“Mr. Walker is not a suspect,” she said. “We don’t know if the person was killed at the Baseball Past & Present site or if his body was dumped there!”
In another era, Walker would have nothing to worry about. He’s near or above on most Hall of Fame metrics, and his career WAR of 67.3 is in line with other Cooperstown members. If he’d played in the 1930s, his stats would have placed him alongside greats like Chuck Klein, Joe DiMaggio, and Johnny Mize, and Walker would have had his plaque long ago. For some reason, even though the 1930s and the late 1990s parallel each other as two of the gaudiest eras for hitters in major league history, numbers for great hitters from the 1930s aren’t dismissed like those of sluggers from the 1990s.
Granted, there’s no doubt playing in Denver helped Walker’s career. His lifetime batting average as a Rockie of .334 is about 50 points higher than how he fared with his other two teams, the Expos and the Cardinals. In fact, the batting averages he posted between 1997 and 2002 are so out of whack with the rest of his career it’s almost comical, and the fact many ballplayers in those years may have been on everything short of horse tranquilizers doesn’t help Walker’s cause.
The reality, though, is there’s no proof Walker used steroids, and even in Montreal early in his career, he looked like something special. I recall an ESPN highlight of him gunning down Tim Wakefield at first from right field. That doesn’t happen too often. I also doubt that outside of Denver, Walker would have been much worse than fellow outfielders Duke Snider, Andre Dawson, or Jim Rice, among others. Those three men got into Cooperstown with the writers. Walker should too.
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1. Jacob Posted: October 27, 2010 at 11:14 AM (#3676616)http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=walkela01&year=1997&t=b#hmvis
He hit more HRs (29 out of 49) on the road!
Starting it off with the splits:
Career: .313/.400/.565 .965
Home: .348/.431/.637 1.068
Away: .278/.370/.495 .865
The home line is amazing. By comparison, David Ortiz's best year (2007):
.332/.445/.621 1.066
Walker was a nice player, but hardly a HOF'er.
I came up with this for RFs of the past 20 years
Walker
Gwynn
Sosa
Sheffield
Vlad (though essentially tied with Sheffield so another season like this one and he'll be 4th)
Ichiro
Abreu
Drew
Giles
Canseco
Also, since roughly 11% of all position players with at least 4000 PA are in the Hall of Fame, and 36 RFs have had 4000 PA since 1990, I put the all important and massively influential Greg K Hall of Fame judgement line somewhere around the Vlad-Sheffield-Ichiro line.* But what's surprising to me is how well Walker does. Probably based on the definition of peak I used. His top 3 years beat everyone but Sosa, and his top 5 the same. He also beats everyone on WAR per PA (which I weight by far the least). He also is just 1 WAR off of Gwynn for tops.
All of which is to say, I would put Larry Walker in.
*I really hope not to start any Ichiro talk. This is purely a fun data entry thing I do and doesn't reflect one way or the other on where I fall in the dreaded Ichiro debate.
Which makes me wonder what he needed to hit in Coors to impress people. You know, they still win and lose games there and make outs on occasion; you can't just toss the entire Coors stat line out the window when evaluating Rockies players.
That applies to Walker is that I'm not sure where numerically my cutoff line would be, but I suspect it's right where Walker sits. There were quite a few contemporaries of walker who had better peaks than him and of those whose career numbers were worse, very few were significantly worse. On the other hand being the one or even among the five best players of your generation has never been the standard for the Hall of Fame, so the fact that there were several players better than him doesn't necessarily disqualify him.
Hmm, but not every player gets a chance to play at Coors, so it's just like the postseason. And as we know, all postseason stats should be junked. (Sorry Ray).
He's definitely not DiMaggio, despite similar slash lines and both being good all-around players with defense and baserunning value, DiMaggio did it in center field and while being hurt by his ballpark.
If you compare him to Mize or Klein, he might get in but it will be a while. Mize waited 28 years after his retirement to get the call, and it took Klein 36 years. That would put Walker in the HOF sometime between 2033 and 2041.
