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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Former outfielder Sammy Sosa will soon announce his retirement, and says he’ll be waiting for the call to the Hall of Fame despite rumors of steroid use, ESPN reported on Wednesday.
“Everything I achieved, I did it thanks to my perseverance, which is why I never had any long, difficult moments [as a baseball player]. If you have a bad day in baseball, and start thinking about it, you will have ten more.
“I will calmly wait for my induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Don’t I have the numbers to be inducted?,” Sosa told ESPN.
heh!
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Personally I'd put him in on peak.
However, I think the voters will make him wait due to the steroid rumours and corked bat incident.
Sosa's peak was not legendary, I don't think - 160/151/161/203/160 OPS+ from '98 to '02, one really massive year surrounded by what are typical All-Star/MVP-caliber seasons but not historic seasons. VORP, for example, has his MLB/NL rankings in those years as 13/7, 19/10, 11/5, 2/2*, 18/10. That's not the stuff of legends.
*Feels unfair that he's second that year only to Barry Bonds supermegamonster campaign.
It is people like that who have made the term SDCN so perfectly descriptive.
FWIW, I would love to see the marketing campaign for The Hall of Super VORPY-NESS, presumably designed by the combined business school faculties of MIT and Cal Tech.
Disagree.
That change in approach was widely credited at the time to Jeff Pentland, and Sosa stuck with it through five extremely productive seasons. And while that may not have been the only reason Sosa became an elite hitter that year, it was crucial, and it seems much harder to attribute to purported steroid use than, say, his bulked-up arms.
By the recent standards of the Hall of Fame, I certainly agree. 600+ HR, 1600+ RBI, 1 MVP (and 6 other top 10 finishes), 7 ASG, and seasons with 66, 63, 50, and 64 HRs. Assuming that the writers don't decide that he used PEDs, he should go in easily.
Disagree.
On what basis do you say this? Is it because he shouldn't be a first ballot selection (based on your personal standards), or that he wouldn't be a first ballot selection (based on what the Hall has done to previous candidates with over 600 home runs)? Which is it? Or is it both?
And how much do you think that steroids will play into the actual HoF vote? How much will that cloud of suspicion (which at this point is nothing more than that) hurt him? Will that cloud be enough to put him under 75%? And without that cloud of suspicion, how many writers would really be likely not to vote for a player with 609 career home runs?
I think Sosa is a clear first ballot Hall of Famer both in deed and in practice.
However, I think EVERY player who is under any cloud of suspicion is going to be kept out. Sosa, Clemens, Bonds, every single one of 'em, regardless of qualification isn't getting in on a BBWAA vote. That Sosa has never had a meaningful accusation against him is irrelevant to these morons, he "fits the profile" so he's out.
Even for peak alone, I'm not sure I'd take Sosa 98-02 over Raines 83-87.
We've been through that with Bonds. The roid cavalry tells us that steroids (or HGH) helps the eyesight.
Well, there's that guy who wouldn't vote for Rickey, those guys who always return an empty ballot, and those guys who refuse to vote for anyone on the first ballot because there's never a player as good as those in the original Hall class.
That's about it.
And BTW I do remember that thread (and a similar one about McGwire, though it may not have been a HoM discussion), but I didn't remember the names of the people who took part in it, other than Dial. It was one of the few times that I ever agreed with Dial on anything relating to Mark McGwire.
FWIW I see Sosa (minus that cloud of suspicion) as a slam dunk HoFer by traditional BBWAA standards. Players with 600 dingers don't usually get their stats analyzed much beyond that by the writers. But like you, I also see him as a less than slam dunk HoM candidate. Meaning I'd vote for him, but he's far from inner circle.
I would, and Batting Wins sez it's not close: 27.5 to 18.7, favour Sammy. Raines was great, high average, lotsa stolen bases, etc. But a guy who hits 'em out again and again and again is gonna help your offense, too.
However, I think EVERY player who is under any cloud of suspicion is going to be kept out. Sosa, Clemens, Bonds, every single one of 'em, regardless of qualification isn't getting in on a BBWAA vote. That Sosa has never had a meaningful accusation against him is irrelevant to these morons, he "fits the profile" so he's out.
I think you're right about this: writers like to prove that they're so much smarter and more moral than the rest of us, so they'll take it out on a whole generation of players. Hell, eventually hitting home runs may actually become a detriment to a player's Hall of Fame case. Wotta world.
I think Sosa is a clear first ballot Hall of Famer both in deed and in practice.
