The Hall of Could Have Been
Somewhere in the middle of the monstrous last blog, Dave Kingman came up. I wrote that if Dave Kingman had played his career for the Red Sox (instead of playing for seven different teams and the New York Mets twice) he would be in the Hall of Fame today. I realize that this takes some imagination when you consider that Kingman was:
1. A .236 lifetime hitter who didn't walk.
2. A historically bad outfielder.
3. A strikeout machine.
4. One of the worst percentage players in baseball history.
5. The guy who once sent a reporter a live rat.
That doesn't seem like much of a Hall of Fame resume, no. But here's the kick: I would bet that Kingman hit more long fly balls to left than any player in the 1970s and 1980s. I'm sure there's a way to look this up, but I don't know how to do it. I'm going off memory. But I do know his splits at Fenway Park -- he played 18 games there, hit 13 home runs and had an .816 slugging percentage. I don't think there has ever been a park more tailored for a player than Fenway for Kingman.
As it was, Kong hit 442 home runs. I think had he played his entire career at Fenway he would have hit 500 home runs for sure and maybe 550. Maybe even 600. He would have led the league in homers five or six times. Or more. He'd be in the Hall of Fame.
Kingman's situation made me wonder who else might have been a Hall of Famer had his career been just a little bit different. So, I emailed Bill James, who promptly sent me back a five-page email with names and thoughts -- Bill's a machine. So here, we look at players who just might have been Hall of Famers had their careers taken a different turn.
I should say right up front though what we we are NOT looking for today:
1. Players who had their careers interrupted by war or delayed by the Negro Leagues. There's no doubt in my mind that had baseball integrated earlier, Minnie Minoso (among many others) would be in the Hall of Fame. As it is, I believe Minoso belongs in the Hall of Fame. Joe Gordon is a guy who would likely be in the Hall of Fame had it not been for World War II. There are quite a few players like this -- but they have been talked about a lot already. We'll save that discussion for another day.
2. Players who had their careers halted or wrecked by injuries. Sure, it's fascinating to think what Tony Conigliaro might have been or Herb Score or even Bo Jackson. But that's a whole other blog item.
So what are we talking about here? We're talking about players who were signed by the wrong teams. Players whose talents were muffled or choked by the stadiums they played in. Players who were blocked by other great players or just had bad timing. Stuff like that.
Fred Lynn
Might have been a Hall of Famer if: He had not been traded from Boston.
Looking back, it's pretty easy to see what Bill James saw so clearly. Lynn's game was beautifully suited for Fenway Park. In 1975, his brilliant rookie season, he hit .368 at Fenway. He hit .282 on the road. In 1976, it was more of the same (.360 at home, .272 on the road). He had an off year in 1977 -- only hit .260 with 18 homers. Why? He was more or less the same player at home (.313, 10 homers). But he was abysmal on the road (.215 BA, .352 SLG).
And so it goes. Lynn might have been at his best in 1978 when he hit .333 and he banged a career high 39 homers. He was widely viewed as the best player in baseball. His splits tell a fuller story.
Home: .386, 28 homers, 83 RBIs in 77 games.
Road: .275, 11 homers, 39 RBIs in 70 games.
Lynn was a very good player. But he was a legend at Fenway Park. In his career, he hit .347 at Fenway with a .420 OBP and a .601 SLG. You know who are the players who hit better than .330, .400 OBP and .600 SLG for their careers?
1. Babe Ruth.
2. Ted Williams
3. Lou Gehrig.
That's it. Lynn had a lot of injuries in his career. But he was a Gold Glove outfielder with a 300+ homers, almost 2,000 hits -- had he spent the last nine years of his career at Fenway, I think he would be in Cooperstown.
Elston Howard
Might have been a Hall of Famer if: He'd signed with a team other than the Yankees.
The story goes that in the mid-1950s -- when it was clear to everyone except Tom Yawkey that this integration in baseball thing was here to stay -- the Yankees asked Kansas City Monarchs manager Buck O'Neil to recommend a special player who could be the first black New York Yankee. Buck mentioned a classy outfielder named Elston Howard.
"He can really catch too," Buck added.