That "some reason" is just time. Check back in 80 years and then we can say whether hitters from the 90's are treated to a tougher standard than hitters from the 30's. That some of them, like Edgar Martinez, don't make it in on the first ballot doesn't tell you much. Neither did Mize.
The beatings will continue until your morale improves.
I agree with this. Walker may be (marginally) a HOFer, but he's not a first ballot, or first 10 ballot guy. The durability and Coors effect really bother me.
His offense basically equals Norm Cash. And I'm much less confident in Walker's 140 OPS+ b/c I'm not sure that's correctly stadium adjusted.
He's a case that requires more reflection, particularly re: Coors Field. Maybe in 20 years we'll know something more about extreme park factors and neutralizing them properly.
In no particular order: Biggio, Piazza, Bonds, Bagwell, Chipper, McGwire, Andruw, Vlad, Rolen, Brian Giles, Sosa, Helton, Kent, Edmonds, Abreu, Griffey, Pudge, Edgar, ARod, Jeter, Jason Giambi, Thome, Lofton and Knoblauch.
Knoblauch and Giles had very little value outside of their peaks so their slight edges in peak wouldn't mean much to me (although Giles' career value problems weren't really his fault). The only reverse scenario I saw was Barry Larkin whose late peak was due to his finally being healthy over a long stretch. His career value was higher than Walker while being dead even on peak. Every other position player with an overlapping peak has less career WAR than Walker (Frank Thomas does not have an overlapping peak by the way).
Then there's McGwire, Kent, Vlad, Abreu and Kenny Lofton. Guys who had slightly better peaks but worse career numbers (to date when it comes to Vlad and Abreu). How I'd rank Walker with them depends on just how much of a bonus I'd want to give for career value.
Finally there's cases like Andruw Jones where it's an open question as to just how much weight you want to put on the obscene amount of value he racked up with the glove according to WAR. Though then Walker is also treated quite well in this regard and then McGwire would sail past Walker if you downgraded defensive numbers a bit. And guys like Bernie Williams (who gets absolutely murdered defensively) would then appear in the discussion as well.
So it really depends on how many guys I'd want to put in the Hall of Fame. It wouldn't have to be abnormally small to keep him out but wouldn't have to be abnormally big to put him in.
Exactly. By contrast, Barry Larkin, who has a similar reputation for playing partial seasons, had 4 seasons over 150 and another 3 over 140. (And an MVP Award for his one other season over 130, at that.)
I think there are two different sub-definitions of peak (or at least when I think about it): 1) What Voros says here, which speaks a lot to the (I think) underrated notion of dependability/consistency; and 2) How great were you at your greatest? #1 is best expressed through some version of the five-consecutive-years; #2 would be looking at the bestness of the best seasons, wherever they lay.
On the same scale, Walker played 103 of 114 team games in 1994 - so make that another "over 140". And 131 of 144 team games in 1995. So make it one season with 150 and five other seasons with 140 or the proportional equivalent.
The Hall of Merit will vote soon, and we will certainly be considering Walker. I predict that he will be elected to the HoM either this year or next year.
Link to Larry Walker HoM thread
Link to general 2011 ballot discussion thread
I'll add that while Walker's MVP should have gone to Mike Piazza, it was still a year of sufficient value that it's not that big an embarrassment to MVP voting.
Yes, imagine the horror of people actually discussing baseball on a baseball site.
Lenny Dykstra is one of those guys whose single-year bestness is so much above even his five-year peak that you wonder at it. He was magnificent in 1993, almost that good in 1990, but his overall talent is greatly masked by the effects of injury and being an idiot.
A lot depends on how you rate his defense. I don't even really know what the advanced state say, but my memory was always that he was top-notch.
WAR debits Walker for his missed time, and he still looks like a pretty easy HOFer -- he's well above the typical career standard of about 60 WAR, has a few huge years, and has many all star type seasons in spite of the in-season durability issues. He's a guy with a HOF career and very nice HOF prime but a slightly short short peak. If you look through the WAR components, it's hard to disagree with any of them -- he gets a good amount of base running credit, but that makes sense given his speed and base stealing ability. He gets about 7 fielding runs per 600 PA, but that makes sense since he had a great arm, was very fast, and was universally considered among the best corner outfielders in the game. He only gets 384 batting runs with a 140 OPS+ in over 8000 PA (compare to Bernie Williams 308 batting runs compiled with a .858 OPS, 125 OPS+ over 9000 PA), so it's not like his Coors home field advantage isn't being penalized. The current size of the Hall demands at least 30 guys from Walker's era (depending on how you define era), and it's hard to see how Larry isn't in that group.
