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Not trying to demean Parker's credentials, but I wonder if his excellence in September is all that unusual. Personally, I would expect most, if not all, outstanding players to have better career records in September than during the rest of the season. That's because the good teams (i.e., the ones with outstanding players on them) are still trying their hardest to win games in September, while teams that are out of the race tend to experiment with the lineup and give minor leaguers playing time. That's bound to have an influence on statistics; one example I'm aware of is that a wildly disproportionate percentage of no-hitters have been thrown in September. I wonder if Dave Parker, and most other players of his caliber, don't have better September stats simply because they were usually facing weaker competition during that month.
If anyone knows of any studies done on this topic, please share.
1. Low walk rate: .290 BA but .339 OBP (in contast to a league average OBP of .333).
2. Bad use of speed: 57% SB success rate.
I'm on the fence, but I just wanted to add these small observations.
Bill James distinguishes OF positions this way:
(1) If you're an outfielder, they make you a CF if you're fast and have a good enough arm.
(2) If you have a good arm but aren't fast enough, you're a RF.
(3) LF ends up being (a) those with bad arms and bad legs (Luszinski and other butchers), as well as (b) those with the speed but not the arm for CF (Brock, Raines, the late-career Henderson).
Parker seemed to have speed, early in his career; was he ever a CF? was he blocked by an incumbent Pittsburgh CF?
He was blocked by Al Oliver in the early Pittsburgh days.
There are exceptions though - Yaz was good enough to play CF (and did at times, until he was 44 years old), but played LF because of the special requirements LF places on Fenway Park. The same may be said of Dewey Evans, as RF is pretty big at Fenway too.
Agree with Eric that this is a good article. I'm also on the fence with Parker. RF is a "deep" position as far as guys on the outside looking in, and I think that Dewey and probably Bobby Bonds have to go in before Parker. Ultimately, I think all three are probably worthy choices, Dawson slightly less so.
I agree that Bonds and Dewey (Reggie Smith was another better player who was left off the ballot years ago) go in before him. There are too many rightfielders that are comparable to the Cobra that are outside the doors of the Hall.
One question,
"Dave Parker wasn't a drug pusher like Willie Stargell..."
How was Stargell known as a pusher? This is news to me. Am I missing something here?
At the infamous Curtis Strong drug trial in Pittsburgh, there was testimony that Stargell often passed out greenies (I think) to other players in the clubhouse. Stargell vehemently denied the accusation and as far as I know, nothing was ever proven one way or another.
The only place where I'd like to see more, though, is number 10. The HOF vote is essentially a comparative vote (Is the candidate better than the other possibilities), and just looking at Win Shares might not be the best way to analyze. Especially among players who all had long careers with high peaks, Parker might just come out on top because of his longevity.
In my mind, the best right fielder not in the Hall is either Dwight Evans or Ken Singleton (I'm leaning toward Ken, for the higher peak). Dave Parker would be third. It's not an obvious ranking, so I'd want to see more than one stat in deciding to through my weight behind Parker over Singleton.
Parker has tough comps. For example, looking only at players born since 1930, there are 40 players who can compare to Parker in terms of PA (+/- 1000).
Out of those players, using my own version of sim scores, his best hitting comps among "hitting positions" are:
Looking at the best hitters in the same group of high-PA guys, I've got
And then it falls off into the next level of hitters
I agree with the other poster. How you view Dave Parker is how you view the threshhold to allow players in.
So, it would have been oh so natural to have combined the two. And without going through a detailed review of Jim Rice's numbers, I just don't remember that it was ever obvious that Parker was any better than Rice. I guess that is why Rice has been running ahead of Parker in HoF voting, in fact, by a huge margin of 260-66 votes last year, and 298-84 the year before that. Yet one poster said that it was Andre Dawson of all the recent RFs who was most likely to gain entry to the HoF (214 votes last year).
Offensively, I guess that Rice and Parker are fairly comp, and then Parker's arm is the tie-breaker...I mean, I think that is the nutshell version of the two. But how come Rice gets four times as many votes from the BBWAA? And how come Rice gets no respect here?