The rest is history. Howard is a big part of baseball history because he was the first African American Yankee. He was also one heck of a player -- he won the MVP in 1963. He made every All-Star team from 1957-65. He won two Gold Gloves as a catcher.
But what if ... he had signed with, say, the Chicago Cubs? Consider a couple of things:
(1) The Yankees had Yogi Berra when Howard was signed. So even though the Yankees called up Howard in 1955, he did not catch. In fact, Howard did not catch 100 games in a season until 1961, when he was already 32 years old. The Cubs (and we only mention them because that's the team Buck O'Neil scouted for and, later, coached with) from 1955 to 1960 had FIFTEEN different players catch -- led by the immortal Sammy Taylor and Cal Neeman.
(2) Yankee Stadium was a BRUTAL park for Howard. He hit 152 career home runs. He hit FORTY SIX of them at Yankee Stadium. So, it's pretty fair to guess that Yankee Stadium stole 50 homers from Howard's career. Had he hit at Wrigley, you probably could add another 20 to 25 homers to that.
So, with a different team, Howard might have had a couple more Gold Gloves and 225 homers. That would put him right up there with Dickey, Campy, Gabby and other catching Hall of Famers.
Bob Cerv
Might have been a Hall of Famer: If something had actually gone right in his career.
He is Bill James' favorite "What if." "It's just so improbable," Bill writes. "EVERYTHING went wrong for him. He didn't lose 40 percent of his Hall of Fame luster. He lost 95 percent of it, so people will never believe how good he could have been."
Talk about bad luck. Cerv went to Nebraska -- where he was a big football star. So he did not sign to play baseball until he was 24 years old. And then he chose to sign with New York Yankees, who were just about to become quite possibly the most dominant team in baseball history. That meant 1951-56, Cerv never played more than 50 games in a season. When he was 30, he was traded to the Kansas City A's. And when he was 32 -- his first season with more than 500 at-bats -- he hit .305 with 38 homers and 105 RBIs.
He was almost as good the next year, and then the A's traded him back to the Yankees because in those days the A's traded EVERY good player they had to the Yankees (Cerv hit .357 for the Yankees in the 1960 World Series). Cerv then bounced around for his last couple of years.
"If he signs with the Cubs before going to college," Bill writes, "I would argue he could be a Hall of Famer."
Hank Sauer
Might be in the Hall of Fame if: The Cincinnati Reds didn't HATE home run hitters.
The Honker did not get a chance to play full-time in the big leagues until he was 31 years old -- after that he hit 281 home runs. As Bill points out, that's more homers after 31 than, among others: Stargell, Musial, Schmidt and McCovey. It's one fewer than Reggie Jackson.
Why didn't Sauer get his chance earlier? The Reds were anti-home run. There's really no other way to look at it. From 1941 to 1947, the most homers hit by a Reds player was 20 (by Frank McCormick hit in the war-torn year of 1944). The Reds were all about pitching and defense ... and they never did appreciate Sauer. They finally gave him his shot in 1948, and he hit 35 homers -- he shattered the Reds' record by five homers.
His reward was to be traded to the Cubs the very next year for Harry the Hat Walker and Peanuts Lowery. Sauer hit 30-plus homers five times after that, including a monster 41-homer season in 1954 when he was 37. That matched Cy Williams NL record for most homers in a season by a player 35 or older.
Frank Howard
Might be in the Hall of Fame if: The game hadn't changed on him.
In 1963, the powers of baseball decided to change the strike zone. They felt like too many homers were being hit (Roger Maris' 61 being the star witness for the prosecution). And so -- this is incredible looking back -- they made the strike zone from the shoulders to the bottom of the knee. Wow. If they had kept that going, Richie Sexson's strike zone would be the second tallest structure in Seattle behind the Space Needle.
In addition, as Bill points out, you could build the mound just about as high as you want. You needed a Sherpa guide to get to the top of the mound at Dodgers Stadium in the 1960s. And it stayed this way until the absurd 1968 season, when:
-- Pittsburgh's Bob Veale went 13-14 with a 2.06 ERA.
-- Cleveland's Sam McDowell went 15-14 with a 1.81 ERA.
-- Cleveland Luis Tiant went 21-9 with a 1.60 ERA -- and did not win the Cy Young Award.