One of the problems with comparing WAR across eras is that WAR is only measuring against a baseline of average (technically replacement but that replacement is based on average). It doesn't adjust for difference in how easy it might have been at the time to distance yourself from average.
Isn't there an argument to be made that Johnny Mize having more than a win higher than the nearest player in the NL in 1939 with a 7.4 count as a better season than Walker being 6 tenths of a win behind the leader in 2007? Or at the very least shouldn't it at least enter into the argument rather than simply sticking with a simple 9.0 > 7.4?
That's one of my big problems with a simple aggregation of WAR as a Hall of Fame measure. It's a start but it doesn't come close to capturing everything you really need to know.
Larry Walker vs Fergie Jenkins
Good thing Walker won 7 gold gloves. Totalzone likes his defense, but for those who don't accept that, Walker was recognized as an outstanding fielder by the coaches and managers on the field with him.
I don't know. You can also make the argument that 9 WAR for Walker is even more than 1.6 ahead of Mize 1939, on the basis of playing against better (integration) competition.
I agree it would be interesting to look at WAR measured in standard deviations above the baseline. If Sean wants to do that sometime, it would add another great discussion point.
To your specific arguments (please note these are merely counterpoints. I have to think about where I come out):
1) Regardless of how impressive being #1 in the league by a full win may be, Mize did add fewer wins to the team than Walker did (assuming WAR is right). Some people might want to adjust for the difficulty of dominating Mize's league, but it's not clear they are right -- taking a position of wins are all that matter is also respectable.
2) Just as there are times when there may be many great CF and no great 3B simply due to randomness of talent distributions over time, there may be seasons where no player was all that great historically (like 2010 AL) and other seasons where a couple of players were great by historical standards (2001 NL). I don't want to normalize everything for risk of over-normalizing. For example in 1939 Ott didn't play a full season, and Vaughn had started his decline. I don't think 1939 baseball was harder than 1938 baseball when Ott and Vaughn were playing to their full ability and were better than Mize: Mize just happened to dominate in 1939 because the other best players in the league happened to be injured or off their game. Walker had to deal with top years from Biggio, Bonds, Bagwell, and Piazza, among others. I do think it's easier to dominate in a year when a guy like Dolph Camilli is your top competition rather than Barry Bonds.
3) There were 14 teams in the late 1990s NL instead of 8 teams in 1939. It is not obvious being #1 in a smaller league is better than being a slightly behind the leader in a bigger league. A standard deviation score would help sort this concept logically.
But that's only one aspect of competitive level and those arguments can be dragged out to absurd levels where Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth don't belong in the Hall of Fame. And it's equally true for Reggie Jackson in 1974 (tied with Grich for the AL lead with 6.7) or Rod Carew in 1975 (8.2 more than a win better than Fred Lynn).
I don't think it's absurd to suggest that there should a be uniformity in the number of players that should go in from each era (accepting arguments as to whether more teams should equal more players). If we're going to adjust players stats by league average, doesn't it make equally as much sense to try and adjust for how easy it was to be a lot better than league average? Isn't it a little presumptuous to just assume that the best players were a lot better in 1997 than they were in 2010 just because WAR seems to say so. Couldn't it be just as likely (if not more likely) that the average player was worse in 1997 than he was in 2010 (which of course would produce the same result)? Shouldn't that matter?
Fangraphs gives Walker 72.2 WAR, which is tied with Manny Ramirez and ahead of contemporary OFers Raines, Gwynn, Lofton, Sheffield, Edmonds, and Sosa. Chone's WAR also has him practically tied with Manny, and just a bit behind Gwynn and Edmonds.
Fangraphs gives him 458 run above replacement with the bat, while CHONE only gives him 384. Is this due to a different park factor?
