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Hall of Merit — A Look at Baseball's All-Time Best Sunday, June 11, 2006Frank HowardJohn (You Can Call Me Grandma) Murphy
Posted: June 11, 2006 at 11:18 PM | 79 comment(s)
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1. John (You Can Call Me Grandma) Murphy Posted: June 11, 2006 at 11:23 PM (#2060444)</facetiousness>
Washington at Seattle 5/11/69
1967: 36 home runs, 5.91 runs created per 27 in an environment where 3.7 runs are scored per game, .849 OPS in a .665 OPS environment
1968: 44 home runs, 6.57 RC/27 in a 3.41 run environment, .890 OPS in a .651 OPS environment.
1969: 48 home runs, 8.18 RC/27 in a 4.09 run environment, .976 OPS in a .699 OPS environment.
1970: 44 home runs, 7.97 RC/27 in a 4.17 run environment, .962 OPS in a .710 OPS environment.
Frank Howard home runs by park
Home: 186 HR
18 HR in the Coliseum, 37 HR in Dodgers Stadium, 116 HR in RFK Stadium, 8 HR in Arlington Stadium, 7 HR in Tiger Stadium
Away: 196 HR
Top 5- Milwaukee (23 HR), Cleveland (22 HR), Fenway (18 HR), Baltimore (15 HR), Minnesota (15 HR)
Last summer a buddy and I were on our way to RFK to catch a Nats vs Pirates game.
We took the Metro from Vienna, VA, a suburb west of DC, down to RFK.
We no sooner sat down in our seats than Frank Howard walks onto the train.
I say to none/everyone "It's Frank Howard"; Frank says, "whats left of him"
We spend the 45 minute ride reminiscing about old Senators/Dodgers teams; Franks prodigious home runs; Bob Short (boooooo); Franks health (he was about to turn 69 and he looked GREAT).
FYI; for those of you who remember Hondo near the end, he'd gotten a bit portly from pounding all that Budwiser every night. Frank's dropped 50+ lbs now, he's trim and looks healty as a horse.
Frank now works for George Steinbrenner as a scout.
He had extremely kind words to say about George Steinbrenner; called him Mr. Steinbrenner; said he was a peach of a guy to work for and said he was a happy camper working as a Yankee scout.
Frank's a very quiet, unassuming man who tries to blend into the crowd.
At 6'7" he isn't able to do that very easily.
Note: not many other people on that train, which was filled with baseball fans going to the game, knew who Frank Howard was.
My buddy and I gave them a reasonable education by regaling Frank with our eye-witness accounts of a number of his many hitting feats.
Frank's a definate borderline HoM'er; I always felt Frank was two really good years away from Cooperstown. He of course pooh-poohed that idea, but had he hit another 60 or so HRs maybe.
Howard may have had some trouble with the expanded strike zone that was in effect from 1963-68. His missing two or three years were 1964-66.
Win Shares has the two dead even from 1969-71. Hondo has a big edge in 1968 and is also tied or near tied in 62-63 and 65, but Killer has a big edge in 59-61,64,66-67,72. Harmon had a head start and isn't eligible yet. They had similarities, that's for sure, though.
Howard's main competition in the backlog in my opinion is Ralph Kiner. I'm going with Kiner right now, but I'd be interested in seeing more analysis. Of course, Sisler, Minoso, Beckley, Duffy and the rest of the backlog should also be in the discussion as well.
The hard part will be ranking him vis-a-vis Cravath and Pete Browning.
The best part of that sweet train story is that thousands more can recount equally warm tales over the past several decades.
Howard slugged ~.550 in 1968. I'd imagine that year would look downright ferocious in a 2006 context.
Other notables:
Cecil Fielder had a surprisingly solid amount of doubles for his, um, "size". 51-25 in his famous 1990.
Dave Kingman: 48-19 in 1979. Definately an all-time "great" in this category.
Darrell Evans, 1985: 40-17
I was only looking at seasons over ~35HR or so, since below that, the demon of statistical noise rears its ugly head. But yeah, the numbers this season seem a little unusual.
