Exactly. Even if I grant that he was the best CF ever (maybe, maybe not), but haircut Jones' ten-year defensive peak to merely best ever (slightly better than Blair, White and Mays) he drops 7-10 WAR.

That basically moves him out of serious consideration for a modern player. And that's giving him best CF of all time credit.

Really, you don't think the Hall of Fame has a place for the best defensive CF of all time? That seems to me to enforce an unduly narrow set of criteria for Hall enshrinement ("Welcome to the Hall of WAR!"). The Hall celebrates accomplishments both numerical and qualitative. A ten-year peak as best defensive CF seems to me the kind of thing that would be a qualitatively Hall-worthy achievement, especially given that he didn't remotely embarrass himself with the bat while providing that kind of defense.

I'm not saying I think AJ should be in, and I'm not saying he is the best CF of all time (just continuing your "even if he is..." line of reasoning). It just seems to me that if the Hall isn't there to recognize excellence in all of its forms - such as the pinnacle of excellence in CF defense - then I'm not sure what exactly the Hall is for.

the stats say he is EXACTLY as good as was widely claimed at the time.

Andruw was regarded as a great fielder. I'm not sure he was ever widely acclaimed as the greatest center fielder of all time. Even if he was, he was decidedly not thought of as someone who was a no-brainer Hall of Famer, a "hit by a bus" guy. He wasn't regarded as Albert Pujols, or Ken Griffey. He wasn't even in the same class as Dale Murphy or Fred Lynn. There's a long way to go to reconcile the image of Andruw and that of a guy who should make the Hall of Fame despite a precipitous decline.

What exactly is going on in these past couple of posts?

That seems to me to enforce an unduly narrow set of criteria for Hall enshrinement ("Welcome to the Hall of WAR!").

Wait, so now we're saying WAR doesn't suggest Andruw should be in? And you're pulling out the kind of argument usually reserved for Jack Morris supporters? How is WAR your enemy here? Really weird.

It just seems to me that if the Hall isn't there to recognize excellence in all of its forms - such as the pinnacle of excellence in CF defense - then I'm not sure what exactly the Hall is for.

To recognize the best players in terms of overall value (offense plus defense). As you surely know.

There's a long way to go to reconcile the image of Andruw and that of a guy who should make the Hall of Fame despite a precipitous decline.

At the age of 30, he was a CF with 368 HR and 10 Gold Gloves. He was absolutely a "hit by a bus" guy. And he got hit by a Twinkie bus.

Andruw was regarded as a great fielder. I'm not sure he was ever widely acclaimed as the greatest center fielder of all time.

When did people start talking about Ozzie Smith as the greatest SS of all time? If Ozzie got fat and started declining after 5-6 years in the majors, would it have ever happened?

Young Andruw was considered the very best defensive outfielder in baseball, better than Griffey and Cameron and his competitors, and it was common for people to say that he was the best since Mays or the best since Blair/White/whoever or the best they'd ever seen.

The common opinion was also that one day he would take a great leap in his batting, learn how to hit .300 consistently, and I think that would have put him squarely into "future HOFer" track (he was already borderline), maybe even "hit by a bus" territory. "Hit by a bus" is a high standard, one which none of the glove-first inductees (Robinson, Maz, Ozzie) ever reached at a young age.

Really, you don't think the Hall of Fame has a place for the best defensive CF of all time?

Not with only 10 years above replacement level, no. Paul Blair or Devon White might be the best defensive CF of all time; no one makes an argument for them.

With a very little discounting on defense (ay 50 runs/5 wins,still leaving him the best CF of all time by a good margin) Jones is significantly behind Lofton and Beltran by WAR, and in the neighborhood of Edmonds, Abreu, Sheffield, Guerrero, Sosa and Ichiro.

That's borderline territory at best. Only the guys who put up gaudy batting averages (Ichiro, Guerrero) seem to have a good shot. Sheffield and Sosa would, except for steroids rumors/assholishness, but they also be getting in for traditional batting stats (HR).

"Hit by a bus" is a funny phrase and a funny way of looking at things. What happened to Jones (or Dale Murphy or Roberto Alomar or others) is almost certainly worse than getting hit by a bus, as far as one's HOF case is concerned.

