Adam Dunn: 42 HR’s behind Dave Kingman…and 543 BB’s ahead of him.
Adam Dunn hoped his 400th home run would be a meaningful blast.
Though his two-run homer to left field momentarily cut the White Sox’ deficit to one run, he wasn’t in a celebratory mood after a 9-4 loss to the Kansas City Royals on Saturday night at Kauffman Stadium.
Dunn’s 428-foot blast off left-handed reliever Tim Collins reduced the Royals lead to 5-4 in the top of the eighth inning. But Kansas City rallied for four runs in the eighth inning and rolled to its second straight win over the White Sox, who committed a season-high four errors.
Kevin Youkilis also reached a milestone immediately before Dunn homered with a single, the 1,000th hit of his career.
“It’s the worst-case scenario,” Dunn said. “We played two bad games. It was just a disaster from the get-go. It’s hard to enjoy. I wish it would have obviously come in a win for sure. That makes anything a lot better.”
...Dunn’s home run was a part of baseball history as he and Paul Konerko—who hit his 400th home run on April 25 in Oakland—are the first set of teammates ever to hit their 400th home runs in the same season.
Repoz
Posted: August 19, 2012 at 04:00 AM |
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I don't think so. As with his 400-homer club mate Konerko, his utter absence of value outside the batter's box will make him unworthy of serious consideration for the Hall. WAR is not the be-all, but it presents a pretty bleak picture of Dunn's worth through the years (hint: by WAR he's almost been as good a player in his career as Juan Pierre).
Could happen, too.
I don't think you have to fully subscribe to the specifics of the defensive metrics to recognize how much of his value he was giving back when he didn't have a bat in his hand.
You don't, but 5.2 wins is still a lot to think a player is giving back. I find it to be an unfathomable high number, I don't remotely see how a first baseman could do that. An outfielder, maybe, but even that is a little extreme. But I do not think a first baseman who never fields a ball, and who only catches the balls that everyone catches at first, could cost his team five wins defensively.
Edit: 7 makes a good point, it's not 5.2 wins compared to an average first baseman, but compared to an average defender...That I could see....maybe. (that is annoying. I prefer to let myself do the positional adjustment)
EDIT: fixed my math.
Well, DRS saw Dunn as a -23 runs in 67 games at first while Total Zone saw him as -6 and UZR as -14.3
This is a very reasonable position, but the -43 RField total in 2009 is also anomalous compared to the rest of Dunn's results. It's possible that, for whatever reason, DRS has Dunn really bad that year and he just wasn't, I don't know. But the rest of Dunn's RField totals seem reasonable enough (contrary to #5's extrapolation), so I'm curious as to what happened to 2009 to get such odd totals for just that year.
Yeah, I agree with this. Instead of arguing about the validity of Dunn's atrocious fielding numbers, I think the simplest way to think of it is to round off his defensive contributions to zero, and compare him to other DHs. Dunn is well below both Edgar and David Ortiz as a hitter, and those two are going to have an uphill battle to make it into the Hall as it is. Dunn isn't making it in.
I think his totals are reasonable. I used "absurd" in the "ridiculous" sense. His defensive totals are absurd in the way Ted Williams' OBPs are. It's ridiculous that a major league ballplayer can be that bad in the field and continue to play the field for a decade.
(There's some evidence that Dh'ing may hurt your hitting stats, but not at a rate of 15-20 runs per season.)
EDIT: Obviously a full-time DH Adam Dunn is also no kind of Hall of Fame candidate, any more than Greg Luzinski looked had a Hall of Fame path. And Luzinski was clearly the better hitter, in context.
BTW, ESPN noted that:All that said, I simply don't think Dunn is a good enough hitter to be deserving. I tried the best way I could come up with to rank players solely on their hitting, which was searching by WAR batting runs. (I wish the B-R Play Index let you search by oWAR, but it doesn't.) WAR batting runs doesn't include baserunning and double plays, but considering Dunn is horrible at one and great at [avoiding] the other, we can pretend it evens out. Here's the search. Dunn is 232nd all-time in WAR batting runs, with 211. Even guys around 400 -- Jack Clark, Pete Browning, Jason Giambi -- don't make the HOF if they are perceived as having zero defensive value. So I don't think even this Dunn-friendly way of approaching the issue sounds too good for him.