Since Brown took 20 years to get elected, it's possible they are THAT close to one another. I see Brown as a little better because he appeared to me to place better among CFs. Howard's in a death match with Minoso, Kiner, Johnson, and the gang (soon to include Brock) in the tier right below Billy Williams and Willie Stargell, down at the straggling end of potential electability among the left fielders. Brown, for his part, was closer to the Williams/Stargell group than the Kiner/Howard group among my by-position rankings, which was a big point in his favor in my system. Ones mileage may vary, of course....
40-17
54-16
Maris in 61
61-16
Ynakees as a team in 61 - 240-194.
No other AL team was even close to hitting more HR than doubles. The closest was the Angels at 189-218.
Here are Kiner, Howard, and just for grins, Roger Maris, in my scaled RCAA system.
Kiner 81 76 70 42 41 28 24 20 10 7Howard 72 71 63 46 41 40 36 35 25 12 12 8 3 0 -1 -1
Maris 67 55 41 38 31 23 19 11 10 9 7 3
Note that Howard played 400 more games than Kiner or Maris (although Kiner was everyday-durable during his career) and Kiner or Maris in turn played 300 more games than Keller.
Howard slugged ~.550 in 1968. I'd imagine that year would look downright ferocious in a 2006 context.
The "72" on Howard's line is 1968, the "71" is 1969.
40-17
54-16
Maris in 61
61-16
Ynakees as a team in 61 - 240-194.
Willie Mays in 1955: 51-18. (Of course, the whole XBH line was 18-13-51.) It's clear that a high HR/2B ratio is only secondarily about speed; it's primarily a sign of hitting the ball in the air.
OK, so make it "HR-(2B+3B)" ratio.
Killebrew only hit 1 triple in his 49HR year to go with his 11 2B's.
That's still amazing.
Also, Mantle must have been an extreme flyball hitter...either that, or Yankee Stadium must have killed 2B's and 3B's (I suspect it might have for a dead-pull lefty like Maris).
The huge left-center field and very short right field made the old Yankee Stadium a good triples park, but a rather poor doubles park. Balls that would be doubles or triples to right wound up as homers; balls that would be homers or doubles to left-center wound up as triples.
And yes, both Mantle and Maris were extreme flyball hitters. As was Killebrew.
Or as outs, of course.
But then, Frank Howard, too.
Looking at BBREF- the problem with Howards comps is that he';s got a better career OPS+ than all of them- his was 142, his ten comps average about 125
even going by age 33-36 he has a better OPS+ than all the comps that pop up- except 2- McCovey and Stargell, both in the Hall
of course neither ended up on Howard's final top 10 list because they played a bit more than he did
Even under 1960s batting conditions, Howard's trough from 1964-66, at ages 27-29, was weird. Put three seasons in there in line with what he did before and after and he's got over 400 HRs; give him peak seasons in there (hardly unusual for a guy ages 27-29) and he'd have been rightly recognized as a superstar.
What happened, happened, of course. But he had one a strangely concave career arc.
James say in TPOG/WEHTTHOF? that being better than ones comps is a point in the favor of any HOF candidate.
if only he'd been able to string together a normal, expected series of years in between his great years.
James makes a similar point about Jim Kaat. If you rearranged Kaat's luck so that instead of having three 20-win years and a ton of 14-11s, you could construct a prime for Kaat where he's winning 18, 19 games a year instead of 13-15, but still has the same career record. Even though he'll now have a few losing years, his career will look more normal and more like what a HOF's career is supposed to look like. Same could be said of Howard. Take the bad seasons and disperse them to the beginning and end of the career, and he's a more normal-looking candidate.
The concave career shape is pretty dramatically shown by Jacques Fournier. Good value for a year or two, then poor, then out of MLB for several years, then rising back up to studhood in the 1920s. Howard got to keep his job at least....
So I made up a stat, (HR/H)/((2B+3B)/H). Esentially normalizing all the XBH's as a percentage of total hits, and taking the ratio of the homers to the other XBH.