-- Danny Cater, a nondescript player if there ever was one, finished second in the American League with a .290 batting average.
And so on. It had gotten out of control. And so they lowered the mound and put the strike zone right again. And over time, the game sort of balanced out again. Then the strike zone shrunk to microscopic size, Brady Anderson hit 50 homers -- anyway, that's another story.
Frank Howard was coming into his prime in 1963 -- he had hit 31 homers a year earlier with 119 RBIs. And he had done that at Dodger Stadium, which was a killer ballpark for home run hitters. Everyone pretty much assumed at the time that Howard would become one of the great home run hitters in baseball -- maybe in baseball history.
But with the crazy strike zone (and Howard at 6-foot-7 had a Space Needle strike zone himself) and the high mound (especially at Dodger Stadium), he really scuffled for four years. His home runs went down every year -- from 31 in 1962 to 28 to 24 to 21 to 18.
In 1967, Howard figured it out -- the next four years he hit 172 home runs. But those quiet years hurt. He ended his career with 382 homers; had he hit even 20 more he would have been in the Hall of Fame conversation (until Darrell Evans and Dave Kingman, every hitter with 400 or more homers was in the Hall o Fame).
Willie Davis is another Dodgers player who felt the pain of the 1960s strike zone. His first full year was 1962, and he looked like a terrific young player: He hit .285 with 21 homers, 32 steals, he led the league with 10 triples.
Then from 1963 to 1968, facing that strike zone and Mount St. Dodger Mound he hit .262, and averaged 9 homers per year and about 63 RBIs. Nothing special at all.
From 1969-1975, though Davis felt free. He hit .296 over that time, cracked 1,200 hits, hit 87 homers, stole bases, made a couple of All-Star teams, even won his first three Gold Gloves. I'm not sure if Willie Davis is an almost Hall of Famer, but he certainly had his prime muted by some goofy rules.
Jose Cruz Sr.*
Might have been a Hall of Famer if: The Astrodome had not been Wonder of the World size.
Cruz had a very nice career -- he hit .284 with 2,200 hits and 165 homers. But look at these home/road splits.
1981 home: .247, 3, 17.
1981 road: .283, 10, 38.
1982 home: .277, 3, 33.
1982 road: .274, 6, 35.
1983 home: .313, 3, 45.
1983 road: .324, 11, 47.
1984 home: .276, 0, 30.
1984 road: .344, 12, 65.
1985 home: .310, 1, 35.
1985 road: .291, 8, 44.
OK, it's still pretty questionable to say Cruz might have been a Hall of Famer in a different ballpark ... I admit that's a stretch. But Cruz certainly would have had a very different career. In 1984, if you just double his road stats you have Cruz hitting .344 with 24 homers and 130 RBIs -- he would have won the MVP award for sure.
Gene Woodling
Might have been a Hall of Famer if: Someone had given him a chance.
He was signed by the Cleveland Indians, who gave him 133 at bats and decided he couldn't hit (to be fair, I guess, he did hit a lousy .188 in those 133 at-bats). They traded him to Pittsburgh for a 500-year-old catcher named Al Lopez. The Pirates gave him 79 at-bats, didn't like what they saw, and they sent him to San Francisco of the Pacific Coast League.
Then the Yankees got him and he was a key player on the teams that won the next five World Series.
Key player -- but not a starter. Stengel's Yankees platooned like crazy, of course, and so Woodling would get 400 or so at-bats every single year from 1950 to 1960 (in fact he averaged 401 at-bats). He was a good player. But if he had gotten 550 at bats instead of 400, he would have averaged over those years: .286, 15 homers, 83 RBIs, 96 walks, etc. Again, it might not be Hall of Fame, but he would be remembered as one of the really good players of the 1950s. Instead, I suspect, he's hardly remembered at all.
Matt Stairs
Might be in the Hall of Fame if: I'll let Bill explain.
"Look at it. Somebody decided he was a second baseman, he tears through the minor leagues, gets to Montreal, the Expos take one look at him and say, 'He's no second baseman, get real.' He bounces around, goes to Japan, doesn't really get to play until he's almost 30, then hits 38 homers, slips into a part-time role and hits 15-20 homers every year for 10 years in about 250 at-bats a season. ... You put him in the right park, right position early in his career ... he's going to hit a LOT of bombs."
