Swinging for the Hall
by Michael Wolverton
Among the many responses I got to the Bert Blyleven
Hall of Fame article on ESPN.com, one of the most interesting was
from Dan Kelley of the Boston Metro and yankees-suck.com
(a completely objective, non-partisan web site, I'm sure). While my article argued
that Blyleven is by far the best pitcher not in the Hall, Dan raised
the complementary issue of the best hitter not in the Hall.
Dan's letter argued that Jim Rice deserved strong consideration for
that honor. (You can read his case for Rice here.)
Rice sounded like a decent candidate to me, but then again I had
never really looked into the issue.
In Baseball
Prospectus 2002, I introduced a method of evaluating players
based on how much they helped their teams win pennants. The idea
behind it, first proposed by Bill James in The Politics of
Glory, is this: given two players with careers worth the same
number of wins, the one with the higher peak will be worth more
pennants to his teams than the one with the lower peak. My method
measures a player's production in terms of expected pennants added to
his teams, and it can be viewed as a way of combining a player's
career value with his peak value -- but not the arbitrary "ignore
everything but the best N years" peak we're used to seeing.
I won't go into any more detail here; the book has the full motivation
and description. What we want to do in this article is use the stat
to measure all the hitters the Hall has passed on, to give one
perspective on who the best hitter is from that group. We'll rank
players by expected pennants added over a replacement level hitter.
The numbers are based on hitting only; basestealing and defense (both
the positions played and quality of play) are ignored. Only
Hall-eligible post-1900 players are considered: no players active
after 1996, no Pete Rose, no Joe Jackson.
Pennants
Player Years Added
-----------------------------------------
1 Dick Allen 1963-1977 1.24
2 Bob Johnson 1933-1945 1.23
3 Dwight Evans 1972-1991 1.16
4 Rusty Staub 1963-1985 1.14
5 Jack Clark 1975-1992 1.12
6 Ken Singleton 1970-1984 1.07
7 Keith Hernandez 1974-1990 1.06
8 Darrell Evans 1969-1989 1.04
9 Norm Cash 1958-1974 1.04
10 Minnie Minoso 1949-1980 1.03
11 Ron Santo 1960-1974 1.00
12 Reggie Smith 1966-1982 0.99
13 Andre Dawson 1976-1996 0.98
14 Frank Howard 1958-1973 0.98
15 Babe Herman 1926-1945 0.98
16 Joe Torre 1960-1977 0.97
17 Jim Rice 1974-1989 0.97
18 Dave Parker 1973-1991 0.96
19 Mickey Vernon 1939-1960 0.94
20 Rocky Colavito 1955-1968 0.94
Dick Allen couldn't catch, throw, or get along with his teammates very
well, but the man could flat out rake. If you put his bat on random
teams for each of his fifteen seasons in the majors, those teams could
be expected to reach the postseason 1.24 times more than they would
have without him.
Of course, just being the top hitter outside the Hall doesn't
necessarily mean he belongs. Allen's Hall of Fame case isn't
cut-and-dried, even putting aside his well-publicized clubhouse
difficulties. Using this method, he ranks 50th among all post-1900
hitters, but that's while bringing very little defensive value to the
table, according to most assessments.
It's probably more informative to look at his standing among Hall of
Fame first basemen. Here Allen, as usual, stands out from the crowd.
He's safely below the well-known giants of the position: Lou Gehrig
(2.63 Pennants Added), Jimmie Foxx (2.14), Willie McCovey (1.50),
Harmon Killebrew (1.45), and Johnny Mize (1.41). On the other hand,
he's a notch or two above the Hall's lesser known and/or more
controversial picks at first: George Sisler (1.11), Bill Terry (1.07),
Orlando Cepeda (1.06), Jim Bottomley (1.03), Tony Perez (1.02), and
George Kelly (0.56). Hank Greenberg is the only Hall of Fame first
baseman with comparable career production (1.26 Pennants Added to
Allen's 1.24), but Greenberg missed a significant chunk of his career
to military service.
The bottom line: whether you think Allen belongs will depend on your
thoughts on the merits of Perez, Cepeda, and company, and your
opinions on whether Allen hurt his teams in the clubhouse. I
personally think Allen's career meets the de facto standards
that the Hall has set for admission.
It's strange that Indian Bob Johnson never made it to Cooperstown,
given that nearly every other decent player from the 1930's and 1940's
has been inducted due to the efforts of Frankie Frisch et al.
Despite the fact that Johnson's exclusion has sometimes been
attributed to a poor peak, the Pennants Added method rates his peak as
extremely strong--the best peak among all non-HOFers. (Admittedly,
the definition of "peak" used here is different from the
conventional definitions; details are in the book.)
Finally, what about Dan's candidate, Jim Rice? He's on the list, but
not very close to the top. I weighed in on Rice's Hall of Fame
qualifications last year in an article
on this site, arguing that he and Dave Parker are very similar
candidates. There might be a case for Rice as a borderline
candidate--especially if you limit the discussion to players currently on the
ballot--but I don't think he's on the short list of the best players
outside the Hall.
Next week, we'll take a look at a few other position players with
strong Hall of Fame cases.
Michael Wolverton is an author of Baseball Prospectus. You can contact him by
clicking here.