I do think it's possible to come up with reasonable segregation penalties basically by moving up the average by taking out the worst (say) 30% of white players and replacing them with non-white players at the new average level. I don't think it makes sense to fully normalize the competitive level to how badly I think 1930s players would hit against today's pitchers stepping out of a time machine.
I mostly agree but wouldn't say there's a hard number of players that deserve it from each era. I believe there should be more 1970s and 1990s pitchers than 1980s pitchers, because there just happened to be star gluts and star famines in some eras. In any case, with the 1990s having 30 teams, and the HOF already having well over 200 members for 1870 through the early 90s, there is a lot of room for 1990s players, and not only the Bonds-level guys.
I don't see how looking at the outliers tells you much about the average. I expect it is most likely that the average player in 1997 was of similar quality to the average player in 2010. The top few guys in the league are outliers, and some years may have several outliers and some years no outliers just by chance.
Besides, how much do you want to move up the average? Saying a 2 WAR player in 1997 would only be a 1.5 WAR player in 2010 is a very strong statement. Even making that assumption, you're only moving Walker down half a win, which isn't remotely enough to cover the ~1.5 WAR gap you're considering.
Goes back to the Dale Stephenson peak lists and he started those in 1992. Dale couldn't see why the years being consecutive should matter and since he was doing the lists ...
James has two definitions of peak in the NHBA. Best 5 years (consecutive) and best 3 years period.
As I've mentioned often enough I define prime as best 7 year stretch with the best and two worst years removed.
And Roger Moore added extended prime to the discussion. Because Dale's methods under-value somebody like Walter Johnson with his large number of excellent years. Basically extra credit for elite years not counted by the peak/prime.
Is that to keep out the bias from the French judge?
Seriously, how/why exactly did you come to that particular definition?
Why? What do you think is wrong with traditional corrections for park effects?
One thing that SHOULD be done: adjust for standard deviations and run scoring environment.
Dan R does both of these things in his WAR.
I made an attempt at this. See
How Would Integration Have Affected Ruth and Cobb?
I doubt that what I did is the final word on this kind of question. It wouldn't surprise me if there is alot better way to do it. But I had Ruth losing about 5% of his HRs and Cobb's average falling to .354 (maybe as far as .347). In either case, they both are still probably Hall of Famers.
"My grandma coulda hit .381 in Coors Field."
"Steroids?"
Out.
and in my umble opinyun, larry was an outstanding fielder - good jumps/reads, few stupid mistakes, strong, accurate arm, knew how to hit the cutoff man, didn't try to get face by trying to throw someone out at home/3rd when it wasn't the sure out
EXCELLENT and underrated baserunner - he and bagwell were the 2 best baserunners in the NL for a long LONG time
i would guess his bat will be disrespected because of coors - but he was an awesome hitter with montreal and st louis too...
Here's what some other longtime Rockies have hit over their careers in Coors Field (and/or Mile High, as the case may be).
Bichette: .358
Castilla: .333
Helton: .356
Burks: .334
Holliday: .358
Galarraga: .333
So even for Coors, .381 is very impressive.
Stadiums have different effects on RHB vs. LHB, on HRs, doubles, triples, Ks, BBs, BABIP, etc.
I'm pretty sure a single PF doesn't accurately adjust for the effect on a single player.
Plus, with Coors, we have the whole "hangover" effect on road stats to worry about.
Those are basically the same thing.
For count variables (runs), the SD is always closely tied to the mean. In the case of the poisson, the mean and variance are the same. Run scoring is closer to the negative binomial where the variance is a bit larger than the mean but not usually substantially so.
Whether WAR's adjustments for era/park and how RAR translate to WAR is sufficient I can't say, but done properly it should take care of most/all the concern over standard deviations.
On Walker, I'll say simply this -- anybody who would vote for Edgar Martinez over Larry Walker deserves to be stabbed in the neck or something.
