Interesting that the BBWAA writer you quote (Bill Conlin) about wishing Boggs had 500 more hits..how many hits did Boggs lose spending 6 years in the minors? One thing that always fueled Boggs was that he could have been drafted by any major league team as a 6 year minor leaguer but no one thought he was worth $50,000. It sometimes led to him saying selfish things, like in 1996 when the Yankees picked up Chralie Hayes in mid season and Boggs saying he would get his 3000th hit somewhere. Boggs did have a big bases loaded walk as Torre's last reserve off Steve Avery in 1996 Game 4 World Series that gets overlooked. But Boggs did probably use that rejection to spur himself on. How many HOF spend 6 years in the minors? Maybe an occasional oddball type like knuckler Hoyt Wilhelm or screwballer Carl Hubbell. Or an injury pitcher like Dazzy Vance. But few, if any, everyday players (except in the case of race if Maury Wills should ever make it).
And for what it is worth, even an intangibles lover like Suzyn Waldman (YES network) has always said the losing Yankee attitude changed in spring training of 1993 when Boggs, O'Neill and Key came on the scene.

It looks like Mathews was the best hitter, but Schmidt passes him overall due to his defense. I'd never have guessed that.

How does being 3rd best among a selection of post-WWII MLB 3B make Boggs the "3rd greatest third baseman of All-Time"?

Shouldn't he be compared with Ezra Sutton, Ray Dandridge, Jimmy Collins, Frank Baker, Shigeo Nagashima, etc. before according him this exhalted status?

I am not so sure that these tables indicate that Eddie Matthews was a better hitter than Mike Schmidt. EQA and WS support that conclusion, but WARP3, RC, and rate stats do not. They are pretty close when it comes to offense, though.

What surprised me was how far behind Brooks Robinson lagged. When I was growing up I heard a lot about how he gave Schmidt close competition for the title of best third basemen on account of his fielding. While Robinson seems to be the best fielder of the group based on the tables above, he clearly is too far behind the rest of the group at the plate for fielding to make much of a difference.

When has Bill Conlin ever said anything smart?
Well, anyway, with all this evidence of Ron Santo's greatness, I'm puzzled as to why he's not in the hall, although I wouldn't have even known about him if not for that Simpson's episode.

Like Shoomee the first thing I thought of was the two extra years that Boggs spent in the minors when he was more than qualified to help a major league team.

The funny thing to me about the criticism about Boggs' lack of power is that it's nothing new. In my opinion though, he has more than paid his penance for that sin. Even though Boggs reached the majors at age 24 he could (should?) have been there much sooner. He hit .332 at Winston-Salem as a 19 year old in 1977 and then .311 at Bristol as a 20 year old. But he had very little pop (14 doubles, 1 triple and two homers in A ball and 14, 2 and 1 in AA), so, the Red Sox made him repeat AA. After hitting .325 in a second full season at Bristol they let him play in Pawtucket in 1980, where he hit .306 with 21 doubles as a 22 year old. In order to get a real shot at the majors, Boggs had to destroy the International League, which he did in 1981 by hitting .335 with 41 doubles, 3 triples and 5 homers. I saw him at Columbus that year and he was just phenomenal -- the talk of the league and, to an extent, all of baseball due to the strike. Finally given a major league slot in 1982, Boggs lost 50 games because he was forced to platoon with Dave Stapleton and Carney Lansford at first and third. Boggs hit .333 against lefties that year, so another 121 plate appearances almost surely would have given him his first batting title as a rookie (he would have had to hit only .287 in those remaining games). Boggs could have contributed to a team as early as 1980, but didn't get the chance until he was 24.

I really can't understand the knock on the guy considering that he did the things that most ordinary baseball fans and writers like -- hit for average, hit with men on, hit when it matters in the season. A lifetime .338/.428/.462 hitter, he did even better with men on .345/.449/.464 and better still with men in scoring position .348/.479/.465 (he was intentionally walked 150 times so some of that OBP with men on is an illusion). As for his power, Boggs did hit for power when he should have. His slugging percentage while leading off was just .439 but it jumped to .487 when he batted second and .492 when batting third. In September of 1986 when the Red Sox were holding off the charging Yankees to win their first pennant in 11 years, Boggs hit .404/484/.541. In September of 1988 when the Red Sox eaked past a fading Detroit team and staved off a surging Brewers team, Boggs hit .423/.551/.536.

If we are going to knock Boggs for anything then it should be that he was probably not as good a hitter as Fenway made him out to be. While with the Sox, he hit .369/.465/.525 at Fenway but .307/.391/.400 while on the road. That's still a pretty damn good lead off hitter mind you. As many of you will remember, Boggs had a tremendous knack for doubling off the Green Monster. For example, in 1983 20 of the 34 (!!) doubles that he hit at Fenway richoted off the wall in left. And in the course of his Red Sox career, he hit 140 more doubles at Fenway than on the road, while his triples and homers remained close. That said, a players job is to help his team win. Boggs learned that he could flip any outside pitch off the wall for a double, so he did. So, sue him.

