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I love the KHernandez comp... overlapped careers (although not completely well matched contemporaries)... batting titles, modest power, gold gloves, moustaches, etc.
Yeah, you're probably not only kidding.
The guy was on a clear Hall of Fame track before back injuries derailed his career.
Given the way that the BBWAA has generally treated 3B candidates, they might have actually been worse off playing across the infield - Santo, Bando, Nettles, Evans, Cey, Bell, and Ventura were all basically blown off by the Hall, and it seems likely that (barring a very, very slow decline from this year) Rolen will receive similar treatment. HOF 3B are expected to field at a gold glove level AND hit like a 1B.
Yeah, and so was Steve Avery. Andruw Jones was a mortal lock for the HOF, until he ceased to play like a HOFer. There is no way Don Mattingly is a HOF calibre player, and no self-respecting analyst would so much as mention him for enshrinement. Take away the pinstripes and he's Jeff Conine in Miami.
That's just wrong.
Mattingly and Jones were HoF caliber players, they just couldn't sustain it long enough to be worthy of induction.
Mattingly had HoF talent, he just didn't have a HoF career b/c of injury. Those players are interesting b/c of what might have been.
Rk Player WAR OPS+ RC PA From To Age1 Eddie Murray 66.7 129 1942 12817 1977 1997 21-41
2 Rafael Palmeiro 66.0 132 2040 12046 1986 2005 21-40
3 Mark McGwire 63.1 162 1529 7660 1986 2001 22-37
4 Keith Hernandez 61.0 128 1281 8553 1974 1990 20-36
5 Will Clark 57.6 137 1415 8283 1986 2000 22-36
6 John Olerud 56.8 128 1455 9063 1989 2005 20-36
7 Fred McGriff 50.5 134 1704 10174 1986 2004 22-40
8 Mark Grace 47.1 119 1403 9290 1988 2003 24-39
9 Don Mattingly 39.8 127 1168 7721 1982 1995 21-34
10 Steve Garvey 35.9 116 1232 9466 1969 1987 20-38
11 Kent Hrbek 35.3 128 1100 7137 1981 1994 21-34
12 Cecil Cooper 34.5 121 1134 7939 1971 1987 21-37
13 Wally Joyner 34.2 117 1153 8115 1986 2001 24-39
14 Mike Hargrove 30.0 121 913 6693 1974 1985 24-35
15 Andres Galarraga 26.7 118 1394 8916 1985 2004 24-43
16 Tino Martinez 25.7 112 1146 8044 1990 2005 22-37
17 Chris Chambliss 24.4 109 1038 8305 1971 1988 22-39
18 Jeff Conine 22.3 107 1070 7781 1990 2007 24-41
19 Bill Buckner 12.1 99 1190 10033 1969 1990 19-40
What makes Mattingly's reheated hoopla different from the years of minority valentines written for the unpinstriped Jim Rice, Steve Garvey, Dale Murphy, Jack Morris, Tony Oliva, Gil Hodges, and a few others in Kinda-Sorta-Nah territory?
Yeah, but Hernandez might have been able to play shortstop if he threw with the other hand.
Player OPS+ PAVladimir Guerrero 152 3839
Will Clark 152 3853
Carl Yastrzemski 151 3909
Duke Snider 150 3966
Alex Rodriguez 149 4114
Eddie Murray 148 3804
Don Mattingly 147 4104
Rusty Staub 147 3643
Ron Santo 147 4128
Harmon Killebrew 147 3764
Joe Medwick 147 3941
Jim Wynn 145 3780
Sam Crawford 145 3746
Arky Vaughan 143 3874
Jim Bottomley 143 3881
Mark McGwire 142 3669
In other words, the majority of guys who hit like Mattingly for those six years of their life are in one Hall or another. But unfortunately for Mattingly's case, that's pretty much all he's got. It's interesting that Staub was very close as a hitter to Mattingly at the same age, played forever, and still doesn't have much of a Hall case.
That sentence is meaningless. They were "HoF caliber players" until they weren't? Certain players have peaks so high that they're HOF caliber regardless of how long they last. Sandy Koufax being the Platonic form of such. But those players are rare and obvious. Mattingly and Andruw are not those kinds of players. They had great starts to their careers, and then went off the rails. They're not HOF caliber players.
