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Hall of Merit — A Look at Baseball's All-Time Best Tuesday, March 06, 2007Fred LynnJohn (You Can Call Me Grandma) Murphy
Posted: March 06, 2007 at 04:43 AM | 60 comment(s)
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1. John (You Can Call Me Grandma) Murphy Posted: March 06, 2007 at 04:57 AM (#2307411)A lot like Eric Davis. Didn't fulfill his promise. Yeah, like Cedeno as well. And therefore what he did do is under-rated. He will not be on my ballot, to be sure, but he looks a lot better than I expected. In the 30s maybe.
I knew that Lynn's swing was made for Fenway, but until now I hadn't seen how extreme this was on a year-by-year basis.
I'm sure this is obvious; I just hadn't realized the difference was at times as much as 40-50%.
Murphy played about 200 more games than Lynn, lower OPS+ (121). Lynn had the best year, Murphy had more great years (OPS+ 140-150) but Lynn had more good ones (OPS+ 110 or so). I couldn't vote for one and not the other, but neither quite makes the hall by my vote.
Oh, I can think of worse. Who have I got in the all-shafted pool? Alan Trammell in 1987 is near the top of the list. (Although they gave it to the wrong guy in the 1987 NL, I'll pass on that because I don't know who the right guy was.) Dwight Gooden, 1985. (Since they gave the 1986 AL MVP to Clemens, you've got to consider Gooden eligible.) George Brett, 1985. Mike Piazza, 1997. If you took some care to spread it out by position, you might be able to assemble and All-MVP-shafted team.
The irony, however, is that the players also selected G. Bell as their PoY. And they now let these people vote for the HoF.
year name tc mvp======================
1969 McCovey 7 1st
1972 Allen 5 1st
1972 Williams 6 2nd
1977 Foster 6 1st
1978 Rice 5 1st
1978 Parker 6 1st
1979 Lynn 7 4th
1981 Schmidt 6 1st
1993 Bonds 6 1st
1994 Bagwell 5 1st
1995 Bichette 5 2nd
1997 Walker 6 1st
1998 Belle 7 8th
2005 Rodriguez 7 1st
2005 Pujols 7 1st
2006 Pujols 7 2nd
And Lynn probably had more defensive value than any of those guys except Schmidt.
You know, I've always heard the 1987 NL talked about as one of those years where there was no one real standout candidate, but Tony Gwynn looks like the obvious choice to me.
Eric Davis was absolutely astonishing; he seemed a sure bet for 50-50 or even 50-100 and he was seemingly robbing someone of a homer every week. Then he got hurt, missed his 30+ games and slumped badly in the second half.
Jack Clark also had a monster year and was well on his way to a 45-homer, 140+ RBI season to go with an awesome OBP that would have made him a fine sabermetric candidate...but he got hurt. Incidentally, the (valid) belief that Clark was the real Cards MVP for most of the year probably hurt Ozzie; plus, it was the type of year where it was going to be hard for a singles hitter to win it.
He looks like Edd Roush with a bit less durability.
On one narrow point, that 105 OPS+ for Ozzie: I think that undersells him pretty badly. Part of it is the SB, but that's only a sliver - a bigger part is that I think the accuaracy of OPS+ as a measurement starts to break down at that extremity. Ozzie had an "upside-down" OBP/SLG relationship: .392/.383 against a .341/.423 league. More to the point: the whole team had a 94 OPS+ but was second in the league in actual runs scored, .4 R/G above league average (in only a mild - 102 - hitters park). Something's way out of whack with how OPS+ represents that particular team.
I did a doubletake when I saw this John. I thought that Lynn played less in the 80's than he had. Yeah, I'm so provincial that players sometimes fall off my radar screen when they leave the BoWash Corridor and the latter part of his career coincided with my Army days, when I didn't really follow baseball all that much.
Anyways, I decided to compare the two Gold Dust twins. Using the Bill James method (Career Win Shares, Top Three Seasons, Best Five Year Stretch, and WS per 160 Games) Lynn scores 107 points and Rice scores 104.4. Lynn's slightly ahead, but they're in the same ballpark. I did the same analysis with WARP3. Lynn noses out Rice 32.44 to 32.42. What's that? Half a GIDP? I ran a quick and dirty substitute for Pennants Added (WARP3 + TPR). Rice won that one 120.1 to 111.2.
Lynn was better in the postseason. It seems like a close call to me.
And he hit the first ASG grand salami---that's huge!!!!!!!!
As good as Ozzie was that year, I'm not sure it's physically possible for anyone, even Ozzie, to be good enough defensively to make up the offensive gap between him and Gwynn. Both RCAP and VORP put the difference between them at 29 runs--and keep in mind that Gwynn was a fine defender himself in his day.
That time, it didn't count.
Musial '44.
Ouch. Marty Marion? MARTY MARION???