However, I think EVERY player who is under any cloud of suspicion is going to be kept out. Sosa, Clemens, Bonds, every single one of 'em, regardless of qualification isn't getting in on a BBWAA vote. That Sosa has never had a meaningful accusation against him is irrelevant to these morons, he "fits the profile" so he's out.
Sad, but quite possibly true.
EDIT: For those of you who don't read the comics, you missed a terrific take by Tank McNamara that ran last week on this very subject. It had an absolutely brutal take on the very morons you're referring to---the "innocent until someone else is proven guilty" crowd.
Up until recently, the 600 dinger club included guys who hit a ton of homers but would have been slam-dunk HOFers even if you turned half of the homers into singles. Hank and Willie had the 3000 hits going, with Hank a very good baserunner and defensive player and Willie being HOF level for those parts of the game themselves. Babe Ruth is a .340 hitter with one of the highest OBP's ever. Had these guys hit between 330-380 homers each, they are still going in.
Sosa is the first guy to hit 600 homers who really doesn't have anything else about him that says Hall of Fame. I'd vote for him, but if he's the first guy to hit 600 and have the writers pick his case apart, there is good reason for it. Hank, Willie, or the Babe he ain't.
Hell, you could make a reasonable argument that it already has.
Sosa is the first guy to hit 600 homers who really doesn't have anything else about him that says Hall of Fame. I'd vote for him, but if he's the first guy to hit 600 and have the writers pick his case apart, there is good reason for it. Hank, Willie, or the Babe he ain't.
I'd agree, but at bottom this is a somewhat subtle HoM style argument, one which I sincerely doubt that any critical mass of writers would ever engage in, absent that cloud of suspicion. If Sosa had the physique and perceived personality of Ernie Banks, I doubt if we'd be having this discussion.
His HOF monitor is 201. That makes him 40th all-time as of now. Every player above him is in the Hall of Fame except Pete Rose and other active/not yet eligible players. Skipping McGwire, you have to go down to 98th (Don Mattingly) to find another eligible non-HOFer. He's surrounded by Hall of Famers.
His top ten comps are all HOFers or are going to be (Griffey, Sheffield).
He's not the greatest outfielder ever to go in the Hall, but certainly he's more deserving than, say, Earl Averill (or to pick a BBWAA pick, Jim Rice.)
Because 600 HRs is basically his case, so the question is if 600 HR are as instructive with him as they are for others.
His HOF monitor is 201.
Whoopty-do. That's will, not should, and the HR greatly impact this as well.
His top ten comps are all HOFers or are going to be (Griffey, Sheffield).
Color me unsurprised that a guy with 600 HR, no matter what else he did (someone want to run comps for fictional guy X with 600 HRs, a .250 average, 1300 RBI, etc?) has as his best comps HOFers. It still doesn't mean that guy deserves to go if there are other arguments against.
Well, for a while, he did have the perceived personality of Ernie Banks. Even Cubs fans seem to forget how adored he was during that peak...
He's a HOFer in my mind, and while he's not a pantheon player, he's not marginal.
Well, for a while, he did have the perceived personality of Ernie Banks. Even Cubs fans seem to forget how adored he was during that peak...
I would think it was obvious I was talking about his perception today, not back when he Helped Save Baseball.
1) Absolute no on anyone proven
2) Ignore the issue completely
3) ?
The sheer number of players with real evidence of steroid use precludes ignoring it completely. But the fact that most of those players were caught because of connections to specific people mean that our "sample" of steroid users is biased, and there are almost certainly many players who were using but were not caught. So that, in my mind, precludes only demeriting those who were caught.
What do you do? I think it is reasonable to adjust everyone's qualifications, especially among the pure power hitters. It may be presuming guilt, but this isn't a courtroom and we're not talking about locking him up. 600 home runs isn't 600 home runs anymore. And without that, Sammy becomes a great power hitter, but not a fantastic one. His war is 59, which is marginal to begin with anyway. I think he should go in, but I don't think it's slam dunk.
Its been argued to death around here, so most people don't even want to discuss it. Feel free, and there will be some people who are glad to discuss. Just giving a reason why so many people are pretty flippant about it.
Plus about 660 more BB in almost the same PA, and while neither were good fielders, Killebrew's willingness to move around helped his team. OPS+ isn't everything, but non-HOF eligible players at over 140 and almost 10K PA are kinda scarce. Put Killebrew's OPS+ at the Sosa-era league avg and K's OPS climbs from 884 to about 930, and OBP 40 points above Sammy. And I'd vote for Sosa without reservation, assuming no "real" PED shockers come to light.