What can you say? It's all there. Stairs did not get 500 at-bats until he was 30 -- he had a .370 OBP that year, hit 26 homers, drove in 106. The next year, he had the 38-homer season. His average dropped the next season, and he never got 500 at-bats in a season after that.
Bert Blyleven
Might be a Hall of Famer if: He'd played on a few better teams (and the Hall of Fame voters appreciated his greatness).
Blyleven's Hall of Fame has been discussed plenty, but we'll just point out that 46 times in his career, Blyleven threw eight innings or more, gave up two runs or less and either lost or got a no-decision. If he wins just 13 of those, he has 300 victories. And he would have been in the Hall of Fame years ago.
Luis Tiant
Might be a Hall of Famer if: He had retired two years earlier.
This is a weird one -- but fascinating. First, take a look at three pitching careers:
Career 1: 229-172, 3.30 ERA, 2,416 Ks, four 20-win seasons, 2-time ERA champ.
Career 2: 224-126, 3.26 ERA, 2012 Ks, five 20-win seasons, Cy Young Award.
Career 3: 224-184, 3.27 ERA, 2,855 Ks, 1 20-win season (four 19 win years), 3-time K champ.
OK? Not a lot to choose between them, is there? You probably already guessed the first one is Luis Tiant. Well, the second and third ones are Catfish Hunter and Jim Bunning.
Catfish was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1987, after waiting only three years. Bunning received some pretty strong voting support and was voted in by the Veteran's Committee in 1996.
Tiant? Well, in 1988 -- the year after Catfish -- he received 132 Hall of Fame votes, so it looked awfully good for him. And the next year, for no obvious reason, his support was slashed by two-thirds -- suddenly he got only 47 votes. The next two years his votes dropped even further. And so Tiant never even came close to getting into the Hall of Fame.
As Fred Willard asks in "A Mighty Wind:" Wha happan?
I'll tell you wha happaned: Starting in 1989, there was a historic run of pitchers who became eligible for the Hall of Fame. In 1989, it was 300-game winner Gaylord Perry and seven-time 20-game winner Fergie Jenkins (neither one of them made it). In 1990, it was Jim Palmer. In 1991, Perry and Jenkins were voted in. In 1992, Tom Seaver got the highest percentage of the vote in Hall of Fame history.
And they just kept coming -- Phil Niekro, Steve Carlton, Don Sutton -- and by the time the voters took care of all the 300-game winners, Tiant was long forgotten. And by the time Tiant became eligible for the veteran's committee there WAS NO veteran's committee.
Tiant's final two seasons were 1980 and 1981 for Pittsburgh and California. He won a combined four games with a 4.55 ERA. If he had retired before those two meaningless seasons, he would have come up on the ballot two years earlier -- before the pitching glut. He would have been directly against Catfish Hunter, which would have made his numbers look a lot better. He might be in the Hall of Fame now.
We'll finish off with a few players who probably would not have been Hall of Famers, but who certainly might have had better careers under different circumstances:
-- Al Rosen lost three years because Cleveland already had a third baseman -- Ken Keltner. He also retired at 32 because of back issues. In between, he was about as good as any third baseman in baseball history.
-- Jackie Jensen didn't get to Boston until he was 27 -- and for the next six years he averaged .285 with 29 homers and 111 RBIs. He retired at 34 because he didn't like to fly.
-- Dixie Walker was buried on the Yankees bench until his late 20s, and after that he hit .309 with almost 2,000 hits. But as Bill says: "He was a racist, so screw him."
-- Dutch Leonard won 191 games and lost 181 in a fine career, but it could have been finer. He played for some miserable teams:
Year: Dutch's record, ERA (team record)
1934: 14-11, 3.28 (Brooklyn 71-81).
1935: 2-9, 3.92 (Brooklyn 70-83).
1938: 12-15, 3.43 (Washington 75-76).
1939: 20-8, 3.54 (Washington 65-87).
1940: 14-19, 3.49 (Washington 64-90).
1941: 18-13, 3.45 (Washington 70-84).