(Edgar Martinez, on the other hand, is 33rd all-time with 532 WAR batting runs. So at least according to this stat, if your logic is that a guy with no defensive value better be one of the very greatest hitters ever, Edgar still qualifies. Two spots above Edgar on the list is Mark McGwire, the rich man's Adam Dunn.)
EDIT: I see several others beat me to the DH point. Ehh, I'll just leave it. It's not like I had anything meaningful to say about it anyway.
4.8, 4.4, 4.0, 3.7, 3.4, 2.6, 2.3 - Dunn (29.7 career)
5.1, 5.1, 5.0, 4.0, 3.8, 2.9, 2.4 - Luzinski (34.6 career)
Dunn could pass Luzinski on career value, ignoring defense, if he can keep playing through his 30s, but Adam Dunn was never the hitter that Greg Luzinski was from 1975-1978. If all you have is a bat, and your bat is not as good as Greg Luzinski's, you are not a candidate for the Hall of Fame. Hell, you're not a candidate for the Hall of Very Good.
All of MLB: 6412 Home Runs in 1948-2012, during 9th Inning or during Extra Innings and put team into lead
1971 Batters
Mickey Mantle 23 Frank Robinson 22 Hank Aaron 22 Tony Perez 21 Jim Thome 19 Jack Clark 19 Eddie Murray 19 Mike Schmidt 19 Andruw Jones 18 Willie Mays 18 Jason Giambi 18 Graig Nettles 17 Willie McCovey 17 Chipper Jones 17 Willie Stargell 17 Barry Bonds 17 Reggie Jackson 17 Adam Dunn 17 Lou Whitaker 16 Harold Baines 16 Gary Gaetti 16 Albert Pujols 16 Alex Rodriguez 15 Mark McGwire 15 Lance Parrish 14 Todd Helton 14 Yogi Berra 14 Dick Allen 14 Mike Piazza 14 Stan Musial 14 David Ortiz 14 Vladimir Guerrero 14 Jeff Kent 14 Ken Griffey 14 Robin Ventura 14 Sammy Sosa 13 Juan Gonzalez 13 Don Baylor 13 Andre Dawson 13 Roy Sievers 132050 Pitchers
Trevor Hoffman 29 Roy Face 24 Lee Smith 23 Hoyt Wilhelm 23 Troy Percival 22 Jesse Orosco 22 Eddie Guardado 22 Jeff Reardon 21 Lindy McDaniel 21 Roberto Hernandez 21 Rich Gossage 20 Dennis Eckersley 20 Willie Hernandez 20 Billy Wagner 20 Rollie Fingers 20 Jose Mesa 19 Ron Davis 19 Randy Myers 19 Don McMahon 18 Rick Aguilera 17 Rod Beck 17 Bruce Sutter 17 Gene Garber 17 Tom Henke 16 Matt Capps 15 Johnny Klippstein 15 Todd Jones 15 Tug McGraw 14 Michael Jackson 14 Kent Tekulve 14 Mariano Rivera 14 Sparky Lyle 14 Jim Brewer 14 Justin Speier 14 Jeff Montgomery 14 Dan Plesac 14 Claude Raymond 14 John Franco 14 Warren Spahn 13 Dick Drago 13But you are a candidate to get toasted with Old Style in Bridgeport.
The leaders are mostly guys who were around 400 HR or way more than that. Whitaker had 244. He only hit home runs when Jack Morris needed them.
dunn is a ridiculously large guy
dunn strikes out more than anyone
dunn had an abysmal season at age 31
dunn has rebounded to some extent at age 32
seen this play before. this scene happens about 15 minutes before the main character begins his descent into nothingness
gorman thomas in 1983 couldn't buy a hit. got traded to cleveland. rebounded a bit. missed most of next season. had a comeback season at age 33. then he receded then he got hurt and then he was done
thomas was a big guy for a centerfielder in his day, not dale murphy big, but at 6'2" 225 he was plenty big. not much of a centerfielder but he banged his body around with the best of them. hit his homers and took his walks and whiffed thought not as whiffy as dunn
dunn is a good quote and a good guy and he seems a pretty sharp fella but he's walking a tightrope in his career between effectiveness and oblivion and oblivion is gaining fast
i think folks need to steel themselves for the end. 2012 may not be the end of the world but it is likely the beginning of the end of this career
My family and I have taken all necessary precautions.