Wouldn't the "slightly" more (I hope) statistically astute voters nowadays be more likely to look past the low BA - probably the chief issue against Killebrew - and put one like him in the Hall 1st or 2nd ballot?
What do you do? I think it is reasonable to adjust everyone's qualifications, especially among the pure power hitters. It may be presuming guilt, but this isn't a courtroom and we're not talking about locking him up. 600 home runs isn't 600 home runs anymore. And without that, Sammy becomes a great power hitter, but not a fantastic one. His war is 59, which is marginal to begin with anyway. I think he should go in, but I don't think it's slam dunk.
IMO that's the worst of all possible worlds, for two reasons:
First, it's a one size fits all solution, which makes about as much sense as punishing an entire classroom because one person put a stink bomb in the vent. The fact that in this case it likely was more than one person in the "classroom" doesn't affect the unfair effect on those who are innocent.
Second, because it gives the power of micro-adjusting statistics to a group of people---i.e. human beings---who are supremely unqualified to undertake such an endeavor, when they have no idea of the actual effects of steroids on production. And that doesn't even address the questions of distinguishing between the truly guilty and the truly not guilty, or the differing effects of steroids on different players, or the differing effects of unknown differing amounts of doses over unknown stretches of time. There are simply way too many unknown factors.
Most of us can agree that all things being equal, steroids have a positive PE effect on production, which raises the moral issue regarding those players who chose to use them. And depending on how you might view the moral issue, you may or may not choose to disqualify known juicers from HoF considerations.
Or if you're reasonably certain you know when a player juiced, you might also want to discard those seasons and still vote him into the Hall on the basis of other seasons. Best case in point: Bonds.
But spare us the pretense that we can quantify any of this in any one size fits all manner, or in any manner at all. That's just hubris of the highest order. Not even Einstein would have the cranial capacity to do this.
If you want to "discount" an era in a much fairer manner, all you have to do is to do what the HoM does for evaluating players from the late 20's/early 30's, or from the late 60's: Compare the player's stat line to the average stat line of his time. That would likely have a negative impact on Sosa (and others as well), but it wouldn't be predicated on steroid guilt by association games. It would be no worse than normalizing Bill Terry's .401 BA in 1930 to compare it to Carl Yastrzemski's .301 BA in 1968.
But the anti-steroid reaction in baseball has been strongly linked to the homerun (at least aside from Clemens). McGwire's taken the brunt of the HOF voter's wrath so far, but Palmeiro, Bonds and Sosa will probably take some too.
I just wish they would use their ballots to honor the great players who didn't make their cases by hitting homers in the meantime - Blyleven, Raines, Trammell, and let Larkin and Alomar in on the first ballot like they deserve.
Maybe because I was a sneaky little cuss as a kid, and I only got caught at a small % of things. I suspect that Sosa used his corked bat more than "once" and who knows what other cheats he is guilty of (yes, including PEDs). I always felt he was a big phony to boot (just a gut feel) and the corked bat and later "behavioral revelations" fit my preconceived notions of him. That said, short of major PED proof, I'd have to reluctantly vote him in. That peak is enough, IMO.
35, 26, 30, 42, 27, 22
The rule of thumb is that a 30-WS season is generally MVP-contender level. And obviously 42 is a great, great year.
For his career, Sosa has 325 Win Shares. That's not inner-circle, but it's way over the borderline.
Translation: The stats you use are stupid, and the stats I use are teh awesome.
Was his 5 year peak any better than Jim Edmonds'?
Edmonds' five best seasons (which came within the six-year span of 2000-05) by Win Shares:
36, 30, 29, 29, 28
Not quite as high a peak as Sosa's, but certainly comparable. And Edmonds has 301 career WS, also quite close to Sosa.
For my money they're both HOFers.
It's more like "the stats you use don't convey the full picture nearly as well as you'd like to believe."
His greatness comes from swatting about 350 more homers than an average player would have hit in his place, and that's a huge thing, should be enough to deserve election.
It's not hard to imagine case where Sammy could have hit 600 homers and not deserve election. He was a great all-around hitter during his peak, but what if he got those homers while hitting .250 every year? (like Andruw Jones' 50 homer year). If he had done that, I don't think he'd be deserving, steroids or not.
Yeah, but Sosa was hitting .290-to-.320 during his peak run. So while it's fair to say that one can imagine a case where a player could have hit 600 homers and not deserve election, Sosa wasn't that player.