At the age of 30, he was a CF with 368 HR and 10 Gold Gloves. He was absolutely a "hit by a bus" guy. And he got hit by a Twinkie bus.

At the age of 30, he hit .222 with an 87 OPS+. It was absolutely clear at that point that he was going to have to do more work to get in. He was a lifetime 114 OPS guy, with 1 top 5 MVP vote season. If anything, his case after 10 years is appreciably worse than Fred Lynn or Dale Murphy. The case for Jones as a HOFer is entirely built on him being the greatest center fielder of all time by a distinct margin, as has been noted here.

Wait, does "hit by a bus" mean "he would get in even if he were hit by a bus right now", or does it mean "virtually the only thing that could stop him from getting in at this point is if he got hit by a bus"? I understood the latter.

(And I'm talking "will", not "should", so OPS+ is not too important, and career HR and Gold Gloves at a key defensive positions are hugely important.)

I don't follow. If the flaw is only with Willie's numbers, and he is underrated by 15 dWAR or whatever, then that doesn't affect the fact that Andruw is a 60 WAR player.

It affects the claim that he was the greatest defensive CFer of all time by a huge margin. If his case for enshrinement is that he was a 60 WAR player, end of story, then fine. But if his case for enshrinement is that he was the Ozzie Smith of CF, then he's got a problem.

When did people start talking about Ozzie Smith as the greatest SS of all time? If Ozzie got fat and started declining after 5-6 years in the majors, would it have ever happened?

If Ozzie got fat and started declining after 5-6, or even 10 years in the majors, he would not be in the HOF.

If Andruw hit like Ozzie I'd agree. Andruw hit like a very good player, the question isn't whether his defense alone gets him in, it's whether his defense elevates the rest of his numbers into the Hall. Andruw has much more to build on than Ozzie.

OTOH, Andruw never really hit like a HOFer, even for a short peak. Seems to me that even among the more sabermetrically inclined voters, all-around cases are going to suffer. So I do think his case is going to have to be more along "defense alone gets him in" lines.

People started talking about Ozzie as the greatest defensive SS of all time by 1981-82ish at the latest.

That sounds right to me, baudib. That did not in my experience correlate with anyone talking about him as an HOFer. I remember as late as 1985 that idea getting laughed at. I would guess 87 was the first time there was any chatter of Ozzie as someone who could possibly become an HOFer, and that was his 10th season. Not as he's in, but hey he's somebody to keep an eye on. Breaking .300 stupid as it may seem, help put the nail in the coffin of Ozzie Smith as Mark Belanger, unfair as that was.

This late September 1987 cover profile is highly complimentary of Smith, but never once speculates about his place in Cooperstown.

[64] Here's an earlier SI article about Ozzie's Hall chances

June 02, 1986
Possessing More Than Stats, These Three Are Worthy Of Cooperstown
Jim Kaplan

Three kinds of players dominate the Baseball Hall of Fame: batters who hit a lot, sluggers who homer a lot, pitchers who win a lot. Their glitzy stats jump out of the bios sent to electors. But there are equally deserving players who don't make the Hall: men whose numbers aren't catchy enough and whose contributions are often too subtle to be summarized. Some of them are subsequently elected by the Veterans' Committee, but that group's deliberations don't begin until 23 years after a player has retired.

One way to try to right these wrongs is to build up support for worthy but underrated players before they get lost in the shuffle. I have in mind three current players who merit election to the Hall but possibly will not make it based on past voting patterns: Tony Perez, Ron Guidry and Ozzie Smith. ...

Ozzie Smith's chances are quickly dismissed. He's strictly a defensive player, critics say, and fielders aren't Famers. Now wait a minute. Lest we forget, shortstops make the Hall with their gloves as well as their bats: Of the 15 shortstops at Cooperstown, only six had career averages of .300 or higher. And by every measure of excellence, from the memories of old men to the complicated formulas of young computer whizzes, Smith is the greatest fielding shortstop of the last half century.

But Ozzie has a lower lifetime average (.243) than any Hall of Fame shortstop, comes the refrain. Well, batting average can be misleading. Would you take Mike Schmidt and his .266 lifetime average—or Ken Oberkfell and his .286?

