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IF I HAD A VOTE IN THE 2013 BASEBALL HALL OF FAME ELECTION, PART 2: THE EVALUATIONS

Index

In Part 1 of this two-part series, we examined in detail the two salient qualities of the 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot: It is a ballot overstuffed with not just candidates—37 players!—but with qualified candidates, and it is a referendum on performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) because of the presence of the two most dominant players of the last 20 years: Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

Part 2 concentrates solely on the merits of all 37 players on the ballot. With respect to PEDs, they are part of the sometimes-tawdry, sometimes-laudatory history of baseball, and the witch-hunt mentality surrounding them has obscured the fact that no part of baseball history has ever been pure or pristine. In short, there is no stigma here regarding PEDs. They are a part of baseball history as much as institutional racism marked the game before 1947, as much as allegations of widespread amphetamine usage marked the game during the "Golden Era" of the 1950s and 1960s, and as much as Gaylord Perry marked his baseball before he threw it.

The bottom line is this: You evaluate the baseball you have, not the baseball you wish you had.

Candidates for the 2013 Hall of Fame Ballot

The following two tables list the 37 candidates on the 2013 ballot, first the 27 position players, and then the 10 pitchers. They are ranked by their career Wins Above Replacement from Baseball Reference (bWAR) along with other representative qualitative statistics (explained below each table).

Here are the 27 position players on the 2013 Hall of Fame ballot, ranked by bWAR.

Position Players on the 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot, Ranked by bWAR

Position Player

Slash Line

bWAR

fWAR

OPS+

wRC+

Bonds, Barry

.298/.444/.607

158.1

168.0

182

172

Bagwell, Jeff

.297/.408/.540

76.7

83.9

149

149

Walker, Larry

.313/.400/.565

69.7

73.2

141

141

Trammell, Alan

.285/.352/.415

67.1

69.5

110

111

Raines, Tim

.294/.385/.425

66.2

70.6

123

126

Palmeiro, Rafael

.288/.371/.515

66.1

74.2

132

130

Lofton, Kenny

.299/.372/.423

64.9

66.2

107

110

Martinez, Edgar

.312/.418/.515

64.4

69.9

147

148

Biggio, Craig

.281/.363/.433

62.1

70.5

112

115

McGwire, Mark

.263/.394/.588

58.7

70.6

163

157

Piazza, Mike

.308/.377/.545

56.1

66.8

143

141

Sosa, Sammy

.273/.344/.534

54.8

64.1

128

123

McGriff, Fred

.284/.377/.509

48.2

61.0

134

134

Williams, Bernie

.297/.381/.477

45.9

47.5

125

126

Murphy, Dale

.265/.346/.469

42.6

47.3

121

120

Finley, Steve

.271/.332/.442

40.4

44.2

104

104

Mattingly, Don

.307/.358/.471

39.8

45.8

127

124

Franco, Julio

.298/.365/.417

39.7

48.6

111

112

Sanders, Reggie

.267/.343/.487

36.7

41.8

115

115

Cirillo, Jeff

.296/.366/.430

32.0

36.4

102

104

Green, Shawn

.283/.355/.494

31.4

34.9

120

118

White, Rondell

.284/.336/.462

25.5

26.2

108

108

Klesko, Ryan

.279/.370/.500

24.6

32.7

128

127

Clayton, Royce

.258/.312/.367

16.4

21.7

78

76

Conine, Jeff

.285/.347/.443

16.2

24.4

107

107

Alomar, Jr., Sandy

.273/.309/.406

11.6

15.7

86

85

Walker, Todd

.289/.348/.435

8.3

11.5

98

98

 

Slash Line: Grouping of the player's career batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage.

bWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by Baseball Reference.

fWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by FanGraphs.

OPS+: Career on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by Baseball Reference. Positively indexed to 100, with a 100 OPS+ indicating a league-average player, and values above 100 indicating the degrees better a player is than a league-average player.

wRC+: Career weighted Runs Created, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by FanGraphs. Positively indexed to 100, with a 100 wRC+ indicating a league-average player, and values above 100 indicating the degrees better a player is than a league-average player.

 

Here are the 10 pitchers on the 2013 Hall of Fame ballot, ranked by bWAR.

Pitchers on the 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot, Ranked by bWAR

Pitcher

W-L (S), ERA

bWAR

fWAR

ERA+

ERA-

Clemens, Roger

354-184, 3.12

133.1

145.5

143

70

Schilling, Curt

216-146, 3.46

76.9

86.1

127

80

Wells, David

239-157, 4.13

49.4

61.2

108

93

Morris, Jack

254-186, 3.90

39.3

56.9

105

95

Smith, Lee

71-92 (478), 3.03

27.9

29.0

132

73

Williams, Woody

132-116, 4.19

25.0

19.8

103

97

Sele, Aaron

148-112, 4.61

17.2

33.6

100

99

Hernandez, Roberto

67-71 (326), 3.45

17.2

15.2

131

77

Stanton, Mike

68-63 (84), 3.92

12.6

13.7

112

90

Mesa, Jose

80-109 (321), 4.36

9.5

13.5

100

100

 

W-L (S), ERA: Grouping of the pitcher's career win-loss record (and career saves, if applicable) and career earned run average (ERA).

bWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by Baseball Reference.

fWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by FanGraphs.

ERA+: Career ERA, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by Baseball Reference. Positively indexed to 100, with a 100 ERA+ indicating a league-average pitcher, and values above 100 indicating the degrees better a pitcher is than a league-average pitcher.

ERA-: Career ERA, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by FanGraphs. Negatively indexed to 100, with a 100 ERA- indicating a league-average pitcher, and values below 100 indicating the degrees better a pitcher is than a league-average pitcher.

 

The table below combines both position players and pitchers into a ranking by bWAR.

All 2013 Hall of Fame Candidates, Ranked by bWAR

Rank

Player

bWAR

fWAR

1

Bonds, Barry

158.1

168.0

2

Clemens, Roger

133.1

145.5

3

Schilling, Curt

76.9

86.1

4

Bagwell, Jeff

76.7

83.9

5

Walker, Larry

69.7

73.2

6

Trammell, Alan

67.1

69.5

7

Raines, Tim

66.2

70.6

8

Palmeiro, Rafael

66.1

74.2

9

Lofton, Kenny

64.9

66.2

10

Martinez, Edgar

64.4

69.9

11

Biggio, Craig

62.1

70.5

12

McGwire, Mark

58.7

70.6

13

Piazza, Mike

56.1

66.8

14

Sosa, Sammy

54.8

64.1

15

Wells, David

49.4

61.2

16

McGriff, Fred

48.2

61.0

17

Williams, Bernie

45.9

47.5

18

Murphy, Dale

42.6

47.3

19

Finley, Steve

40.4

44.2

20

Mattingly, Don

39.8

45.8

21

Franco, Julio

39.7

48.6

22

Morris, Jack

39.3

56.9

23

Sanders, Reggie

36.7

41.8

24

Cirillo, Jeff

32.0

36.4

25

Green, Shawn

31.4

34.9

26

Smith, Lee

27.9

29.0

27

White, Rondell

25.5

26.2

28

Williams, Woody

25.0

19.8

29

Klesko, Ryan

24.6

32.7

30

Sele, Aaron

17.2

33.6

31

Hernandez, Roberto

17.2

15.2

32

Clayton, Royce

16.4

21.7

33

Conine, Jeff

16.2

24.4

34

Stanton, Mike

12.6

13.7

35

Alomar, Jr., Sandy

11.6

15.7

36

Mesa, Jose

9.5

13.5

37

Walker, Todd

8.3

11.5


Picking off the Low-hanging Fruit

Of the 37 candidates, 14 can be dismissed immediately: Sandy Alomar, Jr., Jeff Cirillo, Royce Clayton, Jeff Conine, Shawn Green, Roberto Hernandez, Ryan Klesko, Jose Mesa, Reggie Sanders, Aaron Sele, Mike Stanton, Todd Walker, Rondell White, and Woody Williams. This might seem like a ruthless assessment made harsher because of the wealth of talent on the ballot, but while several of these candidates, all first-timers on the ballot, were solid role players, none were exceptional enough to merit serious Hall consideration.

Of these 14, Shawn Green is perhaps the best of the lot, having reached 2000 hits, 400 doubles, 300 home runs, and 1000 runs batted in with a five-year power peak that saw him hit 40 or more home runs in three different seasons, two of those while in Los Angeles playing in pitcher-friendly Dodger Stadium. Reggie Sanders isn't too far behind, having displayed power and speed as he reached 300 home runs, hitting at least 20 in a season with six different teams, and 300 stolen bases to join a select group while winning a World Series in 2001 with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Aaron Sele had four consecutive years of at least 15 wins on his way to 148 career wins. (Although contemporary analysis holds that wins credited to a pitcher are not only overvalued but are not an accurate indication of a pitcher's ability—wins are a function of a team's dynamic, with too many factors that are beyond a pitcher's control—enough voters carry a residual attachment to them that they will continue to be noted.) Roberto Hernandez notched 30 or more saves in six years, including 43 in 1999, while amassing 326 in his career, 13th all-time; Jose Mesa is next on that list with 321. (Likewise with saves—they are an unreliable indication of a relief pitcher's true effectiveness.)