For Hernandez, this is certainly a reasonable point.
Sam H. beat me to it - you're absolutely right, he was on a Hall of Fame track - and he wasn't that guy again after he turned 27. It doesn't matter if he was "on track" - lots of guys are at some point - he has no business being discussed, and if he had spent his career in Kansas City or Minneapolis, we'd wouldn't still be talking about him - outside of a "yeah that guy sure was great for a few years" sort of way. Do you really disagree that he has no business being in a HoF discussion?
True, but articles like this (and I've seen plenty) aren't talking about what might have been. They're asking if he has a legitimate HOF case based on his actual career. And the answer is pretty clearly no. Yet you don't see nearly the same amount of speculation about Hernandez (who has a much better case), Clark, McGriff, etc.
Don Mattingly 147
I find this really interesting. I used to get into heated arguments as a kid with a close friend who's a Yankees fan about Murray vs. Mattingly. He was convinced that Mattingly was a far superior hitter because of his BA and RBIs. I'd just started reading Bill James and argued that Murray's BBs made him just as valuable.
Rice had a better career.
Garvey shouldn't be discussed either.
Murphy had a better career.
Morris is silly as well.
Oliva had a (slightly) better career.
Hodges isn't totally absurd if you consider his time as a manager.
FWIW, none of them would be in my personal HoF, and only Rice and Murphy would give me pause for five minutes. Maybe he would still be discussed if he hadn't been a Yankee - but I'm not convinced.
And then his body seized up on him and he was never much of a player afterwards. He's not a Hall of Famer because we demand more longevity from Hall of Famers, but his talent, though not at a Gehrig/Foxx/Pujols level, was up there in the middle of HOF/HOM first basemen.
Exactly. The fact that Rice, who doesn't deserve to be in the HOF, was better than Mattingly doesn't exactly scream "put Donnie Baseball in the HOF! He was awesome until he turned 28!!!" None of the listed players (Rice, Gavery, Murphy, Morris, Oliva, Hodges) are HOF calibre. Hodges you'd have to mix player with manager, which is disallowed by voting rules. Fred McGriff I'd listen to argument for, and Keith Hernandez. But otherwise, none of the players mentioned here pass the sniff test.
Don Mattingly is not a HOFer.
Will Clark was even better but you don't see a continuous cycle of Clark in the HOF articles like you do for Mattingly. No one questions that Mattingly was great for a while, but we're constantly reminded of his brief greatness because he's a Yankee. This seems pretty obviously true to me. (I do think that for people of my generation, Don Mattingly's status as THE ROOKIE CARD to have in the 1980's has helped his fame. It sounds stupid now, but America was awash in baseball card madness in the mid 80's. Mattingly was kind of the Pet Rock of the decade.)
I think Will Clark is kinda the best example of how people would talk about Don Mattingly if he weren't a Yankee.
Clark was better than Mattingly, for longer, and you see way more HoF articles about Mattingly than about Clark.
No one really has as much bulk outside of his prime as Andruw.
Jeff Conine? Get the #### outta here with that ####.
1991
what happens when you re-run that list for Mattingly's age 29-35 seasons?
I think that's everyone's point here: he was on his way, but he didn't finish it off, mostly due to injuries. And unless your peak years are outwordly (Sandy Koufax), or it was long enough (Kirby Puckett), you're not going to get an injury exception.
Never said he was.
But he had HoF talent, unlike someone like Garvey who never exceeded a 133 OPs+.
A guy that runs off a string of 156, 156, 161, 141 OPS+ in his first 4 years with a batting title, MVP and a 2nd place is going to get some ink as a "might have been".
I have no problem with "what might have been" articles. I have problems with articles falsely suggesting that what "might have been" means we should reassess what "actually was." Mattingly is Rocky Colavito with a better PR department. He's Joey Belle without the anger management issues. He is not a HOFer.
And that's what the article concludes.
I think it's the fact that the articles are written at all in with such frequency still, regardless of the conclusions.
I have yet to make an argument with regard to the article. I have made arguments with regard to comments here.
Awesome Moustache.
So Don Mattingly is the Jason Kendall of first base, plus some Yankee-related adulation?