O.K., Smith doesn't have Schmidt's power, but Ozzie isn't the offensive liability he has long been perceived to be. For one thing, a .243 average isn't that bad for a No. 8 hitter being fed breaking balls and off-speed pitches. Averaging 56 walks, 34 stolen bases and only 35 strikeouts a season, Smith is a guy who can reach base with two outs and make sure the pitcher doesn't lead off the next inning. Or, with fewer than two outs, he can steal second himself if the pitcher fails to bunt him over. "I have pride in being able to do little things, like score a man from third with fewer than two outs or move a man into scoring position," Smith says.

Last year he learned to drive the ball and had his best season—hitting .276, with six homers and a game-winning tater in the playoffs—while winning his sixth consecutive Gold Glove. In the 1986 Baseball Abstract, Bill James calls Smith, not Willie McGee, last season's National League MVP.

"It's a little early to be talking Hall of Fame," Smith says. Technically he's right. He won't qualify for selection until he completes his 10th season in 1987. Then he should be considered a solid choice. Tony Perez and Ron Guidry are already in my Hall of Fame.

That seems to me to enforce an unduly narrow set of criteria for Hall enshrinement ("Welcome to the Hall of WAR!").
Wait, so now we're saying WAR doesn't suggest Andruw should be in? And you're pulling out the kind of argument usually reserved for Jack Morris supporters? How is WAR your enemy here? Really weird.

It's only weird if you willfully misread what I've written here. I've neither argued for nor against WAR, just questioned whether WAR is a singular criterion by which to elect people to the Hall. I've argued that Andruw's defensive stats seem generally in line with the perception of his excellence at the time of his peak, and have asked why people discount them. I have asked why there is no place in the Hall for someone even if considered the best at his position while also hitting well. At no point have I actually argued that Andruw should be in, because I haven't actually made the argument that he's the best ever, but instead I'm running with the "even if" scenario posited here.

And, give me a break with your snarky Jack Morris crack. If Jack Morris had any claim in the neighborhood of what was posited above (best defensive CF ever) then you might have a point. But, "best defensive CF ever" is far above anything claimed for Morris. There are precious few people in the history of baseball who can lay claim to being the best ever at any aspect of the game for a significant period of time. All appeals to qualitative accomplishment are not equal to "the kind of argument reserved for Jack Morris supporters".

It just seems to me that if the Hall isn't there to recognize excellence in all of its forms - such as the pinnacle of excellence in CF defense - then I'm not sure what exactly the Hall is for.
To recognize the best players in terms of overall value (offense plus defense). As you surely know.

I have no idea if this line is serious or a joke. Such is the level of discourse around here.

Andruw was regarded as a great fielder. I'm not sure he was ever widely acclaimed as the greatest center fielder of all time.

I heard it bandied about frequently enough. He very often got called the best since Mays, if not his equal, which given the deification of Willie, was akin to calling him the greatest of all time without succumbing to blasphemy.

Regardless, and I could have been clearer, what I meant was that the stats say he was EXACTLY as good relatively to his contemporaries as he was claimed to be at the time. If you look only at the players we have the same kind of data quality for, his relative quality and longevity fits exactly what what claimed about his defense: he was essentially a unanimous pick for greatest CF of the era and he maintained that acclaim for about a decade.

Paul Blair or Devon White might be the best defensive CF of all time; no one makes an argument for them.

Because a "might" with no evidence isn't much of an argument. Andruw has (a) a better statistical claim and (b) a better "I seent it with my eyes" narrative claim than his near-contemporary White. White might been up there if he'd made the majors at 19 like Andruw instead of his mid-20s, what with defense peaking basically as early as possible, but we'll never really know. Also, White was a slightly below average hitter -9 Rbat, which is pretty big no-no for HOF consideration. Andruw is at +119.

Blair has a more legitimate claim to top all-time CF defense, but even if we think he is short-sold, and in fact as valuable as Andruw, the reason he was never considered for the Hall is obvious: He was a below average hitter, with -33 Rbat, who had an even shorter career than Andruw (~2000 fewer PAs).

With a very little discounting on defense (ay 50 runs/5 wins,still leaving him the best CF of all time by a good margin) Jones is significantly behind Lofton and Beltran by WAR, and in the neighborhood of Edmonds, Abreu, Sheffield, Guerrero, Sosa and Ichiro.