In addition to his being named in the Mitchell Report, Mike Stanton is in the midst of another unfortunate situation: As a middle reliever, he filled an unsung role for his entire 19-year career, and the Hall has not yet shown any interest in recognizing players in specialized roles beyond closers, and even there the reception is mixed. Stanton is the lifetime leader in holds—which is not an official Major League Baseball (MLB) statistic, anyway—but as a career setup man Stanton is not going to see any kind of recognition from the Hall.

Two position players, Steve Finley and Julio Franco, demonstrate the deceptive effects of counting numbers and traditional qualitative statistics. Franco, who came back from the dead (figuratively speaking) throughout his career, became the oldest regular position player in MLB history. (Franco's career began in 1982, one year after Cal Ripken, Jr.'s, debut season, and Franco's final season, in 2007, was the same year in which Ripken, Jr., was inducted into the Hall of Fame.) Franco boasts a .298 career batting average and led the American League (AL) in hitting in 1991, and he finished with 2586 hits, 407 doubles, 173 home runs, 1285 runs scored, and 1194 runs batted in. Franco began as a middle infielder, both second base and shortstop, but he was never considered to be a quality defender even after moving to first base later in his 23-year career.

Finley has an even stronger case: A respectable defender in center field (a career 2.9 defensive bWAR), he reached 2548 hits, 449 doubles, 304 home runs, 320 stolen bases, 1443 runs scored, and 1167 RBI in a 19-year career. Most of those counting numbers match or exceed another center fielder on the ballot, Bernie Williams, and although Williams beats him in the jewelry department—Williams won four World Series rings with the New York Yankees—Finley's sole ring came in 2001 when his Arizona Diamondback beat Williams's Yankees in one of the great World Series in baseball history. In addition, Williams was a lousy defender, with a minus-10.3 defensive bWAR lifetime and 118 runs below average in Total Zone rating. But Finley reached his totals in about 500 more games and 1500 more plate appearances than did Williams, which is why Finley's career OPS+ and wRC+ are just a few ticks above league-average (both 104) while Williams sports a more robust OPS+ of 125 and wRC+ of 126.

In short, both Finley and Franco were solid, durable players with their moments of glory (and with Franco providing a fine human-interest story), but ultimately they both compiled career totals that reflected longevity and not Hall of Fame excellence.


Sorting through a Crowded Borderline

Next come seven players on the borderline of Hall of Fame excellence: Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Lee Smith, David Wells, and Bernie Williams. In any other year, these seven would merit higher consideration, although four have extensive ballot experience already: Smith (11th year on the ballot), Mattingly (13th), and Morris (14th), while for Murphy this is his last chance to be elected by the voters of the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA).

Wells is the only first-timer in the bunch; I detailed the cases for the other six this time last year and have recapped them below.

A durable starting pitcher with surprisingly good control for a left-hander, "Boomer" Wells saw action with nine different major-league clubs including the Toronto Blue Jays and the New York Yankees, earning a World Series ring with each club. Wells was a 20-game winner with Toronto in 2000 when he went 20-8 (.714) with a 4.11 ERA and led the AL in complete games (9), although his 1998 campaign might have been more impressive as he won 18 games for the Yankees against only 4 losses (an .818 winning percentage) with a 3.49 ERA. Those were two of the nine seasons in which Wells won 15 or more games on his way to 239 wins lifetime, tied for 57th with Hall of Famer Mordecai Brown, against only 157 losses for an excellent .604 lifetime winning percentage.

He did this despite an ERA over 4—his career 4.13 ERA would be the highest-ever by a Hall of Fame pitcher even if Jack Morris (3.90 ERA lifetime) gets in. Wells's fielding-independent ERA (FIP) of 3.99 suggests only marginal improvement once you factor out the defenses behind him; despite issuing only 719 walks in 3439 innings pitched, resulting in an impressive 1.9 walks per nine innings pitched—and with his 2201 strikeouts giving him an excellent career strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.06—he did allow 3635 hits, netting a walks-plus-hits-per-innings-pitched (WHIP) of 1.266, 334th lifetime. Instead, Wells enjoyed a career run-support average of 5.3 runs per game, better than a half-run above the MLB average of 4.7 runs per game over the course of his career. His ERA+ (from Baseball Reference) of 108 and ERA- (from FanGraphs) of 93 indicate a better-than-league average pitcher but hardly an elite one. Even if BBWAA voters toss out all the players with the steroids taint and Larry Walker for good measure, David Wells will still have a tough time securing that tenth spot on a voter's ballot, let alone garnering the 75 percent of the total vote needed for induction.

A much more likely choice is Jack Morris, who netted 66.6 percent of the vote last year, which many observers have noted indicates eventual election through at least 75 percent of the vote. And if this year's vote truly is a referendum on PEDs, then Morris is the old-school refutation both to PEDs and to sabermetrics. (To put it into terms of recent baseball movies, if Bert Blyleven was the Moneyball candidate of 2011, then Morris will be the Trouble with the Curve candidate of 2013.) In my assessment last year, I did indeed note that Morris was a throwback, the Gus Wynn of our time, the proverbial battler whose numbers are comparable to Wynn's, who fought and scraped his way to 300 wins. In an era of interventionist bullpens, Morris's 254 wins and 3.90 ERA are equivalent to Wynn's, who posted a career 3.54 ERA and finally retired in 1963 following a protracted struggle to earn that 300th win. Morris, despite his Game Seven immortality in the 1991 World Series, is similarly a just-above-league-average pitcher, as his 105 ERA+ and 95 ERA- indicate; even Morris's FIP of 3.94 suggests that his cumulative defenses helped him out a bit, while his run-support average of 4.9 runs per game is a half-run better than the MLB average of 4.4 runs per game during his career. Although my vote on Morris is still no, I strongly suspect that he will be elected this year.

Whether his son Chad's eleventh-hour "integrity" campaign will have any measurable effect or might even backfire, Dale Murphy is another borderline candidate who, like Morris, could be elected this year simply for being a good guy whose career predated the Steroids Era. (Chad Murphy's argument/online petition posits in part that if a player's decision to use PEDs reflects "negative" integrity that voters will use to not vote for that player, then a player's "positive" integrity, such as in Dale Murphy's case with its celebrated good-fellowship and charitable commitment, should be an incentive to vote for the player.) Beyond that, Murphy's case is one of a decent peak in his prime, which saw him win back-to-back National League Most Valuable Player Awards in 1982 and 1983, followed by the inevitable decline. Murphy led the NL in RBI in 1982 (he actually tied with the Montreal Expos' Al Oliver with 109) and 1983, and it is no coincidence that he won the MVP in those years as MVP voting has traditionally rewarded RBI leaders (as with wins and batting average, RBI are considered overvalued by current analytical standards, but they too retain a legacy sparkle), although in 1982 Mike Schmidt, Gary Carter, and even Pedro Guerrero all had equally strong cases for MVP. To be fair to Murphy, he stood out in a relatively offensively challenged period although not so distinctively that he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

As for the "integrity" angle, Chad Murphy raises an excellent point—perhaps we should nominate Dale Murphy for the Nobel Peace Prize? After all, Nobel has awarded the Peace Prize to any number of dubious recipients including Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa, Barack Obama, and the European Union. Could Murphy be any worse?

Another borderline player who could benefit from the anticipated backlash against the PEDs-era players is Fred McGriff, whose peak came just before the offensive explosion of the mid-1990s. As I noted last year, those gaudy numbers of the Steroids Era overshadow McGriff's although they do not obliterate his record—"Crime Dog" was a durable, consistent power hitter with eight years of 100 or more RBI and ten years of 30 or more homers. He finished with just under 2500 hits (2460) and 500 home runs (493) and well over 1500 RBI (1550), and qualitatively his 134 OPS+ is 121st all-time and his 134 wRC+ is 112th all-time. McGriff has a strong—but not compelling—case for the Hall, but it could be strong enough this year if the voters' consensus is to bypass the PEDs users, actual or suspected, and "reward" the "clean" players. But Fred McGriff is at best the fourth-best first baseman on the 2013 ballot.

One of the first basemen not ahead of McGriff is Don Mattingly, whose retirement in 1995 after his age-34 season, the result of recurrent back problems, kept him from compiling greater counting numbers than the 2153 hits, 442 doubles, 222 home runs, 1007 runs scored, and 1099 RBI he did accumulate. A decade before the Steroids Era, "Donnie Baseball" hit a six-year peak from 1984 to 1989 that saw him deliver a .327/.372/.530 slash line and seasonal averages of 203 hits, 43 doubles, 27 home runs, 330 total bases, 97 runs, 114 RBI, a 147 OPS+, and 5.3 bWAR. In that time he led the AL in batting in 1984, was the MVP in 1985—not surprisingly, he led the league in RBI—and had three consecutive years of 30 or more home runs, including a record six grand slams in 1987—oddly enough, the only six grand slams of his career. Although Mattingly won nine Gold Gloves, Baseball Reference assesses him at a minus-6.8 defensive WAR but credits him with 33 Total Zone runs above average, as does FanGraphs, meaning that he was worth 33 more defensive runs overall than an average first baseman. Don Mattingly was an excellent player but not an elite one.

