Wednesday, January 6, 2010
HAWK, NOT HOCK: Andre Dawson is now a Hall-of-Famer, but stealing the 1987's NL MVP's thunder is the fact that Roberto Alomar garnered 73.7% of the vote, to fall just eight vote short. Theories on Alomar's failure to reach 75% range from the fact that some may have thought he wasn't a "first-ballot" HOFer to lingering resentment over that loogie. Perhaps just as disappointed today is Bert Blyleven, who with 74.2% of the vote, missed by just five votes. ALOTT5A fave Edgar Martinez received 36.2% in his first year on the ballot. And somehow, one of the 539 voters felt David Segui was worthy of enshrinement in Cooperstown.
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The Hall's standards have been lowered further today -- the Hawk was a Very Good player, but not more. But post Jim Rice, this was inevitable. My favorite memory of Dawson was from his appearance on The Baseball Bunch, and specifically the Chicken's cowering in fear upon learning that a hawk would be visiting that day.
ReplyDeleteThe good news is that Alomar and Bly11 will get in next year.
At 2:03 p.m. the shock wave from Isaac's head exploding reached the East Coast. 36.2%?
ReplyDeleteWhat I think you and others fail to look at with Dawson was the speed and defense. He was a complete player. One of my favorite stats about him is the 400 homer-8 gold glove crowd, which is Schmidt, Mays, Bonds, Griffey, and the Hawk. Plus there's the 400 HR-300 SB club (Mays, Bonds, Dawson). Don't forget the bulk of his career was in the non-juice era and in cavernous Olympic Stadium. And it shouldn't matter, but it does--the guy was pure class.
ReplyDeleteWow, I'm actually stunned by the result. If you had told me only one guy was getting in, Dawson (notwithstanding that I feel the way Adam does about the merits) would have been no better than 3rd on my mental list.
ReplyDeleteCan Bert find 5 more votes in the next two years? What more can the pro-Bert crowd throw out there to sway people? Maybe next year they can focus more on promoting Bert as equal to other HOF guys and less on showing that he is superior to a non-HOFer like Morris. Unless destroying Morris's candidacy is their true goal, in which case it appears to have been successful.
ReplyDeleteI am shocked by Alomar, but it can be explained by Alex's reasoning and will almost certainly get fixed next year. But, Tim Raines at 30% while Dawson gets in? That's just crazy.
Jay Mariotti submitted a blank ballot - not because he thought no one was worthy, but because he wanted to call attention to the fact that he was submitting a blank ballot.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, Alan Trammell is taking notes on who's likely to be on the Veterans Committee in 2021.
He was certainly not a complete player. I will give you defense, arm and power, but he did not hit for average and his speed, at less than 75% SB success rate, probably cost his teams more than it ever gained them. He was particularly bad at getting on base and then he had the audacity to make 109 more outs on those ocassions when he did get there. Like Adam said, this was inevitable once Rice got in, but this is not the best selection the voters could have made this year.
ReplyDeleteI think we can all agree that 5 years from today we'll be discussing first-balloter Randy Johnson...
ReplyDeleteYet another reason Mariotti is hateable.
ReplyDelete...and Pedro, too? He doesn't have another comeback in him, does he? Wouldn't that be some class to follow the 2014 class of Maddux and Glavine?
ReplyDeleteWhat Chin said. Except that I agree that his defense is a complete black hole to me. If he was Mike Cameron in the field, it would make up for a lot of the shortcomings. The problem is that I have no way of assessing his value in the field.
ReplyDeleteTo me, though, this is two years in a row now where somebody clearly inferior to Edgar has gotten in. And Cosmo -- I don't think 36% is particularly terrible for Edgar's first year. 40% would have been best-case this year.
Blyleven may pick up more percentage points by subtracting dying sportswriters than by convincing existing voters.
ReplyDeleteI'm almost as pissed off that Rock Raines (second best lead-off hitter of all time, who had the bad timing to play at the exact same time as the best lead-off hitter of all time) is still way low on the ballot as I am that Alomar wasn't a first ballot inductee because of idiots like Mariotti.
ReplyDeleteThe Gold Glove award, while certainly not a perfect measure, usually speaks volumes about a players' defense. One Gold Glove can be seen as an anomaly, but eight is a fair indication the guy had a decent glove. I guess when it comes down to it, besides my own personal recollections of his play, are opinions of numerous baseball people I repsect who covered him and competed against him. For a good decade he was always in the discussion of the best OF in the game.
ReplyDeleteNo, Dan Le Batard is hateable (on PTI, at least). Mariotti is an ass.