On "peak" ... unless you have something not much worse than a Koufaxian/Pedrovian/Sosasian sort of peak, when it comes to HoF, I don't care. 5 years is simply too short a period to matter unless you were truly great for those 5 years. Now "prime" (a player's 8-10 best years ... I don't get hung up on consecutive but won't argue strongly against it either) is something I consider very highly. As a general (but not necessarily ironclad) rule, if you were the best at your position over an 8-10 year period, you should be in the HoF. (Things that make it non-ironcladdy include cases where a player may have sucked outside that time frame and the Dave Concepcion/collective insanity exception.)
On Walker's "short" career. It was 1988 games and 8000+ PA. I'll be the first to admit that's not long by HoF corner standards but the level of performance makes it long enough in my book. I'm not sure why Walker's playing time distribution should be considered worse than McGwire (7 150+ seasons but also 5 seasons (and his cup of coffee) below 105). From 29-31 Mac played only 178 games. Walker ended up with more games and PAs than McGwire. I think you've got to go down to something like "pennant impact" before you can make any sort of case that McGwrie's playing time distro is somehow superior.
Or Edgar. The bulk of the career for both is 1990-2003. Over that span Edgar played 1822 games, Walker played 1786. That's 3 games a year difference and, presumably, DH carries a "durability" advantage.
Anyway, Walker is the HoF-quality version of JD Drew.
If playing in Coors results in hitters having lower road stats than they otherwise would, then Walker's OPS+ would understate his effectiveness.
Your earlier posts seemed to be saying you were suspicious that Walker was really as good as his 140 OPS+, but all the effects you cite here are either neutral or work in Walker's favor. I have no idea why you think he was worse than his OPS+.
1) Schedule adjustments: Mize has 154 game seasons, Walker has 162 game seasons. Also, Walker would need adjustment for 1994 and 1995.
2) Mize missed seasons to WW2.
I suspect the comparison would be much closer and may in fact have Mize ahead when these adjustments are made. Of course, there are league quality adjustments that may also apply.
I think he might be worse, but there is a countervailing factor that could make him better.
My point is I just don't know, and he's close to my borderline (I wouldn't put Edgar in either) so I'd rather wait.
He feels like a 10+ year ballot, of a VC guy to me anyway.
5.34 -- ages 25-27 ... entering prime, end of Montreal
5.42 -- ages 28-32 ... prime, all Coors
5.36 -- ages 33-38 ... "decline" phase, years 2000-2005, mostly Coors
So if anything looks funny there, it's the lack of decline (on a rate basis). Still for that last 550 PA in StL he was at 4.3. That is what many HoF careers look like -- consistent excellence over 15 years with no noticeable decline phase. Anyway, his Coors prime age WAR rate was the same as his early prime Montreal rate -- if anything, we'd expect ages 28-32 to be a little higher. Did Coors mask a mild late-career decline? I suppose that's possible but no reason to think WAR got Coors about right from 1995-1999 then got it badly wrong from 2000-2004. And given the one season of PAs in St L at a very good WAR/600 rate, we have no reason to think that Walker's decline was precipitous.
We can all think of scenarios that paint Walker as a Coors creation that would match those numbers but there's absolutely nothing in those numbers to suggest that Walker was a Coors creation. You'd be hard-pressed to find a player with less variation in WAR/600 over his career.
Edgar
27-31: 5.1
32-36: 5.5
37-40: 4.7
Mac
23-26: 4.1 (he stunk at 27 but feel free to add it back in somewhere)
28-32: 7.2
33-36: 5.7
I apologize for not checking how Dan does it first (I'm at work), but do you need to do the first thing if you've already done the second?
All else being equal, it's easier to put up 5 WAR in an 81-game season than to put up 10 WAR in a 162-game season, and so the 10-WAR season should get more credit (but not double the credit) than the 5-WAR season. Standard deviations ought to capture this pretty well.
Here are Walker's OPS+ for those same seasons:
age 25-27: 137
age 28-32: 153
age 33-37: 139
A much more normal progression, obviously. Now, one could see how the non-hitting parts of WAR, primarily defense and baserunning, would have been stronger when Walker was 25-27, meaning he wasn't any better overall as he moved into his late 20s and his hitting improved. But it's hard to see how those non-hitting factors would have improved so much in his mid-30s that he would have been as valuable a player overall while losing 15 points of OPS+.
