His eyebrows alone are deserving of the HOF. They seem to be the inspiration for Yadier Molina's.

By WAR (not that it ends the discussion), Grich, Whitaker, and Biggio rate above Alomar. So does Carew, if you count him. And Jackie would had he not missed time for WWII and some other reason I now forget. Alomar is more likely out of the top 10 than in it.

Well, there is this pesky thing called segregation that might have kept Jackie from playing during that time period as well. It wasn't all Tojo's fault.

By WAR (not that it ends the discussion), Grich, Whitaker, and Biggio rate above Alomar. So does Carew, if you count him. And Jackie would had he not missed time for WWII and some other reason I now forget. Alomar is more likely out of the top 10 than in it.

Carew had nearly as much value at first instead of second, including his best and 3rd best seasons. His is not an Ernie Banks situation. Whitaker doesn't have the peak. Grich and Biggio are damned close. Still, not a bad list (except for the exclusion of Robinson).

The issue with Biggio and Robinson) is that they spent significant time playing other positions. You can take the Bill James approach, decide what is his primary position, and put all value there; or you can take the approach that they are valued as second basemen only for the value they provided while playing that position.

The article (which uses WAR) seems to take the latter approach, and it is as much a matter of taste/philosophy as anything else.

Well, there is this pesky thing called segregation that might have kept Jackie from playing during that time period as well.

So you took his line "Jackie would had he not missed time for WWII and some other reason I now forget" literally?



EDIT -- Given the War, he actually lost only 2-3 years to segregation, depending on how early you think he might have been called up in the absence of discrimination.

It is also worthwhile to review Jackie's BB-REF page to remind yourself what an amazing player he was.

Was it there the whole time? I think he might have added it after I wrote my little non serious bit.

Isn't any ranking of Roberto Alomar going to be tremendously difficult because of the defense issue?

Bbref WAR has him as 3 wins negative over his career, and negative in 12 seasons out of 17 total seasons. Lou Whitaker, for example, gains 10 wins on Alomar from defense, since Alomar is 3 negative and Whitaker is 7 positive. Sandberg similarly gains 8 wins on Alomar.

Since most mainstream people feel like Alomar was a ++ second baseman, as evidenced by his 8 Gold Gloves, any discussion of Alomar should probably include a note about how you feel about his defense.

Alomar is another guy I probably rate less highly than most here. As I've mentioned before there seemed to have been a lot of WAR to go around from around 1993-2004. Alomar got his share, but to me it's less impressive than Sandberg and Grich who get theirs when guys when guys weren't racking up those kind of totals so often. Yeah WAR doesn't like his glove, but I thought his glove was overrated while he was playing too.

I think he's probably a HOFer in my opinion, but maybe just barely.

McCoy, it was there all along. Sometimes my irony voice is hard to distinguish from my regular voice.

FWIW, DRA has Alomar at +21 runs for his career. DRA likes Biggio's defense even less than TZ, so that evens things out a lot between them. OTOH, DRA likes Grich's and Whitaker's defense much more than TZ, so Alomar would drop relative to them.

I think he's probably a HOFer in my opinion, but maybe just barely.

Well, it looks like the matter is somewhat out of your hands.

Given the War, he actually lost only 2-3 years to segregation, depending on how early you think he might have been called up in the absence of discrimination.

Correct, segregation cost some guys their entire career and many player got late starts, but Robinson didn't lose much major league time due to segregation. His career is relatively short for a couple reasons. Everyone remembers the time in the service for World War II. However, they tend to forget that he also played college football for UCLA. Also, at the back end of his career he retired rather than accept a trade to the rival Giants. I think he realized he was physically about done at that point. The aggressive way he played the game plus the pounding as a running back took their toll on his body.

FWIW, DRA has Alomar at +21 runs for his career. DRA likes Biggio's defense even less than TZ, so that evens things out a lot between them. OTOH, DRA likes Grich's and Whitaker's defense much more than TZ, so Alomar would drop relative to them.

Does DRA like Grich and Whitaker's defense by more than 50 runs over their careers?

I happen to think that Alomar is probably the second best second basemen since integration behind Morgan, but I think that it's reasonable to see a few guys in that same general area. For guys after 1955 or so, it's Morgan >>>>>>>>> Everyone Else.