That is also still my assessment of another Yankee, Bernie Williams, who, as noted above, is a better center fielder qualitatively than is Steve Finley—at least offensively—but isn't quite ready to ascend to the lofty heights of storied Yankee center fielders Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, let alone follow them into the Hall of Fame. The switch-hitting Williams led the AL in batting (.339) in 1998, and during his eight-year peak from 1995 to 2002 he posted a .321/.406/.531 slash line with seasonal averages of 177 hits, 32 doubles, 5 triples (41 of his 55 career triples were hit during this period), 24 home runs, 105 runs scored, 102 RBI, a 142 OPS+, and a 4.9 bWAR, which is just about All-Star quality but isn't MVP quality. That sums up Williams's Hall chances as well—like Mattingly, an excellent but not elite player.

What to make of Lee Smith? By the midpoint of his career, he turned out to be the prototype of the contemporary closer, the reliever who entered the game to record the final three outs—for the last nine years of his 18-year career, Smith averaged 58 innings pitched in 56 games while notching 30 saves per season. He racked up 478 saves by the time he retired, the all-time record until Trevor Hoffman and then Mariano Rivera passed him. Smith's qualitative stats look good, a 3.03 ERA and a 2.93 FIP, 8.7 strikeouts per nine innings, a 132 ERA+, a 73 ERA-, and a 76 FIP- (fielding-independent pitching, league- and park-adjusted, negatively indexed so values below 100 indicate how much better than league-average the pitcher is).

Despite leading the league in saves four times, and ten seasons with at least 30 saves, Smith left no legacy of excellence. He finished in the top five for Cy Young voting three times; his best showing was runner-up in 1991, when he set a career-high in saves with 47, but he placed a distant second to a deserving Tom Glavine. Smith was part of no World Series champions; in fact, in four postseason appearances, two each in 1984 and 1988 in League Championship Series in the NL and AL, respectively, that totaled 5.1 innings pitched, Smith posted a cumulative 0-2 win-loss record with an 8.44 ERA and no saves.

As the model of the modern-day closer, Smith might get some further consideration—he reached the 50-percent mark on last year's ballot—but I still cannot muster more than a lukewarm non-objection should he be voted in this year. The save is such a cheap statistic, and I'm not sure that the peripheral numbers can be counted on to make the relief pitcher's case.


The Hall of Fame Cup Runneth Over

Undoubtedly your powers of deduction, or at your least arithmetic skills, have told you that there are 14 candidates remaining who are qualified for the Hall of Fame. This is an almost unprecedented embarrassment of riches for a voter: A voter can choose a maximum of ten players on the ballot, which means that at least four qualified players must be omitted.

(Why the qualifier for "unprecedented"? Consider the inaugural Hall of Fame ballot of 1936: Of the 47 candidates, while only 5 were elected that year, 37 of the remaining 42 were eventually elected to the Hall.)

These are the 14 potential Hall of Famers: Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Kenny Lofton, Edgar Martinez, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Mike Piazza, Tim Raines, Curt Schilling, Sammy Sosa, Alan Trammell, and Larry Walker.

Of these, seven are on the ballot for the first time this year: Biggio, Bonds, Clemens, Lofton, Piazza, Schilling, and Sosa. Why the other seven have not yet been elected to the Hall underscores the roiling dynamics of Hall voting in recent years that inexorably reaches its head with this year's historic referendum (as expressed in great detail in Part 1 of this series).

McGwire and Palmeiro are PEDs poster boys being made examples of by the moral dudgeon impelling the backlash against the Steroids Era, with Bagwell lumped in through guilt by appearance—he just looks as if he took steroids, even if no evidence has surfaced to substantiate that. Walker seems to be penalized for park effects—the numbers he generated at pre-humidifier Coors Field are suspect, affecting his overall chances. Martinez reflects the ambivalence voters seem to have for a player whose primary role was as designated hitter. And Raines and Trammell are sabermetrics cases, their qualifications touted through abstract numbers-crunching and not through traditional statistical measures or the even old "eye test."

Based on this past experience, Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, and possibly Piazza will be treated as previous candidates with PEDs association—actual or implied—have been. That leaves Biggio, Lofton, and Schilling as the only unsullied candidates, and if they join Martinez—assuming negligible bias against the designated hitter—Raines, and Trammell, that leaves four slots available for the maximum of ten on the ballot, presumably to be filled by four of the borderline candidates described above.

Even when flatly removing the PEDs players, that still leaves numerous permutations, and trying to determine how a ballot of ten candidates would look is a crap shoot. However, in the interest of rolling for boxcars ("C'mon, baby, papa needs a new pair of shoes!" as they used to exclaim in old movies), the table below presents three possibilities based on hard exclusions, moderate exclusions, and soft exclusions.

Possible 2013 Hall of Fame Candidates, Various Scenarios

Hard Exclusions (PEDs Users and Other Factors)

Moderate Exclusions (PEDs Users)

Soft Exclusions (Some PEDs Users)

Biggio, Craig

Biggio, Craig

Bagwell, Jeff

Lofton, Kenny

Martinez, Edgar

Biggio, Craig

Mattingly, Don

Mattingly, Don

Bonds, Barry

McGriff, Fred

McGriff, Fred

Clemens, Roger

Morris, Jack

Morris, Jack

Martinez, Edgar

Murphy, Dale

Raines, Tim

Morris, Jack

Raines, Tim

Schilling, Curt

Raines, Tim

Schilling, Curt

Smith, Lee

Smith, Lee

Smith, Lee

Trammell, Alan

Trammell, Alan

Trammell, Alan

Walker, Larry

Walker, Larry

 

The Hard Exclusions column assumes that any player with even suspicion of PEDs association will not garner sufficient votes, and Edgar Martinez, primarily a designated hitter, and Larry Walker, a beneficiary of extreme park factors for part of his career, will also not garner sufficient votes. The Moderate Exclusions column admits Martinez and Walker while still shutting out any PEDs-associated player. The Soft Exclusions column relents on Bagwell while admitting Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, either because both of whom have been argued to have been Hall of Fame-caliber players before they were suspected of beginning a PEDs program or because their career numbers and sheer dominance are just too huge to be simply ignored.

Places assigned to players who have been on previous ballots were based on their voting trends, and that does establish a bias toward players already on previous ballots—Curt Schilling could leapfrog over a listed player in the Soft Exclusions column, and I am also assuming that Craig Biggio will be listed on even a Soft Exclusions ballot; leaving aside problematic members of the 3000-hit club (Rafael Palmeiro, Pete Rose), entrance into that select circle is not always an automatic first-ballot lock, but in this year's environment that could be a major factor, making Biggio a likely inductee.

The biggest assumption is that voters will choose the maximum number of ten candidates on the ballot. I considered ranking from most to least likely the candidates in each column, but that would quickly end up like trying to count the number of angels able to dance on the head of a pin, or on the tip of a syringe, as Keith Olbermann remarked recently. The point, of course, is to illustrate the sheer number of candidates—qualified candidates—and some of the various scenarios that could present themselves with this year's vote.


The 14 Most Qualified Players on the 2013 Ballot

It is no coincidence that the 14 players who I think are the most qualified for the 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot also happen to be the 14 players with the highest bWAR in the combined table above. Thus, it would be simple to merely list them in the order in which they appear in the table.

But although WAR (in whatever version) is a good quick-and-dirty sorting tool, as I explained in Part 1, I've ordered the 14 candidates below based on other factors such as positional scarcity (the idea that a player at a more-challenging defensive position such as catcher or shortstop, all other things being equal, has more value to his team than a player at a less-challenging position), the context of the player's active seasons, the magnitude of the player's accomplishments, and other considerations.

With that in mind, here, in reverse order, are the 14 presumptive Hall of Famers.

14. Sammy Sosa (first year on ballot)

A great irony of Sammy Sosa's career—detractors might call it a comeuppance—is that although Sosa is the only player in baseball history with three seasons in which he hit 60 or more home runs—in 1998 (66 homers), 1999 (63), and 2001 (64)—he never led the league in home runs in any of those years. He is one of only five hitters in baseball history to reach 60 homers in a season, and the other four all led their league—indeed the majors—in round-trippers when they reached that milestone, including Mark McGwire twice. Sosa did lead the league in homers in two other years, 2000 (50) and 2002 (49), and he was the NL MVP in 1998—the same year of the famous "home run chase that saved baseball" when McGwire set the single-season mark with 70 long flies—when he knocked in a league-leading 158 runs batted in and led his Chicago Cubs to the postseason.

Eighth in lifetime home runs with 609, Sosa is one of only eight men with 600 or more big flies, and his 1667 RBI are 27th all-time; he had eleven seasons with 30 or more homers, seven with 40 or more, and nine seasons, all consecutive, with 100 or more RBI. Sosa is also third in lifetime strikeouts with 2306, a career rate of 23.3 percent, with only 929 bases on balls in 9896 plate appearances. Sosa's career slugging percentage of .534 is within the top 50, higher than Hall of Fame sluggers Willie McCovey, Mike Schmidt, and Willie Stargell, but his career OPS+ of 128, equal to marginal Hall of Famers Goose Goslin's and Jim Rice's, challenges the effectiveness of those gaudy counting numbers, as does his wRC+ of 123. Defensively, Sosa was not terrible, costing his teams one win (a minus-1.0 defensive bWAR) over his career while saving 104 runs overall and notching 143 assists, 127 of those as a right fielder, tied for 23rd with Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, on the all-time list.