1943: 11-13, 3.28 (Washinton 84-69)
1944: 14-14, 3.06 (Washington 64-90)
1945: 17-7, 2.13 (Washington 87-67)
1946: 10-10, 3.56 (Washington 76-68)
1947: 17-12, 2.68 (Philadelphia 62-92)
1948: 12-17, 2.51 (Philadelphia 66-88)
And so on. Had Dutch Leonard pitched on some good teams, there's no telling how much better his record might have been.
-- Matty Alou had the misfortune of coming up to the San Francisco Giants when they had Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey and a couple of other Alou brothers. Matty did not escape to Pittsburgh until he was 27. Then he was befriended by Roberto Clemente and in his first year (1966) he hit .342 and won a batting title. The next year he hit .338, then .332, then .331.
-- Bill wants special mention given to Kevin Appier, who pitched for mostly rotten Royals teams in the 1990s but was often a a dominating force. Bill says: "By RSAA (Runs scored against average) he ranks the sixth best pitcher of the 1990s, behind Pedro, Clemens, Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux and David Cone but ahead of Glavine, Kevin Brown, Mike Mussina and John Smoltz.
"Beginning in 1990, he's +24, +15, +36, +54, +24, +23, +31, +37. These are huge numbers. He finished with a winning record and a better-than-league ERA every year from '1990-96, usually with a .600 winning percentage with teams that really weren't good ... On a better team, he could easily had had several years as a serious Cy Young contender."
39 comments:
Great stuff. I didn't realize Matt Stairs was... I'm having a hard time thinking this, let alone typing it... a second baseman. That's amazing. Let me add a couple guys to the list:
Will Clark, if the BBWAA would only recognize that HR is not the best measure of power, and that once they accept that they'd realize he had monster seasons early in his career. Despite "slumming" in Texas and Baltimore for a few years, the guy had an OPS+ of 138 for his career! Furthermore, at least twice he was more deserving of the MVP than the guy who got it: 1987 and 1989. Finally, Jay Jaffe's system pegs him as about as qualified for Cooperstown as the median Hall 1B.
And...
Albert Belle, if he'd worked on getting along with people. He was a decent OF, and his numbers stack up nicely to Kirby Puckett's. Accounting for defense, I expect they'd be neck and neck in total value over their careers.
That was a great article (though I think you mean Jose Cruz, Sr. in there, as Jr. is still playing for.. someone). I, too, was going to suggest Albert Belle, and I think there are a few guys whose careers overlapped the 80s & 90s who are going to get left out because the context for hitters changed so much at the end of their careers. Think someone like Lou Whitaker or Alan Trammell, both of whose careers peaked in the mid-80s when the statistics they were putting up were great, but ended in the mid-90s when compared with the hitters of their day the stats loooked somewhat pedestrian.
Interesting stuff. I think you mean Jose Cruz Sr., not Jose Cruz Jr. There is no plausible scenario that Jose Cruz Jr. could be a HOFer unless you go by collegiate careers.
Another good article, Joe. From what I had read, I kind of considered Jimmy Wynn to be the posterboy for the Astrodome "What If" argument, but after looking at his splits on Baseball-Reference, he seems to have been a better hitter at home than on the road after about 1968 or so. I'm not sure what to make of that.
I'd say I had a pretty good chance to be a HOFer until my lucky Jetson's t-shirt shrunk in the wash and the 4,000 cases of Jell-O I got from my 1987 Astros contract turned out to be bad. They were bad because I used them to make about 8,750 Jell-O shots, of which I consumed 8,700 of them and gave the rest to Alan Ashby and Jim Pankovits. I also ate way too much. Jell-o shots make me hungry. My 1986 season was monster though! I am now lobbying the town of Knob Noster, MO (My hometown!) to rename the local diamond Kerfeld Field as part of the annual Kerfeld Krazzy Daize.
What about Edgar Martinez not becoming a fulltime player until he was 27?
Its a bit premature, but the same could be said of Jorge Posada...
What about Andre Dawson, who would've had a more productive career if he hadn't been in Olympic Stadium.. which not only tore up his knees, but was hard to hit in.
I'm afraid in 20 years, we'll be saying "Ryan Howard would be in the HOF if the Phillies hadn't signed Jim Thome." Probably cost Howard 70-100 HRs those two and a half years.