Here's the list of the top 10 guys all-time:
McGwire Mark
Killebrew Harmon
Phelps Ken
Kittle Ron
Kingman Dave
Fielder Cecil
Gentile Jim
Sosa Sammy
Kiner Ralph
Deer Rob
And my wife, who met Howard when she was singing the national anthem at a Mets/Dodgers spring training game sometime in the early '90s, concurs in everyone's assessment of him as a sweetheart and a real gentleman. (She told her father, a lifelong Indians fan, who she'd just met, and he responded "Do you know who he is?!!!" Because, of course, Howard himself hadn't told her. She did know enough that he must be somebody to get her photograph taken with him, though.)
She also got hit on by Roger McDowell, but that's another story... :)
Roger McDowell hit on my mother, too!
In 1964, Howard's batting average took a tumble, and he was traded from the Dodgers to the Senators in the offseason. In '65 and '66, he wasn't hitting home runs, but his BA recovered and he posted the two best OBPs of his career to that point (even in the teeth of the wider strike zone), while striking out at about the same rate as he had before 1963 (actually, a tad less often). In 1967, his strikeout rate took a huge leap upward - but so did his home run total.
Which makes me wonder - did Howard make a deliberate effort to shorten his stroke and to take more pitches in his first two years in DC, and did he then decide "Screw it, this isn't working" and return to his previous style of hitting? 1965 and 1966, interestingly enough, were also the only full seasons in which Howard had more doubles than HRs, and Howard also had 10 triples in those two seasons (he managed 6 in 1962, but never more than 3 in any other season).
T'would be an interesting research topic.
-- MWE
That's generally been my theory over the years, Mike. He reduced his Ks, restored his BA, and reduced his HRs in '65 and '66. Perhaps that was at the urging of Gil Hodges (who had known him in LA) or the Senator's batting coach, or perhaps Howard shortened up his stroke on his own.
But why did he suddenly revert back to his old go-for-broke approach in '67?
I don't know. It puzzled me at the time, and (while honestly I haven't looked real hard), I never came across anything in the annuals and guidebooks of the time that explained it.
Actually, Howard had a tough streak in early 1963 and only a late surge salvaged that season. In '64 his power numbers to start the season were fine, 13 homers through the first two months, but his average was stuck around .220. Then his power vanished and Alston soured on him. The organization was already less then thrilled with Frank's less then enthusiastic approach to Spring Training.
I think the trade to Senators caused something of a career crisis in Frank's mind which resulted in the change in approach. As was already described he was a slow guy without much value outside of the batters box. If folks decided he couldn't hit his shelf life was pretty short. So I am pretty certain your hypothesis applies to the 1965 season.
I also seem to remember a hand injury in 1966 being something of an issue which would have delayed a return to his powerhitting persona. But I could be confusing Howard with Adcock. Big lugs...............
Well, yeah, compared to Don Mossi, Andy Etchebarren, and Joe Torre, I could see you thinking Frank was more appealing. ;-)
I think it can be fairly said that Alston and the Dodgers organization never really appreciated what they had in Howard. He has a fine rookie year in 1960, in fact wins the ROY, and then the next year Alston platoons him into a part-time player. Even in '62, '63, and '64, Alston benched him against RHPs a fair amount. He seemed to be one of those guys who the organization always focuses on what he can't do, to the extent that they lose sight of what he can. They put up with Tommy Davis's shortcomings and played him every day in the middle of the lineup; if they'd done it with Howard instead they'd have likely produced more runs.
That is the highest HR/2B ratio in history for anyone with at least 502 PAs in a season. The only other season with better than a 4:1 ratio is Dave Kingman's 1982 (37 HR, 9 2B).
Dave Parker...
Met Frank at a luncheon in '82; a real genuine guy. When he was a coach with the Mets in the early nineties, I took my nephew to a game where there was a postgame "kids run the bases" event, and Hondo stood in the first-base coaching box, urging the kids on. Wonderful.
I'm leaning toward Browning at the moment for various reasons, but does anyone else feel strongly enough one way or the other to spend the time to post on the subject?
Danny Ainge?
(lol)
Kenny Lofton was an All-American at AZ, wasn't he?