Sammy Sosa's power-hitting accomplishments have to put him into the discussion, but their impact is open to debate. Any of the other thirteen candidates deserve a ballot spot ahead of him.

13. Kenny Lofton (first year on ballot)

One player who might not have popped up on anyone's radar screen as a potential Hall of Fame candidate is center fielder Kenny Lofton, although he crossed mine a year and a half ago even if I thought then, as I do now, that the logjammed ballot will make his case even tougher than it is already. Runner-up for the 1992 AL Rookie of the Year Award to the Milwaukee Brewers' shortstop Pat Listach—yes, I had to look him up too—Lofton posted virtually identical numbers to Listach's while leading the league in stolen bases with 66, the first of five consecutive years in which Lofton led the league in that category. He swiped a total of 325 sacks during that time, more than half of his 622 career steals (15th all-time), while posting a career-high of 75 in 1996.

Alas, Lofton did this with the high-powered Cleveland Indians and was overshadowed by Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome, and Omar Vizquel, among others. Too bad, because Lofton was essentially a poor-man's Tim Raines with much better defensive skills, posting many offensive numbers comparable to "the Rock" while playing in 400 fewer games and making 1000 fewer plate appearances. Lofton was practically a .300 hitter, sporting a .299/.372/.423 slash line while amassing 2428 hits, 383 doubles, 116 triples (tied for 106th all-time with Hall of Famer Jimmy Collins), and 130 home runs while scoring 1528 runs, 60th all-time.

But Raines's hurdle to overcome is being tagged as the poor-man's Rickey Henderson—so you can imagine the poverty gap Lofton has to cross being the poor-man's poor-man's Henderson. Not helping is Lofton's peripatetic path following his first nine years in Cleveland—with even that broken up by a one-year stint with the Atlanta Braves in 1997 before returning to Cleveland—as he played with nine more clubs in his last six years, including the San Francisco Giants during their 2002 World Series appearance and a curtain call with Cleveland in 2007, his final season. His career OPS+ of 107 and wRC+ of 110 make it hard to call Kenny Lofton an elite player, but he was an excellent leadoff hitter and an outstanding defender at a premium position, center field—he probably deserved more than the four Gold Gloves he did win—and he deserves serious consideration.

12. Mark McGwire (seventh year on ballot)

Apart from the PEDs issue that has defined Mark McGwire's Hall of Fame chances, the biggest knocks against "Big Mac" are that he was a one-dimensional player and that his career wasn't long enough. Like Harmon Killebrew, McGwire was known strictly for hitting home runs, and in 1874 games and 6187 at-bats, McGwire collected only 1626 hits for an unexceptional.263 lifetime batting average, although that would not be the lowest among Hall of Fame first basemen—Killebrew's .256 would still hold that dubious honor.

On the other hand, 583 of those hits were home runs and are tenth all-time, while his ratio of 10.61 at-bats per home run is tops in baseball history, more than a full at-bat better than Babe Ruth's 11.76. Moreover, as I noted last year, McGwire is a classic Three True Outcomes hitter: In addition to slugging home runs at a prodigious rate, which informed his .588 career slugging average that is bested by only seven other hitters, he either struck out—1596 times for a 20.8 percent clip—or walked: Mac drew 1317 bases on balls, with only 150 of those intentional, which puts his lofty .394 on-base percentage (81st all-time) into bold relief against his pedestrian batting average.

McGwire's long-ball prowess was demonstrated early, when he became the 1987 AL Rookie of the Year with the Oakland A's by smashing a record 49 long balls. That led to eleven years of 30 or more round-trippers, with six of those years netting 40 or more, while seven years of 100 or more RBI, including a league-leading 147 in 1999, led to 1414 for his career. His record might have been even more impressive had not foot injuries nagged him in his prime, limiting him to 74 games and 279 plate appearances total for 1993 and 1994. Qualitatively, McGwire's 163 OPS+ is 11th-best lifetime, while his 157 wRC+ is 12th-best lifetime and his weighted on-base average (wOBA) of .415 is 32nd lifetime. Defensively, Mac was a liability even at first base with a minus-12.8 defensive bWAR, costing his teams a net minus-29 runs overall. Mark McGwire might have been a one-dimensional player, which is why I have him ranked 12th out of 14, but that dimension was rather spectacular, which is why he is qualified for the Hall.

11. Edgar Martinez (fourth year on ballot)

Had Edgar Martinez become a full-time player sooner than his age-27 season, and had injuries not dogged him from the start, he might have compiled an even more auspicious batting record than he has currently, and his path to the Hall of Fame would be much smoother. Unfortunately, you have to evaluate player as he is and not how you wish he could have been, and so looking at Martinez's record requires just a little more discernment.

But not that much, because Martinez produced as much, if not more, in the 14 full years he played for the Seattle Mariners (not counting his first three seasons and his injury-plagued 1993 campaign) than have most ballplayers. I made a case for Martinez last year, and it still holds up now. What seems to be the biggest obstacle for Martinez is his status as a designated hitter. I'm a National League guy myself and admit to residual bias against the DH—which is why Martinez slides to just outside the top ten for this year—but the DH has been an official position in the AL for four decades now and is part of baseball whether we like it or not.

Moreover, the award given since 1973 (the year of the first designated hitter) to the best DH, the Outstanding Designated Hitter Award, was renamed in 2004 the Edgar Martinez Outstanding Designated Hitter Award. And why not? In the seven prime years that Martinez was the Mariners' full-time DH, from 1995 to 2001, he posted a .329/.446/.574 slash line while averaging 171 hits, 42 doubles, 28 home runs, 298 total bases, 107 walks, 100 runs scored, 110 runs batted in, a 164 OPS+, and a 5.5 bWAR—All-Star quality, as he was for five of those seven years. Martinez was the first—and remains the only—DH to win a batting title when he hit .356 in 1995; he won his first batting title in 1992 with a .343 average while starting 102 games at third base. Martinez lifetime rankings include 21st in on-base percentage with .418, 41st in OPS+ with 147, 57th in wOBA with .405, 91st in fWAR (position players only) with 69.9, and 108th in bWAR (both position players and pitchers) with 64.4. Edgar Martinez is a Hall of Fame hitter.



10. Alan Trammell (twelfth year on ballot)


In one sense, it is remarkable that Detroit Tigers' shortstop Alan Trammell has survived for so long on the Hall of Fame ballot; this is his 12th year as a candidate. His career largely predates the offensive explosion that began in the mid-1990s, and although he might have been the prototype for the modern offensively-charged shortstop, he was overshadowed by Cal Ripken, Jr., and the wave of super-shortstops who followed them, including Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Miguel Tejada.

Yet Trammell, both with the bat and with the glove, was remarkably consistent and consistently excellent. During the 1980s, from 1980 when he batted .300 to 1990 when he batted .304, Trammell generated a .291/.359/.433 slash line while averaging 152 hits, 28 doubles, 13 home runs, 81 runs scored, 66 RBI, 16 stolen bases, a 119 OPS+, and a 5.2 bWAR—again, at an All-Star level, as Trammell was in six of those eleven seasons. He was the 1987 AL MVP runner-up to the Toronto Blue Jays' George Bell, who hit 47 home runs and led the AL in RBI with 134. But Trammell, whose 8.0 bWAR was third-best that year (behind Roger Clemens and Wade Boggs), had an MVP-caliber season: .343/.402/.551 slash line, 205 hits, 34 doubles, 28 home runs, 109 runs scored, 105 RBI, 21 stolen bases, 329 total bases, and a 155 OPS+.

But if the primary value a shortstop can deliver is his defensive ability, then Trammell did just that. This four-time Gold Glover ranks 17th in career assists by a shortstop with 6172, 23rd in career fielding percentage by a shortstop with .9768, 28th in career putouts by a shortstop with 3391, 34th in lifetime defensive bWAR with 22.0, and 53rd in career range factor per nine innings by a shortstop with 4.711 (the ratio of putouts plus assists over nine innings of play).

This is the biggest factor in Alan Trammell's favor—positional scarcity. He was consistently excellent defensively at one of the two hardest defensive positions on the diamond, and he supplied a strong, if not overpowering, bat at the plate. Trammell is not an obvious Hall of Fame choice, and on such a crowded ballot as this year's he can be overlooked quite easily. But he should not be overlooked in this or any other year.

9. Rafael Palmeiro (third year on ballot)

Divorced from the PEDs opprobrium that engulfs Rafael Palmeiro, his accomplishment of being just the fourth batter in major-league history to collect at least 3000 hits (3020) and 500 home runs (569) should have made him a first-ballot inductee, as it had for the previous three: Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Eddie Murray. In addition to both Murray and Palmeiro manning first base for the Baltimore Orioles for a significant stretch of their careers, Palmeiro posted numbers that are remarkably similar to Murray's.

Obviously, with just 11.0 percent and 12.6 percent of the vote on his first two ballots, Palmeiro has been handed his standing by the BBWAA. And even if you consider the Steroids Era to be a colorful if ugly but still-valid period in baseball's history—as I do—Palmeiro's angry denial of PEDs usage before a Congressional committee in 2005, only to fail a drug test months later, still resembles the kind of sitcom-like hubris that befalls the villain who justly deserves his comeuppance.