I've always wondered what Dave Stieb's final career totals would have been had his career in Toronto started a few years later along in the franchise's history, when they were perennial contenders, rather than shortly after its birth as an expansion team.
You could add Jimmy Wynn as another victim or era and ballpark who'd otherwise have a very good case for entry.
I'm afraid in 20 years, we'll be saying "Ryan Howard would be in the HOF if the Phillies hadn't signed Jim Thome." Probably cost Howard 70-100 HRs those two and a half years.
You're on drugs. Howard had just finished hitting 19 homers in the Sally League when Thome was signed. The next year, he hit 23 in the FSL. There's simply no case to be made for him deserving a shot at the majors until at least the middle of 2004 when he was destroying the Eastern League.
I expect Travis Hafner and Brian Giles will enter this discussion within the next 10 years or so.
Eddie Cicotte from the Chicago "Black Sox" is an excellent woulda/coulda/shoulda candidate, as I outlined here:
http://boyofsummer.blogspot.com/2002/11/say-it-aint-so-eddie.html
Goose Gossage, like Tiant, is another guy who might be in the hall already if he'd retired sooner. If he'd hung it up after 1992 instead of 1994, his career ERA would have been 2.93 instead of 3.01, and the memories of his salad days would not have been quite so far in the rear view mirror.
Steve Garvey's another guy who got killled by his home parks, not to mention the way the Dodgers jerked him around early in his career, while trying to squeeze blood out of the Wes Parker stone. In reality, he hit .294/.329/.446 with 2599 hits and 272 homers, but in a neutral park, he could have had 200-250 more hits and probably 300+ homers. In Fenway, in the '70s and '80's, he'd have hit something like .315/.350/.475 with about 3000 hits and 500 doubles, nad he'd have been elected in his first or second year of eligibility.
BTW, must be nice to just email Bill James whenever you have a question about baseball...
You could say many of the same things about Joe Gordon as you said about Elston Howard (leaving aside years Gordon lost to military service). Gordon had excellent power for a middle infielder but played many of his home games in Yankee Stadium (before his trade to Cleveland before his age 32 season), which was death to righthanded power hitters. Bill James has made the argument that Gordon and Bobby Doerr were much the same player, yet Doerr had the good fortune to play his home games in Fenway. Doerr is in the HOF.
Kingman!
Wow. Nice stuff, Joe, about Fenway and Kingman. From his Athletics days, I recall him as being more deadly at the Kingdome. Anecdotal, pure (radio-reported) anecdotal.
My favorite Kingman memory was him playing 3rd base for the Giants, and they were playing the Dodgers at Candlestick. Ball hit right to him. Muffs it, no throw. Next batter, another groundball, another clang off the glove...
So what are the odds?? Next batter, -another- ground ball to Kingman! He's got it! Wow! Announcer (Vin Scully?) expressing approval. Kingman winds up (ex-USC pitcher) and throws to first.... about 10-15 feet over the first baseman's head.
If Kingman can find the film/tape, he should sell that sequence to SouthWest Airlines... "Wanna get away??"
A lot of these are a BIG stretch. Some of them really make you think though. It makes me want to take a look at some of the Hall of Famers that should not be there. If 500 HRs is the measuring stick and Dave Kingman almost hit 500 HRs, I question the measuring stick.
Excellent and thought-provoking article. My only quibble: Jose Cruz would not have won the 1984 NL MVP (he finished 8th). Ryno's win was nearly unanimous; his Cub's came in first, while Cruz's Astros finished below .500; Cruz would not have won the batting title even had he hit .344 (Gwynn won it at .351- Tony's Padres also won the pennant, yet he finished a distant third in the MVP vote.)
Sandberg also had the pinball-lights type stats that voters love: 200 hits, 100+ runs, 30+ stolen bases, .500+ SLG (for a 2nd baseman), and the even his ML-leading 19 triples.
Throw in Ryno's GG defense and I can't imagine Cruz would have "for sure" beat him out for the award.
Scott:
Good story on Kong!
I'm a Yankee guy, so I loved the stuff on Ellie Howard, first African-American NYY. Stengel said "They finally get me one and he can't run."
