. Raines and Brock had nearly identical batting averages, and while Raines swiped 30 fewer bases he also slugged 15 points higher. Like Brock, Raines was a left fielder not particularly known for his defense despite the burning rubber.

But here's the difference:

Lou Brock didn't walk much. That's a problem for a punch-and-judy leadoff hitter. His lifetime .343 OBP was good, better than average, but not table-setting material. For his career, Brock sported an OPS nine percent better than average. Keeping in mind that average includes all the weak-hitting middle infielders and backstops in baseball, Lou Brock was barely an average left fielder.

Rock Raines earned almost twice as many free passes as Brock in fewer plate appearances, giving him a .385 OBP.  His OPS, despite playing half his career in knee-killing Stade Olympique, shone 23% above the median.

Defense!
I glossed over their fielding ability earlier. The metrics suggest Raines was about average in the pull corner for his entire career, about where Brock measured until he turned 30. For half his career, he rated in the butcher category. Brock lost twice as much value from his glove as Raines. (Baseball Prospectus even less sanguine on Brock.)

Then there's the matter of steals. Raines ran into outs 161 fewer times than Brock. That's a huge difference -- about 10 wins against replacement over the course of their careers.

Even without those 10 runs, Raines was still the vastly better player. According to Baseball Reference, Raines earned 69 WAR over his career and Brock just 45 -- about the same as Amos Otis. That 53% gap is the difference between surpassing the average left fielder's Hall of Fame WAR (65) and falling well short.

Why Is Lou Brock a HOFer?
We value what we measure -- in baseball and in life. Because we measured this relatively insignificant skill -- base stealing -- baseball observers in the 60s and 70s vastly over-rated Lou Brock. In addition, we didn't know how to leaven batting average with on base percentage, so Brock's pedestrian OBP was overshadowed by his excellent batting average.

We know better now, and that's why Raines's Hall support rocketed up to 70% in his penultimate year on the ballot. He has none of the milestones like 3,000 hits (he was too busy walking) or an MVP. He's simply the second best leadoff hitter of all time.

Lou Brock was nothing like that. If he were on the ballot today he wouldn't sniff the Hall.

Do Not Chew Your Stolen Bases

One of the problems faced by Luddites and other haters of Sabermetrics is that they are forced to fight gun battles with knives. The numbers crunchers speak in the language of research, data and measurable results. Cement heads talk about tradition, unwritten rules and a hatred of math.

Keith Hernandez is not a Luddite or a hater of Sabermetrics. In fact, he's one-third of the best local TV broadcast team in the Majors. Along with Gary Cohen and Ron Darling, Hernandez provides more insight in one inning than in an entire week's worth of White Sox telecasts.

But even Hernandez is susceptible to misrepresenting the basics of new analysis. On a recent broadcast, Hernandez claimed that Sabermetrics eschews the stolen base.

Sabermetricians doesn't eschew stolen bases. They don't chew them and they don't es them. They don't cashew stolen bases. Or almond or peanut them. Seamheads don't apply any nut or legume to stolen bases. If you can count, you love stolen bases as much the innumerate fan.

Stolen bases are good. They take runners from first and put them on second. Yay.

On average, teams score .941 runs when they start an inning with a runner on first and none out. With that runner instead on second, they score 1.17 runs. That's an extra run every fifth game. If your opponent offers you an extra run every fifth game, take it.

What Sabermetrics doesn't like is getting thrown out trying to steal. Outs are bad. Far worse than advancing a base is good. In fact, research (no! not that!) shows that getting thrown out attempting to steal offsets slightly more than two successful thefts. 

If that same runner gets nailed instead, his team's run expectancy that inning drops from .941 to .291. He costs his team two-thirds of a run. Not only is he no longer on base, but his team forgoes a precious out. They only get 27 of them.

Which is why stat guys look at steals with a jaundiced eye. The year Ty Cobb set the steals record with 96, he ran into 38 outs. His baserunning, for all the added bases he took, was worth all of two runs. Rickey Henderson is the current record holder with 130 steals in 1982. He was cut down 42 times. He netted his team about nine runs.

Those are commendable, but hardly worthy of a record. For most of my youth, Maury Wills was the steal king. In his 104-steal season of 1962, he was caught just 13 times, a net benefit to his team of 22 runs. So although Henderson broke his record, it came at a stiff price. For his extra 26 steals, Henderson got thrown out 29 times, a miserable tradeoff.

