Wednesday, December 12, 2012
2013 Results: Bonds, Clemens, Piazza and Biggio are elected to the Hall of Merit!
(bbtf)
Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza and Craig Biggio have been elected to the Hall of Merit!
The timing for our first year electing 4 candidates could not have worked out better, since class of 2013 is the strongest in terms of electees that we’ve ever had. The top of the 1934 ballot included Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins, Pop Lloyd, Smokey Joe Williams and Cristobal Torriente, but only 2 were elected.
Bonds and Clemens were each unanimous at 1 and 2. I believe that’s the first ...
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1 2 3 4 >If by "through his era," he means 1977-79, then sure.
I usually expect a more sustained peak.
The sun still rises in the east too.
I usually expect a more sustained peak.
Those three years were enough to get Rice in, and Parker was the better player in those years. He was better than Rice in 1978, Rice's calling card year.
(And yes, he deserves it much more than Jim Rice.)
But was he feared? Oh yeah, he was.
Blow.
(And yes, he deserves it much more than Jim Rice.)
Not really. When you look at their careers, Parker's was slightly longer, but Rice beats him in nearly every offensive category other than oWaR, which is solely a function of Parker's three extra years. Parker at one point had a reputation as somewhat of a speedster, but his career SB success rate was .577, which is worse than worthless. And while Parker was a better fielder in his prime, his career defensive numbers are still negative.
Parker's out of the HoF for one reason and one reason alone: His self-inflicted drug habit. Not because it was "performance-enhancing", but because it was exactly the opposite, which anyone who looks at the records can see. The closest parallel to Dave Parker's career isn't Jim Rice, it's more like Sam McDowell or Don Newcombe.
Has a very nice and neat five year peak from 1975-1979 and he was a hell of a player for those five years. He was not the best player in the NL over that span though, that was Schmidt and it wasn't close. Morgan probably was better too due to the sheer awesomeness of 1975-1976.
From 1986-1991 Parker racked up 3568 PAs and according to Baseball Reference -0.3 WAR during that time. He was regarded as having thrown his talent away on drugs before the revival in 1985, I'm not sure that was really fair. Other guys from the cocaine years seemed to play okay, although it's possible Parker's problems were substantially more worse and had a bigger effect.
I have absolutely no recollection of him playing for Milwaukee, Toronto or the Angels at the end of his career. I do remember his time in Oakland though.
Don't feel too bad about that, Voros. Parker may not remember it himself.
Unless, of course, I'm thinking of Don Baylor.
A very good player...not a Hall of Famer.
Parker did getfat in the early 1980s but I wonder if we looked at him today if we would call him that. If you look at the Bucky Dent game, Bill White makes jokes about Bob "Beetle" Bailey being overweight. Maybe in that era of skinny players but not today.
No, the assists were his. (-:
It didn't just get him the MVP, it earned him a defensive reputation for the remainder of his career that his actual performance didn't justify. He could run a little when he was younger and had a strong but terribly erratic arm. He was not a good defensive player, but a polyester-clad Vlad.
Or Andre Dawson, for that matter. There ain't a whole lot to choose from between the Cobra and the Hawk. Of course, the Hawk doesn't belong in the Hall, but he's there and so Parker has a point.
And here's where Jim Rice screws things up for everybody. Why not Dave Parker? Why not Dale Murphy? Why not Cesar Cedeno?
Remind me, when was Dave Parker a Gold Glove center fielder and excellent baserunner?
From 1975-1979 George Foster was also more impressive than Parker, at least offensively.
Andre Dawson was clearly a better all-around player than Parker, but I can't say the same about Jim Rice. Dawson was probably one of the 2 or 3 best all-around players in baseball when he was with Montreal, Rice might have been one of the 2 or 3 best all-around players on the Red Sox, but even that is debatable.
Andre Dawson is a borderline Hall of Fame selection. If he made it fine, if he didn't, that's fine too.
Rice was an outright bad selection. Parker would be equally bad. Rice's selection gives better players such as Murphy and others a crutch. It's really not terribly helpful to Parker's non-case.
Wes should get credit for his brilliant acting career. How many times was Dave on the Brady Bunch? or Matt Helm? or Police Story? Okay, Dave may have portrayed on Police Story.
Because I started following baseball in October of 1986, I remember Parker's time with those teams, but not his time with the Reds or Pirates. (Although in the late 80s I played Tom Tippet's Pursue The Pennant with my brothers and I had the 1985 Reds, of which he was a key part.)
The problem with Parker is that he's all peak. He has five seasons that would fit very nicely into a HOF career... but not nearly enough outside of that. If your argument is mainly all peak, you have to have a Koufaxian one.
According to Francesa, Blyleven wasn't dominant and didn't "feel like a Hall of Famer" when he was playing. Francesa looks for dominance. "For example... Catfish. He was dominant. All of those 20-win seasons. Blyleven had a nice curveball but wasn't dominant. I never thought I was looking at a Hall of Famer. Look at Sandy Koufax. Koufax was the best pitcher ever at his peak. Mussina? No, he's not a Hall of Famer. Neither is Pettitte."
He's also supported Morris in the past. So: Morris and Catfish, but not Blyleven or Mussina. And he's right that Pettitte's not a HOFer, but even Pettitte beats Morris and Catfish.
And Koufax's peak is bested by, for starters, Pedro/Clemens/Johnson/Maddux.
Blyleven's an interesting case. He didn't really feel like a Hall of Famer and didn't feel dominant ... but he was dominant. The shutout and strikeout numbers don't lie.