If, I don't know, Chris Davis or somebody hits 40 HRs a year for 15 years while putting up a lousy BA and OBP, then that could be a case of a non-HOF-worthy 600-HR career. But nothing like that has yet occurred; the closest case we have is Kingman with 442. The issue is that 600 home runs is a gargantuan total of home runs, even in the "steroid era" or the "juiced ball era" or whatever pejorative we choose to hang on it. 600 home runs delivers a ton a value.
I really don't see how 600 HRs makes someone a slam dunk Hall of Famer. It implies a sensitivity not only to a player's performance, and to the distribution of that performance over a career--both of which are obviously legitimate--but to the particular shape of that performance. So, for instance, if Sosa had hit 450 HR, but had enough extra singles, walks, and doubles such that he was just as valuable a hitter in any given year, he would somehow be less deserving of induction? I mean, I know that actual Hall voters sometimes fall back on arbitrary benchmarks like that, but that is just because they are using such benchmarks as a proxy for the player's value, which we now can measure much more accurately.
EDIT: By the way, I am not saying that it is crazy to think that Sosa is a legitimate Hall of Famer. If he was actually a terrific fielder as well, then he is probably over the in/out line. But I just don't think it's obvious that a corner outfielder with the same OPS+ as John Olerud is deserving. Also, I obviously owe AROM a coke.
Sosa was actually quite fast when he first came up, and considered to be a tolerable enough fielder to play over 200 games as a CF. Based on that, and knowing that he's got a decent arm, I'm not too surprised to see him grade out as an above average RF.
I agree, we haven't seen that player yet. I know Sosa became a .400 OBP guy during his peak as well. But I only have to do a little imagining to move Sosa down to the level where he's not worthy (knock 50 points a year off the BA for 6 years) as opposed to Willie Mays, where you'd have to undo his greatness in every aspect of the game to get there.
What I'm objecting to is the dogmatic response by some that 600 homers has to be automatic.
The CW regarding the young Sosa was that he was a good defensive outfielder, but hardly great. He had the speed-and-arm tools, but never dazzled anyone with particular aptitude regarding jumps and routes. He was used in center field a fair amount, but no team ever felt comfortable leaving him there full-time. He never won a Gold Glove.
He was considered a 5-tool player, and I remember Baylor challenging him to be more like that in 2000 and 2001. By then his defense had gotten worse and his stolen base totals had dropped considerably (He stole 0 in 2001, down from a high of 36 in 1995) People forget he was a fairly good player before 1998, with OPS+ totals of 127, 121, and 126 from 1994-'96 to go along with his very good fielding. And his home run totals before 1998 were nothing to sneeze at.
EDIT: I should also note his OPS+ is dragged down by the fact that he had 1/5 of his career plate appearances before he turned 25.
I tried to make this point in the Ichiro thread and was shouted down by rabid Ichiro supporters who wanted to apply special rules for him.
Don't forget that home runs count as hits in calculating BA. If you're hitting 60 HRs in, say, 600 ABs, you'd have to hit .167 in your non-HR ABs to be only a .250 hitter.
Take Dave Kingman as an example. In his last season, he hit 35 HRs and did nothing else - batting .210 for the season, 118/561. Turn him into a 60-HR guy by turning 25 flyouts into HRs and all of a sudden Kingman's batting .255 (143/561) - not great certainly, but that's about as bad as you can probably hit if you're hitting a Sosa-level number of home runs.
He was considered toolsy, for sure, but to call him a 5-tool talent was a stretch. Until he learned to lay off the breaking ball in the dirt, he was never able to sustain a high batting average, and of course once he mastered that his speed pretty well vanished. And he was never an adept "fielder," though he ran and threw quite well.
Wrong again, as pointed out above. While not great, he was not as bad as some of his detractors here are saying in an effort to justify their position.
That's because Ichiro apparently plays it like a CF. It probably has something to do with his competitive soul fire.
Well, how about saying 600 homers puts a high burden of proof strongly on detractors to explain why he should not be in the Hall -- which, given that he was not a bad fielder, had a high peak, and he was not the .250 hitter of some people's imagination, makes that burden impossible to meet?
I'd say that sums it up pretty nicely. 600 home runs is just a gigantic total. A player would really have to work at it, Kingman-style, to make himself non-HOF-worthy while still delivering 600 taters.
It's 609 career homers. I'm stunned that there's even a hint of a question as to his numbers being Hall worthy.