I have always felt there are 2 reasons why Santo didn't get into the HOF. He was pretty much in competition with Ken Boyer as best NL third baseman of the 60s and they divided the votes (writers probably tend to choose maybe 1 player at each position) and Boyer has things writers love like an MVP (which they choose) and a ring, not enough to get him in but enough to divide the vote.
Also Santo probably emerged as the jerk from those Cub teams in late 60s/early 70s that won a lot over games in a 5 year period but never enough in one year to win a pennant. Banks was loved, Williams and Jenkins were respected (Williams more so) but Santo was hated for jumping and clicking his heels after a Cub victory. Mild today, but not admired by many traditional writers of that era. It probably didn't help him that his manager Leo Durocher ripped him in his autobiography. Durocher praised Williams, is pretty silent on Jenkins and while Durocher was critical of Banks, Mr Cub's persona was pretty well established as a good guy (idle thoughts..could Sosa have learned anything..like no corked bats and no leaving games early and getting caught). Durocher did have enemies who waited until he died before putting him in Cooperstown..the old Veterans committee was often accused of rewarding friends and punishing their enemies by HOF enshrinement/rejection.
One of thing about Boggs lack of much mainstream acceptance.. I remember in 1990 Chris Russo of WFAN was ripping Boggs for not scoring enough runs despite 200 hits/100 walks seasons. Fortunately there was a caller with a record book who told Russo that Boggs had scored 100 runs for 7 straight seasons, tying a record.. Russo was left to sputter some idiocy over being proven wrong.

Great article, no argument from me on Boggs. I'm a little surprised he's as far ahead of Santo as he is and I'm stunned he's rated his equal defensively. As to how far to drop Brett probably depends on whether you're a peak or career kind of guy, but Boggs is certainly among the top 4 in my book.

fat lot of good it does Eugene now, but a minor nit on the presentation -- very minor, editor type stuff. When introducing the advanced metrics, it would be good for the less-saberiffic fan (which seems to be the audience) to mention that WS and WARP3 try to combine offense and defense, while RC, EQA, etc. are offense only.

Also, did you ever actually list your top 3B?

Then it might be nice to add FRAA (not that I buy it) and maybe DRA (if you can find it) to the defensive stats.

I can't speak to many other pre-war 3B, but Baker falls short of this group based on most stats. He does well on OPS+ (135), but had a very short career compared to these guys (1575 games) and so had little decline phase. I once calculated his OPS+ as if he had as many games played as Santo, playing those extra games at league average, and his "career" OPS+ came out right at Santo's (125). And Santo gets grief over his "short" career.

He has 78 WARP3 (8/162). (By the way Eugene, BPro's website lists Santo with 115 WARP3, you have him at 109). Anyway Santo's WARP3 are almost 50% higher than Baker, though Santo's per 162 rate is just a smidgen higher (8.3).

So basically Baker's peak is pretty good, probably just below Santo's. Bakers top 5 WARP3 totaled 43.9 and top 3 is 28.0; for Santo those numbers are 61.2 and 37.6. So maybe Baker's peak was well below Santo's. When you figure that Baker has far less career value than any of these guys, Baker might battle Robinson for 6th if you really value peak over career (I generally do), but that would seem to be about it.

Traynor pretty clearly doesn't belong by fancy stats. Just 78.2 WARP3 (in about 400 more games than Baker but a good bit less than any of these guys), a career EQA of 269, and just 6.5 WARP3/162.

The other guys I can't comment on.

Shouldn't he be compared with Ezra Sutton, Ray Dandridge, Jimmy Collins, Frank Baker, Shigeo Nagashima, etc. before according him this exhalted status?

Over at the Hall of Merit, we have elected Baker, Collins, and Sutton. Walt Davis has put the case for Baker well: a definite high peak, but a short effective career, quite short compared to any of the 80's guys this article is about.

Jimmy Collins only got in becuase we respect his defense and understand that 3rd base was a defense-first position. As a hitter, he doesn't belong in the same conversation with Baker.

Sutton's true quality is partly lost in the mists of time, and he has an oddly shaped career, with an offensive dropoff in the middle. We did see enough there to elect him.

Dandridge and Traynor aren't eligible yet; frankly, I don't expect Traynor to be elected. I don't know enough about Nagashima to comment.

Bottom line: none of these guys mentioned should get in the way of discussing Boggs versus Brett, Mathews, and Schmidt.