Yep. I'd vote for Dunn before either of those guys, because he actually played a position, even if he was terrible at it.
McGwire is about a season of stats ahead of him and has 841 extra base hits, vs 1626 hits total(785 singles)
This was the name that jumped out for me, but looking at the splits, he wasn't hitting homeruns at a noticeably better rate in the 9th and extra innings, roughly a little over 3.27%(1 per 30 at bats) of the time vs 2.85% (1 per 35 at bats) of the time.
If comparing Dunn to other "DH" type of players, that is the way I would do it, no reason to include a positional adjustment(oWar) , but a flat comparison of their offense, with of course a park adjustment and era adjustment, but not a positional adjustment. (for comparison sake between guys like Thomas, Luzinski, Edgar etc) now if you are comparing to legit position players that is different and you have to factor in defense.
I don't support Edgar for the hof, and there is no way that Dunn is as deserving as Edgar.
The difference being that Dunn has a chance at a very long career.* A miraculously healthy Dunn pushes 12000 PAs and 700 HR. He is 4 years younger than Ortiz but only 600 PA behind; 9 years younger than Edgar's last season and only 1500 PA behind. He's not nearly as good but some Thome-esque raw numbers are quite possible for Dunn.
For now, the voters would basically view him as Dave Kingman in a more HR-friendly environment. Of course he walks a lot more than Kingman ever did but only some voters would take that into account.
Dunn: 7073 PA, 241/372/502, 400 HR, 1005 RBI, 1981 K, 126 OPS+
Kingman: 7429 PA, 236/302/478, 442 HR, 1210 RBI, 1816 K, 115 OPS+
Kingman had only one good year after 32 but did manage 150 HR. Give Dunn Kingman's late career and he's at about 10500 PA, 550 HR, 1450 RBI and 2500 K. While I think 500 is no longer a magic milestone for the voters, I suspect somewhere around 550 is going to be hard for them to resist ... but I think they still would in Dunn's case.
*I tend towards HW's prognosis so I don't expect him to have one.
So it's crazypants to support a player who was durable enough to play every day over a player who wasn't?
If Edgar hadn't been able to hide as a DH, he would've broken or torn or strained something important halfway through the season. We know that's true, because that's what he did when he was a real player who played in the field in 1993 and 1994. By the end of his career, he was so brittle the Mariners benched him (their best hitter!) during interleague games because they didn't think he could handle the physical rigors of a week at first base. It was pathetic.
Used as a real player, Dunn made a positive contribution to his teams. Used as a real player, Edgar got fitted for a set of crutches.
Or, if he played at a time when there was no DH, they'd have simply stuck him at first, told him not to move too much (Dunn never needed those instructions, that came naturally), and let him rake. That they played in a league where there was a position perfect for a guy with a tremendous bat but a questionable health record worked out well for them. But we don't know what happens in the alternate world where Edgar is forced to endure the tremendous physical hardship of being an immobile first baseman for the back half of his career.
And it's worth noting that the injury that caused him to miss all that time in 1993 and 1994 was suffered while he was playing offense, something he continued to do for the remainder of his career.
Edgar Martinez was so brittle that he would injure himself in the batters box. First base may not require a lot of athleticism but it still isn't comparable to sitting on your couch eating potato chips. He couldn't withstand the rigors of playing a position.
I seriously doubt that first base is significantly more rigorous, if at all* than hitting four times a game and running the bases, which he was able to manage for 10 years after that initial injury. He may well have gotten hurt playing first (probably would have suffered the occasional tweak, given his history). The idea that he would have simply crumbled in a heap if forced to withstand the rigors of first base is ludicrous. We don't know what happens to his career in a world without a DH. But Edgar was moved to DH not because it was the only option. He was moved there because it was the best option.
* Seriously, I'd be interested to see where most injuries occur on the diamond, and how they rank by position. Do most get hurt on offense or defense. Is it possible a second baseman is more likely to get hurt playing defense, while a leftfielder more likely to get hurt on offense? Anyone know?
Injuries in his youth sidetracked his career to the point that he didn't even get going until he was 27. In 1992 he had the bum shoulder, 1993 was a torn hamstring, 1994 he got hit on the wrist opening day and had a bunch of injuries throughout the season, and in 1998 he had a major knee injury, quad strain in 2001, two tendons removed in 2002, and a broken big toe in 2003. Edgar had a bum leg from the get go.