600 homers is such a large amount of value that it would take a stunning amount of negative to not equal a HoF, which Sosa doesn't have.
If your metric shows that he's not a HoF, then your metric needs to be refined.
Being faster is a function of being "stronger". Being able to generate more force, more quickly, makes someone stronger and faster. As long as you are "stronger" relatively (to your bodyweight), in your lower body.
HOF elegibility is determined by last season played, so he's in that monster of a class.
Actually, it probably is right at bordeline in terms of a career argument for an outfielder. Here are some outfielders around 325 Win Shares or higher that are not in the HOF.
Da. Evans -- 363
Dawson -- 340
Staub -- 340
Sheckard -- 339
Dw. Evans -- 329
Leach -- 328
Luis Gonzalez -- 326
Reggie Smith -- 325
Pinson -- 321
Parker 310
Of that group, only Dawson will probably get in.
Here are some that are in:
Keeler -- 333
Slaughter -- 323
Roush -- 314
Hooper -- 312
Medwick -- 312
According to Win Shares, Sosa is a borderline career outfielder, but an extremely strong peak candidate, which should make him a solid HOF choice.
This is clearly one of the most important things to mention when discussing Sosa. Start Sosa's career in 1993, at the age of 24, and his line jumps all the way to a 137 OPS+ with a .354 OBP and he still has 572 HR to go with 1500+ RBI. That player is clearly HoF-worthy, and Sosa's minor league track record shows that he was pretty much thrown to the dogs as fast as possible, with little regard to his actual performance. Sosa's case on the surface suffers for the opposite reason of a guy like Edgar Martinez, but he's definitely in for me.
So ... they're either vote for him, or they won't?
I think Sosa should get in, but I don't see anything wrong with talking about the issue a little bit.
edit: I've been trying to post that for 24 hours, the site just became viewable for me again, it should have been post #11.
Sosa's career OPS+: 128
Jim Rice's career OPS+: 128
Of course, Sosa has about 800 more plate appearances, doesn't have all those GIDPs, played better defense, had a better peak, stole a ton more bases, etc.
Which means I basically agree with everyone. By the standards of the HOF, he deserves to go in. If we want to pretend that "first ballot" is a special category, he pretty clearly doesn't belong there - even with all little things, his career is too similar to Rice's to make him an inner-circle guy. But he hit more than 600 homeruns, so absent steroid hysteria would be inducted with 97% of the vote in his first year.
I've been tempted to for quite a while, but every time I put a message together with that little observation, it just felt too trollish.
Yours didn't, however, so that probably more of a problem with my writing style than anything else.
So ... they're either vote for him, or they won't?
Who knows? Check back in five years. Despite all our blustering, none of us here really have a clue about how that critical number of writers are going to frame any of these three players. For every writer who's posted his opinion on the subject, there are several who just quietly vote while we don't even have a clue that they exist.
How many of these guys have you ever heard of? (Be honest.) Every one of them is a currently eligible HoF voter. How many of them have stated their views on steroids? And how many of them will even be alive five years from now?
You're correct. I was comparing that 325 total to all players in the HOF, not just outfielders, so your comparison is more apt.
These.
Sosa had 1400+ PA from ages 20-23 where he amassed an OPS+ of 85. Those seasons are heavily weighing down his career OPS+, which keeps being thrown about. Look at his stats, just as a Cub (His non-Cub seasons account for -.8 WAR by AROM's numbers):
12 seasons, .284/.358/.569, 139 OPS+, 545 HR (45.4 a year over 12 years), 116 TotalZone
That's an easy HOFer by itself, in my opinion. I don't care that he was called up to flounder in the majors 4 years before he was ready, or he held on a couple years too long.
I commented on the Sosa-Rice comparison a few weeks ago, as follows. (DMN later pointed out something I missed -- that Sosa spent 10% of his time in CF while Rice spent 25% of his time at DH.)
Quoting a great man (myself) from post 29 of this thread:
---------------------
Absent the steroids issue (which is bizarrely applied to Sosa), he would go in without a doubt on the wave of his 600 home runs including 60+ three times. But what if we convert some of Sosa's home runs into other events while giving him equivalent value? Would he still be a deserving HOFer then?
He has a 128 OPS+ in 2354 games. Rice -- who most people here, including me, don't think is a deserving HOFer -- has a 128 OPS+ in 2089 games. So that seems dangerously close, except that Sosa has 267 more games -- which is not an insignificant number.
