Hall of Fame voting

The annual Baseball Hall of Fame voting has taken place, kicking the new season into gear with the typical controversies over who did and who didn’t get in. This year’s primary bone of contention is the candidacy of Jim Rice, who failed for the 14th time to be voted in by the writers. You’ll find articles decrying his failure all over the sports websites and, also, articles expressing relief that he was not included. It causes one to think about what the criterion should be for attaining to membership in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I’d like to think that the writers take this process seriously, and most probably do. A vote for a Todd Stottlemyre gives me pause and is a clue that some of these guys have no business with a vote. The Old-Timers committee has inducted some players I wouldn’t have included in my Hall. Allow me to explain how players SHOULD be determined to be Hall-worthy or not…in my opinion, that is. The writers would be wise to consider the following: amounts, rates, context of achievements, special accomplishments, extenuating circumstances/information and the regard of his peers.

AMOUNTS are the easiest of statistics to compare. How many hits, homeruns, RBI and etc. for a hitter. How many wins, strikeouts, shutouts and etc. for a pitcher. One of Rice’s counting stats is his 382 homeruns. Lets begin with a comparison with Rice and two other similar players based on career homeruns and consider all three of them by the aforementioned several criteria:

Jim Rice – 382 HR (16 seasons, 2089 games) – not in the HOF
Frank Howard – 382 HR (16 seasons, 1895 games) - not in the HOF
Johnny Bench – 389 HR (17 seasons, 2158 games) – in the HOF

Of these three players, Rice is first in RBI, runs and total bases. Bench is second and Howard third in all instances. Rice also leads in triples and hits. Bench is the leader in walks and stolen bases (!) and doubles. Howard leads in strikeouts. Based just on these statistics, one would say that “if Bench is in the Hall, so should Rice be included. Howard? Maybe, maybe not.”

But there are more counting stats. For instance, the famous intentional bases on balls. There are four basic reasons a player gets walked intentionally. First, because he is the eighth batter in a National League lineup and the pitcher bats next. If the eighth batter is good with men on base (and there are men on base), you go ahead and walk him to face the pitcher. Maybe the opposing manager will then take out the pitcher for a pinch-hitter and so on, but anyway that is why a shortstop with a lifetime batting average of .257 (Leo Cardenas) was intentionally walked 99 times in a six-year span between 1964 and 1969. Second, you walk a left-hander to get to a right-hander (or vice-versa) with men on base but first base open. Third, you walk a guy with men on base because you are afraid to face that batter and feel better about putting him on to face the next guy in line no matter what the platoon advantage might be. Fourth, with first base open you walk a guy to set up the easy double play or to load the bases to have a force at each base no matter which way he bats.

That being said, a mediocre batter may be walked from time to time to fit into scenario one, two and four. The most dangerous hitters get additional intentional walks in scenario three. So you cannot compare the intentional walk totals of a 3-4-5 hitter with an 8th batter and come to any conclusions. But, when you compare 3-4-5 batters, then the primary difference in their IBB totals will be the respect/fear they engender in the opposition. Since one of the primary arguments for Jim Rice is that he was such a “feared” hitter, let’s compare intentional walk totals:

Bench – 135
Howard – 135
Rice – 77

I was struck by the fact that Howard, in his four-year period of dominance (1967-1970) was intentionally walked 80 times, more than Rice in his entire career! From 1972-75, Bench was intentionally walked 64 times, even though that meant the pitcher would then face Tony Perez. Rice was never walked more than 10 times intentionally in a season and no more than 28 times in any 4-year span. Now, Frank Howard was a 6-7, 250 plus pound intimidating monster of a first baseman/outfielder. But the 6’2” 205 pound Rice and the 6’1” 208 pound Bench were about the same size. Yet pitchers were far more reluctant to face Bench with the game on the line based on the IBB totals. Big edge here to Howard and Bench over Rice.

Then we have walk totals altogether.

Bench – 891
Howard – 782
Rice – 670.

Neither Bench nor Howard are famed for their strike zone judgment. But obviously both of them were more willing to be patient and take an unintentional walk than Rice. Patience and strike zone judgment are helpful to an offense. A player who prefers to swing away misses opportunities to get on base and score runs. But impatience and imprudence at bat leads to another thing: double plays. The smart player tries to hit to the right side with a man on first and less than two out or, he seeks to get on base via a walk. If a right-handed hitter pulls the ball on the ground in those situations (and all three of these players are right-handed hitters), then a double play is likely to ensue and a potential rally is killed. They call the double-play grounder the “pitcher’s friend.” Who was friendliest to pitchers out of these three players?