It's a tradeoff between a higher overall quality against lower playing time. I'm surprised that Kenny came out so well.
In terms of 1b/of guys on the line to decide on, here's my list, in order of hitting only: Perez, Rice, Hernandez, Singleton, Murphy, Dawson, Joey Belle, Baines, Parker, Lynn, Downing, Al Oliver, Jose Canseco, Chili Davis.
If you throw in fielding as well, Keith, Dawson, Murphy move to the top. So, where do you draw the line?
Tough call.
BTW, Joe Torre comes out looking when I run my numbers. He's before my time, and I don't know how good his fielding was at C/3B. But Joe might be another borderline guy.
Jim Rice is coming, as are the remaining ballot members.
Excellent point, Lenny. Similarity scores don't take into account park effects (of course, this wouldn't help Williams) either.
Of the three (Williams, Perez and Parker), Williams would make the cut (though close).
A minor point: Rice appears more likely than not to go in, given that he's garnered more than 50% of the vote the last three years. He actually dropped a couple of percent last time, but percentages were depressed across the board by the retirement announcements of no-doubt HOFers Ripkin, Gwynn, and McGwire.
In the final analysis, Parker is the kind of guy I'd like to vote for if there weren't so many outfielders with similar candidacies. The fact that there are so many means that I'd have to open the door a little too wide, and so I'm forced to reject them all. None of Rice, Dawson, Parker, Baines, etc. stand out from the rest far enough to make my cut.
2. Marc & Tango: Parker is better than Rice. Bill James called Rice "probably the most overrated player of the last 30 years: (A) He benefitted a LOT from Fenway, which increased run-scoring almost 20% during Rice's best years; two years when Rice hit 39 HR (1977 & 1979), he hit 27 at Fenway & 12 on the road. (B) Several little things make Rice's BA slightly less impressive, i.e., mediocre walk totals (for such a feared power hitter) and a lot of double plays. I'd thought Rice should go in until I read all that.
And?
(A) He benefitted a LOT from Fenway, which increased run-scoring almost 20% during Rice's best years; two years when Rice hit 39 HR (1977 & 1979), he hit 27 at Fenway & 12 on the road.
Just because Rice was able to take more advantage of Fenway than his teammates, that's a minus? Discount all the Sox players *to the same degree*. Don't discount Rice more.
Rice slugged 100 more points at home than on the road.
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/Jricej001.htm
Dewey's split was 70 points
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/Jevand002.htm
The 1979 Redsox was 126 points!
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/WBOS1979.htm
The 1986 Redsox had a reverse split.
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/WBOS1986.htm
Once you apply your park factor, you can't apply another one on top of that. I agree that my numbers didn't include park.
Now to some specific points that people have raised:
the allegation that Willie Stargell was a "drug pusher" was particularly vengeful/hateful
In short, no it isn't... particularly since I don't hate Stargell and have no desire for vengenace of any kind. Stargell does deny it, but it is well documented from several independent sources including testimony under oath from THREE former teammates that he distributed amphetamines in the Pirates' locker room, and even encouraged abstainers to take them. I should have noted that charges were never pressed and that Ueberroth didn't take action against Stargell (or Bill Madlock)... which means squat as far as I am concerned. He didn't take any action against Willie Mays either, in fact apparently he never even made a pretence of investigating the claim against Mays.
The testimony by John Milner, at least, was defense testimony (Berra and Parker were prosecution witnesses); Milner had nothing to gain from telling anything but the truth under oath. The revisionist myth that Stargell wasn't involved with drugs, which begun with the book Out of Left Field, was just that... revisionism. An equally stupid revisionism was the "everyone was doing it" defense, which holds just as little water. Amphetamines were illegal at the time, and everyone knew it.
I haven't gone back to the testimony from U.S. v. Strong but we can, by all means, if you like.