Sounds about right, actually.
"5. Voting: Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played."
It's not entirely clear, but I think it implies that BBWAA voters should NOT consider post-playing manager careers.
The rules on the HOF website for the New VC three-headed monster are silent on the issue of whether considering combined contributions is allowed.
Sounds about right, actually.
I've never made that connection, but it's a suprisingly good comp.
You can disagree with that idea; you can even think that idea is stupid. But it quite obviously has an easily comprehensible meaning.
Edit: Ugh, blockquote-in-blockquote doesn't work?
No. Mine is just a "career-shape" observation. Mattingly has almost exactly the same career WAR (per B-Ref) as Gil McDougald and Roger Maris, two other famous Yankees. Maris got significant HOF voting support, McDougald got almost nothing; Mattingly has gotten some, and one reason is that Mattingly's career shape is a lot more like Maris's than McDougald's. None of them are in any Hall, and rightly so. You can say of Mattingly that he was a great player for three years, Maris for two; McDougald by contrast was a consistently good player for a decade.
Nope. The beef seems to be with the article, and the many others of the same type, being written at all, since there aren't as many written about Will Clark or other similar ex-ballplayers. Of course, whether there are actually many more Mattingly articles or simply many more Mattingly articles linked here by chief instigator Repoz is unknown.
No, but then I haven't seen TommyinCT here in awhile.
343/381/527, 156 OPS+ - 306/342/534, 123 OPS+
324/371/567, 156 OPS+ - 323/362/584, 140 OPS+
352/394/573, 161 OPS+ - 357/418/603, 153 OPS+
327/378/559, 146 OPS+ - 372/434/599, 155 OPS+
311/353/462, 128 OPS+ - 310/352/528, 128 OPS+
303/351/477, 133 OPS+ - 301/345/524, 121 OPS+
Mattingly was a step better, and he managed several more hanging around a couple more seasons than Nomar. In the end, Mattingly has a bit over 7000 PA with a 127 OPS+, and Nomar a bit over 6000 at 124.
Nomar was a shortstop, though. While Mattingly's peak rates in the middle-of-the-pack with the peaks of other HoF first basemen, the only HoF shortstops who peaked as high as Nomar are the very inner circle - Wagner, Vaughn, Banks, Ripken, ARod. Jeter too, I guess. Wagner of course peaked higher, and Vaughn and ARod maintained their peaks much longer. Nomar's peak is pretty well situated in that second tier of HoF SS peaks.
I think it'll be an interesting comparison, in five years or so, how much attention Nomar gets as a Hall of Fame case. His case is clearly much better than Mattingly's, but his career length makes him an unlikely HoFer by the writers' standard. And, of course, one can hardly say that Mattingly got a qualitatively different kind of media coverage than Nomar did.
The difference between Mattingly and Clark is that Mattingly was perceived as HANDS DOWN the best player in baseball, and was doing things like driving in 145 runs that nobody had done in many years. In terms of actual value they may have been equal or Clark better, but Clark's peak was not perceived as being as dominant as Mattingly's was.
Not if Mattingly ends up with 500 homers!
I don't get it either. I agree with you guys that he is almost a joke candidate. I don't think he has any foreseeable chance to actually get in, either (unless, of course, he also has a good career as a manager.)
Exactly. I would have thought that anyone who remembers being a baseball fan in the 80's would understand why these articles get written about him more than other shoulda/woulda/coulda candidates. The fact that he's still around in the game doesn't hurt either.
Also, Mattingly hasn't had his managing career yet. He still has a chance!
That seems unlikely at this point.
That all depends on to whom Jason Gimabi bequeaths the remaining stock of his rainbow juice now that he's reportedly going to retire.
Key to stats:Peak -- total offensive wins (OW) for the best five years of the player years are not necessarily consecutive.
Outside -- total offensive wins outside the best five years
Decade -- decade in which most of the player's peak falls.
Years -- Games played, divided by most common games/team for each year.
@Pos -- percent of games played at this position
FR -- Career fielding runs above average, as estimated by Baseball Prospectus
-- From '88-'96, fielding runs generated from DA substituted.
Hall -- Hall of Fame status. * indicates HOFer, with VC or OT for committee
Active players listed as Actv
Currently BBWAA eligible listed with highest vote %.