An odd offensive comparison: Boggs and Tim Raines, both of them essentially leadoff hitters who spent some time batting 2nd or 3rd in the order. They have about the same number of R+RBI in about the same number of outs.

Wade Boggs, with that great OBP, all the hits, the batting titles, the doubles, etc., from the 3b slot, while being at least a decent fielder , always struck just me as a no brainer first ballot guy. So when I read that idiot Bill Conlin article, I could not believe it.

But I really reacted when I read the idiotic thing quoted above about how he'd "feel better about his numbers if he had about 500 more hits than his 3,010". Is Conlin so lacking in either basic math skills or knowledge of baseball that he does not how bloody many hits that is? Does he not know that this would put him in the top 6 all time in hits? If that is the standard, you don't need a Hall of Fame; a large walk in closet of Fame would about cover it.

I had this long post about why I thought Boggs was great, but slightly overrated. I lost it because it was too many characters and I hadn't saved it anywhere.

Anyway, to summarize:
1. As mentioned, Boggs had a 200-point OPS advantage in Fenway. On the road he was a sub-.400 OBP guy and a sub-.400 SLG guy. That makes him still useful as a leadoff hitter, but really makes him either a rich man's Greg Gross or maybe a poor man's Mark Grace.
2. Boggs is probably one of the few guys (Ernie Lombardi, Shanty Hogan) whose baserunning is such a problem that it actually subtracts a fairly significant chunk of value from his remarkable hitting stats. He wasn't just slow; lots of guys are slow. He was slow and tentative and usually had no idea wtf he was doing on the bases.

For a quick and dirty comparison, check out Boggs' 1985 season and compare it to Brett Butler that year. Boggs had an amazing season for getting on base, getting 240 hits and 96 walks, one of the greatest on-base years ever. Butler reached base almost 100 fewer times and his OBP was almost 100 points lower, and for good measure he got thrown out 20 times. Boggs was in a better hitter's park with better hitters behind him (Evans, Buckner, Rice, Easler) than Butler (Bernazard, Jacoby, Franco, Thornton). The Red Sox were second in the league in slugging, the Indians 12th.

But Boggs only outscored Butler 107-106.

Boggs' runs scored totals are terrific, but they aren't any more terrific than a handful of other leadoff guys who got on base a hell of a lot less often.

Boggs was certainly a great hitter and no doubt a Hall of Famer, but it's hard for me to believe his true value is 30 points of OBP over Tim Raines (who I also think is a no-doubt Hall of Famer).

Great, just a little overrated.

I think there is a distinction to be made between a guy who benefits from a hitter's park and one who tailors his game to the park he plays in. I think Boggs was more the latter.

In 81, Boggs hit .335/~.436/.460 at AAA. In 82, he hit .349/.406/.441. Was he taking advantage of Fenway in AAA? No. Boggs' best ability was bat control. He would slap high breaking balls over the short stop's head, pound outside fastballs down the line. In Fenway, he did what he would have done in any park--he found the best way to use his skills to get hits and exploited it.

Another point in his favor is that the overall park factor for his homeparks averages out to something around 103.

I disagreen with baudib's assesment of Boggs' baserunning--I remember him as quite speedy in his younger days and adequate on the basepaths. I cannot, however, explain his relatively low run totals in certain years.

For a quick and dirty comparison, check out Boggs' 1985 season and compare it to Brett Butler that year....

But Boggs only outscored Butler 107-106.

Boggs' runs scored totals are terrific, but they aren't any more terrific than a handful of other leadoff guys who got on base a hell of a lot less often.

1985 season...

Boggs-46 games leading off...Butler-127 leading off.
Boggs-113 games batting 2nd.

Career...

Boggs-737 games leading off...Butler-1,402 leading off.
Boggs-888 games batting elsewhere in lineup(mostly 2nd-3rd).

I can't imagine why anyone could or would argue Boggs' HOF credentials. Personally I always equated him with Tony Gwynn as I was growing up - a great hitter, especially for average, but lacking HR power.
Looking at some of their stats...

Boggs .328BA .415OBP .443SLG 3010 Hits
6 Batting Titles

Gwynn .338BA .388OBP .459SLG 3141 Hits
8 Batting Titles

Do you really think that the media is going to be saying that Gwynn is a borderline case?

Something Bill James mentions in the NBJHBA: most players have (R+RBI) for their career almost equal to their number of hits.

Brett is exceptional in this respect: 3178 R+RBI, 3154 H.

Boggs is not. 2527 R+RBI, 3010 H.

Maybe it's the horrible baserunning. Maybe it's the Fenway factor. Maybe it's teammates who hit into a lot of DPs, or whatever. But I think the evidence shows that Boggs's contribution to run production was less than you would expect by applying linear weights to his various totals of hits and walks.