The point about mentioning Hernandez and Stargell was simply that the media in particular are as twisted a bunch of hypocrites as you could find, and the fans' views of a player that are filtered down to us through the media reflect this. Some players get a free pass, and others are forever tainted... and none of this should matter to us in thinking about the Hall.
Incidentally, I am not a Parker fan... I find Parker a pretty distasteful character, actually. I do appreciate what he was as a player, and I do think he was hard done by, by both the fans and the media.
Unless you were around the Pirates for the times of Bonds and Parker, I don't think you can legitimately compare Bonds to Parker as you have done.
The comparison was only as to how they were received by the fans and media, and to attempt to give a contemporary referent to Parker's treatment and the possibility that there was an element of racism in it. I didn't think the two players acted the same way... Parker was an ass to the fans, Bonds never was. Your own attitude towards the second-best player in 121 years of Pirate history speaks volumes about how Bonds was treated in Pittsburgh. I don't want to get into Barry Bonds arguments as well, but he did not fail "year after year" in the postseason for the Pirates... he played very well in the 1992 series, and though he didn't get any extra-base hits in 1990, he had a .375 OBP and scored four runs, more than any other Pirate.
The Zaske you referred to was not Jesse, but LHP Jeff Zaske.
Thanks for the clarification, and you are of course correct. The original source I borrowed the story from gave the name as "Jess", and I failed to check it properly.
A minor point: Rice appears more likely than not to go in, given that he's garnered more than 50% of the vote the last three years.
fracas is of course correct about this, and it as stupid of me not to say Rice is not only the most likely to make it of Parker's uninducted comp group, but also a shoo-in to go in (whether or not he is a good candidate). I think Dawson is also likely to make it.
Also re Rice, tangotiget pointed out that it doesn't matter in analyzing Rice, that he seemed ideally suited to his park. I agree with this for the most part; however if we are asking whether someone was a great player (as opposed to a valuable player... for example, if we are asking who "the best player in baseball" is) then I think someone who was uniquely helped by his park should have it counted against him. If Ed Williamson hits 27 home runs because he had a leftfield fence at Lakefront Park that was 250 feet away from the plate, we don't just capitulate and say he was the best power hitter of the 19th century.
Normally we want to know how someone's impact was, and these questions don't matter. But once in a while we are genuinely interested in how good someone was... there, we need to adjust for peculiarities of parks and their individual effects on hitters.
Back when Dave Parker was at the peak of his powers, it was really Jim Rice who was his competition for "best player." Not that either of them really was. We hadn't yet realized just how good Mike Schmidt was at that time.
Not just Rice and Parker. George Foster was yet another player at the time, other than Schmidt, Rice and Parker, who had a strong public claim on the "best player" category in 77-78-79. I think Foster was a better player than Rice at the time.
I think you are right to say that Schmidt was in fact baseball's best player during the late 1970s. Parker was right behind, but in my view he was behind. But Parker would be a very defensible choice.
The only place where I'd like to see more, though, is number 10. The HOF vote is essentially a comparative vote (Is the candidate better than the other possibilities), and just looking at Win Shares might not be the best way to analyze.
You're absolutely right, MattB. I should have expanded that section in the article... I actually did a fairly exhaustive review of the candidates, but only mentioned the WS analysis. I will try to repost that material here later... it's only in the form of notes and some number-crunching right now though.
Bobby Grich may be a popular HOF candidate among Primer readers. But he certainly has not been popular with actual HOF voters.
Lenny, you are absolutely correct. But Grich is a very popular candidate "amongst ourselves", as it were... and that is the audience I am addressing. If we think that Grich is a HOFer, and Parker has a similar qualification, I think it's a point in favor or Parker.
If the average offense level over the course of each player's career was part of the similarity score I wonder if Perez and Williams would still be at the top.
I should have addressed this in the article... in their careers, park-adjusted, the league OPS (offensive context) was .730 for Billy Williams, .720 for Tony Perez, and .727 for Parker. Of the eleven players on the comp list, Staub and Al Oliver have easily the lowest-scoring offensive context, and Baines and Dwight Evans easily the highest-scoring.