But on peak value, Sosa has Rice easily beat. Sosa's five-year peak is broader and higher than Rice's. Here are their best five OPS+s:
SOSA 203
SOSA 161
SOSA 160
S0SA 160
Rice 157
Rice 154
S0SA 151
Rice 147
Rice 141
Rice 130
Therefore, Sosa is ahead of Rice in career value and easily ahead on peak value. (I think it's necessary -- though not enough -- to show that a player is clearly better than Rice in order for that player to be a serious candidate for the HOF.) Sosa probably slots into the bottom third of HOF corner outfielders on career value, which isn't good. But what drives Sosa's case is really peak value: his five year peak is outstanding, and probably slots him in to the middle tier of HOF corner OF as far as peak goes.
Ten HOFers and Sheffield on Sosa's comps list, though when you hit 600 home runs, that's the way your list will read, and we're trying to get away from the home runs in and of themselves and look more at value.
In short, I think you're closer here than with Sheffield, but I think Sosa's peak deservingly ushers him in to the Hall on merit. Is there a case against him, as you say? Sure. If one is more of a career guy than a peak guy, one probably won't like Sosa as much.
Gywnn is my idea of a solid, mid-tier HOFer. This comparison shows that Sosa is behind on career value:
Gwynn: 2440 games, 132 OPS+, .307 EqA
Sosa: 2354 games, 128 OPS+, .292 EqA
-------------------------
That works pretty well. Taking Sosa's 10 best years, the OPS+ is 149 (Kiner) to 146, with about 200 PA difference between them. Granted, there's a big difference in the shape of their performances (Sosa has about an extra 100 HR over that stretch, whereas Kiner kills him on walks, and then there's the difference in steals), but it's not a bad comparison, especially for peak candidates.
Gwynn: 2440 games, 132 OPS+, .307 EqA
Sosa: 2354 games, 128 OPS+, .292 EqA
FWIW, Win Shares is Gwynn 398, Sosa 325.
EDIT: And what the heck: Killebrew 371, Rice 282, Kiner 242.
There's something of a defensive difference there too.
There is, but I've long been a bit skeptical of Kiner's reputation as a terrible defensive outfielder. Yes, he played exclusively in left field (with a dabble at first base) for the bulk of his career, but he played mostly in center field in his rookie year. I, for one, was shocked when I first learned that, because it so goes against the image of Kiner I'd long been taught.
I'm a bit suspicious that it was Branch Rickey's campaign of running Kiner down (for the purpose of convincing John Galbreath to allow Rickey to trade Kiner) that sportswriters of the day picked up on and parroted: if The Mahatma said Kiner was a terrible outfielder, it must be so! My guess is that the truth is probably closer to something like Kiner wasn't all that bad a fielder, at least before his back went bad, but the Rickey-fueled image of Kiner as laughably slow and weak-armed made for a better story than a less extreme, more muddled reality.
Yeah, that's not unlikely. The image that's stuck with me is the Cubs moving Hank Sauer to right field to make room for Kiner. But that's old, post-back-problem Kiner.
It is certainly fine to think that Sosa is a "no doubt" Hall of Famer, as long as you think the same about, say, Jim Edmonds, who is almost certainly more deserving from any value perspective other than "one year peak". If you don't think Edmonds is a lock, then you have to explain why, say, Sosa's 609 home runs make him deserving over and above the actual value those home runs produced.
Bless your heart.
I have a bias toward durable players.
All right. Here's a comparison of Sosa against Player X using AROM's WAR. Sosa and Player X are both outfielders from the same era. I have zeroed out all seasons where the player was below replacement level. (In Sosa's case, I am ignoring 1989 and 2005. So I list him with 9184 PA instead of 9801.) For the 3yr peak, I take the player's top 3 consecutive years. Likewise for the other lengths of peak.
.............PA 1yr pk 3yr pk 5yr pk 7yr pk 9yr pk TotalSosa 9184 11.3 22.0 33.2 41.7 49.9 60.3
Player X 9018 8.0 22.1 31.1 42.1 51.1 67.4
Of course Sosa has his incredible 2001. Player X spent a couple extra seasons as a solid player (>2 WAR), so he has a slight edge in career value. But overall these guys look pretty damn similar.
Who is Player X?
Considering that he beat his wife with a rum bottle and was put on house arrest when he was in his early 20s, I'd say we already knew a good bit about Sosa's character without getting into the later "behavioral revelations." He was always more Elijah Dukes than Kirby Puckett.
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