Henderson is the single season base thief god, but Tim Raines was more valuable stealing bases for six consecutive seasons -- in which he swiped 454 of 513 -- than Henderson was in his record-breaking year. (To be fair, Rickey had six better seasons on the basepaths too, including the following year, when he stole 108 of 127. Absent his 1982 season, that would stand as the record without the caveat.)

So Sabermetricians are being rational when they look askance at SB numbers without knowing the CS numbers too. Of course, being rational is another thing they do that annoys Luddites.

The Hall of Fame...?

At the beginning of each semester, I ask my students to write down directions from a mythical street to another mythical street by way of a third mythical avenue. Of course, there are no wrong answers, because if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.

There's a bit of the old professor's trick in Hall of Fame voting because it's not clear what the standard is. The original blueprint was Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson and Ty Cobb, but a good frat leader could fit that Hall into a Volkswagen Beetle.

Since then, voters have swerved back and forth between the "big tent" Hall and the "best of the best" Hall. Which leaves us today with no real benchmark.

Bill James of Abstract fame and Jay Jaffe, an author at Baseball Prospectus, both measure Hall credentials of qualifying players against average Hall of Famers at given positions. Inducting only nominees who equal or surpass the overall average at their positions would slowly raise the standard over time.

That's more or less the criterion I use for my (also mythical) Hall of Fame ballot. Inductees have always comprised roughly one percent of players at a given time, and that seems to me like a reasonable guide. Given that, here's a brief summary of my HOF evaluations.

Don't Even Need To Look 'Em Up:

Marvin Miller, Tim Raines, Robbie Alomar

I wrote an impassioned piece last year this time comparing the putrid induction of Bowie Kuhn, likely the least effective commissioner in baseball history, to the snubbing of Marvin Miller. As the union chief who moved the players from virtual slaves to multi-millionaires, Miller tormented Kuhn at every confrontation. Inducting Kuhn and not Miller is, without hyperbole, like putting Jerry Quarry in the Boxing Hall of Fame and leaving out Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. Marvin Miller is one of the five most significant figures in MLB history.

I made my case for Raines a few blogs back. His inability to come close is yet another indictment on the baseball media establishment.

You may be remembering the Robbie Alomar who spit on an umpire, or the Robbie Alomar who disintegrated upon arrival at Shea Stadium, never to re-animate. But the Alomar through age 33 was a truly great five-tool player. He posted OBP over .375 eight times and slugged over .450 seven times. That's right fielder territory, but Alomar was a slick-fielding second-sacker. He's the top echelon of second-basemen after the gods -- Hornsby, Morgan, Lajoie, Collins. This one is a no-brainer, which is why the BBWAA should excel here.

Deserving:

Barry Larkin, Edgar Martinez

Like Alomar, Larkin was a five-tooler whose power tools stayed mostly in the closet. (He did hit 33 dingers one anomolous season.) In Cal Ripken, Jr.'s wake, we tend to expect our shortstops to swing big lumber, but Larkin's .295/.371/.444 over 19 seasons, with 379 steals at 83% and Gold Glove defense places him squarely among the greats.

Edgar Martinez is a closer call, in part because the Mariners let him marinate in Triple-A for several years after he'd proven he could knock around Major League arms, and in part because he didn't play the field. Plenty of Hall of Famers past (think Harmon Killebrew) and future (paging Frank Thomas) were lousy fielders who could have benefitted from a seat half the game, so I don't penalize Martinez much for that. But there's no doubt that a hitter who cannot take the field limits his team's flexibility and forces them to play a lesser hitter who can catch.

That said, the guy raked. Anyone who hits .312/418/.515 over 18 years is going to have to have some pretty awesome warts not to make the Hall of Fame. The guy contributed 4-5 wins a season without putting on a glove, which puts him above the average Hall of Famer at first base. (He began his career at third, was a passable fielder, but couldn't be left without adult supervision as his knees deteriorated.)

I guess I'm convinced:

Bert Blyleven, Ron Santo

The seamheads say Bert Blyleven and Ron Santo belong in the Hall of Fame. Blyleven was an effective, rubber-armed curveball specialist who toiled mostly for weak teams in prosperous hitting environments. As a result, we didn't value him correctly contemporaneously. But he did seem to be one of the five best hurlers in his league every year for a long stretch, fanning three times as many batters as he walked.