Morris felt like a Hall of Famer (**) and should be in the Hall of Fame, though admittedly his is a close case with plenty of material for the antis.
Mussina sure felt like a Hall of Famer to me.
Pettitte didn't.
Catfish as "dominant" is preposterous on its face. Wins, while more meaningful in aggregate than sabermetric orthodoxy holds, do not translate to dominance. The guy was top ten in league Ks/9 once in his career. So, yeah ... Francesa.
(**) As chronicled herein, the divergence between his "playing ability" and "playing record" -- explicitly distinct HOF criteria -- and the reasons for it, were noted by contemporaries early in Morris's career. To those most familiar with his oeuvre, 1991 Game 7 didn't enhance as much as it confirmed.
I am sure Parker wishes he had gone to the movies all those nights in the early 1980s instead of doing lines. I don’t have a moral problem here–it has been suggested that half of all major league players were at least casual users, and the percentage in the rest of society (among people with money) was higher than that. I went to many parties in the 1980s where coke was everywhere. There are many coke users in the Hall of Fame, some that we know about (Molitor) and several that we do not. Most of the guys from the 1980s likely at least tried it.
That said, Parker has five years in the middle of his career where he did not help his teams. That is the truth. He recovered a bit in his mid-30s, but at that point he was just a hitter–he had lost all the other tools that made him Dave Parker.
He had a fine career, and I hope that he finds some peace with all the good things he accomplished.
I don't think Mazzilli had the arm for RF.
Although he is indeed all over the map, I think that Francesa's opinions on this probably line up with those of a large number of casual and serious fans.
If you're supposed to be an "expert," you really should understand ERA+ and the problem with wins.
And you don't really even need to understand ERA+. Morris has a 3.90 raw ERA. In a normal era of offense. The concepts are so simple.
SBB: If Morris was coming up big when it counted (let's say a 2.90 ERA), WTF was he doing when he didn't think it counted? Posting ERAs in the 5s? Do you think his team might have liked him to try during other times as well?
Regarding coke use in the early '80s: among affluent young people (which Parker and every other ballplayer certainly was), at least casual use of cocaine was extremely widespread. The only other non-legal recreational drug more pervasive was weed. No one should be the least bit shocked about Parker's or anyone else's indulgence in coke.
That said, it is apparent that Parker's usage was more than casual. That certainly would be consistent with the manner in which he was "managing" his consumption of calories and of tobacco and god only knows what all else, because he became amazingly obese. Somebody upthread wondered if we would think of early 1980s-Parker as fat today, and the answer is, yes, oh yes we would. Baggy modern unis and all, he would look fat as hell today, because he was.
I do think that few if any modern players are as out of shape as Parker was at his worst. Vastly fewer players (or young people in general, for that matter) smoke cigarettes today, for one thing.
"Doing" is too active a verb. Run of the mill games didn't put him in the zone as much as big games.(**) While they obviously impact different people differently, there's no way to simulate the bigger moments.
Do you think his team might have liked him to try during other times as well?
"Try" is too active a verb; see above. I suppose the answer is "yes," but the more precise answer for these purposes is that three organizations knew him warts and all, and all three denominated him their ace, deployed him as an ace, and paid him like an ace.
(**) As indicated by, among other examples, Game 7 1991. In an era before guys regularly pounded their chests, and emitted choreographed screams, and engaged in other simulacra of intensity for the television cameras, Morris looked and acted as if was genuinely possessed. Which, in a sense, he was.
Yep. "Clutch" is just another word for "lazy". Otherwise, he would've pitched like a stud all the time.
Well, not if you're a dude, maybe.
As a Jays fan, his shittacular 1992 post-season completely nullifies 1991 Game 7. How come he couldn't step it up, just one year later?
There's a rarity, we agree on something. :)
Do you realize how hard it is to get so obese while doing so much coke and also smoking? That's a Hall of Fame accomplishment right there.
In boxing some guys seem to completely fall off the cliff after one last epic effort. Ken Norton's 15 round squeaker loss to Larry Holmes in 1978, Tom Sharkey's 25 round torture test against Jim Jeffries in 1899, Ezzard Charles' twin brawls with Rocky Marciano in 1954, etc. They throw everything they have in one last valiant effort and seemingly deplete their reserves forever.
But Morris? He was a bum.
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In boxing some guys seem to completely fall off the cliff after one last epic effort. Ken Norton's 15 round squeaker loss to Larry Holmes in 1978, Tom Sharkey's 25 round torture test against Jim Jeffries in 1899, Ezzard Charles' twin brawls with Rocky Marciano in 1954, etc.
Not to mention Jersey Joe Walcott, who gave Marciano the battle of his life for 13 rounds while defending his championship, and then went down in the 1st round while trying to get it back.
Only a schoolmarm would care about how he performed on, say, October 1, 1983. It's of less moment for these purposes than the chemical composition of Francesca's ball sweat.
Morris pretty clearly ran out of gas in the 1992 postseason, at the end of a heavy-workload career marked by high-caliber work and elan. He wouldn't be "clutch" if he walked out on the mound today, either.
I suspect it was the weight gain more than the drug use that messed up Parker's career. Several players from that era had serious cocaine problems without it becoming evident in their statistical lines - Keith Hernandez, Paul Molitor, Tim Raines, etc.
On the other hand, the coke probably contributed to Parker's obvious lack of concern about his baseball career.
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