This is a guy so fragile that the Mariners didn't even start him when they played interleague games in the NL. He only started 10 games in NL stadiums over his career.
Funny you should mention that...
Today I was playing in a softball tournament. I had gotten up three times, ran the bases once including getting into and out of a rundown and scoring. In the bottom of the 5th, with 2 outs I blacked out and fell down for some reason. No warning, wasn't hit in the head, just blacked out, was hallucinating/dreaming. Eventually I came to and was trying to get up. By this time I am surrounded by various players, wives who are nurses, and a couple of lesbian EMTs (liberal town.) I guess they call it seizure symptoms, but I did not do other seizure like things and was lucid immediately. It is odd to faint without warning when engaged in physical activity. Went to the E/R, nothing found, fine now. Thing that makes the most sense is there is apparently something called the Vagas nerve that can be triggered if you are leaning forward in a "ready" position, as you might be in the field in softball.
I play 1st base. So perhaps there are unexpected hazards.
Why would they start him at first when they had a DH position to fill in the overwhelming majority of their games?
And, if by revolving door you mean a steady stream of good production out of their first basemen during the time when Edgar was active and interleague play was ongoing, then yes, yes they did. Sorrento had two very good seasons, followed by Segui (one good, one blah, but an excellent glove), then Olerud the rest of the way. None were Edgar's caliber as a hitter, but they also weren't scrubs. I'm sure Lou and others saw the NL games as a chance to give Edgar a rest, or to use his bat in a pinch-hitting capacity. He still did get some starts there (as well as a handful of on-field starts in AL parks during this time frame), so they must have took the chance that he wouldn't spontaneously combust if he had to cross the white line with a glove.
Again, if there's no DH, Edgar is deployed differently (and the Mariners construct their roster differently). Maybe that results in Edgar getting snuffed out in one of those oh-so-common debilitating injuries suffered at first*, maybe it doesn't. None of us knows.
* And yes, I remember the Derreck Lee injury. Ugly, but a rarity.
Why would they move a guy who you believe would be capable of playing the field to DH? How common is that? You don't put players that can play the field at the DH position.
It isn't a single career ending injury that would be the big worry it is the missing of 30 or more games a year because of DL trips that would kill his performance and his candidacy to the Hall.
Edgar Martinez played a grand total of 28 games at first for a total of 224 innings. He was the DH in 1403 games.
In 1996 Edgar started 134 games as a DH. Sorrento started 123 games and third base was a mess all season long. Yet Edgar only started 4 games at first that year and 1 game at third. The Mariners chose to use Brian Hunter as their backup first baseman instead of Edgar. Brian Hunter.
In 1997 Edgar started 144 games as a DH. Sorrento started 119 games at first and Martinez only started 7 games at first that year. With 3 of those starts coming in NL parks and Edgar did not start in the other 5 games in NL parks.
Because someone still has to DH. It's a position that has to be filled by AL teams. And there's no better guy to put there then the one with the tremendous bat but one the team feels is an injury risk.
If there was no DH, do you really think the Mariners would not have stuck Edgar at first and hoped for the best? Of course they would have. They put him at DH because it was the best way to take advantage of his historically great bat while reducing his injury risk as much as possible.
What would have happened if he had to play the field? Who the #### knows. Maybe nothing. Maybe Edgar suffers more little injuries along the way (probably the odds-on choice). Maybe Edgar suffers the big one and is done at 33. The point is, we don't know.
That was the point of all this?
Dunn has 30 career oWAR, and 14 WAR. I find that really hard to believe for someone playing corner OF and 1B.
You're right. I should know better than to think arguing with you is anything but pointless. Because when you're obviously spewing nonsense, as you were here, you just pretend you were arguing something else.
So my opinion that Edgar would not have been able to handle playing the field is nonsense because we just don't know? Thank you for the empty counterpoint.
Will the Yankees win the world series?
Well, I think tha-
Hey, hey, hey. WE. JUST. DON'T. KNOW.
I mean you decided to argue with me about whether or not Edgar could play the field and your point was that we don't know. That's a stupid point.
No, you ########. I disputed Vlad's claim that we knew he'd get hurt if he had to play the field. You decided to dispute that point. It's right there. You can go back and check.