My theory on players who perform much better at home: They watch TV with their wives at home, they drink scotch in the hotel on the road. Example: David Wells has a much better record in night games than day.
Love it when Bill James guest writes. Good stuff here Joe.
Talking about Dutch Leonard always confuses me because I always think about the guy who had a .96 ERA in 1914. One of the single best pitching seasons ever.
Dick Allen is already a HOFer to me, but he would be in the HOF right now if his career had started in the '70s. As it is, his counting stats are muted by the pitching era of the late '60s and the voters aren't persuaded much by more "advanced" performance measures. Also, he would not have had to endure integrating in Arkansas, which certainly shaped his later attitude while with the Phillies. Philadelphia in the '60s was a continuation, albeit on a lesser scale, of his Arkansas experience. In fact, Philadelphia's treatment of their black players was such that it was one of the reasons Curt Flood refused to be traded (for Allen) from STL to PHI and sued MLB. Dick Allen would be some combination of Manny Ramirez and Gary Sheffield.
And don't forget the Buck O'Neil. He too is a HOFer if not for the vote of a handful of well-meaning but myopic "experts".
C'mon, give Donnie Baseball a healthy back and he'd still be ripping doubles all over the field. What a sweet swing. He could hit any pitch and almost direct it to acertain part of the field. However; I do love seeing Mattingly wearing pinstripes again.
Mark Prior will make this list someday. The cubbies overused his arm 2003 when he pitched like 250 innings. The mariners were wise not to do the same with Felix Hernandez when they put an innings cap on him last year.
The standard take on Bill Mueller's 2003 is that it was a career year and that he returned to form in 2004. My take -- which I offered *before* the season (in fact, for several years before he signed with the Sox) -- is that 2003 was simply Mueller in Fenway, par for his age, and that he started falling off the table in 2004 at roughly the same age that similar hitters Wade Boggs and Dave Magadan did. Both San Francisco ballparks were very bad for him. I think that if he signed elsewhere, he's a frequent All-Star, and that if he played his whole career in Fenway he's at least a borderline HOFer.
Taint in the Hall is a stretch. I would put McDowell in before Tiant. The two were team mates for years on the Indians in the 1960's. McDowell was the ace of the staff and had an incredible fast ball. Look at his K's. He had over 200 K's for 6 years in a row. His K to BB ratio is close to 2-1. He is 34th on the all time K leaders, just ahead of Tiant. McDowell's big knock (other then the drinking that ruined his career) was as you point out, he pitched in the 60's when pitching was king. But that is the same knock against Tiant. Tiant racked up his K's and dropped his ERA because of his playing in that pitching dominated era.
Also, in reverse to what you have here, who would NOT be in the hall if they had been on a different team? One guess off the top of my head is Mel Ott. Ott played in the Polo Grounds and had a lot of homers in the corners which were extremely short. Had he played in a Dodger Stadium there is no way he would have hit his 500 homers. Maybe he would not be in the hall had it not been that he played for the Giants of the Polo Grounds.
Dwight Evans, if he'd met up with Walt Hriniak half a decade earlier,
would be a sure thing.
Prior won't be on this list in the future because of rule number two. And his inning count for '03 was 211, not "like 250".
I think Posada may end up on this sort of list, because of the Yankees' love of Girardi. It's also possible that he still would've fallen short of the Hall, of course. It's possible that if he became the regular catcher a few years earlier, the wear & tear would kick in sooner and he'd be done by now. Hard to say with catchers.
Great post. I can't believe Hank Sauer was literally traded for Peanuts...
Joe Adcock was platooned with inferior players and played in the tough Miluakee park and still hit over 300 HRs.
Bob Cerv was clearly NOT nearly as good the year after his breakout '58 season. Going from .305/38/105 to .285/20/87 is a pretty big decline.
Had Mel Stottlemyre played for the dominant Yanks instead of the lousy Yankees he might be a hall of famer.
I have to agree with including Andre Dawson on this list. Had he played on a grass field his knees would have held up longer, and 400+ SBs would have been realistic. Had he played in a park not as cavernous as Montreal, 500 HRs would have been realistic too; 500 HRs and 400 SBs would have ensured enshrinement in the Hall. Also, more media attention in a bigger market and he would be getting more votes. And the Hawk did it all for NL teams, never hiding behind the DH.