Bichette: .358
Castilla: .333
Helton: .356
Burks: .334
Holliday: .358
Galarraga: .333
So even for Coors, .381 is very impressive.
Yeah, I'm reminded of Bill James's discussion of Vern Stephens in The Politics of Glory. James says that when Stephens was driving in 140 or 150 runs a year as a shortstop, it was just so far out the range of normal that everyone, even at the time, largely wrote it off as a park fluke. It had to just be Fenway Park and the Green Monster; those numbers aren't worth getting excited about. IIRC James suggests a similar dynamic happened when Chuck Klein was putting up those ungodly numbers in Baker Bowl.
And the problem with that is while, of course, those numbers are amplified by the park effect, they aren't just the park effect. Those kinds of numbers are dramatically better than what anybody else (except Teddy Ballgame) was putting up in the very same park.
It's one thing to interpret numbers within the context of a park effect; it's quite another to dismiss them, to be blinded by the park effect.
How do we know you're not a suspect? You seem to lurk around my site in dawn's early hours, at least according to Lenny, my night watchman.
"You should find yourself a safe house or a relative close by because you're probably wanted for murder."
I agree in principle. But I'm pretty lazy.
I think it's the Platonic ideal that a player develops, peaks, and then declines, and that somewhere in the middle you have a slice that represents their apogee.
That isn't true in all cases, of course, but if a player has peaks separated by a weird long time (Darrell Evans, age 26 and age 38) one might tend to think both were fluky.
I dunno, that's just my impression.
I might be wrong on this, but in the Historical Abstract I believe James used several different "peaks". Some mix of best 3 consecutive, best 5 consecutive best 3 overall..etc. His explanation being exactly what we're talking about here, that "peak" doesn't really have a fixed definition.
I managed to avoid the Ichiro discussion, but failed to account for touching off a "peak" discussion. I should have pointed out earlier that I only do 5 best and 3 best because it's a lot easier to compute and I don't really put a great deal of time into this. Just something fun I do at the end of every season. (Highlight this year was Joe Mauer reaching the 3500 PA cut off for catchers. He debuted 2nd overall I think, between Piazza and Rodriguez. Best debut since I started doing it 3-4 years ago). For what it's worth I agree that consecutive years is the more accurate way to measure peak.
I don't think McGwire has a great case for precisely this reason. McGwire and Walker are both borderline IMO. That said, seven 150+ seasons is a lot more impressive than one.
That was way up near the top of the thread, and Greg produced a list to go with it. But that post mostly goes to show the gap between the HoF perspective and the HoM perspective.
Here's the HoM perspective: while we can argue about the order of his list and haggle about the exact placement of the in-out line, we have no problem with Greg's general point, which is that to maintain reasonably consistent standards over history, we should be electing significantly more post-1980 players than the HoF has been electing. From that perspective, there's not much doubt that Walker is over the general in-out line. As to whether he should be elected on his first ballot, this year, the question is whether he is one of the top 3 eligible candidates. With our must-elect rules and our considerably thinned backlog, that means he is mostly competing with others who are first eligible this year: Bagwell, Kevin Brown, Palmiero, Olerud. That's competition, but it's competition in which Walker can do reasonably well.
The HoF perspective is different, since the HoF has not been electing modern players at anything close to the rate implied by Greg's post. Is Walker one of the top 3, or 5, or 7, or 10 players eligible for the HoF? Blyleven is not in the HoF. Larkin is not in the HoF. Raines is not in the HoF. Trammell is not in the HoF (nor is Whitaker). No 1980's-centered starting pitchers are in the HoF (Morris is visible on the ballot but Stieb and Saberhagen have sunk out of sight.) It's a much more crowded ballot for Walker to fight his way through.
Good point, but as with some other short-season accomplishments, it's a lot easier to play 90% of your team's games in a 114-G season than 162. I'm not sure that a full extrapolation is the way to look at this. Somewhere in between, perhaps. After all, Jeff Bagwell played 110 of the Astros' 115 games in 1994, but that's all he would have played even if they'd played 162.