I think it is reasonable to assume that, if he had been required to play the field all those years, his performance would have suffered, probably both in terms of missed time due to injury (and daily recovery time) and, as a consequence of the injuries, reduced performance. Basically I don't see anyway you can argue he would have aged better while playing the field and it's easy to see how he would have aged worse.
Edgar finished with 8700 PA and a 147 OPS+. Norm Cash didn't have that luxury and he finished with 7900 PA and 139. Jack Clark was probably already done (in terms of his body breaking down on him) by the time he got a chance to DH and he finished at 8200 PA and 137. Delgado called it quits after 8700 and 138. Those are perfectly reasonable outcomes for Edgar Martinez, immobile 1B and none of them are going to the HoF anytime soon.
Edgar from 27-32 (which excludes his early brief stints and includes his first year as a DH) had a 148 OPS+. Clark had a 144. Delgado had a 151. (Cash was just 133 so he falls out.) The comps aren't out of place.
And then there's good old Larry Walker. He stayed in the NL and kept playing the field. He ended up just 600 PA and 6 OPS+ points away from Edgar's totals while playing good defense almost all of his career. Even assuming no dropoff, I don't see how Edgar the immobile 1B is a better player than Walker.
You could make a similar argument for Thome who moved pretty much fulltime to DH at 35. He's added 3000 PA at 140 OPS+ and 181 HR. It's certainly not reasonable to assume he'd have had none of that as a lumbering 1B but it likely bought him a lot of PA.
Willie Stargell might be a reasonable late-career example as well. For ages 35-40 he had a 141 OPS+ but in only 2400 PA; Edgar put up a 152 but in 3500 PA. Dock Edgar 1100 PA and he's down to 7500 PA and a few points below his 147 OPS+.
That said ... (a) it's a position; (b) there's little doubt that moving and keeping Edgar at DH was the optimal move. Given (b) I agree that Edgar's not playing the field doesn't tell us a whole lot about how bad it would have been.
Yes, you disputed a point about an alternate world theory by saying we don't know. That's a stupid point.
I am overcome with sympathy.
Even if you regress those defensive numbers heavily to the mean, you're still looking at 20 career WAR or so. That gets him into Garret Anderson / Mark Kotsay territory, at best.
adam dunn is not dumb. what are the origins of this assessment?
dunn has had seasons where he looks like he is not trying but that was because he was out of shape. he was trying but carrying a plow hinders one's movements.
i have not followed dunn's defense in chicago as there was no defense to follow. but when he was in the national league i followed him quite closely
and your last two remarks strike me as completely erroneous unless i misunderstand what you have written.
After that, the best bet would be with Miguel Cabrera sitting at 306. He seems more likely than anyone except Pujols to make it. Nobody else is far enough along to make them odds-on, though someone will likely emerge from the pack.
Not that it mean he's anything like a Hall-of-Famer, but I suppose it isn't too far-fetched to imagine Dunn as the last guy to get in the club until Trout in 2027, especially if offense ticks down another notch.
Well, he is from Texas.
Seriously, I agree that Dunn is a bright guy but he certainly put out a laid back vibe which some will mistake as dumb.
I enjoyed Dunn's time in Cincinnati but wished he hadn't been so resistant to moving to first base. IIRC he didn't want to make the transition one year because he was playing in the WBC and therefore wouldn't get the reps in during Spring Training.
HR's are at 1.02 this year...a big jump from 0.94 and 0.95 the last two seasons.
However, he often looked a bit baseball dumb to me. He didn't seem to always know where he's supposed to position himself, where he's supposed to go in different situations. (I can buy some truly awful numbers for him at 1B in part because first basemen need to follow a relatively complex algorithm of where to run to and how to position yourself in different situation.)
It's possible I've mistaken a lack of fitness for a lack of effort. That's always hard to read.
The number is so extreme that it's hard to believe, but if anyone could be that bad, it would be Adam Dunn. That season he accumulated significant negative defensive runs at 1st base, right field, and left field. I think the position switching contributed to Adam having a terrible year by his own poor standards. He's bad enough as it is when you let him concentrate on one position.
low average hitter, horrible defensive rep, no significant awards.
won't happen
Yeah, I noticed that too. Seems the glut of 500 homer hitters who debuted in the late 80's through the mid 90's was just a passing trend rather than a new norm, similar to what we saw with the guys debuting in the '50's.