Players not yet eligible listed with year of eligibility.
Players recently retired are listed with year to appear on ballot.
Players on ineligible list are listed as -IE-
Other -- % of games played at other positions. Less than 20% not listed.
OW -- Offensive Wins, (BR/A + SBR) / R/W.
R/W -- Runs per win, calculated by (4 * League Runs) / (1.83 * League Games)
BR/A -- park adjusted linear weight batting runs, calculated by TB VII.
SBR -- stolen base runs. (SB*0.22 - CS*0.35). Not calculated for years without caught stealing totals.
Peaks for Prominent First Basemen
Name Peak Decade Outside Years @Pos FR Hall OtherLou Gehrig 42.1 30s 46.2 14.1 99% -53 *
Jimmie Foxx 33.9 30s 31.7 15.0 83% 14 *
Frank Thomas 33.2 90s 25.9 10.9 55% -59 Actv 44% dh
Jeff Bagwell 33.0 90s 25.9 11.4 99% 38 Actv
Willie McCovey 31.9 60s 28.9 16.1 79% -40 *
Mark McGwire 31.8 90s 25.1 11.8 94% 22 '07
Johnny Mize 27.9 30s 23.4 12.2 88% 51 * VC
Jason Giambi 27.0 00s 2.6 6.9 69% 18 Actv
Hank Greenberg 25.9 30s 13.9 9.1 82% 49 *
George Sisler 25.5 20s 3.0 13.6 96% 5 *
Will Clark 25.1 80s 16.6 12.6 96% 53 '06
Pedro Guerrero 24.7 80s 6.5 9.8 37% -74 24% 3b, 35% of
Dan Brouthers 24.4 1880s 25.9 13.9 98% -75 * OT
Eddie Murray 24.2 80s 25.3 19.3 80% 4 *
Jim Thome 23.9 90s 9.5 8.9 55% -22 Actv 36% 3b
Fred McGriff 23.5 90s 20.9 14.9 92% -109 Actv
John Olerud 23.4 90s 11.4 11.9 91% 95 Actv
Orlando Cepeda 23.3 60s 14.6 13.3 79% -16 * VC
Boog Powell 22.5 60s 13.0 12.6 72% -111 21% lf
Jack Fournier 22.3 20s 8.9 10.0 86% -64
Don Mattingly 21.9 80s 4.6 11.4 92% 63 14%
Roger Connor 21.8 1880s 23.5 16.7 88% 105 * VC
Dolph Camilli 21.4 30s 6.2 9.7 99% 90
Rafael Palmeiro 21.3 90s 22.0 15.3 77% 49 Actv
Norm Cash 20.8 60s 18.1 13.0 93% 84
Keith Hernandez 20.6 80s 14.9 13.2 96% 167 6%
Bill Terry 20.5 30s 11.6 11.2 92% 74 *
Bob Watson 18.4 70s 8.8 11.5 59% -61 31% lf
Mo Vaughn 18.2 90s 5.6 9.6 86% -36 Actv
Cecil Cooper 18.0 80s 2.7 12.0 78% -22
Ted Kluszewski 18.0 50s -0.6 11.1 86% -59
Jim Bottomley 17.7 20s 6.0 12.9 95% -22 * VC
John Mayberry 17.7 70s 1.1 10.3 91% -36
Mickey Vernon 17.4 50s 1.0 15.6 97% -4
John Kruk 17.2 90s 5.6 7.6 57% 14 25% lf
Frank Chance 17.0 1900s 5.7 8.5 77% 11 * OT Manager
Cap Anson 16.6 1880s 22.6 24.0 90% 77 * OT
Andy Thornton 16.5 70s 2.2 9.9 47% 10 47% dh
Darrell Evans 16.2 80s 12.0 16.9 32% 145 54% 3b
Phil Cavarretta 16.2 40s 3.9 13.2 62% -64 27% of
Hal Trosky 15.9 30s 2.3 8.7 98% -56
Andres Galarraga 15.3 90s 1.2 13.6 95% -41 Actv
Mark Grace 15.1 90s 10.9 13.8 97% 111 Actv
Gil Hodges 15.1 50s 4.6 13.4 92% 10
Steve Garvey 14.9 70s 4.3 14.7 88% 64 28%
Todd Helton 14.2 00s -0.1 5.1 95% 52 Actv
George Scott 14.1 70s -0.9 12.6 87% 60
Kent Hrbek 13.9 80s 10.0 11.1 92% 39
Joe Adcock 13.9 60s 8.6 12.5 72% 17
Rudy York 13.6 40s 2.5 10.4 79% -33
Jake Beckley 12.8 1890s 13.2 17.0 100% 69 * VC
Jake Daubert 12.2 10s 6.4 13.3 99% 34
Cecil Fielder 12.2 90s 1.0 9.5 62% -14 '04
Fred Tenney 11.6 1900s 1.1 13.6 91% 245
Bill White 11.2 60s 2.9 10.5 88% 38
Frank McCormick 11.1 40s 2.4 10.0 94% 84
Joe Judge 10.5 20s 7.3 14.4 96% 1
George H. Burns 10.4 10s -0.5 12.4 90% 60
Joe Kuhel 10.4 40s -4.1 13.7 98% 58
Stuffy McInnis 9.0 10s -4.9 14.1 94% 74