RBIs!!!!
funny thing though- since Wallach was a decent defensive 3B and Dawson's range was greatly diminished due to his knees by 1987- Wallach was probably more valuable than Dawson in 1987...
not that either man was remotely in the top 10
wrt to STL
it's pretty hard to lead the league in OBP and have an OPS+ of 94...
anyway- STL's raw runs created for that year was 709- but they scored 798- most years Runs Created is not off by that much on any team. More techniocal versions only get the team up to about 720 runs.
STL scored about as much in 1986 and 1988 as OPS and RC says they should have....
As a life long Met fans I always HATED that 87 Card's team- I never could understand how they won more games than the 1987 Mets- and I still can't.
and Fred Lynn in 1979
and Ron Guidry in 1978.
None of them would make my HOM ballot or my 15 runners up.
Freddie Lynn, didn't he have a short career? Er, no.
OCF Posted: March 06, 2007 at 01:31 AM (#2307452)
Better than Rice, but not as good as Edd Roush and maybe not as good as Cesar Cedeño or Bobby Murcer. If he could have stayed in the lineup, that might have been different, but as it is, he won't make my ballot.
This is about right.
I'm waiting for Dwight Evans. Will Secretary Murphy write "better than Lynn and Rice"?
Most definitely, Paul. :-)
Post #1 was in reference to the now infamous Jim Rice thread, BTW.
Best to defer to kevin on that one.
Also, there's no way Lynn was better than Rice:
Rice - 2089
Lynn - 828
Rice - 2089
Lynn - 828
Where did you get the 828 from, Misirlou? Lynn played in 1,969 games.
True, but we're comparing whole careers. But if you want to compare them 1974-1980, I'd still take Lynn over Rice.
Continuing post #25, Rice outpaces Lynn in MVP shares. OTOH, Rice didn't strike me as a particularly clutch hitter, but that may be a kid's memory. His lines with none on were .291/.344/.495 and with men on were
.305/.359/.509. Is that a normal rate of inmprovement? September does look like his second best month (after June)
From 1974 to 1980, Rice played 98 more games than Lynn (12% more). And it got worse - from 1981 to 1986, Rice played 155 more games than Lynn (22% more). Lynn started to make up the gap starting in 1987, but even then Lynn was only a part time player. Once again, not much dispute that Lynn was better than Rice when healthy, I just don't think he was so much better that it overcomes the health issue.
I have a hard time thinking of someone who missed 35 games a year on average, during his prime, as an all time great.
In the context of the late 70's Red Sox, a team loaded with backup outfielders, which couldn't find enough playing time for guys like Rick Miller and Bernie Carbo, who were much better than replacement level players, Lynn may have been more valuable than Rice, since he was a better player when healthy. In a lot of ways, Lynn then is similar to JD Drew now, except that Lynn's injuries were usually crashing into walls to make catches, and Drew's have been getting hit by pitches. But anyways, Drew makes sense for the Red Sox, because they have two solid backup outfielders in Pena and Hinske, so if Drew gets hurt, they won't be sending Adam Stern out there or anything, and when Drew is healthy, he's a lot better than anyone on the market.
On the other hand, in the context of a more normal team, I'm not sure Lynn was really better than Rice, because Rice was so consistent about staying in the lineup in his prime.
Where did I state that he was an all-time great, Diz?
If anyone is under the impression that Lynn will be on my ballot, they are wrong.
Sorry, but that was a throwaway line, meant as a good natured dig at kevin, whom I had mentioned in the previous line, and not meant to be taken seriously. Sorry for polluting the thread.
That makes sense now. :-)
Well, HOM guy anyway. Its been discussed, but you're right, I don't think many will have either of them high on their ballots.
I'd also disagree with your greater point, I see Murphy as better career, peak, and prime than Lynn. Not that either are particularly likely to ever make by ballot. Main problem with Lynn is a complete lack of in-season durability: he only played 150 games once in his entire career, and played 140 games all of 4 times. Keeps one from building much of a case, at least to me. Murphy, on the other hand, was a workhorse during his best years, allowing him to pile up some nice seasonal numbers.
Of course.
I'd also disagree with your greater point, I see Murphy as better career, peak, and prime than Lynn. Not that either are particularly likely to ever make by ballot. Main problem with Lynn is a complete lack of in-season durability: he only played 150 games once in his entire career, and played 140 games all of 4 times. Keeps one from building much of a case, at least to me. Murphy, on the other hand, was a workhorse during his best years, allowing him to pile up some nice seasonal numbers.
Murph's relative durability definitely narrows the difference between the two. What hurts him though is all of those games in RF, while Lynn played almost his entire career in center.
I think Eric Davis is another guy like that - he was simply awesome at his peak.
This may have hurt his career value but it's sure helped his quality of life - he still looks like he could man Fenway's center field for a few innings and springs around the outfield of charity softball games.
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