Of course, bWAR is already "discounting" his defense by about 5+ Wins compared to fWAR, which sees him as a +20 defender through his whole Braves tenure. So how about we compromise: let's throw out the optimistic (UZR) as well as the pessimistic (random subtraction to hypothetically just levels), and just settle on the bWAR total as the middle ground, absent some legitimate critique of the underlying data.

It affects the claim that he was the greatest defensive CFer of all time by a huge margin. If his case for enshrinement is that he was a 60 WAR player, end of story, then fine. But if his case for enshrinement is that he was the Ozzie Smith of CF, then he's got a problem.

It's not really about the ranking (though that certainly helps the narrative), it's about the value of the defense. What's important is not that no one else was as good, but rather that his defense was incredibly valuable. If someone else was just as good, that doesn't take away from Andruw's value. The entire "rankings" issue is a red herring; if there are two "best ever" (e.g. Belanger and Smith) it doesn't diminish how good either one was.

OTOH, Andruw never really hit like a HOFer, even for a short peak. Seems to me that even among the more sabermetrically inclined voters, all-around cases are going to suffer. So I do think his case is going to have to be more along "defense alone gets him in" lines.

I agree with you on "what will probably happen" level.

Andruw was arrested for battery last night. Haven't seen it reported yet other than on Braves blogs. Capitol Avenue Club is where I saw the link:

http://www.gwinnettcountysheriff.com/index.php/inmates/?id=2012691937&random=1356447450113&print;

Wait, does "hit by a bus" mean "he would get in even if he were hit by a bus right now", or does it mean "virtually the only thing that could stop him from getting in at this point is if he got hit by a bus"? I understood the latter.

I've always assumed the former. If the guy's career ended today, would he be in? There are problems with the question, though, because if a player actually gets hit by a bus (or their plane goes down, or they get glaucoma), the voters seem to assign the guy has a normal decline phase. And, as we've seen, that doesn't necessarily happen. If a guy reaches "bus" stage then has a normal decline, he gets in. If he outperforms the normal decline, he's in. But if he doesn't do much, he might be out.

He didn't really "bolt" from the Braves. The Braves announced really early, like the day after the World Series or something, that they had no intention of trying to bring him back. The timing was weird, but it was a good decision then, and an even better one in retrospect.

Given hindsight, is this the best "ahh, let him go" move of all time?

Matt Stairs is the best pinch hitter of all time (probably). Does he get in? Jose Molina could be the best pitch framer of all time.

I think Andruw's case gets hurt the most by Beltran, Edmonds and Lofton who were a bit better than him career wise. Andruw might be able to make it on the strength of is peak, but I doubt voters will be able to recognize just how amazing it was (assuming the defensive numbers are accurate).

I don't really have a huge reason to doubt that they are. WOWY has Andruw at ~410 plays (~330 runs) in CF over his career. B-R has him at ~230 runs over his career.

http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/best_worst_wowy_since_1993_through_age_34

And we know that Total Zone artificially reduce the spread in fielding talent. I think all of the evidence shows us that Andruw was better than his B-R numbers, not worse.

The case of Mays is simple. We know that Total Zone reduces the spread in fielding talent, even more so for players pre - hit location data. The further you go back, the more regressed those ratings are going to be, which makes Mays look worse than he actually was. I also think Andruw definitely has a claim on the best centerfielder of all time over Mays. We know that timelining exists - that players are generally better now than there were 50 years ago. I have little reason to doubt that the best defender of the past 20 years is the best defender of all time.

In in the end, I don't buy Snapper's "c'mon, he wasn't a better fielder than Willie" case at all. It's simply not supported by any evidence.

The common opinion was also that one day he would take a great leap in his batting, learn how to hit .300 consistently, and I think that would have put him squarely into "future HOFer" track (he was already borderline), maybe even "hit by a bus" territory. "Hit by a bus" is a high standard, one which none of the glove-first inductees (Robinson, Maz, Ozzie) ever reached at a young age.

His age 23 season (2000) looked at the time to have fit the bill-hit .300, cut K rate down to 13.7%, new highs in most everything (except BB).

We all know what happened the next year: K rate ballooned up to 20.5% (which is more or less where it stayed), OPS dropped 135 points. If he is at a 130 OPS+ for a decade after that he sails in: instead it was 110.

I blame Merv Rettenmund.