Bench – 201 GIDP
Howard – 219 GIDP
Rice – 315 GIDP

Howard was a huge 6’7” guy, and famously slow. Bench was a catcher not noted for his speed. Rice was surely the fastest of the three and yet he is 6th all-time in grounding into double plays! The mind boggles to consider that Rice is 165th in games played but 6th in GIDP. This means he was a consistent rally-killer for his team above and beyond the norm and frankly leads one to conclude that he was a selfish, RBI-oriented hitter who did not hit situationally.

Finally, let us consider outs. Batters seek to get walks and hits and runs and avoid outs.

Howard - 4992
Bench – 5955
Rice – 6221

Rice twice led the league in outs. Bench and Howard never came close to doing that. So now we begin to get a fuller picture of Jim Rice, a guy who produced a lot of positive stats, but also lots of corresponding negative stats that hinder an offense.

Also in amounts we include the amount of league leaderships in various categories. Baseball-reference.com presents a leaderboard for each season and also for each player. There are only three negative categories (outs, GIDP and strikeouts) among the thirty categories listed on a player’s career page. Here are the league leaderships for the three players:

Rice – 26 positive (5 triple crown cats) and 7 negative
Bench – 14 positive (5 triple crown cats) and 0 negative
Howard – 11 positive (3 triple crown cats) and 3 negative

Here Rice shows well, having led in 23 categories in the years 1977-79 to accumulate 26 overall.

AMOUNT CONCLUSION: There is far more than first meets the eye about accumulated statistics. Rice has the biggest positives and the biggest negatives among the three. More information is needed!

RATES of the accumulated stats are quite important because it is necessary to understand the quality of the player’s contributions beyond simply the totals. Batting average, on-base percentages and slugging average are simple means of measuring the rates of batting accomplishment. Often, on-base plus slugging (OPS) is used as a simple tool to combine the averages.

Rice - .298 batting average/.352 OBP/.502 SLG
Howard - .273 BA/.352 OBP/.499 SLG
Bench - .267 BA/.342 OBP/.476 SLG

Rice - .854 OPS
Howard - .851 OPS
Bench - .818

CONTEXT: we cannot look too deeply into rates without looking into context, which will also cause us to take a look back at amounts. Students of the game know that there have been times when hitting .400 was almost necessary to win a batting title, and times when .301 would be enough. There were times when 12 homeruns would lead the league and other times when hitting 60 wouldn’t guarantee leadership. A player’s accomplishments must be viewed in the context of the time and league and ballparks and opponents that were a part of his baseball world.

Baseball-reference has a nifty tool by which they can convert a player’s statistics to the average league climate for hitting and pitching since 1900. They call the result translated stats. The translations put all careers into an environment of 162-game seasons with the average team scoring 4.42 runs per game. Here are the OPS totals for the three players when translated:

Howard - .906
Rice - .853
Bench - .848

You can see that Rice played in a time of close to average offensive production, while Bench and especially Howard reflect playing all or part of their careers in the modern dead-ball era, which depressed their batting accomplishments. In a translated world, Bench would drive in the most runs, Howard hit the most home runs and Rice would continue to lead in batting average.

Adjusted OPS+ is another more sophisticated measure of offensive production put into the context of all leagues, teams, players and ballparks since 1900. By this measure, the men rank as follows, with 100 meant to express the average:

Howard – 142
Rice – 128
Bench – 126

So the above is a rate statistic. One sees that by either translated OPS or adjusted OPS+, Frank Howard jumps to the front with Rice and Bench in almost a dead heat, a notch below in effectiveness. Howard had the misfortune to have his prime years coincide with the worst of the deadball era of 1963-68, which depressed his statistics greatly. Some all-time greats like Hank Aaron and Willie Mays and Frank Robinson produced awesome numbers despite enduring this era and Howard’s accomplishments pale somewhat alongside theirs. Bench began his career at the tail-end of the dead-ball era and this hurt his numbers a bit. Rice, overall, was just slightly helped by his time frame but very slightly.

ACHIEVEMENTS, ACCOMPLISHMENTS, AWARDS, AND OTHER STUFF

We now look at how the player was regarded by his peers and award voters, his other awards and accomplishments and other things such as innovations brought to the game and whether he was considered the best player at his position or in his league for a period of time. Dominance over a short time or excellence over a longer time are both helpful to the cause of a candidate for the HOF. Other considerations like base-running and fielding and the difficulty of the position played are major considerations apart from batting.