ReplyDeleteIf the Gold Glove was always given to the player with the best fielding percentage at his position (given a minimum number of total chances), then you could argue that winning the award (in the absence of modern fielding stats) is at least some sort of indication of defensive ability or quality.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the Gold Glove is based on nothing like that. Exhibit A is Palmiero's GG in Baltimore several years ago, at the end of a season where he played some ridiculously low (less than 20, maybe?) number of games at first base.
This makes two things Dawson should never have gotten - the 1987 MVP being the other, of course.
OK, Palmeiro's 1999 GG was 'earned' in a Rangers uniform for 35 games played at 1B. The point still stands, though.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree on Gold Gloves. Once somebody wins one, the likelihood that that person will win another seven is pretty high. Voting is extremely dependent upon reputation, and once somebody has a reputation as a prime defender, they'll win until somebody else comes along and gets that reputation. For some reason, you're more likely to win a Gold Glove if you hit well. Derek Jeter won four Gold Gloves (including one this year). Is there really an argument that Hunter, Jones, and Ichiro! were better defensive outfielders in 2009 than Franklin Gutierrez, who stats (and, anecdotally, opposing players and GMs) say was the best defensive player in baseball last year (or, for that matter, Carl Crawford)? Gold Gloves may not be utterly meaningless in terms of correlation to the skill they're supposed to measure, but they are closer to it than any other baseball stat or award besides, maybe, "productive outs."
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I am not suggesting that Dawson was anything other than a stellar defensive player. Everybody who observed him says that he was excellent in the field. Those of us who didn't watch him every day (and maybe those of us who did) just have no way of knowing exactly how good he was, or how to measure him against other great defensive players, or whether his defensive abilities made up for his offensive liabilities. All we have is a lot of people saying that they did, and a lot of other people saying they didn't, and that's not helpful.
ReplyDeleteI wanna second what Alex just said. A Golden Glove or two can be meaningless, but six or seven or eight Golden Gloves? That becomes a preponderance some some sort of anecdotally driven evidence. I was actually having this debate with Sepinwall on IM today, not regarding Dawson, but regarding Larry Walker. I'm guessing that Walker will get only the tiniest bit of support, but I really want to start banging the drum early that if Andre Dawson and Jim Rice are Hall of Famers, Larry Walker is a Hall of Famer as well. Just as somebody, not Edgar on the first ballot clearly, is going to break the threshold for DHs, somebody will have to be the first player with Coors-driven offensive statistics to make it in. If you look at the bottom-line numbers, Edgar Martinez and Larry Walker are striking similar, both with truncated careers preventing big accumulated numbers. Edgar has a higher on-base percentage. Walker has a far higher slugging percentage, but they're nearly identical. So obviously you say "Edgar played in a pitchers' park and was considered a hitting genius, while Walker played in a bandbox and was considered a bit of a Canadian goofball." But Larry Walker was, wherever he played, a phenomenal hitter. And he won seven Gold Gloves, which is a darned impressive number for a guy who doesn't play center. So does Walker's defensive prowess cancel out the Coors Factor to make him a viable candidate? I'm betting it won't. But darnit, it should!
ReplyDeleteOff my soapbox now and back to watching TV...
-Daniel
Dawson has been an inductee for four hours he is already part of the "if Rice/Dawson are HOFers, so is Player X" argument. I think Larry Walker had a good career and if he wants HOF consideration he needs to be compared against guys who weren't borderline HOFers. I am also not sure that anyone will break the Coors Field threshold, as the park has managed to mitigate much of the offensive boost it used to provide. So, there is not as much of a backlash against the guys who succeed there offensively. Todd Helton and Larry Walker are probably the only two guys who could break through, but they are also probably the last two guys who will face it.
ReplyDeleteSecond Isaac re: the value of Gold Gloves as a defensive measurement. Remember 1999, when Raffy Palmeiro won the AL 1B GG, despite playing DH for 130+ games? It's an award voted on by managers and coaches from each league, who aren't allowed to vote for their own players. Reputation is an enormous factor. Do they get it right? Sure. But not with inspiring regularity.
ReplyDeleteI think we saw the backlash begin today: Galarraga and Burks, two guys who had most of their best years of offense as Rockies, didn't get enough votes to stay on the ballot.
ReplyDeletefrom tom verducci:
ReplyDeleteEDGAR MARTINEZ: This was a real tough one for me. I have deep respect for the manner in which his peers regarded Martinez, a virtuoso of the art of hitting. I started out thinking that he probably should be a Hall of Famer. But here's the problem: If you're going to completely disregard half of baseball -- the defensive half -- then you better be extraordinarily great in the other half. Martinez wasn't.