But had the PEDs notoriety not grabbed Palmeiro, it is not clear that he would have stood out in voters' minds, anyway. Yes, he did achieve the rare feat of 3000 hits and 500 home runs, and for a 15-year period, mostly with the Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles, the first baseman was a consistently excellent hitter: From 1988 to 2002 he generated a .294/.375/.523 slash line with seasonal averages of 170 hits, 34 doubles, 32 home runs, 303 total bases, 94 runs scored, 102 RBI, a 136 OPS+, and a bWAR of 4.1. Yet Palmeiro was never a dominant hitter; he led the league once each in hits, runs, and doubles, none in the same year; his best showing in MVP voting was sixth in 1996, with a strong but not exceptional year; and he was named to only four All-Star squads.

Palmeiro finished with 119 sacrifice flies, 8th all-time (coincidentally, Murray is the lifetime leader with 128); 5388 total bases, 11th all-time; 569 home runs, 12th all-time; 585 doubles, 16th all-time; 1835 runs batted in, 16th all-time; 3020 hits, 25th all-time; and 172 intentional walks, 28th all-time. A neat footnote to Palmeiro's record is that he did walk five more times than he struck out (1353 bases on balls to 1348 strikeouts), unusual for a power hitter of his era. His PEDs notoriety might keep him out of the Hall of Fame for the duration of his stay on the ballot and even through any future veterans' committees. But many years from now, regardless of how the PEDs furor is resolved, people are going to look at Rafael Palmeiro's record and ask, "Why isn't this guy in the Hall of Fame yet?"

8. Mike Piazza (first year on ballot)

So, how is the fairy tale going to end for Mike Piazza, with his being treated like Cinderella or like one of the wicked stepsisters? Piazza of course was drafted in the 62nd round by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1988, essentially as a favor by family friend Tommy Lasorda. Encouraged to play catcher in order to enhance his chances of making it to the majors, Piazza did make it to the big-league club full-time in 1993 and merely became the NL Rookie of the Year with a .318/.370/.561 line, 35 home runs, and 112 RBI along with a 153 OPS+ and 6.8 bWAR. That ushered in a career that saw Piazza become one of the greatest-hitting catchers—arguably the greatest-hitting catcher—of all time.

That is the Cinderella scenario, and Piazza, the only catcher in major-league history to combine a .300 or better lifetime average (.308; .313 as a catcher) with 400 or more home runs (427; 396 as a catcher—the most all-time at that position), would be a shoo-in as a Hall of Famer. Among catchers with 7000 or more career plate appearances, only Mickey Cochrane (.320), Bill Dickey (.313), and Deacon White (.312) posted a higher batting average than Piazza, and White, a Pre-Integration Committee Hall of Fame inductee this year, not only played in the 19th century, when the game was markedly different than it was in even Cochrane's and Dickey's day, let alone Piazza's, he actually played more games at third base (827) than he did at catcher (458). Also among catchers with 7000 or more career plate appearances, Piazza ranks first in OPS+ with 143.

The wicked-stepsister scenario involves the PEDs taint coloring his career. Piazza did admit to using androstenedione ("andro") early in his career, which would have been before it was made illegal by Major League Baseball, but in this witch-hunt environment that is worse than Jeff Bagwell's being merely suspected of using PEDs. It's a crap shoot as to whether Piazza's inaugural year on the ballot coinciding with the debuts of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Sammy Sosa is a help or a hindrance: Is he screened by the higher-profile cases, or he is lumped in as yet another miscreant?

In any event, Piazza's Hall of Fame case does rest on his offensive prowess. At the toughest defensive position on the field, Piazza was not an auspicious defender. With 1400 stolen bases allowed, Piazza ranks 7th all-time, while he ranks 111th lifetime with 124 errors and ranks 122nd lifetime with 102 passed balls (he led the league twice in passed balls and reached double digits four times). Yet despite being 61 runs below average in Total Zone total runs as a catcher, Piazza still wound up with a career defensive bWAR of 1.0 win above a replacement player. That means that Piazza's defensive play did not offset significantly his offensive contributions.

For a ten-year period, from 1993 to 2002, Piazza flashed a .322/.389/.579 slash line with seasonal averages of 162 hits, 25 doubles, 35 home runs, 292 total bases, 85 runs scored, and 107 RBI while establishing a 155 OPS+ and a 5.2 bWAR; he was an All-Star in all ten years and twelve times in his career. That is a Hall of Fame career.

7. Craig Biggio (first year on ballot)

Although every eligible member of the 3000-hit club except Rafael Palmeiro is in the Hall of Fame, not every member was a first-ballot inductee. Eddie Collins, Nap Lajoie, Tris Speaker, and Paul Waner all had to wait at least a year before getting the call. (Or was it the telegram back in those days? Who remembers what a "telegram" is now?) Waner might have had to wait five years before getting the call/telegram in 1952 (rules were different then—Waner had retired in 1945 and was on his first ballot in 1948), but every eligible player with 3000 hits since Waner and up to Palmeiro went in on his first ballot.

(Pete Rose, the all-time leader in hits with 4256, had agreed to permanent ineligibility from baseball in 1989, three years after he had retired, for allegedly gambling on baseball, an accusation that at the time he denied. In 1991, the Hall of Fame made formal its informal ban of any player deemed so ineligible, the year prior to Rose's first year of hypothetical eligibility; thus, Rose has never been an eligible candidate for the Hall. In 2004, Rose admitted that he had indeed bet on baseball games, even on—though not against—his own team, the Cincinnati Reds.)

Palmeiro might still be waiting for his call, but Craig Biggio, 21st lifetime with 3060 hits, could very well find himself entering Cooperstown on his first ballot. It is unfair to say that Biggio might not have had an inside track to the Hall had there not been so many players with PEDs association on this year's ballot, along with the backlash against such players, because Biggio compiled an impressive record in his 20-year career. Yet despite the inevitable whispers concerning PEDs that touches anyone who played in the Steroids Era—Biggio was a long-time teammate of Jeff Bagwell's, don'tcha know?—Biggio is generally regarded as one of the "clean" ones, even one with "integrity" almost comparable to Dale Murphy's, and that might be the, er, performance enhancement that could get him elected on his first try.

Which is academic, because Biggio is a Hall of Fame-caliber player in any event. And it's not just the 3000 hits that make him so, although obviously they don't hurt. Biggio is 5th in doubles with 668, 15th in runs scored with 1844, 33rd in total bases with 4711, 64th in stolen bases with 414, and—ouch!—2nd in hits by pitch with 285. What makes these numbers so impressive is that for his entire career, Biggio was an up-the-middle defender. His first four seasons were spent primarily as a catcher, starting 391 games, before moving to second base in 1992, a position at which he won four consecutive Gold Gloves, amassing a defensive bWAR of 2.3 during that period, while starting 1959 games at the keystone sack overall. Then late in his career he took a turn in the outfield, starting 252 games in centerfield and 98 in left field, before winding up his time back at second.

Truth be told, Biggio was not a defensive standout at any of the three positions. Altogether for his career, he was 70 runs below average in Total Zone analysis and at minus-50 in defensive runs saved, while his career defensive bWAR was minus-3.8. In essence, Biggio was a little below league-average at any of these positions—which, recall, are three-fourths of a team's defensive core—while providing offensive power well superior to a league-average defender at those positions. As a leadoff hitter in 1560 games started and 7297 plate appearances, Biggio sported a .284/.370/.447 slash line with 1800 hits, 426 doubles, 181 home runs, 2833 total bases, 1128 runs scored, and 238 total bases. He started another 1000 games batting in other positions in the lineup, notably second, at which he roughly duplicated his leadoff output.

The 3000 hits might be the sparkly stat that gives him first-ballot entrée. The parade of PEDs-associated might clear the path even more. But is Craig Biggio truly a Hall of Famer? In the history of this sport, who are the only two players other than Biggio to have combined more than 3000 hits, more than 600 doubles, more than 400 stolen bases, and more than 1800 runs scored? Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker. And while Speaker might not have been voted in on his first ballot, his ballot was even tougher than Biggio's.

6. Larry Walker (third year on ballot)

In my very first column for this website, I had Larry Walker pegged as a Hall of Famer, and of course I stated his case for the 2012 ballot. So I am getting tired of pointing out that Walker is a genuine five-tool right fielder whose career performance—capped by three batting titles, the 1997 NL MVP Award, and seven Gold Gloves—has earned him a spot in Cooperstown.

Yes, I know—Coors Field. Walker spent nine full seasons with the Colorado Rockies, from 1995 to 2003, playing in 38 games for the Rockies in 2004 before going to the St. Louis Cardinals. Seven of those seasons were before the Rockies began using a humidor to store baseballs, with the aim of neutralizing the altitude effects in "the Mile-High City" of Denver that makes Coors Field a hitters' dream park. The knock against all Rockies, including Walker, who won all three of his batting titles playing in pre-humidor Colorado, is that those extreme park effects inflated their numbers, with the corresponding depreciation of their overall records.