Well, it looks like the matter is somewhat out of your hands.

Ah, a Rube Marquard fan.

Unfortunately for the premise of this article, the Hall of Merit did its all-time ranking vote before we elected Alomar, so Alomar didn't appear on that particular ballot. One other note: we're ranking whole careers here, not just the portion played at 2B. So is Hardy Richardson played quite a bit of outfield (which he did), or if Carew played quite a bit of 1B, that still counts in his favor.

1. Eddie Collins
2. Rogers Hornsby
3. Joe Morgan (Out of 23 voters, 16 had Collins #1, 5 had Hornsby, and 2 had Morgan.)
4. Nap Lajoie
5. Charlie Gehringer
6. Jackie Robinson
7. Bobby Grich
8. Rod Carew
9. Ryne Sandberg
10. Frankie Frisch
11. Ross Barnes (1870's)
12. Billy Herman
13. Bid McPhee (19th century)
14. Hardy Richardson (19th century)
15. Lou Whitaker
16. Joe Gordon
17. Bobby Doerr
18. Frank Grant (19th Century segregated teams)
19. Cupid Childs
20. Willie Randolph
21. Nellie Fox

As I said, the vote with Alomar wasn't taken. If he were to be added to it, my gut feeling is that he would rank behind the Grich/Sandberg/Carew/Frisch grouping - probably somewhere between 10th and 15th. If you want a fuller explanation for that low a ranking, ask Dan R. (Actually, what Voros says in post #9 above sounds a lot like what Dan R was saying in HoM discussions.)

Alomar is within spitting distance of Biggio.

The aggressive way he played the game plus the pounding as a running back took their toll on his body.

But if segregation didn't exist he likely wouldn't have played football for as long as he did. Baseball would have gone hard after him when he was graduating from high school.

Just reading the comments here, I get the feeling that many of the posters didn't bother to read the article. He explains his thinking pretty well, he has his system, it's clear to me that he has a slight personal bias for Alomar, but I don't think it's difficult to imagine Alomar being better than Sandberg or others, heck if you look at the way the hof voting went, Alomar went in on his second ballot, Sandberg took 3 ballots so the writers might think that Alomar is also a better candidate.

Or that once they accepted Sandberg they accepted that level from second basemen.

If it takes you 14 ballots to get Dave Kingman elected are you really going to drag out Jose Canseco's induction?

What exactly was the problem with Alomar's defense? The guy I watched had great range, good hands, an accurate arm. How in the world was he a below-average defender according to some of these systems?

Or that once they accepted Sandberg they accepted that level from second basemen.

If it takes you 14 ballots to get Dave Kingman elected are you really going to drag out Jose Canseco's induction?

Yes that is the argument, I was just pointing out one possibility. I personally think Alomar is better, but not so much that I would really feel it's worth arguing either way. Just don't fully trust defensive metrics that says he is 'average'.

Does DRA like Grich and Whitaker's defense by more than 50 runs over their careers?

Yes, in fact by over 100.

But if segregation didn't exist he likely wouldn't have played football for as long as he did. Baseball would have gone hard after him when he was graduating from high school.

That assumes Robinson would not have wanted to go to college. Given that baseball salaries were not the astronomical numbers we talk about today, it is possible he would have wanted the benefits of an education.

Yes, in fact by over 100.

Sorry, I should have said, do they like Grich and Whitaker by more than 50 runs than TZ?

I don't think it's difficult to imagine Alomar being better than Sandberg or others

I don't either. Alomar was by far the better offensive player: Alomar has more than 10 oWar more than Sandberg. You have to really buy into the defense argument to even get them close.

That assumes Robinson would not have wanted to go to college. Given that baseball salaries were not the astronomical numbers we talk about today, it is possible he would have wanted the benefits of an education.

Jackie left college to take a job and to play a paying sport.

What exactly was the problem with Alomar's defense? The guy I watched had great range, good hands, an accurate arm. How in the world was he a below-average defender according to some of these systems?

If I recall correctly the mid-'90s arguments from rec.sport.baseball: Positioning. He played too deep, which meant he "got to" more balls... and looked great getting to them... but didn't actually convert them into outs.

And there was some issue with going to his left. I can't remember.