Reggie Smith 35.0
Dwight Evans 30.4
Andre Dawson 29.9
Bobby Bonds 29.5
Rusty Staub 27.6
Rocky Colavito 25.6
Tony Oliva 24.9
Dave Parker 23.0
Ken Singleton 20.9
Gavy Cravath 18.9
Harold Baines 17.8
Tommy Henrich 14.5
Bobby Murcer 12.9
Roger Maris 11.7
I think TPR is a horrible ranking, but this is at least something.
I would like to be so bold as to suggest we add another question to the Keltner List.
The Keltner List as it is currently written neglects the one aspect of evaluation that perhaps is the most dangerous yet perhaps is the most useful. The question is: What is our memory of this player?
It is dangerous because it undercuts the whole point of sabrmetrics that a player evaluation based on statistics is the only conclusive method of evaluation.
Asking ourselves to recall our memories of a player is useful because our memories hold we think is the most important aspect of a player's career. Does one remember a great play? Does one have a memory of how a player performed in the 7th game of the World Series? Does one remember the player's attitude to the game like some remember Rose for his hustle or Stargell for his playfulness and not taking the game too seriously?
What is the very first thing that comes to mind when a player is mentioned? Is it how he did not hit in the clutch? Is it an error he made? Is it how he stood at the plate? For me I think of the word contact when I think of Ichiro or Rod Carew.
For example I just saw a highlight of Morgan's hit to win Game 7 of the '75 Classic. It might have been the first time I seen it since the actual hit. (I'm 38 years old now so I was about 10 when I saw it live.) My memory of the hit was that it was a line drive. The actual hit was a texas-league bloop that fell 10 feet in front of Lynn. My MEMORY served to highlight the greatness of Morgan. In my mind he drove in the winning run in the best WS of all time and my memory exaggerated his hit for the purpose of enhancing his greatness.
As a kid I was in the car with my grandfather in Pittsburgh. We passed a sign for the town of Carnegie and my grandfather said with all the pride of a Pittsburgh steelworker that Honus Wagner was from Carnegie. There was a sentimental quality to his voice. My grandfather was not a talkative man but that memory was important to him so it was important to me too. That memory is useful for evaluating Wagner because he had been storing this fact in his mind for at least 60 years by the time he told me this.
The obvious corollary is that one might have memories of the negatives for one reason or another. Some players are antagonistic and volatile as lightning rods. With Bonds I think of poor playoffs and rude behavior. Because I am an adult I can hold conflicting views. I think that he is one of the 5 greatest ever but I also think he does not show the qualities that I respect and admire. We must take these memories of frailties adn errors into our evaluation of a player too.
So to get to the point: What is our memory of Parker? Certainly The Throw must be included because it is included in nearly every compendium of baseball highlights that exists. Does Winner come to your mind? The last time the Pirates won the World Series he was the best player on the team. The last time the A's won the WS he played a role. So one must remember him as a winner. I put him in this category - "Great Players who were Also Winners" I put Rice and Evans in another category I call "Great Players who were Not Winners" because when the time came to put up or shut up they did not come through.
Fair? You bet it is because winning and clutch performance is a legitimate factor in our evaluation of a player. We put labels on people for a reason. A sociologist or psychologist can explain it better than I can but players get this label for a good reason.
A sabrmetrician might say that only sabrmetrics can determine whether that labes is deserving or not. I agree. I disagree with those who say that one World Series or two World Series is too small a sample size. What one player does in his only shot at a title is the only thing we have. We can't say that if a player got another shot he would perform better because we can't predict the future. Think Mazeroski here. His homer in the '60 WS is perhaps one's only memory of him and puts him in a different class of players than Biggio, or Bret Boone or Davey Lopes to name a few.
I guess the point is for each fan to dig up those memories and determine for himself if they are relevant to evaluating whether a player belongs in the HOF.