There is no doubt that Walker feasted while playing at Coors Field, particularly in the pre-humidor days. In 427 games, 1820 plate appearances, and 1527 at-bats at Coors from 1995 to 2001, Walker boasted a lusty .396/.466/.754 slash line while notching 623 hits, 141 doubles, and 126 home runs (including a league-leading 49 in 1997, although only 20 of those were hit at Coors that year), with 428 runs scored and 396 RBI. The humidor cooled him down somewhat: His combined 2002-03 effort at Coors, in 143 games, 581 plate appearances, and 477 at-bats included a .350/.461/.612 line with 126 hits, 33 doubles, 26 home runs, 116 runs scored, and 116 RBI. Between 1995 and 2003, for a total of 570 games, 2401 plate appearances, and 2050 at-bats, and he posted an overall .385/.465/.721 line with 790 hits, 174 doubles, 152 home runs, 544 runs scored, and 512 RBI while playing in Coors Field.

By contrast, Walker was more human on the road. From 1995 to 2003, Walker's line away from Coors, in 562 games, 2256 plate appearances, and 1918 at-bats, was .279/.382/.508 with 536 hits, 114 doubles, 100 home runs, 326 runs scored, and 316 RBI. Over his entire career, Walker hit much better at home than on the road—a whopping 70 points higher in batting average (.348 at home versus .278 on the road), 61 points higher in on-base percentage (.431 versus .370), and an eye-popping 142 points higher in slugging percentage (.637 versus .495).

If you simply removed Walker's home record for the entire time he was in Colorado, you would end up with the following career record: a .282/.372/.499 slash line in 1418 games, 5629 plate appearances, and 4857 at-bats, with 1370 hits, 297 doubles, 231 home runs, 2426 total bases, 157 stolen bases, 811 runs scored, and 799 RBI. That reflects the removal of 570 games, 2401 plate appearances, and 2050 at-bats from his record, leaving him as a solid, though not quite Hall of Fame-caliber, hitter.

But that is only a crude exercise that does not make any accounting for the roughly 29 percent of Walker's games played at Coors Field. Nor does it account for the fact that like any player at any time in baseball history, Walker had very little control over park factors. Should the opportunity present itself, through trade or free agency, a player might be able to choose a team with which to play, and thus a home park in which to play, but that is not always an option, and it certainly wasn't an option prior to the 1970s, when free agency ushered in the current era of players having more control over their careers.

Baseball Reference features a comparison tool developed by sabermetrician Jay Jaffe called JAWS, the Jaffe WAR Score system, that measures a player's Hall of Fame-worthiness by position. Walker ranks ninth in JAWS, ahead of Hall of Fame right fielders Tony Gwynn, Harry Heilmann, Sam Crawford, Paul Waner, and Dave Winfield. Of the eight players ranked higher than Walker, all but Reggie Jackson enjoyed the advantages of hitting at home. Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Stan Musial (an odd inclusion as he played more games at first base and in left field), Mel Ott, Frank Robinson, Roberto Clemente, and Al Kaline all posted overall slash lines higher at home than on the road. Spending his entire career with the New York Giants, Ott hit 63.2 percent (323) of his 511 home runs in the Polo Grounds—by contrast, 152 of Walker's 383 home runs, or 39.6 percent, were hit in Coors Field—while Robinson hit 54.8 percent (321) of his 586 home runs in his home parks, and Kaline hit 56.6 percent (226) of his 399 homers in Tiger Stadium, the only home park he knew. Even Musial, who famously split his lifetime 3630 hits equally between home and the road, hit 29 more home runs (252 at home to 223 away) and 61 more doubles (394 to 333) at home. Only Jackson had a stronger slash line during away games, although his home runs were a wash, 280 at home and 283 on the road.

Home-field advantage has been a positive factor for almost all of the right fielders ranked higher than Walker—and we haven't yet examined his early career with the Expos, playing in Montreal's cavernous Olympic Stadium. In the five full seasons Walker played for the Expos, three of those seasons, 1990, 1991, and 1993, had Olympic Stadium considered to be a pitchers' park, with the corresponding effect on Walker's performance. Even in 1992, which found Olympic Stadium more of a hitters' park—and Walker did hit 13 of his 23 home runs that season there—he still hit better on the road. Overall, Walker did hit slightly better in Montreal: a .286/.364/.500 slash line—coincidentally, fairly close to his line with all his Coors Field games removed—with 311 hits, 75 doubles, 47 home runs, 543 total bases, 181 runs scored, and 188 RBI in 319 games, 1243 plate-appearances, and 1047 at-bats. In 355 away games, with 1447 plate appearances and 1279 at-bats, Walker posted a .278/.350/.468 line with 355 hits, 72 doubles, 52 home runs, 599 total bases, 187 runs, and 196 RBI.

There is no doubt that playing at Coors Field boosted Walker's numbers. But consider this: In his 1997 MVP season, Walker posted a .346/.443/.733 slash line on the road while hitting 29 of his 49 home runs in other ballparks; despite hitting 30 of his 46 doubles and all four of his triples in Coors, he actually slugged better on the road. In 1997, Walker swung a hot bat anywhere he played, not just in Denver. Walker's final season was in 2005, his only full season in St. Louis, and he did hit significantly better in Busch Stadium II, which that year did favor hitters slightly.

Throughout his career, Walker did hit significantly better in his home park, whichever park that was, than did the right fielders with whom he is ranked. Do we penalize Walker for this—and not other hitters who also enjoyed their home-field advantage? Perhaps some kind of weighting or neutralizing could scale Walker's output at Coors Field, both before and after the introduction of the humidor, to approximate how Walker would have done in a "normal" home park. But the logical extension of this thinking is to then re-evaluate every player based on his specific advantages—and then to re-evaluate based on his disadvantages.

All this would be done to "adjust" the results of roughly 30 percent of Walker's games although in the other roughly 20 percent of his home games other than in Coors Field—more "normal" ballparks—he demonstrated a less extreme if still significant propensity to hit well. That is just a fact of Larry Walker's career, and even if we scale back some of Walker's stratospheric numbers in Coors Field, he still remains a Hall of Fame-worthy candidate.



5. Tim Raines (sixth year on ballot)


Another player whom I endorsed in my very first column and again last year, Tim Raines actually showed up on my radar screen in 2001, when the speedy left fielder was winding up his career. I was taking a course on writing up various kinds of reports including feasibility studies, or the evaluation of various options with the eventual recommendation of one of those options.

As it was summer and as I'm a baseball fan, I concocted an exercise in which I was writing on behalf of a fictitious "Underdog Committee" recommending potential Hall of Fame candidates among players who would be retiring soon and who were likely to be undervalued or overlooked in the upcoming years. (Recall that Wade Boggs, Tony Gywnn, and Cal Ripken, Jr., were expected to be elected in those upcoming years.) I chose four players, examined their records, and made my recommendation.

Barely sabermetrics-aware at the time, I did stick mostly to traditional qualitative and quantitative statistics, although I did use on-base percentage and positional scarcity. (Also, I could not assume that my intended audience—my course instructor—was a baseball fan.) The four players I chose were—don't laugh at the first one—Andres Galarraga (hey, he looked fairly impressive at the time), Edgar Martinez, Fred McGriff, and Tim Raines. Going into the exercise, my assumption was that Martinez would emerge as the best-qualified of the four. However, after crunching the numbers, my recommendation was for . . . Tim Raines.

Even with my rudimentary analytical skills, I realized that Raines was the poor man's Rickey Henderson—what really pushed me over was that Raines is fifth in stolen bases, with 808. Subsequent examination shows that Raines's success rate—he was thrown out only 146 times—was an outstanding 84.7 percent. And in a decade, the 1980s, that predated the offensive explosion of the Steroids Era, Raines posted a consistently excellent record.

For a fifteen-year period, from 1981 to 1995, Raines established a .296/.386/.429 slash line with seasonal averages of 153 hits, 25 doubles, 7 triples, 10 home runs, 221 total bases, 75 walks (including 9 intentional walks), 51 stolen bases against only 9 failed attempts, 91 runs scored, and 55 RBI, generating a 126 OPS+ and 4.2 bWAR. As a leadoff hitter in 1415 games (of 2502 total) and 6514 plate appearances (of 10,359 total), Raines's slash line of .294/.385/.427 is virtually identical to his lifetime line while yielding 99 home runs, 1011 runs scored, and 584 stolen bases. Interestingly, for a leadoff-type hitter, Raines was walked intentionally 148 times, 48th all-time, two ahead of Mike Piazza and two behind Mark McGwire; by contrast, Rickey Henderson was walked intentionally only 61 times.

Raines led the league in stolen bases for four consecutive years and had six consecutive years of at least 70 thefts including a career-high of 90 in 1983, the 35th-highest single-season total in baseball history with 21 of those seasonal highs coming in the much-looser 19th century. But unlike, say, Vince Coleman, Raines was hardly one-dimensional, leading the league in both batting average and on-base percentage in 1986 while, as a full-time player, hitting .300 or better six times and reaching base at a .400 or better clip four times.

Even a basic examination, such as the one I did more than a decade ago, of Tim Raines will tell you that he is a Hall of Famer.