KJOK, Gadfly, or Gary A would be able to tell us which NgLs played for the Globetrotters, I think there were a few.
I didn't think of Winfield because I saw him play--I had season tickets to the Minnesota Gophers through his career. Actually he never played until his junior year. He was discovered playing intramural ball and invited to try out for the Gophers, and ended up starting for 1.5 years. He was a tough son of a b***h but lacked a certain finesse. I think Frank Howard was vastly better as a front court player.
Lou Boudreau is of course a good choice, too, an All-American at Illinois around 1937-38 or thereabouts. In fact, the Gophers won the Big Ten title in 1937, their only one between 1919 and 1972, but Illinois and Boudreau tied them for it. 'Course he's another guard. What we need is a center.
I don't remember Lofton being that good. When I think of Arizona State, I think of Lenny Randle running a punt back for a touchdown against Minnesota in about 1968-69(?).
he doesn't look like a baseball player or run like one.
The concave career shape is pretty dramatically shown by Jacques Fournier. Good value for a year or two, then poor, then out of MLB for several years, then rising back up to studhood in the 1920s. Howard got to keep his job at least....
in a time when the major:minor pay differential had become serious.
I think it can be fairly said that Alston and the Dodgers organization never really appreciated what they had in Howard. He has a fine rookie year in 1960, in fact wins the ROY, and then the next year Alston platoons him into a part-time player.
I have read this elsewhere, too, maybe in someone's remarks on the 1963 World Series from a Yankees perspective.
--
"Creighton" makes me think of pitcher Jim, not Bob Gibson and Willis Reed.
Gibson and Jenkins are the obvious HOF choices.
Winfield is the enforcer off the bench.
David Thompson's sidekick Tim Stoddard (9 rebounds 5 assists v UCLA) can come off the bench for both teams, too.
On my screen, the whitespace between numbered articles has vanished.
.
BPro's Translated Batting Statistics has Hondo's '68 season as 303/369/680 with 60 jacks among his 100 XBH. Wow.
In 1969, Howard hit .296/.402/.574 with a 177 OPS+. If you translate those numbers into the context of 2005 in Texas, you get a line of .326/.417/.663. Derrek Lee's 2005: .335/.418/.662...with a 177 OPS+. Eerie.
Rock Anderson
Joe Bankhead
Zack Clayton
Nat “sweetwater” Clifton
Piper Davis
Bill Dumpson
Greene Farmer
Sammy Gee
Bob Gibson
Ferguson Jenkins
Collins Jones
Ezelle King
Joe Lillard
Ziggy Marcell
George “sonny” Smith
Ford Smith
Othello Strong
Ted Strong
Bill Watson
Sam “boom Boom” Wheeler
John “jumping Johnny” Wilson
mental note: when it comes to basketball, always trust sunnyday2 over Dr. C.
from baseball liberry:
Lofton grew up in the projects of East Chicago, Indiana and was a four-year starter for the George Washington High School baseball team before taking his athletic talents to the University of Arizona. While he didn’t make the varsity baseball team until his junior year, he was the sixth man for the Wildcats 1988 Final Four basketball team. The following season, he started at point guard. By his graduation he owned the university’s single-season and career record for steals.
So good, but not as good as I'd claimed.
But one I made good on:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Red_Rolfe
Rolfe coached in the NBL. Here's basketball-ref's take, they only go back to 1947:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/coaches/rolfero99c.html
But if he did, then I would guess the Gibby and Fergie should be on the joint baseball/hoops all-star team.
Looking over some old threads, I discovered he did surprisingly well on ronw's old lists by position, and reasonably well in Kelly in SD's, both near the bottom of the page at this link:
http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/hall_of_merit/discussion/leftfielders/
Whatever happened to those positional threads, anyway? We seem to have abandoned them.
Jenkins supposedly played in the 1967-68 and 68-69 offseasons.
I believe Jenkins also had a tryout with the Chicago Blackhawks.
Ferguson Jenkins F 6-5 Chatham Vocational H.S. (Ont.)
Another one, and I'd argue the best at the two sports together - if you had some Power/Speed number type equation.
Goose Tatum
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