Hal Chase 8.8 10s -2.2 12.6 95% 2 -IE-
George Kelly 8.5 20s -3.2 10.6 85% 78 * VC
Billy Buckner 7.4 80s -7.4 15.8 62% 52
Cal McVey 7.2 1870s 2.0 8.9 35% 1 35% C, 21% of
Chris Chambliss 6.7 70s 1.2 13.7 90% 39
Joe Start 6.3 1870s 3.7 14.3 100% 94
Wally Pipp 6.0 10s -3.7 12.4 97% 104
Lew Fonseca 4.8 20s -3.9 6.1 40% 20 39% 2b
Charlie Grimm 4.4 20s -12.0 14.1 98% 32
Seems counterintuitive to define "peak" as a collection of non-consecutive seasons. Shouldn't "peak" in this context presuppose a bell-curve shape to a player's career and then focus on the highest segment of the arc?
Dale simply didn't see why it mattered if the years were consecutive and he did the work. You're welcome to produce a set of best 5 year run lists. I say that without sarcasm. They might well be popular since there's no consensus as to the meaning of peak and you're not the first person to raise this objection.
There used to be. Maybe the difference is just that the Clark boosters are better at recognizing that their cause is lost.
Tony Oliva (another guy to whose candidacy James has always been unusually sympathetic)
If you ever saw Tony Oliva play when he still had knees, or try to play when he no longer did, you'd be sympathetic too.
Fully agreed that Clark was not pereceived as being as dominant as Mattingly, simply because the great majority of fans and media are lousy at contextualizing statistics.
But I was a huge baseball fan in the '80s, and I sure don't recall Mattingly ever being perceived as "HANDS DOWN the best player in baseball." He was considered on the short list for sure, but nobody outside of Yankee fanboys ever thought of Mattingly in the mid-1980s as anything close to "hands down" better than the likes of Murphy, Schmidt, Brett, and Henderson, if he was considered better at all.
Mattingly was overrated, but he wasn't that overrated.
I don't disagree. But I took your comment as meaning to say that no one would write about Mattingly's value as a player. Comparing Mattingly and Andruw Jones is absurd. Jones got fat and Mattingly's back went bad.
And Joe C, Jim Rice has no business being in the Hall of Fame. There should be no "pause." Anyone who knows anything about baseball knows that his presence there is a joke.
His candidacy was jumpstarted by the old Boston writers who couldn't stand him when he played.
I was born in 1978 so I started following baseball religiously in the 1986-1988 time frame. I read all I could about baseball, and had no preconceived notions developed before that time frame.
There is no doubt in my mind that Don Mattingly was considered the absolute best baseball player on the planet at that time by a very large percentage of the media (and I was most definitely not a Mattingly fan). Schmidt and Brett were seen as great players who were still adding to their HOF resumes but were not at that time the best player around (well, I guess Schmidt was "the best player in the NL" still). Henderson was regarded as a hell of a player, but because of his stolen bases, he was seen as much as a Nolan Ryan-type anomaly/circus-show as he was a well-rounded player. Of the stars current right at their peak, it was Mattingly-Boggs-everyone else.