4. Curt Schilling (first year on ballot)

Even more so than Craig Biggio, Curt Schilling stands to benefit from the expected backlash against PEDs-associated players with respect to his Hall of Fame chances. The more PEDs players the voters ignore (disregard, snub, punish—choose your favorite verb), the more attractive a Schilling vote becomes. This is not to say that Schilling isn't a qualified candidate—I picked him as one my "tough sells" a year and a half ago—but throughout his career he has found himself in the shadow of other pitchers.

Never a Cy Young Award winner, Schilling was runner-up three times, two of them, in 2001 and 2002, to his Arizona Diamondbacks teammate Randy Johnson, who just happened to establish himself as one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history, and he certainly showed it in both of those years as both his ERA+ and bWAR topped Schilling and everybody else. But in 2001 Schilling actually led the NL in wins with 22, one more than Johnson, against only 6 losses (a .786 winning percentage), and in innings pitched (256.2) while posting an ERA a notch under 3 (2.98) and piling up just under 300 strikeouts (293); and with only 39 walks, Schilling also led the league in strikeouts-to-walks ratio with a superlative 7.51. In 2002, Schilling picked up one more win from 2001 (23–7, .767), pitched a shade more innings (259.1), and exceeded 300 strikeouts (316)—and still took a back seat to the Big Unit. Yet because Schilling walked a measly 33 batters, he led the league not only in WHIP with 0.968 and in walks per nine innings with 1.1, but also in strikeouts-to-walks with an incredible 9.58, the fifth-best single-season mark in baseball history (and two of those marks are held by 19th-century pitcher Jim Whitney, playing in an entirely different environment from Schilling).

Even in the American League in 2004, Schilling took a back seat to the Minnesota Twins' Johan Santana although Schilling led the league in wins and winning percentage (21–6, .778), and with only 35 walks against 203 strikeouts, he again posted a league-leading strikeouts-to-walks ratio of 5.80, human but still excellent.

But Schilling shone on the big stage of the postseason, taking a back seat to no-one since Christy Mathewson. He even engendered some modern-day mythology with the famous "bloody sock" of Game Six of the 2004 American League Championship Series, a seven-game series that saw the New York Yankees win the first three games, including the opener against a hobbled Schilling, only to watch the Boston Red Sox battle back to win the last four games—the only time in a baseball seven-game series that the feat has ever occurred. In Yankee Stadium for Game Six, Schilling, pitching atop a hastily-repaired ankle that soon began to bleed through his sock, went seven innings, giving up only four hits and one run while striking out four as the Red Sox beat the Yankees and forced a Game Seven.

Schilling had helped to defeat the Yankees on the bigger stage of the World Series in 2001, as his Diamondbacks won the Series in seven games, and Schilling was named co-MVP of the Series, out of the shadow of and instead alongside co-winner Randy Johnson. We might forget that Schilling, although he lost Game One of the 1993 World Series to the Toronto Blue Jays while pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies, pitched a superb five-hit shutout in Game Five of that Series to keep the Phillies' chances alive after being down three games to one.

There are only 16 men who have struck out 3000 or more batters in their big-league careers; Schilling's 3116 ranks 15th. Every one of those pitchers eligible for the Hall of Fame has been inducted. Not that the 3000 punch-outs are a lock—Bert Blyleven, fifth on the list, had to wait 14 years before getting the call. But among active pitchers, only C.C. Sabathia has a realistic chance of reaching this milestone in the next few years while younger hurlers Felix Hernandez, Clayton Kershaw, David Price, and Justin Verlander have a lot of ground to cover before they can get close. And with just 711 walks issued in 3261 innings, Schilling owns a career strikeouts-to-walks ratio of 4.38, topped only by 19th-century pitcher Tommy Bond, meaning that Schilling's is the best mark of the much tougher modern era.

Over his career, Curt Schilling might have been overshadowed a few times in the regular season, but it was very difficult to top him in the postseason, and his overall record points only to one conclusion: He is a Hall of Famer.

3. Jeff Bagwell (third year on ballot)

The first baseman for the Houston Astros for his entire career, Jeff Bagwell has been long on my list of worthy Hall of Fame candidates, from the very beginning to my ballot assessment last year. As with Larry Walker and Tim Raines, I begin to sound like a broken record (or a sticking disc for any younger readers) making the case for the closest thing to a five-tool first baseman we have seen for a long time.

Well, maybe not a true five-tool first baseman. Bagwell's defensive capabilities have been downgraded recently—he now sports a minus-7.9 defensive bWAR, meaning that he cost his team nearly eight wins over the course of his career because of his defensive play, along with a bit more positive 12 career defensive runs saved and 31 career Total Zone runs above average. He did win a Gold Glove in his MVP year of 1994 (a strike-shortened season), but as the old saying goes, he hit well enough to earn that Gold Glove.

Bagwell is the only first baseman with at least 400 home runs and at least 200 stolen bases. He had six years with a batting average of .300 or better and finished with a .297/.408/.540 slash line. He had eight years with 30 or more home runs, and three years with 40 or more. His highest total was 47, in 2000, which coincided with the Astros' first year in Enron Field (now Minute Maid Park), a much more hitter-friendly park than their previous park, the cavernous Astrodome, in which Bagwell had played for the first nine years of his career. In 2000, 28 of those homers were hit in Enron Field. Bagwell did hit 43 home runs in 1997, with 22 of those coming in Houston, and he did hit 42 homers in 1999, although a mere 12 were hit in his last year in the Astrodome.

What we're getting at are the intimations, the insinuations, that Jeff Bagwell used PEDs at any time during his career. If he did, he was a very smart, very discreet player because he never exploded for an eye-catching number of home runs at any time during his career. In fact, he never led the league in home runs, and in the 14 full seasons in which he played, he averaged 32 home runs a season. A knock on Bagwell from another angle is that in nearly 8000 at-bats he didn't reach 500 home runs. In 1994, his fourth season and his age-26 season, Bagwell hit 39 home runs as he began his peak years; by 2004, he had dropped to 27 homers in his age-36 season (and 18 of those were hit at the friendly confines of Minute Maid Park) as age and injuries slowed him; he limped through the 2005 season, long enough to make his only World Series appearance, before retiring.

Unless evidence emerges that can identify Jeff Bagwell as having used PEDs at any time during his career, his exclusion from the Hall of Fame exemplifies the witch-hunt mentality that has engulfed baseball, as I detailed in Part 1 of this series. Lacking that evidence, not voting Jeff Bagwell into the Hall of Fame is an embarrassment to say the least. And I will say only the least.

2. Roger Clemens (first year on ballot)

The other side of the steroids coin from Jeff Bagwell is Roger Clemens, whose name was splashed all over the Mitchell Report as a PEDs user (while making trainer Brian McNamee's name a near-household one); who came off as surly, defensive, and unconvincing in a 2008 60 Minutes interview; and who faced prosecution no less than twice by no less than the federal government as its first attempt ended in a 2011 mistrial (because of prosecutorial misconduct), and the second with Clemens's 2012 acquittal on six counts of lying to Congress about his PEDs usage.

So much for the "integrity, sportsmanship, and character" terms of Rule Five of the Baseball Writers' Association of America's (BBWAA) election rules for Hall of Fame voting, right? Well, what about his playing record?

Similar to attempts with Barry Bonds's record to split the "clean" player from the "PEDs" player, trying to determine what—and even whether any—part of Clemens's playing record is issue-free could be like trying to split the atom: It will wind up being explosive with radioactive fallout in any case. Cut loose at the end of the 1996 season by the Boston Red Sox after enduring only one of two losing seasons in his 24-year career, a 10­13 win-loss record with a 3.63 ERA, Clemens regrouped with the Toronto Blue Jays. (In 1993, Clemens was 11–14 with a 4.46 ERA, and in his final season, 2007, he went 6–6 with a 4.18 ERA.)

In his age-34 season, Clemens clinched the AL pitching Triple Crown with 21 wins (against only 7 losses for a .750 winning percentage), a 2.05 ERA, and 292 strikeouts; he also posted a rarefied 222 ERA+ and otherworldly 11.6 bWAR. Clemens merely repeated the feat in 1998, leading the AL with 20 wins (against only 6 losses for a .769 winning percentage), a 2.65 ERA, and 271 strikeouts, generating a more mortal, though no less impressive, 174 ERA+ and 7.8 bWAR. Needless to say, he walked away with the Cy Young Award in both seasons, his fourth and at-the-time record-breaking fifth awards. (We should note that both Randy Johnson, in 1997, and Pedro Martinez, in 1998, were close on Clemens's heels in performance if not in votes.)

Was 1997 when Clemens began taking PEDs, if in fact he did? Certainly, the record of his last 11 seasons, from 1997 to 2007, his age-34 to age-44 seasons, when he pitched for the Blue Jays, the New York Yankees, and the Houston Astros, is proportionally identical to the record of his first 13 seasons, from 1984 to 1996, all with Boston, as this table illustrates.

Roger Clemens's Career Record, by Seasonal Grouping

Seasons

W–L (Pct.)

ERA

GS

IP

SO

ERA+

bWAR

1984–1996

192–111 (.634)

3.06

382

2776

2590

144

77.7

1997–2007

162-73 (.689)

3.21

325

2140.2

2082

140

55.4

Totals

354–184 (.658)

3.12

707

4916.2

4672

143

133.1

 
GS = Games started; IP = Innings pitched; SO = Strikeouts


In those last 11 seasons, Clemens won the Cy Young Award four times, adding to the three times in his first 13 seasons.