Even if the likes of Dunn, Konerko, Papi, or Andruw don't make to 500, it seems a bit unlikely that NO ONE from the younger crowd - Teixeira, Cabrera, Fielder, Braun, etc - will make it, doesn't it?
It seems to me a guy who's legitimately -5 WAR defensively would have to be cartoonishly, making-a-mockery-of-the-game bad. I don't watch NL games during the season and don't really pay attention to Sportscenter or Baseball Tonight, etc. Was Dunn getting any media attention that season for being a laughingstock in the field?
I mean, my eyes have told me over the years that Jeter is worse defensively than other shortstops; he just doesn't get to balls that guys on the other teams get to, and the numbers bear that out with him coming in between -1 and -2 WAR defensively per season. That yearly -2 WAR was enough to spawn a litany of "Past a diving Jeter!" jokes among stats-savvy Yankee fans. So what would a -5 defensive WAR Jeter look like, and would such a guy actually be allowed to play long enough to amass that -5 WAR?
dunn has been shown throughout his career bungling various plays.
on a vaguely related note apparently the reds are ranking reds announcer marty brennaman's top 'calls' in his career with the reds as a tribute for getting into the broadcast wing of the hof. my relatives tell me that adam dunn gamewinning homers make up a third of the options presented to the fans
I guess one could boil the issue down to, how many homers would Adam Dunn have to hit in order to make the Hall of Fame? Is it 763? Would even that do it?...
maybe if homer 763 hit bonds on the head and killed him??
Holycrap, really? After last year I had to figure he was like 38 or something.
Can we make a team of players that are not nearly as old as you'd think? We could call them the Livan Hernandez All-Stars. (He's only 37 even now. His "comeback" year with the Mets in 2009 was at age 34.)
Adrian Beltre, Esteban Yan?
Booey, are you forgetting Fred McGriff? (ZING!)
You're right, though, I wouldn't take odds worse than about 25-1 in making a bet against the field. Cabrera, in particular, seems like about 70% to make it, and Braun appears to be the kind of consistent, healthy, athletic player who'll make a run. On the other hand, Bagwell, Vlad, Delgado, Chipper and McGriff were all positioned right aroung where Texeira is at age 32. McGriff actually seems like a pretty good comp, so I'm thinking Tex has less than a 50-50 shot. Not that comparisons like this are really all that meaningful; there's no method here, this is just barroom conversation.
Fielder's obvious comp is the nearest genetic match, Cecil, who hit 224 homers from age 29 forward. That would leave Prince just short.
Beltre is a good one. I guessed 37, looked it up and saw 33.
Jake Peavy is one for me.
Hmmmm.
Juan Pierre and Andruw Jones are only 35
Francouer is only 28.
Are you saying McGriff is one of these young guys that still has a chance? :-)
But yeah, there's several guys from the last couple decades alone that looked like they had a great shot at 500 and didn't make it (hell, Juan Gone looked like a stone cold lock). And while I probably wouldn't bet too much money on any individual doing it save Pujols, I'd still say it's gotta be pretty likely that SOMEBODY does it between Dunn and Trout (assuming either of them makes it).
A couple of possibilities are: it was the first season since 2002 he started a significant number of games at 1B and it was the first season he started a significant number of games in the OF where his home park wasn't a bandbox. I'm thinking it's possible he was really struggling trying to learn how to play 1B and the OF in Washington was much larger than the OF in Cincinatti so his lack of range was even more exposed.
However, if he ends up at ~550 HRs, I'd vote for him, I'd expect him to go in, and I don't think that's a bad thing. It's the Hall of "Fame" - not the Hall of Merit - and for better or worse, ever since Ruth -- Home Runs have been a signifier of baseball fame. You hit big ones, they get remembered, you hit a lot of them, you get remembered.
I'm just glad Dave Kingman ended up petering out when he did because then I'd have had a quandary.
Unlikely.
No, as others have pointed out, it's not. Other than HR he's not done anything to put himself on that path. OPS+ 126 for a corner OF/1B is not at all noteworthy, and that's pre-decline. His peak, 2004-2010, is only 136 and his high is 147, which was good for 9th in the league that season. He's, forgive the redundancy, a notoriously poor defender and baserunner. He's a one trick pony, the Silly Ball Era's Dave Kingman. He's nowhere near "shaping up" a HOF worthy career
While it's true it's the Hall of Fame, it's not true those inducted are inducted for their fame. Inductees are generally great baseball players. Sure there are some notorious selections, primarily by the various VC incarnations and occasionally by the writers, but the players elected going forward are still going to be generally great baseball players, not famous ones. The museum takes care of recognizing fame thourgh its many archives and displays of memorabilia, but famous players who are not also great baseball players do not merit induction, and Dunn falls into that group.