Santo was a superb, but not spectacular, cornerman for the Cubs during a short career smack in the middle of Deadball II. His .277/.362/.464 seems mundane until placed into the context of his time.  Makes sense to me, but I was five when he had his best year. Santo, of course, is not on the ballot, but the Veteran's Committee, aka Dr. No, could induct him.

Not Enough

Andre Dawson, Dave Parker, Fred McGriff, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy

Dawson and Parker got on base at .323 and .339 lifetime rates. That is well below average for any outfielder, much less a HOF candidate. Mattingly and Murphy, to different degrees, were superb two-way players for a period of time, and not so superb the rest of their careers. Really, Murphy had five great years and not much otherwise. The argument for Mattingly is really a concession speech: he would have been Hall worthy but for an injured back. Well, I would have been Hall worthy but for a scintillating lack of talent.

McGriff is my toughest out. He was a numbers accumulator for much of his career, what with the seven straight 30-homer campaigns. He hit everywhere he went until age 39, compiling 493 home runs and .284/.377/.509. But he never seemed to equal the sum of his parts. McGriff was a mediocre fielder who ran like tapioca pudding. My qualitative side can't put him in.

Don't Know What To Do With
Alan Trammel

I remember Trammel as Mark Belanger's alter ego, but in fact, he was twice the hitter and nearly every bit the fielder. In 1987 he smacked 28 home runs, knocked in 105, stole 21 of 23, hit .343/.402/.551 and was the best defender in the game. He was the best defender in the game numerous times, but he couldn't (or just didn't) do back flips, so no one noticed. I didn't either. The statheads say he's a stone cold lock. I'm feeling cognitive dissonance, because that's not how I remember him.

You might disagree. Tomorrow, so might I. Because after all, there's no real standard.
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The Most Under-Rated Player In Modern History

It's hard to believe that any player in baseball could be over- or under-rated. Most activities on the field involve one player per team at a time and are measured down to the individual nose hair by the Elias Sports Bureau, whose count is duly recorded for posterity by 73 websites staffed by megageeks who atomize the information and subject it all to regression analysis.

Nonetheless, as long as willfully ignorant sportswriters and sportscasters dominate the debate -- and the Hall of Fame vote -- the wrong measurements will remain valued over those that provide a broader, fuller and more accurate picture of player accomplishments.

The profile of an under-rated player is predictable: Sports media over-rates batting average as opposed to on-base percentage, home runs as opposed to double and triples, RBIs as opposed to runs scored, offense as opposed to defense (except in extraordinary situations), steals as opposed to base stealing percentage, accomplishments in an accommodating ballpark (except in extraordinary situations), being prodigious in a particular facet of the game as opposed to demonstrating broad-based excellence, and maybe most of all, playing on a winning team.  In addition, players whose teammates propel them into spotlight games -- specifically the World Series -- in which to demonstrate their transcendence, often bask in that glow.

(This, of course, applies to everyday players, not pitchers. Pitching wins is probably the single most over-rated statistic in baseball, but that's another story.)

Consequently, the quintessential under-rated player toiled for lousy teams and rarely made the playoffs. He batted in a pitchers' park most of his career, hitting lots of doubles and triples, but not a ton of homers. He was an excellent, but not flashy, fielder who stole bases at a very high rate, hit for a good but not great average while walking like a mall rat, scored a mess of runs but never knocked any in. Our particular fellow may have been the second-best lead-off hitter of all time, but played Scottie Pippen to Rickey Henderson's Michael Jordan.

This player belongs in the Hall of Fame, and not the ancillary wing with Jim Rice, Tony Perez, Phil Rizzuto, Don Drysdale, Don Sutton and Bill Mazeroski. Unfortunately, he'll never sniff Cooperstown without a ride from the Albany airport. Last year, his first year of eligibility, he tallied less than 25% of the Hall vote. It might be his high-water mark.

He's Tim Raines, and he's the most under-rated player of my lifetime. Raines was a superman who could do everything well, under the worst circumstances, but we didn't notice, because we were looking at all the wrong things.

Let me quote the great Joe Posnanski, from an epistle supporting his Hall vote for Raines based on peak and lengevity.