Nolan Ryan was a freak of nature, a legendarily hard thrower who pitched until he was 46. In his age-34 season, Ryan too won an ERA title and posted an ERA+ of 195, the highest rating of his 27-year career. Yet in the succeeding 12 seasons, Ryan established an ERA+ of 140 or above only twice, and he was a near- or below-league-average pitcher, meaning an ERA+ of 110 or lower, seven times despite winning another ERA title and leading the league in strikeouts for four consecutive seasons, including 301 in 239.1 innings in 1989 at the age of 42.

By contrast, Clemens posted a near-league-average ERA+ only three times following his age-34 season but generated an ERA+ of 140 or higher four times during that period, including a career-high 226 in 2005, when he led the majors in ERA with 1.87, and a 194 ERA+ the following year when he posted a 2.30 ERA, albeit in just 113.1 innings.

Had Roger Clemens called it quits after the 1996 season, he would have had conceivably a Hall of Fame career. His win total, eight shy of 200, might not have looked impressive, ranking 136th instead of his being ninth among the 24 members of the 300-win club. His bWAR of 77.7 would have ranked 21st all-time among pitchers, just ahead of Hall of Famers Bob Gibson, Ferguson Jenkins, and Nolan Ryan, and just below Hall of Famer Pud Galvin, the 19th-century pitcher who was reputedly among the earliest PEDs users. He would still be tenth in ERA+ with 144, while he would have to settle for 26th on the all-time strikeouts list instead of his spot as the man with the third-highest number of career strikeouts in baseball history.

But he didn't call it quits, and he and Barry Bonds, the most dominant hitter of the last 30 years as Clemens was one of the most dominant pitchers of the last 30 years—unlike Bonds, who has no equal, Clemens faced competition from Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, and, at least for a stretch, Pedro Martinez as the era's greatest pitcher—epitomize the sorry, squalid state that Major League Baseball now finds itself in, officiously trying to enforce morality in a morally ambiguous environment, like Captain Renault in Rick's Café Americain, declaring that he is "shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on in here!"—even as he pockets his own winnings from the gambling tables in Casablanca.

Hell, Roger Clemens just as a Red Sox is a better pitcher than Catfish Hunter, Herb Pennock, or Early Wynn, pitchers the writers have voted to enshrine in the Hall in previous decades. He is a better pitcher than Jack Morris, whom the writers seem likely to enshrine this year in part because he is not Roger Clemens. But Clemens should be enshrined all the same, although I will be "shocked, shocked" if he is this year or even the next.

1. Barry Bonds (first year on ballot)

Should Barry Bonds not be elected to the Hall of Fame, either this year or in subsequent years, there would be a perverse symmetry in that the all-time leader in home runs joins the all-time leader in hits, Pete Rose, on the curb outside Cooperstown, looking in. And that both situations reflect both personal and institutional failings.

In Pete Rose's case, it might seem hard to blame institutional failing for his lifetime ban from baseball. The proscriptions and the penalties for gambling were explicit and unambiguous when he decided to begin betting on baseball games while still an active player; he was caught, and has remained ineligible for the Hall of Fame ever since. By contrast, the proscriptions and penalties for using PEDs were not explicit and unambiguous, at least not until they were defined by 2005, and that has put Barry Bonds and all other PEDs users, or suspected users, into a legal and moral No Man's Land; furthermore, while it might ultimately have remained a personal failing for Bonds and any other player to have chosen to use PEDs, that adds up to a lot of personal failings—and at what point does that become a reflection on the institution itself?

Because that institution, Major League Baseball, could very well find itself without its all-time hits leader and all-time home run leader represented in its own shrine to legacy excellence, the Hall of Fame. (Or its only seven-time Cy Young Award winner, Roger Clemens, and other notable individuals described above.) Regardless of personal failing, that is also an institutional failing. Does the sport attract "bad apples," ones who nevertheless rise to the top of the profession, and are tolerated, or at least unrecognized, until they transgress? Or does the sport foster the environment in which "good apples" can nevertheless be tempted to go bad? Perhaps that reflects the fact that men can be paid millions of dollars a year for excelling at a child's game while the teams that employ them can compel municipalities to subsidize the considerable cost of building the ballparks in which they play—that's called welfare—and then charge admission to everyone in those municipalities who wants to see them play.

We are drifting off into an area that starts to fall outside the scope of this article and of this website, but it does underlie the entire rationale of professional sports. For our purposes, it does highlight the institutional nature of the PEDs problem. Time and again, players have noted that their decision to use PEDs, or at least the temptation to use them, stemmed from the intense competition and the knowledge that they could be easily replaced, either by players who are better or who are willing to take PEDs to become better. That speaks to the conditions inherent in the workplace—in other words, institutional factors. (And, yes, skeptics will wonder, who forced these men to have to play baseball for a living?)

Furthermore, it also speaks to the question of "integrity" that Chad Murphy, Dale Murphy's son, has broached with his plea to reward his father and other like players for, in essence, being nice guys who played fair, were actively involved in community and charitable affairs, were ambassadors for the game of baseball, and who otherwise also fulfilled the other two "morals" terms of Rule Five of the BBWAA's election rules: "sportsmanship" and "character." Were those terms earnestly applied to every inductee in the Hall, that Hall would empty in a hurry, taking Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Gaylord Perry, and who knows how many more players with them.

(It is intriguing to note that this year the Pre-Integration Era Committee inducted one player among the three inductees it chose: James "Deacon" White, an excellent barehanded catcher who in the 19th century also stood apart from his rough-and-tumble contemporaries as a churchgoing teetotaler—hence the nickname "Deacon." Without putting too fine a point on it, White's closest player competition on the ballot was "Bad Bill" Dahlen—you could hardly find a better example of "good versus evil" nicknames, if not actual character; ironically, Dahlen's nickname derived from his arguing style with umpires when, near the end of his playing days, he managed for four years, the first two as a player-manager; otherwise, Dahlen was regarded as a quiet ballplayer who kept to himself. Meanwhile, Deacon White reputedly believed that the earth was flat; nowhere in the rules does it say anything about intelligence or gullibility.)

In one sense, this all seems to boil down to the hoary platitude that professional athletes are supposed to be "role models." One would have thought that the squalid saga of O.J. Simpson, and more recently (and more appropriately) that of Lance Armstrong, would have put paid to that idea. And as Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson once put it so incisively, "Why do I have to be an example for your kid? You be an example for your own kid." But as the overarching theme of this two-part series emphasizes, this year's Hall of Fame vote is indeed a referendum on PEDs users, and that ultimately means a referendum on cheating.

In case you think we have drifted away from the evaluation of Barry Bonds, we haven't. Divorced from how his career statistics were derived, Bonds is ridiculously qualified for the Hall of Fame, and you don't need me to elaborate. (And exercises such as determining whether the "clean" Bonds had Hall-worthy credentials before the "steroids" Bonds appeared are laudable if pointless ones—as we saw with Roger Clemens, voters are not going to elect half a player.) Moreover, as I pointed out in Part 1 of this series, the BBWAA has already made its pronouncement of Bonds (and to an extent Clemens), and it is unambiguously positive: The BBWAA named Bonds the National League's Most Valuable Player in four consecutive years—and those years, 2001 to 2004, were right when the entire PEDs issue was heating to a boil. This is after the BBWAA had named Bonds the MVP in three previous seasons, giving Bonds an unprecedented seven MVP Awards.

Coupled with Clemens's unprecedented seven Cy Young Awards, including those awarded in 2001 and in 2004, this is also why this year's ballot is a referendum on performance-enhancing drugs: Bonds was the most dominant hitter of his era, and Clemens was one of the most dominant pitchers of his era. Period. Their career numbers place them among the best players ever to have played baseball. Period. However, their use of PEDs—alleged, accused, denied, partially proved and partially disproved on narrowly technical grounds (much like O.J. Simpson's murder charge)—and the backlash, the moral dudgeon, against PEDs usage will prevent them from being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, at least this year. Period.

To which I say: bunk. You evaluate the baseball you have, not the baseball you wish you had. Had I a ballot for this year's election, these would be my top ten votes, followed by the four I would vote for were there the ability to do so.


Postscript: The Sound and the Fury

With apologies to two Williams, Shakespeare and Faulkner, all I have done here is add my shout to the torrent of voices arguing vociferously across the range of opinion on this year's vote. It is indeed a sound and fury signifying nothing more than the attempt to influence the voters of the BBWAA who will decide which candidate or candidates—if any—are elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2013.

Regardless of how the vote emerges this year, neither the overstuffed ballot nor the controversy over players who might have used PEDs will disappear; both topics will continue to provoke heated discussions as more qualified candidates become eligible for the Hall in upcoming years—including those with associations with steroids.

This in turn will continue to generate sound and fury from those of us who, like with the game itself, are spectators in the stands. We can cheer, and we can boo, and we can simply watch and wonder, but in the end we have to accept the call no matter how we feel about it.

And perhaps some years in the future, we will look back at this historic, tumultuous period in baseball's history and its initial assessment of this era's legacy and exclaim, "Wasn't that a time!"
Last modified on Thursday, 22 March 2018 01:56

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