That's not to say opinions didn't differ, but I strongly feel if a vote were held in 1987 asking media and most fans "who is the best player in MLB right now" Don Mattingly would have won, and fairly easily. It was BA-HR-RBI driven, and it was if not definitely wrong, at least highly debateable, but that's what it was.
The Simpsons softball episode was in 1992, and given that Mr Burns wasn't terribly up-to-date in his player evaluations, I think most of the popular candidates for best player 1986-88 made the squad: Mattingly, Boggs, Ozzie Smith, Strawberry, Canseco.
I think he's getting shafted because of his age / career shape. If he had put up those numbers from 25-34, he wouldn't be considered the disappointment he is today.
I'm also not convinced he's done -- it's not hard to me to see him repeating his 2010.
I was in college when Mattingly won his batting title over Winfield, his MVP over Brett & Henderson, and then infamously finished behind Clemens the next year. It was right in my sweet spot as an obsessive fan. My recollection is that if you took a poll of AL fans in '85-'86, he would have won a very large plurality, if not outright majority as the best player. Heck, his APBA card called him Donnie Baseball one of those years.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1065327/index.htm
Mattingly Ends His Year Fittingly
Don Mattingly couldn't catch Wade Boggs in the batting race, but he demonstrated why he's now accepted as the best in the game
"...the definitive 1986 judgment on Mattingly will not be that he lost the batting title, but rather that he won the unofficial title of best player in baseball... The best player in baseball. That is no idle claim for the 25-year-old Indianan. A poll of major league players by The New York Times confirmed it. Departing Baltimore manager Earl Weaver called him that, saying, "I've never seen anyone like him." Tiger manager Sparky Anderson seconds Weaver and says, "Mattingly's from another planet." Atlanta general manager Bobby Cox, who has managed in both leagues, says, "He's simply the best."
Tony Oliva (another guy to whose candidacy James has always been unusually sympathetic)
If you ever saw Tony Oliva play when he still had knees, or try to play when he no longer did, you'd be sympathetic too.
And if Oliva played in the 1980s and 90s instead of the 60s and 70s, there would be weblinks to some of the hundreds of articles about his candidacy and/or "snub." Typical Minnesota bias.
That's definitely not how I remember it. I suspect the "Mattingly is the best" crowd didn't know very much about that other league.
I don't ever remember him being considered the best player around. He was thought to have that kind of talent (the black Ted Williams BS that was bandied about before he ever came up), and at times people would say "See, if he played like this all the time, he'd be the best," but he was mostly considered a "what if" kinda guy even before his career fell apart.
Thanks for bringing this back - I burst out laughing when I read it.
I don't disagree. But I took your comment as meaning to say that no one would write about Mattingly's value as a player. Comparing Mattingly and Andruw Jones is absurd. Jones got fat and Mattingly's back went bad.
And Joe C, Jim Rice has no business being in the Hall of Fame. There should be no "pause." Anyone who knows anything about baseball knows that his presence there is a joke.
His candidacy was jumpstarted by the old Boston writers who couldn't stand him when he played.
I think we are generally in agreement - I didn't mean "no one should write about Mattingly" - rather that it seems like he has an inordinate number of articles about him which are framed in the context of his Hall of Fame credentials.
As far as Mattingly v Jones, I agree that the relevant comparison there stops at "two guys who had HoF caliber starts to their careers who lost it earlier than expected." I do think Jones has a better case than Mattingly, for whatever that's worth (not much).
As for Rice - well, "the pause" would be the three minutes I'd take to look at his BB-Ref page and decide that guy isn't a Hall of Famer. I didn't mean to insinuate that I even consider him borderline. Really, they aren't so dissimilar if you look at them a certain way - great peak for a few years early on, a bunch of middling years to follow, "short" career.
I wonder what answer you'd get if you asked the average fan "who had a better career - Don Mattingly or Tim Raines?"
This would be a fun "man on the street" type game.
Jose Canseco or Tim Raines?
Paul O'Neill or Tim Raines?
Juan Gonzalez or Tim Raines?
David Ortiz or Tim Raines!
Cecil Fielder or Tim Raines!!