Martinez did put up appealing-looking rate stats. (The .300/.400/.500 thing stirs our predilection for round numbers.) But the mass of his hitting isn't as impressive as the rate of it. Even as a DH, Martinez had trouble going to the post. Only four times did Martinez play in 150 games and put up an adjusted OPS of 120. Since 1987, the year he broke in, that ties Martinez for 36th with, among others, Richie Sexson.
If you drop the games played to 140, Martinez has eight of those 120 OPS+ seasons. Not bad. But since 1961 (the start of the 162-game schedule) that puts Martinez at 29th, tied with guys such as Mark Grace, Greg Luzinski and Frank Howard, and fewer than McGriff, Bobby Abreu and Carlos Delgado. I'm sorry, that's just not extraordinary enough.
In his HoH voting column, Posnasnki defended Edgar by pointing out that no player in baseball history had ever played 2000+ games, hit .310 or better and had an on-base percentage better than .400 hadn't made the Hall. Well, Larry Walker was 13 games shy of 2000 and his on-base percentage was .400 on the nose (batting average was .313). The Coors Factor has obscured that he wasn't just a GOOD player. He was a spectacular player when healthy. He just was never healthy.
ReplyDeleteAnd Helton's going to be a great case. Writers have to be praying he has an Alomar-style breakdown, because you're looking at a guy with a .325 lifetime average and a .427 slugging percentage, plus a trio of Gold Gloves. And because he was a football player, nobody's ever accused him of doing anything untoward to get large, he's just always been large.
And I can't imagine what's gonna happen with Bagwell next year. If ever there were a player who circumstantially *had* to be juicing, it was Bagwell and yet...
-Daniel
My plan was to come in with a home/road splits argument against the Rockies guys, but the fact that both Helton and Waler had career OPS+ of 140 (the same for each, which is odd) tying them for 71st all time put a bit of a crimp in that argument. I was honestly shocked by that, particularly with Walker whose home OPS was .989 and road OPS was a less-otherworldly .780. I think that their counting stats (approx. 2, 100 hits, less than 400 HRs) will work against them, but it's a closer call than I thought.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, just to help Daniel's case a bit, Helton's .427 that he cites is his OBP, not slugging, and it's good enough for top 12 all time.
Wow...is there an echo in here?
ReplyDeleteLet's assume that Dawson was a truly great fielder. Still, how many wins did that add to his teams compared to, say, a more average fielder who hit 5 more HRs a year?
ReplyDeleteAdam -- last year, Franklin Gutierrez (the best defensive player in the league, according to UZR) was worth 29 runs in the field better than average. A run saved on defense is no different than a run created on offense. The expected value of a home run, without knowing context, is probably something like 1.25 runs (wild-ass guess; feel free to modify the following numbers if you think otherwise). So all else being equal, an average defensive center fielder would have had to hit 41 home runs (23 extra home runs plus the 18 that Guti actually hit, with otherwise the same number of singles, doubles, triples, and walks) to make up for the difference in the field.
ReplyDeleteGutierrez is going to regress next year -- he's amazing, but 30 runs is freakish -- and I have no way of knowing whether Dawson was or wasn't that good (which is my point -- Mike Cameron is an awesome CF, maybe the best in the game over the last decade, but his best years were in the 15-run range; somebody telling me that Dawson was a great OF doesn't tell me whether he was Gutierrez 2009 great, Cameron 2000s great, or just pretty darn good, even leaving aside the penalty for playing a corner spot instead of the more valuable CF, which by the way is another problem with the Gold Gloves). But compared to an average fielder at the same position, he wouldn't have to have been that good to make up six runs a year (your hypothetical average fielder with five more HRs). Then again, he had more than six runs to make up.
Verducci, just data mining. Of those eight 140-game/120 OPS+ seasons Edgar had, six were 140-game/150 OPS+ seasons and the other two were 140-game/130 OPS+ seasons. How many of the other 29 guys in Verducci's pool can say that? And of the ones who can, how many are Hall of Famers, will be, or would be but for steroids/scandal? And Verducci's cutoff seems designed to exclude Edgar's three other 130+-game/160 OPS+ seasons. Shameful.
ReplyDeleteIt's like saying Bonds was really not all that great because there are literally dozens of guys who, like Bonds, had 140 OPS+/40+ homer seasons. Set the bar far enough below the accomplishments that you're evaluating, and of course you're going to get a large pool of comparables.
Yesterday on the mlb channel when the panelists began looking ahead at the 2011 ballot, Costas said Walker's name was the first that popped out as a sure-fire hof'er.
ReplyDelete