Johnny Bench broke the record (since broken again) for homeruns for a catcher and most consecutive seasons of 120 or more games caught and 100 or more games caught. He was awarded two NL MVP awards and one World Series MVP, was the 1968 Rookie of the Year, was a 14-time all-star, collected 10 Gold Gloves, the 1970 Player-of-the-Year, the 1975 Lou Gehrig Award, the 1976 NL Babe Ruth Award and the 1981 Major League Hutch Award. He was widely considered the best catcher in all of baseball for several years and has been named the top catcher of all-time on various post-war and 20th century Major League All-Time teams. “The General”, as his teammates called him, is the only one of these three players who is in the Hall and he was a first-ballot, near unanimous inductee. His high doubles totals and steals, for a catcher, indicate a smart base-runner who got what he could from his speed. His lower GIDP totals are typical of a slugger who was willing to hit the ball to right field with a man on first and less than two outs.

Bench introduced an improved catcher’s chest protector. He popularized the wearing of a batting helmet behind the plate and the one-handed catching style that helped him avoid broken fingers on his throwing hand. He was considered to have the best throwing arm among major league catchers for several years. In fact, in postseason play Bench himself stole six bases in 45 games while all the opposition players combined managed to steal only seven against him.

In short, Bench as a batter alone has a case for the Hall of Fame, although a tenuous one. However, the positional value of being a catcher, the additional value of being an excellent defender and the additional factor the general acclaim by his peers and the voters of his time convert him into a sure thing who certainly belongs in the Hall.

CONCLUSION

We know that Bench is already a member of the Hall of Fame and as we delved into his career we can understand why that was a good choice. How about Howard and Rice?

By amounts alone, Rice has a case for the HOF, although there are some negative amounts that call that into question. Howard is a bit shorter on the amount scale. By rates, taken into context, Howard has the stronger case for his batting accomplishments and one then wonders whether people should have been more concerned about his candidacy.

However, we then look into the additional factors. Frank Howard was the NL Rookie of the Year in 1960 and made 4 all-star teams. That is emblematic of a good, not great, player. He was not a good base-runner and was, in fact, one of the slowest players in the major leagues during his tenure, making him less valuable as a base-runner. He was considered one of the strongest, if not the strongest, man in baseball for much of his career, which was good to know during a baseball brawl but otherwise adds little to his candidacy.

Howard was a below-average fielder at first base and the outfield. He did not play a premium position and where he did play, he was well below average in terms of range and sure-handedness. He was a designated hitter before his time, a guy who hurt you in the field and on the bases and his one big ability was to hit a baseball long and hard. He didn’t do that either long enough or hard enough to reach the level of great, in my opinion. He remains a better than average slugger who had a few seasons in which he was very valuable.

Jim Rice did win one MVP award and was an 8-time all-star. However, he also fits the Howard pattern to a great extent. He was not a good base-runner. He was a slightly-below average fielder in the outfield. His one good attribute, throwing runners out on the basepaths, was in part due to his reputation for not having a great arm or being quick to chase balls down in the outfield. So runners took chances on his arm and sometimes he would get them. That was good for his teams. But his below-average range and fielding percentages were not. Considering that he didn’t play a premium defensive position, he is then going to have to depend entirely on his bat to make the Hall.

Jim Rice is easily as good as at least five or six current members of the Hall of Fame. He would not be a detriment to the Hall. He would simply be another case of voters lowering their standards to take in someone who bordered on greatness rather than achieved to greatness. Rice wound up playing about one-fourth of his games as a designated hitter, yet another indication that he falls short of Hall-worthiness. In my book, an undisciplined hitter who was average or below average at every phase of the game other than swinging a bat would need to be a dominant hitter for many years to justify his inclusion into a membership designed for the truly great.

You want a great hitter who wasn’t much on defense or on the bases? Frank Thomas will be that guy. Currently with 513 homeruns, his adjusted OPS+ is 157 and his translated OPS is .978. Now THAT is what I mean when I talk about excellence. I think that compounding the mistake of electing Tony Perez by electing someone else like him is a mistake. Perez? He had a translated OPS of .828 (much lower than the three men we’ve been considering) and an adjusted OPS+ of 122 (also below the other three). If you believe that anyone better than Perez should be voted in, well, then Rice is for you. But if you believe, as I do, that we have to quit putting the Tony Perez-types in the Hall and limit it to the truly special like Frank Thomas and Johnny Bench, then you will be very glad to see Rice miss again next year.

As Posted at the Fantasy Lounge, where fantasy sports players find their games...