I would like to be so bold as to suggest we add another question to the Keltner List.
The Keltner List as it is currently written neglects the one aspect of evaluation that perhaps is the most dangerous yet perhaps is the most useful. The question is: What is our memory of this player?
It is dangerous because it undercuts the whole point of sabrmetrics that a player evaluation based on statistics is the only conclusive method of evaluation.
Asking ourselves to recall our memories of a player is useful because our memories hold we think is the most important aspect of a player's career. Does one remember a great play? Does one have a memory of how a player performed in the 7th game of the World Series? Does one remember the player's attitude to the game like some remember Rose for his hustle or Stargell for his playfulness and not taking the game too seriously?
What is the very first thing that comes to mind when a player is mentioned? Is it how he did not hit in the clutch? Is it an error he made? Is it how he stood at the plate? For me I think of the word contact when I think of Ichiro or Rod Carew.
For example I just saw a highlight of Morgan's hit to win Game 7 of the '75 Classic. It might have been the first time I seen it since the actual hit. (I'm 38 years old now so I was about 10 when I saw it live.) My memory of the hit was that it was a line drive. The actual hit was a texas-league bloop that fell 10 feet in front of Lynn. My MEMORY served to highlight the greatness of Morgan. In my mind he drove in the winning run in the best WS of all time and my memory exaggerated his hit for the purpose of enhancing his greatness.
As a kid I was in the car with my grandfather in Pittsburgh. We passed a sign for the town of Carnegie and my grandfather said with all the pride of a Pittsburgh steelworker that Honus Wagner was from Carnegie. There was a sentimental quality to his voice. My grandfather was not a talkative man but that memory was important to him so it was important to me too. That memory is useful for evaluating Wagner because he had been storing this fact in his mind for at least 60 years by the time he told me this.
The obvious corollary is that one might have memories of the negatives for one reason or another. Some players are antagonistic and volatile as lightning rods. With Bonds I think of poor playoffs and rude behavior. Because I am an adult I can hold conflicting views. I think that he is one of the 5 greatest ever but I also think he does not show the qualities that I respect and admire. We must take these memories of frailties adn errors into our evaluation of a player too.
So to get to the point: What is our memory of Parker? Certainly The Throw must be included because it is included in nearly every compendium of baseball highlights that exists. Does Winner come to your mind? The last time the Pirates won the World Series he was the best player on the team. The last time the A's won the WS he played a role. So one must remember him as a winner. I put him in this category - "Great Players who were Also Winners" I put Rice and Evans in another category I call "Great Players who were Not Winners" because when the time came to put up or shut up they did not come through.
Fair? You bet it is because winning and clutch performance is a legitimate factor in our evaluation of a player. We put labels on people for a reason. A sociologist or psychologist can explain it better than I can but players get this label for a good reason.
A sabrmetrician might say that only sabrmetrics can determine whether that labes is deserving or not. I agree. I disagree with those who say that one World Series or two World Series is too small a sample size. What one player does in his only shot at a title is the only thing we have. We can't say that if a player got another shot he would perform better because we can't predict the future. Think Mazeroski here. His homer in the '60 WS is perhaps one's only memory of him and puts him in a different class of players than Biggio, or Bret Boone or Davey Lopes to name a few.
I guess the point is for each fan to dig up those memories and determine for himself if they are relevant to evaluating whether a player belongs in the HOF.
Parker was sued by the Pirates for breach of contract due to his drug abuse and the effect on his performance. While he recovered and had a long productive stretch in the latter part of his career, it's hard to erase that impression for me. Your article mentions 1980, but the whole 1980-1984 era was only average (in terms of productivity and durability), a pretty big gap from ages 29-33 for a HOF position player.
"BTW, Joe Torre comes out looking when I run my numbers. He's before my time, and I don't know how good his fielding was at C/3B. But Joe might be another borderline guy."
Win shares rates Torre a grade C catcher, a B- firstbaseman and about a D at thirdbase (2.12 WS/1000, same as Killebrew). He did win a gold glove at catcher, by default and with his bat.