Here's Baseball Prospectus's 1996 comment discussing the issue:

Alomar has been the topic of one of the most vehement arguments in the baseball analytical community, specifically, his fielding. The general public and traditional statistics say that he is the best second baseman there is. The analysts point out that he is average or below in range factor (essentially, assists and putouts per game), as well as in more detailed defensive statistics like Defensive Average. A lot has been written in support of both sides: he's flashier than others in making the routine play; he plays too deep, which makes his range look better while actually making it worse; he knocks down a lot of balls without making an out; it's the fast carpet or coach-ordered positioning that's causing the bad numbers.

However, in the time from 1988-95, the DA of his backups has been very poor; only three other players have backups with worse DAs, and all of them have DAs much worse than Alomar. Alomar exceeds his teammate's DA by 41 points, more than anyone else except Craig Biggio, at +42. Others in the same vicinity are Delino DeShields at +33, Robby Thompson at +36, Billy Ripken at +37, Ryne Sandberg and Carlos Baerga at +27 apiece: none of him are labeled bad second basemen. I think there is a problem with the statistics that we've been slow to recognize and revise.

We get heavily into counterfactuals here. If Jackie Robinson could have skipped college and been paid to play baseball, but baseball didn't pay that well, but black men weren't being hired on Wall Street or into management track positions (no matter how talented they were), then he plays baseball. But if we lived in a colorblind society (which is a difficult hypothetical to even imagine), AND baseball doesn't pay too well, maybe he stays in college and plays football. Etc.

Jackie Robinson's brother Mack, of course, was a world-class sprinter (silver medal behind Jesse Owens in the 200m at the 1936 Berlin Olympics), and graduated from the University of Oregon as a national track champion. Jackie was the national long-jump champion for UCLA in 1940, jumping 7.58 meters: not near Owens's marks, but Jerome Biffle's gold-medal distance at the 1952 Olympics, for comparison, was 7.57. The Robinsons were not well-off, but they were not your typical family, either. Pro baseball was an option for Jackie if he'd wanted to concentrate on it, albeit the ill-paid sector of segregated ball; instead, he was to some extent following his older brother into elite athletics.

Sorry, I should have said, do they like Grich and Whitaker by more than 50 runs than TZ?

Yes in Grich's case, only about 35 runs better for Whitaker.

I remember watching some Jays games in '93 and seeing some ground balls go through the right side of the infield and saying to myself, you know, if Alomar was as good as his reputation, he would have caught those. I don't think he was bad defensively at all... but I don't think he was as good as everyone says he was.

(Out of 23 voters, 16 had Collins #1, 5 had Hornsby, and 2 had Morgan.)

So what's the case for Collins over Hornsby?

WAR has them very close, but Hornsby seems quite a bit peakier (i.e. acquired all his WAR in 16 seasons vs. 20, has 6 10+ WAR seasons vs. 3 for Collins, and 3 seasons better than Collins' best, etc.).

I understand why it's close, but why pick Collins?

I understand why it's close, but why pick Collins?

Because he brought Ted Williams to Boston.

So what's the case for Collins over Hornsby?

WAR has them very close

WAR has them very close in career, while rating Hornsby as a better defender. I'm guessing the HOM disagrees with that particular assessment.

What exactly was the problem with Alomar's defense? The guy I watched had great range, good hands, an accurate arm. How in the world was he a below-average defender according to some of these systems?

I've always had the same question. The height of my hard-core fandom was in the early 90's; I remember spending hours and hours trying to come up with a defensive system for second basemen that matched what I saw on the field: that Alomar and Knoblauch were very good defenders. Coincidentally, they were also two of the few second basemen that played most of their games on turf.

#32 The 54 baserunning runs for Collins feels low. And I'm not sure how to adjust for the management decision to bunt him as often as they did. For that matter, I'm confident that Collins reached on error quite frequently (given his speed, the fact that he was an excellent bunter and the fielding percentage of the day it would be moderately surprising if a bunt by Collins wasn't a better than break even play in spite of his OBP)

I think I'd still go for Hornsby though -- at least in the abstract. If I was actually running a team I'd take Collins any time. The difference won't be large, and an easier life has to be worth something.

You called, OCF?