From 1983-87 -- (his) five year peak -- he hit .318/.406/.467 for a 142 OPS+, the same OPS+ that Jim Rice had during his five-year peak. During those five years, he averaged 114 runs scored, 34 doubles, 10 triples, 11 home runs and 71 stolen bases a year. He led the league in runs scored twice, batting and on-base percentage once, doubles once, stolen bases twice, and could have won three MVP awards. He had 163 win shares in those five years -- an average of 32.6. Bill (James, the mastermind behind Win Shares) says a 30-win share season is an MVP-type year.

That's not even the half of it. Raines' lifetime slugging percentage is higher than Rickey Henderson's and two points lower than Joe Morgan's, despite playing much of his career in that hangar the Expos called home. He's fifth on the stolen base list, but first all-time in success rate (84.7%) among guys with 300 steals.

Baseball writers use an affective-cognitive-conative approach to Hall of Fame voting. First, they use the smell test: did this guy seem like a Hall of Famer. Raines did not, because we were obsessed with batting average (.294 lifetime) and home runs (130 lifetime) during his career. Then they do their due diligence, noting the mediocrity of his triple crown stats (never more than 71 RBIs in a season.) Then they move on to someone else.

On objective measuring systems, Raines is a front row Hall of Famer. On the aforementioned Win Shares scale, which attempts to determine a player's share of responsibility for team wins, he places 40th all time, ahead of the likes of Johnny Bench, Reggie Jackson, Jackie Robinson, Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken, Yogi Berra and Paul Waner. Not too shabby.

I know, I know, you don't care about Win Shares.You don't care about OPS or stolen base percentage or any of those fancy doo-dads like VORP and BABIP. I understand. We've got a recession, two wars and nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea to worry about, and there's no room in your head for a new understanding of how baseball really works. I get that. And that's why Tim Raines will remain under-rated and on the wrong side of the doors to the Hall of Fame.
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The Persistence of Memory

Last week I examined how Tim Raines' generalist abilities and shadow skills have doomed him -- perhaps unfairly -- in our esteem and in Hall of Fame voting.

Today the flip side: Jim Rice.

As with Raines, I make no claim as to whether Rice should be a HOFer. We certainly remember him as a fearsome slugger who dominated baseball offensively for the better part of 12 years. Four times in his career he batted over .300, slugged 39 or more home runs and drove in at least 114. He finished in the top five in MVP voting six times. At the time, we thought that was the definition of a great player.

Today, our lens is more finely focused. We realize the value of walks, of OBP over batting average, of defense, of context and of double plays (in the negative.) And all of those elements line up against Jim Rice.

Let's take them in order. Rice didn't walk. He earned 60 free passes just once in his career, so despite his .298 BA he had a non-HOF .352 OBP. He was never much of a fielder, despite the long-standing New England rationalization that he had a special knack for predicting Green Monster caroms. Myriad retrospective defensive statistics, about which I am admitedly dubious, all agree that Rice was a liability in left field.

Left field, of course, is where many of history's best hitters roamed, and against whom Rice must be measured. It is also the least important defensive position on the field (as opposed to the DH, who is not on the field defensively) because neither range nor an arm are particularly relevant. Rice's competition for the Hall, besides Raines, includes Musial, Bonds, Ted and Billy Williams, Simmons, Henderson, Shoeless Joe, Yaz, Stargell and Kiner.

Jim Rice also played in a hitter's park his whole career. Fenway increases offense by 8% versus today's MLB stadiums, and it was likely higher in Rice's day. Then, when you factor in the 315 twin killings he grounded into, it effectively drops his OBP to .339 and his slugging percentage below .500.

What you have, after all that, is a mighty hitter for sure, but one who doesn't avoid outs, has no speed (58 steals and 34 CS is a net negative) and hurts you defensively. Moreover, his talent ebbed quickly, with his last good year at age 33. Suddenly he's much less Hall-worthy.

For fun, I compared Rice to Raines. Note that Raines played most of his career in Montreal's concrete cavern.

Player	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS+	H	HR	RS	RBI	SB
Tim Raines	.294	.385	.425	123	2605	170	1571	980	808
Jim Rice	.298	.352	.502	128	2452	382	1249	1451	58

OPS+ is on-base plus slugging relative to the rest of the league. A 100 OPS+ is exactly average. At 128, Rice was 28% better than the average hitter.

You can decide for yourself whether Jim Rice deserves a bust in Cooperstown. It appears, given his near-miss last year, that he's headed in. It also appears that regardless, he is diminished by perspective, in much the way Tim Raines' stature is enhanced.