With Joe's combined contribution, he stands a fair chance at election. He is certainly deserving.
Does anyone doubt that he'd be in if he (a) were a cuddly cute guy (e.g., Puckett) or (b) played at least some of his good years in better media markets (e.g., Winfield, Dawson).
Hell, I'll go out on a limb a bit further: does anyone else notice that almost ALL of the players derided as "attitude problems" are black? Parker, Dick Allen, Barry Bonds, Albert Belle, and, increasingly, Griffey Jr. Seems like most of these guys are/were jerks, don't get me wrong. But I can't help but think that being a jerk is held against black players but not white players.
People treat Parker as if he were the worst miscreant to ever tread the outfield turf. I think that's bull, and I wanted to point to a reason why. I have nothing against Stargell either... but Stargell is a convenient comparison because he was a teammate of Parker's, and the incidents described were happening at the same time.
A lot of what we do when we talk about the Hall is to make comparisons... comparisons to the other candidates, comparisons to players in the Hall, comparisons to players not in the Hall. In trying to respond to the argument that Parker isn't worthy of the Hall of Fame because of his behaviour, I chose to make a comparison to some other players' behaviour.
If it was inappropriate, please explain why. I would certainly consider having the piece changed if it is.
In the end, ironcitytt knows more about the Pirates of that era than I do, and others should keep that fact in mind. Both of us know less than the players who testified in court, and you should keep that in mind too.
As far as Barry Bonds goes, that argument has been rehashed too many times here.
As far as proposed Ques. 16, my prevailing memory of Parker is that he had presence in the batters' box; perhaps that was imprinted on me as a young O's fan watching the '79 Series slip away. There was a certain ####-suredness about Parker that made him imposing. When he became less dangerous, his girth compensated to maintain his usual imposing level.
It is truly impressive that Parker could make himself such a viable candidate with such a huge chasm blown (oops, no pun intended) through the 5 years just after a player's normal peak. It is that chasm that prevents me from checking his name on my sim-ballot.
Anyone else notice that whatever plate discipline Parker may have been developing went away, and never returned, when the alleged effects of cocaine led to Parker's decline? Might be a study there for someone -- the effect of documented cocaine use on plate discipline.
Jim Rice and Andre Dawson, with whom I feel Parker is very comparable, received 52% and 50% respectively.
Comparing the 4 offensive stars on the ballot using:
Black ink, grey ink, HOF Standards, HOF Monitor
Bl - Gry - HS - HM
11 - 181 - 56 - 155 - Eddie Murray
33 - 176 - 43 - 147 - Jim Rice
11 - 164 - 44 - 118 - Andre Dawson
26 - 145 - 41 - 126 - Dave Parker
Murray doesn't have the black ink, but he wins the other categories.
The other 3 are pretty even on HOF Standards (and on the wrong side of the HOF average),
but Rice beats them out in the other categories. Dawson vs Parker is then a tossup.
Murray and Rice also had the "churlish" reputation attached to them.
To my knowledge, Dawson never acquired that tag.
I'd say Murray is in because he appears qualified to the writers, regardless of his rep.
Rice's short career hurt him in the HOF Standards, and that is what's holding him back.
If the "rep" has anything to do with anything, it's showing up in the Dawson vs Parker voting.
It would require a poll of the electorate to determine whether it's the cocaine or the
press relations (assuming an honest answer is even obtainable).
I tend to doubt that either Dawson or Parker will make it before Jim Rice does.
Bl - Gry - HS - HM
11 - 181 - 56 - 155 - Eddie Murray
33 - 176 - 43 - 147 - Jim Rice
11 - 164 - 44 - 118 - Andre Dawson
23 - 111 - 34 - 130 - Dave Mattingly
31 - 147 - 34 - 116 - Dale Murphy
26 - 145 - 41 - 126 - Dave Parker
They don't look that different from Parker; they did only slightly better than him in the voting, too. The interesting question is why Dawson did so well.
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