Player RBI YearTed Williams 159 1949
Vern Stephens 159 1949
Walt Dropo 144 1950
Vern Stephens 144 1950
Vern Stephens 137 1948
Ted Williams 127 1948
Ted Williams 126 1951
Ted Williams 123 1946
Bobby Doerr 120 1950
Rudy York 119 1946
Jackie Jensen 117 1954
Bobby Doerr 116 1946
Ted Williams 114 1947
Bobby Doerr 111 1948
Bobby Doerr 109 1949
During VErn's big RBI year he was batting 4th
1: DiMaggio, .404 OBP
2: Pesky, .408 OBP
3: Splinter, .490 OBP
711 PAs batting fourth behind those guys- who were on base 919 times
That makes sense, but when you are talking about their contributions, or their value, or whatever you want to call it, order should not matter. I could say that Albert Pujols has had 10 consecutive fluke seasons, and even if I was correct, it doesn't change how many wins he contributed to his teams. The same would go for Darrell Evans, or whoever, I would hope, even if the wins were not distributed in as pleasing of a shape.
I used to argue this way, but what was pointed out is that in the end it doesn't matter how he achieved those numbers, value is measured in the ultimate results. It doesn't matter if a park is favorable for a lefty or righty, a homerun has the same absolute value, doing it the way you are talking is good for figuring how a guy will perform if you move him from one stadium to the next, but in the end value is value no matter how it is achieved.
I don't agree with that approach. The Hall of Fame is about more than just value amassed. That's why we have peak candidates.
Everyone agrees with park adjustments, I just want more granular ones.
He's the absolute borderline for me.
But then I am a smaller Hall kind of fella.
Harveys: what would you say about the Hall-worthiness of
Ted Simmons
Harmon Killebrew
Frankie Frisch
Brooks Robinson
Lou Boudreau
Goose Goslin
Richie Ashburn
Enos Slaughter (who has been mentioned on this thread)
Just trying to get a sense of what "smaller Hall" means.
Harmon Killebrew--Yes
Frankie Frisch--Yes
Brooks Robinson--Yes
Lou Boudreau--No
Goose Goslin--Yes
Richie Ashburn--Yes
Enos Slaughter--No
Here's how I look at it -- if you plopped the guy into your lineup for five years within the vicinity of his prime, could you be confident in getting five years of HoF- or near-HoF-caliber play? Or was he more inconsistent and injury prone, with MVP-quality seasons mixed with washouts, and/or whole long stretches of solid-but-not-great playing? I wouldn't fetishize some strict five-consecutive-year thing, and I definitely like an MVP-quality peak, but I definitely see the point of seeing whether a guy was reliably great.
Goose Goslin--Yes
Goslin played about 300 more games and had about 1900 more PA than Walker. Two seasons worth of games but three seasons of PA. So Goslin did have a somewhat longer career. (Goslin's teams played 8 fewer games a year than Walker's but 1994 and 1995 take back half of that particular difference).
Goslin hit .316/.387/.500 in a .290/.360/.415 park-adjusted league context for an OPS+ of 128.
Walker hit .313/.400/.565 in a .283/.355/.443 park-adjusted league context for an OPS+ of 140.
Part of Goslin's career was in Washington, where the ballpark suppressed HR - but that park didn't suppress overall offense all that much compared to the rest of the league, and Goslin did hit plenty of triples in that park. And there was plenty of offense all through the league in his time. All of this shows up in the context above.
Walker was an outstanding defensive RF and a very good base runner. Goslin was a more ordinary defensive LF. I don't know much about his base running.
Both are right 'there' but I think Goslin's consistency over a decade and a bit more durability along with great postseason effort give him a slight edge over Larry (who I like a lot as a player). And it wasn't like Al didn't have a great peak with multiple seasons over 150 OPS+. That and I guess I just cannot shake how someone like Ellis Burks looked like the same player only Walker hung around Colorado longer. And nobody thinks of Ellis as a HOF player.
I know what you are saying.
I don't think Walker and Burks are very similar at all, and I don't think they were considered close over any significant length of time. Walker did substantially betting in MVP voting, and has 5 All-Star appearances to Burks' 2. Burks has 1 GG, but Walker has 7 of them. More black ink. More gray ink.