What's the point of making the highest honor in a field simply a reward for fame? Why not just induct Michael Jordan and Garth Brooks then? Kevin Costner, too, he's done a lot of baseball stuff and he's way more famous than most Hall of Famers.
Jordan is in the HOF and I'm pretty sure Brooks will be (if he's not already) when all is said and done. And no one even complained about their inductions! :-)
Basically he's Dave Kingman with more walks and a nicer disposition.
But Dunn isn't even particularly baseball famous. He's something of a circus freak, which is a different thing.
(I say this as someone who enjoyed Dunn's time in DC and who thinks the defensive numbers have to be off to some degree, no matter how bad he looked.)
Heh, yeah, Dunn's MVP history is a handful of down-ballot votes in three seasons, resulting in a mighty 0.03 MVP Shares (good for 1,251st all-time).
At just 32 he's tied at 1,251st with other Hall of Fame candidates like Mark Clear, Hubie Brooks, Chris Hoiles and Joe Sambito. With another couple of excellent seasons he could quadruple that total to 0.12 MVP shares and be in the company of Al Holland, Bo Jackson, Luke Easter, Mark Fidrych, John Roseboro, Von Hayes, and Tom Glavine, each of whom will be known to historians as the Adam Dunn of his respective era.
I'm going to have to reach out to SBB and see how should conduct themselves in such debates...
Ignore all actual statistics and base your argument almost entirely upon reputation, throw in how much Dunn is getting paid, and you'll have a pretty good start.
Sounds like heaven to me. Are you sure you didn't die out there?
When looking at Dunn's awards and honors, it's important to remember two things:
1) He was playing for a small-market (or at most, low-prestige mid-market) team putting up poor records in a division that's generally ignored by the media, and as such probably didn't receive as much support as his play warranted.
and
2) The NL during at least the first half of Dunn's career had a greatly disproportionate share of the star-caliber OF talent in baseball. In 2004, for example, Dunn put up his first truly dominant offensive season, with 46 HR and a 147 OPS+. Other NL OFs that season include Bonds (45 HR, 263 OPS+), Edmonds (42 HR, 171 OPS+, GG), J.D. Drew (157 OPS+ in his career year), Berkman (160 OPS+), Beltran (38 HR, 42/3 SB/CS, 133 OPS+), Miguel Cabrera (33 HR, 130 OPS+ - primarily as a RF), and Abreu (30 HR, 40/5 SB/CS, 145 OPS+).
Er, history of the game, for advanced fielding metrics?
True, but few players have played as many defensive innings as Jeter either. Who was the better home run hitter, Ralph Kiner or Harold Baines?
Fielding runs per 1000 defensive innings:
Dunn -12.2
Jeter -10.5
Jeter -10.5
Even so would you expect Jeter's defense to just be costing his team 1.7 runs per 1000 innings less than Adam Dunn's defense?
I blackout for a few seconds every several years or so - I'm aware that it's about to happen for a moment as it starts, but am unable to vocalize it to anyone. Never found a medical reason for it, infrequent enough that I forget that I do this except when reminded by posts like this. Here's two examples:
* On a date... we went to a state fair (not my bag) and she asked to go to the "freak show" (really not my bag, but whatever). I start to pass out during the closing bit of a sword swallowing act and begin to sway in her direction, now unconscious. Afraid she's going to spill her drink, she gets out of the way and I (I'm told) take out a flotilla of sorority girls, bouncing from one to another - all the while the performer grins, thinking his act is *on* today. I wake up on the face down on the ground, confused and unattended to. We leave the tent and she gives me the "poor sensitive dear" as I try to explain, no, this is just a thing I have.
* Same year... I'm doing an improv show and realize that this is kicking in right as I've been "stabbed" in a swordfight. I make sure to lean in the direction of the back of the stage and fall right off (maybe a 2' drop?), face first onto the floor - coming to shortly before the scene drew to a close. Apparently, no one was the wiser.
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