Murray Chass, New York Times, January 1987: "There is, however, no maybe about Don Mattingly. The Yankees' first baseman is generally acknowledged as the best player in baseball today"
LA Times, October 1987: "Don Mattingly, widely regarded as the best player in baseball, is the first to receive a perfect score in statistical rankings used to determine compensation for free-agent signings."
NY Daily News, 1990: "Don Mattingly, arguably the best player in baseball, officially became the richest player in baseball Monday. No argument."
People Magazine (!), 1987: "Maybe he is the best player in baseball—that's what 417 major leaguers said last year in a newspaper poll."
-------
Hartford Courant, 2010: "Mattingly was not a highly regarded prospect; he made himself into the best player in baseball for four years."
Washington Times, 2008: "While Mattingly does pass the "greatness" test - he was possibly the best player in baseball from 1984 to 1987 - he was unable to sustain that lofty level of play for an extended period of time."
CBS Sports, 2010: "Don Mattingly was considered, and rightfully so, the best player in baseball for 3 or 4 years."
I meant me and Peter Gammons
"Who were the stars of the '80s? Certainly Mike Schmidt, who hit 313 homers in the decade, and Rickey Henderson, who had stolen 836 bases through Sunday, deserve that distinction. But the real star of the '80s—the Man of the Decade—was not a player but a manager: Whitey Herzog. In the '80s, the task of putting together a winning team became more complex than simply buying up a bunch of big names a la George Steinbrenner. Herzog understood that better than anyone. When he took over the Cardinals in June 1980, they were in last place. Since then he has led them to three World Series, the most for any team in the decade. And his previous creation, the Royals, won three division titles and the American League pennant twice.
That said, here are my selections for an all-1980s team, with Herzog, naturally, at the helm:
FIRST BASE
Eddie Murray ( Orioles, Dodgers)
He has led the majors with 996 RBIs (through Sunday)."
There was no jump start. He took the same slow, steady path to Cooperstown followed by many who debuted at his level of support, from fellow undeservings Tony Perez, Sutter and Goose to more worthy choices like Bert in 2011 and, eventually, Tim Raines. His wasn't some kind of strange outlier progression to the Hall of Fame, regardless how appealing it is to apply something more sinister to the process.
He's not deserving by any stretch of the imagination. But when he got 29 percent of the vote during his first year on the ballot, he stood a decent chance of eventually getting enough support for the Hall. Like many others before him, he did.
Andruw currently has 59.9 WAR. That is at least borderline.
During his 9 year prime, from 1998-2006, he amassed 55.3 WAR, or an average of 6.1 per year.
If people looking at Ichiro's numbers say that he is HOF now, based on 10 years and 55 WAR, then Andruw is entitled to SOME consideration.
And, taking a page from the Konerko thread, at age 33 with 407 HRs, you cannot write off the possibility of his reaching 500 HRs.
So let's say he becomes spokesman for slimfast, stays in the league another 5 years, and gets to 500 HRs, with a WAR total of around 65, and the 9 year prime referenced above -- Isn't that worth a least a column or two about "Is Andruw Jones a HOFer"?
Not quite. That Dawson fellow got a little bit of pub too, and deservedly so.
I think he's worth a column or two on the subject without another 5 years or reaching 500 HRs. I don't know that I'd vote for him for the Hall -- I'm still a little leery of the idea that he was a historically good defensive CF, although he was always a treat to watch. But from a sabermetric perspective, there seems to be enough "there" there to warrant at least some discussion.
If he gets to 500 HR, I actually think he'll get in without too much trouble. Assuming he plays for another 5+ years to do that, by the time he's eligible for election, he'll have been a bloated shell of his former self for long enough to be ripe for pieces on how graceful and elegant he used to be, and how he played for all those great Atlanta teams during their historic run, and so on. Sort of a Mickey Mantle for the 2000s, except with booze and chronic injuries replaced with weight gain and ... more weight gain.
The key thing to his dominance was how shallow he could play because he was so good at going back on the ball. He turned a lot of normal line drive singles into routine outs that way. I actually often think that a lot of CFs should play shallower -- I think part of the reason they don't is that you look pretty silly when the ball is pounded over your head, but it seems to me that the decreased singles more than make up for the increased doubles and triples. But regardless of generalities, Andruw could pull it off with ease.