Walker has a much higher career OPS+ (140 to 125), in only 136 fewer PA. He has over 50 more SB with fewer CS. More HR. More 2B. More hits. More walks.
WAR puts Walker far, far ahead of Burks, with nearly 20 more career wins, and better individual seasons.
As I said, I'm not much of a fan of peak for HoF judgments. But, to the extent that peak is important to me, it's in showing that a player had a sustained level of "greatness" (or near to it) and that would be something like 5 consecutive years. If those great years are spread out, it would look more like the random variation of an excellent player. Granted, that difference is probably more perception than reality.
Good point on the changes in Walker's offensive output -- that was pretty obvious but didn't occur to me until after I'd left for work.
seven 150+ seasons is a lot more impressive than one.
Sure, but McGwire had a lot more low playing time seasons. Walker played more games in his career (1988) than Mac (1874) while playing only one more season. So why is 1874 games with 7 150+ seasons more impressive than 1988 games with 1? In his other 8 non-cup-of-coffee seasons, Mac played just 776 games. As I mentioned, if you look at the 14 seasons that form the bulk of Walker's career, it's 1786 games; do the same with McGwire and it's 1759. Why should I give McGwire a "durability" edge over Walker? Why would I do it with Edgar? I don't recall a lot of concern around this site with either of those players' durability. Why is a 150 game season plus a 100 game season better than two 125 game seasons?
Like I said, there's probably an argument based on "pennant impact" but that's reaching pretty far down in the sabermetric toolbox to make a distinction.
Burks's OPS+ in Colorado (age 29-33) was 128, and his career level was 126. He had a 149 one year in Colorado, and the other seasons over 300 PA were 122, 113, 108, and 101. Larry Walker averaged a 147 OPS+ in Colorado over 10 years. There is no comparison between what the two men did in Coors. When I say that, it should be viewed as a great boost to Walker, because Burks was a great player in his own right when healthy. He had HOF talent except for durability and was nevertheless better than say, Jim Rice. When a player like Walker is much, much better than a guy the quality of Ellis Burks, it says to me that Walker is a HOF player.
1. Was he much, much better than Ellis Burks?
Evans year by year per WAR:
-0.3, 0.3, 1.3, 3.5, 9.0, 6.8, 3.0, 0.3, 1.6, 3.6, 2.7, 4.0, 2.6, 2.2, 4.5, 1.4, 3.6, 2.9, 4.9, 0.5, -1.1
Yes that 9.0 does look kind of spiky, but what about that 0.3 and 1.6 smack dab in what should have been his prime? Ages 29-30?
1976 was a very low offense year, but Evans just went poof, .222 BABIP, just 11 homers and 9 doubles... he hit reasonably well in June and July... became a fulltime 1b that year- later went back to play several more years at 3B I just have to assume he was hurt.
One season, that wasn't close to as good as Walker's best.
Ellis Burks' single great offensive season in Colorado (not counting the 42-game season in 1994) would have been Larry Walker's 7th best season, by pure rate (although if you make a playing time adjustment, you could argue that it's closer to 2nd or 3rd).
A 5+ WAR season is considered All-Star quality, and Burks had two seasons with 5+ WAR (and one 4.9 WAR season). Walker had four 5+ WAR seasons (and one 4.9 WAR season). WAR accounts for playing time, so it's not like it's ignoring Walker's fragility. Also worth considering... as far as WAR is concerned, 8 of Burks' 18 seasons were below average, while 4 of Walker's 17 seasons were.
You're looking at two players, and one has much more career value AND a significantly better and longer peak. I don't know how you could find those two guys remotely similar.
1. Was he much, much better than Ellis Burks?
As funny as that is, it's hard to think of too many one-question tests that are much better.
I know it's just a personal preference, but I put a lot of weight on "pennant impact" for the purposes of the HOF. The same issue has come up in the Ichiro debates re the "shape" of his performance.
I like it. If you're as good as or worse than Burks, you're not a HOF. If you're better, you're worth a fair discussion. If you're much better, you're probably deserving but not definite. If you're much, much better, you're in.
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