The case against Alomar as an all-time elite 2B (as opposed to a deserving Hall of Fame/Meriter, which he is) is simple. As a hitter, he was merely good, not great--I have him with 23 batting wins above the pitchers-excluded average (very close to baseball-reference's 253 runs), or 26 if we ignore his final three worthless seasons. He was a great baserunner, and that helps, putting him up to 27, or 30 through 2002. But by the time Alomar played, 2B was not the defense-first "middle infield" position it had been in the 1970s--freely available replacement 2B (say, Miguel Cairo) hit and fielded their positions just as well as freely available replacement 3B or CF did (roughly an 80 OPS+). It was a middle-spectrum position. So 30 batting wins above average, plus 13 full seasons' worth of middle-spectrum replacement level (just over 2 wins a season) makes 60 total, which is juust about the minimum for the Hall for a guy without a huuge peak.

Now, that's before giving him any credit for above-average fielding. The numbers say he was merely average. If he was an outstanding defensive 2B (+100), then he's at 70 which is an automatic-in, even before peak credit. If he was Mazeroski (+200), then he's knocking on the door of the top 5 with Gehringer and Jackie.

8. Rod Carew
9. Ryne Sandberg

And here's another example of the absurdity of ranking positions based on games played elsewhere. Carew had just 1130 games at 2B; Sandberg had 1995. That's not a tiny, ignorable difference. As a 2B, Carew had 40 WAR in 9 seasons; his 5 year, non-consecutive peak is 26 WAR. Sandberg had 62 WAR at 2B with a 5-year non-consecutive peak of 34 WAR.

So Sandberg wins on peak as a 2B and career as a 2B; Carew wins on being an excellent 1B for half his career.

Now it's not hard to imagine an alternate universe where Carew remains at 2B for 2-3 more seasons (Chone puts him well above-average at 1B those years) and his age 30-31 seasons were his best. Now I don't remember why Carew was moved but the Twins moved him to 1B to start the 28-year-old Bob Randall (88 OPS+) at 2B even with some fairly obvious other options for 1B (Braun, Kusick, Hisle) so it looks like a move the Twins felt had to be made.

EDIT: Carew's career is interesting in that it's nearly exactly 50/50 at 1B/2B in terms of playing time and value (by WAR). That's different than Banks and even Yount.

Carew's career is interesting in that it's nearly exactly 50/50 at 1B/2B in terms of playing time and value (by WAR). That's different than Banks

What am I, a potted plant? Post #4:

Carew had nearly as much value at first instead of second, including his best and 3rd best seasons. His is not an Ernie Banks situation.

That's a good point about Carew, Walt.

Did Carew move to lesson the risk of injury? That might make some sense, although Carew did not have a lot of missed games as a 2B.

Depriving Hornsby of #1 needs some explaining: first, because there just too damn much offense, and second, because recent attempts to quantify his defense shows that it wasn't that bad--BBref has him just as good as Collins and better that Morgan. Why the demotion?

@37: interesting argument, Dan, since it undermines Alomar's rep with the bat and the glove, and still leaves him a HOFer. If I'm remembering his reputation as a fielder rightly, if he's in fact below average, the difference between the perception and the reality would be as great for Alomar as it is for Jeter. He was also popularly considered a hell of a hitter for a 2Bman. Is there anywhere I can find the average yearly OPS+ by position?

I'm surprised at Jeff Kent's career WAR (60.8). Acc to BBRef his D was better than Alomar's, and his OPS+ was 123 to Robby's 116, but even though Kent has only 500 fewer PAs he trails by about 3 wins. Guess Alomar's baserunning really was something special.

Speaking of Kent, since no one else has, does anyone here think he won't make the Hall? I thought he'd be a lock, given the MVP and that he was still a good player until his last season, but it wouldn't surprise me if he never "clicks" with voters, and never gets out of the 30%s.

The case against Alomar as an all-time elite 2B (as opposed to a deserving Hall of Fame/Meriter, which he is) is simple. As a hitter, he was merely good, not great--I have him with 23 batting wins above the pitchers-excluded average (very close to baseball-reference's 253 runs), or 26 if we ignore his final three worthless seasons. He was a great baserunner, and that helps, putting him up to 27, or 30 through 2002. But by the time Alomar played, 2B was not the defense-first "middle infield" position it had been in the 1970s--freely available replacement 2B (say, Miguel Cairo) hit and fielded their positions just as well as freely available replacement 3B or CF did (roughly an 80 OPS+). It was a middle-spectrum position. So 30 batting wins above average, plus 13 full seasons' worth of middle-spectrum replacement level (just over 2 wins a season) makes 60 total, which is juust about the minimum for the Hall for a guy without a huuge peak.