As for Edgar Martinez, what credit he gets for not being a full time player until 27 is taken back by being a DH for half of his career. That's a wash in my book
Concerning Sauer
http://baseballminutia.com/blog/2006/03/28/mining-for-gold-harvesting-turds/
Hank Sauer came to camp in Tampa in 1949 fresh off setting the Reds single season record for home runs, the 31-year-old WW 2 vet had worked his way through the Reds system since the early 1940’s and had starred at Rochester after the war, yet still he could get no interest from Warren Giles until 1948 when deadball era manager Bill McKetchnie finally left. It was then that he finally won the left field job and ended up the season with 35 home runs, a Reds team record. Sauer was a dead pull hitter playing in a park that boasted that it had the most expansive outfield in the major leagues, however the LF line was only 328 feet away and the wall was 18 feet high. However, operating under the adage that a manager knows best in the spring of 1949 Reds manager Bucky Walters entered camp with a pet project, he and his staff were going to get Hank Sauer to use the whole field, not only would he get 30 home runs buy he would rack up the doubles as well. Sauer was no spring chicken, and the 31 year old took offense to the request and promptly replied, “You wanted to provide power and I hit 35 homers, what in the hell is wrong with that?” Despite his pleas they still attempted the change, focusing much of the spring on taking the ball to right field. Sauer eventually worked so much that his hands swelled up from the change in approach, limiting all his baseball activities, it was then that the project was stopped and Sauer was allowed to return to his prior hitting approach. Because of the lack of regular work Sauer had a hard time finding his stroke in the early part of 1949 and by June he had only batted 152 times and he had only .673 OPS.
Once again the Reds brain trust made a move that they would rather forget than remember when they traded Sauer and Frank Baumholtz to the Cubs for Peanuts Lawrey and Harry Walker, a lopsided deal if there ever was one, this deal was later termed by Reds GM Warren Giles as “The worst deal I ever made.”
When asked by the Sauer why he was traded Bucky Walters replied, ” Because I couldn’t make an all around hitter out of you.” Sauer went on to hit 242 home runs for assorted teams around baseball and took home the MVP award in 1952. He never was much of a doubles hitter only topping 25 twice in his career. However his dead pull hitting made him a popular slugger in a hitter’s era and the Reds got nothing out of it other than the heartbreak of watching him do it in another teams uniform.
Bucky Walters was let go by the Reds after the 153rd game of the season. He never managed in the major leagues again.
Maybe Ken Phelps?
Thank god for Charlie Kerfeld!!! I had completely forgotten about Jim Pankovitz.
Keep on commenting, Kerfeld...and please tell us what you think of Lenny Dykstra.
I was just looking up albert pujols top 10 most similar hitters through age 27 and of the 10 people on the list, only 1 was not in the hall and not eligible for the hall. His name was Hal Trosky (http://www.baseball-reference.com/t/troskha01.shtml) and it looks like he would have been in the hall if not for migraines (which suspiciously appear at the outbreak of WWII). Really great first 8 seasons and a career OPS+ of 129 after 2 crummy post-retirement years after the military declared him 4F.
Hmm, I ignored the war and medical complaint of Trosky. However, maybe he wouldn't have had those issues if he had not been slandered by Oscar Vitts.
baseball is a game of rolls, and roll players should make the hall. my choice would be the all time leader in pinch hits, Lenny Harris. just for what he accomplished. pinch hitting is as diffucult a job in baseball as there is. 212 career pinch hits. enough said. oh as a Canadian i totally agree about Matt Stairs
Wow, didn't know about what happened to Matt Stairs. That's so sad.
And I too believe that Dave Stieb should be in the hall. He would have been a multi 20-game winner if he had gotten any run support during the first 5 years of his career.
Well,Matt Stairs is,like Yours Truly,
a muscular,beefy Canadian lad(Stairs is
5'9'',about 210 or so;I'm 5'8'',210-220
lb. with 17.5'' biceps),so Matt was likely short-shrifted by Yankee baseball
folk who thought him not quite as valua-
ble as a similarly-skilled U.S. player.
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