The truest statement so far in this thread. Repoz's wet dream would be a Murray Chass article stating that the contrite Andy Pettitte should go into the HoF before the defiant Roger Clemens.
FWIW I definitely recall those "Mattingly is the best player in baseball" articles, all within the 1984-86 time frame, and especially in 1985-86. But by 1987 his injuries started to kick in, and you can't base a HoF case for a first baseman on three or four years that were great, but nowhere near historically so.
Mostly, because I'm leery of the idea that anyone is a historically good defender -- defense is one of those areas where I don't trust my eyes, and am not certain of the precision of the statistical record and how we evaluate it.
As a huge Greg Maddux fan, I watched a ton of Atlanta games in the '90s, so I remember how good Andruw looked when he was, well, thinner. He's certainly among the best CFs I've seen play, I'm just -- perhaps too acutely -- conscious of my own uncertainty as to how much value a great defensive CF should be credited with.
I absolutely buy that Andruw was a historically great CF but the WAR on B-Ref makes me pause. According to those numbers he's added the 2nd most defensive value of anybody in baseball history,the entirety of it coming from 1997-2006. Those numbers there are saying Andruw was saving 24 runs a year on defense in his prime. Willie Mays, the #2 CF according to DWAR, saved 16 runs per year in his 10 best non-consecutive years. I have a lot of trouble believing that Andruw was 8 runs a year better than Mays in their primes.
He's not a Hall of Famer, but I think he would have been if his back hadn't completey sapped his power.
I'm admittedly biased about Mattingly because I watched him play Double AA baseball in Nashville. He was on thr same team with Willie McGee and they just steamrolled the Southern League. I met Mattingly when I was a kid, and he was just the nicest guy.
I got the chance to meet him about 10 years ago when they retired his number in Nashville and he was just as warm. It's the nicest interaction I've ever had with a major league player, and I've met quite a few. Rob Dibble is another story, however.
Speaking of writing about Mattingly, I think Bill James summed him up best in his last Abstract:
"100 percent ballplayer, zero percent bullsh*t."
It puts him in the "virtually no doubt" HoM basket ... but they've got a lot of guys in that basket now so their in/out line might move up. (Bell and Bando are the only ones above 57 or 58 who aren't in.
What will annoy me about Andruw's non-election is the number of articles that will discuss his "short career", etc. Because of his early start, Jones has over 2,000 games and 8,000 PAs. He has more games and PAs than Jim Edmonds (by a smidge), way more than Puckett and not far behind Snider. From the ages of 20-30, he averaged 157 games a season. Had he not fallen off a cliff, right now he'd be at about 2200 games and 10,000 PA with a reasonable shot at 3,000 games.
I can understand that...actually, the Nomar comparison that was brought up upthread really works perfectly - fan favorite (and overrated by said fans), among the very best players in baseball for four years, with a couple more very good ones following. An injury that sapped their abilities (Mattingly's back hindered him more than Nomar's wrist, of course), followed by an early decline. Plus, both left their original team, where they were beloved, right before said team began to win championships and have their most successful period in decades.
Andruw is 10th among active players in HR - and only two (Dunn, 354 and Pujols, 408) among the rest of the top 30 are younger than him.
We should start a thread about this.
I didn't realize Andruw was in his 40's.
Derek Jeter: The best player of Peter King's lifetime =
Joe D: Greatest living ballplayer
(I suppose it COULD be a co-in-SIDE-ence that they all played in NY)
Like Santo
Of course, Murphy did this in centerfield, rather than at first base. So Dale Murphy has a BETTER Cooperstown case than Mattingly, easily.
Not that this kind of logic works with the writers... see: Jim Rice vs. George Foster and Dave Parker.
I also absolutely don't believe the defensive numbers. 24 of his 60 WAR come from defense, all from the 1997-2006 period.
B-Ref has him averaging +24 defensive runs per season in that period, which highs of 35 and 36.
This compares to Wllie Mays having a high of only +21, and an average of +13 in his prime.
I am completely certain Andruw Jones did not have an average season better than Mays' best season.
If we dock Jones down to Mays' level, he loses 11 WAR, and his HoF case is weak.
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