I really disagree with this approach to analyzing value. Second base did not get easier to play in the 1990's than it was in the 1970's. Saying that there were better readily available replacement players in the 1990's than in the 1970's doesn't really have any bearing on the overall value of the position--just on the guys who happened to be available. Nothing happened to make it easier to play second base. If anything, it was harder since a high offense era has more double play opportunities. In addition, managers did not change strategies to de-emphasize the importance of second base defense, like how fielding a bunt became less and less of a third baseman's everyday duties.

In short, the position did not change, so our concept of the replacement value should not vary because of who happened to be playing the position.

Depriving Hornsby of #1 needs some explaining: first, because there just too damn much offense, and second, because recent attempts to quantify his defense shows that it wasn't that bad--BBref has him just as good as Collins and better that Morgan. Why the demotion?

I imagine a guy like Hornsby who was so much clearly superior player than everyone else probably got a rep as a bad defender is because he's like Hanley Ramirez and didn't look like he cared about it. He was probably so much better as an athlete that he didn't need to try to be good(and from what I've read he never really cared about defense) so people projected his attitude onto the quality of his defense.

What am I, a potted plant? Post #4:
That's a good point about Carew, Walt.

Draw your own conclusion. :-)

Correct, segregation cost some guys their entire career and many player got late starts, but Robinson didn't lose much major league time due to segregation. His career is relatively short for a couple reasons. Everyone remembers the time in the service for World War II. However, they tend to forget that he also played college football for UCLA. Also, at the back end of his career he retired rather than accept a trade to the rival Giants.

Myth. He had already decided to retire. The trade simply affected the timing of his announcement, not the timing of his retirement.

I really disagree with this approach to analyzing value. Second base did not get easier to play in the 1990's than it was in the 1970's. Saying that there were better readily available replacement players in the 1990's than in the 1970's doesn't really have any bearing on the overall value of the position--just on the guys who happened to be available. Nothing happened to make it easier to play second base. If anything, it was harder since a high offense era has more double play opportunities. In addition, managers did not change strategies to de-emphasize the importance of second base defense, like how fielding a bunt became less and less of a third baseman's everyday duties.

In short, the position did not change, so our concept of the replacement value should not vary because of who happened to be playing the position.

I don't think Dan, or anyone else, is saying that the fielding part of the job changed much, if at all, just that the guys who could handle the position defensively became, at bottom, better hitters. There were probably a number of reasons for that: increased recourse to weight training which may have affected smaller players disproportionately, random variation, more teams willing to sacrifice defense for offense at the position, and so forth. The guys who could field enough to pass muster on defense became, by the 90s, better hitters than those guys had been in the 70s. If Alomar is putting up a 116 OPS+ and a replacement level 2bman has an OPS+ of 65, Alomar in comparison is a tremendous hitter. If the replacement level 2bman instead, as Dan reports, has an OPS+ in the 80s, Alomar is still a very good hitter for a 2bman, but he's no longer a monster.

In short, the position did not change, so our concept of the replacement value should not vary because of who happened to be playing the position.

But the offensive aspect of the position HAS changed. The offensive production of replacement level players DID change between the 70s and 90s. It increased. That increase affects the value of other 2bmen, including Alomar. It also affects our perception of Alomar. If we're judging his offense by comparing it to the hitting of 2bmen of the 1970s, we're going to think he was a much better hitter than he already was.

I remember someone doing a study of Blue Jays pitchers during Alomar's tenure, and while I don't have the numbers handy anymore, it was pretty clear that Toronto had an extreme flyball staff most of his time there.

Times leading the league in WAR for position players

Babe Ruth - 11
Willie Mays - 11
Honus Wagner - 11
Barry Bonds - 10
Rogers Hornsby - 10

By my count no one else has more than 7. Morgan did it four times, Collins did it twice, Lajoie four times and Jackie Robinson three. It's tough to look at that and pick someone other than Hornsby. Sure he was a pain in the ass, but that applies at least to some extent to three of those five guys (and Cobb who did it 7 times). When you're that good, I guess you get to be difficult.