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Hall of Merit— A Look at Baseball's All-Time Best
Monday, February 09, 2009
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1. John (You Can Call Me Grandma) Murphy Posted: February 09, 2009 at 06:54 PM (#3072174)I'd classify it as one of the only Bermanesque nicknames that works. But I don't think it bizarre.
Either way, I'm looking forward to the discussion of Fred's career.
It should be noted that McGriff was at the center of an era of excellence in Toronto through the two trades that made Gillick's name. His acquisition (along with Dave Collins) in 1982 for Dale Murray was a stroke of genius, and his departure with Fernandez for Alomar and Carter in 1990 was a perfect example of the necessary reconfiguring of talent to push a good club over the top.
My first thought was whoaa...
then decided to look
McGriff: 10174 PAs at 134, top 5: 166, 166, 157, 157, 153
Staub: 11229 PAs at 124, top 5: 166, 153, 147, 139, 137
Perez: 10861 PAs at 122, top 5: 159, 158, 145, 140, 125
FWIW Perez had more defensive value than the other 2 (which says more about them than Tany)
I still think McGriff is better than those 2, but it's closer than my initial thought, and given that I think Tany Perez in the hall is a mistake...
It's bizarre in the sense that it doesn't have anything to do with his play on the field, baseball in general or was even a nickname that he grew up with. At least the "Wild Bills" or "Flash(s)" (as in Gordon) from the past either were wild in some way or flashy/fast. I doubt that McGriff said "Yes!" when "Crime Dog" started to gain momentum (btw, was Bob Gibson happy with "Hoot"?)
That was me. I came up with it. Seriously. I also made efforts to popularize it. I have documentation, but you probably wouldn't be interested.
It doesn't seem that unusual for a nickname to just be a wacky play on the last name (I seem to recall Bill James mentioning a Bill "Goober" Zuber), but I dunno what historical percentage of nicknames are such ;-)
I always thought it was a combination of his name AND a big fastball when he first came up. At least it seems more descriptive than the McGriff one.
1: If Tony had Keith Hernandez Glove, and McGriff had... McGriff's, that would easily make up 10 points.
2: Perez played 760 games at 3b, 1778 at 1B, 82 as DH
McGriff played 2239 at 1B and 175 as DH.
If Perez had played the majority of his games at 3B, then I'd say yes, Tony was better than McGriff even with McGriff's 10 point OPS+ advantage.
I read this as Eddie Murphy and about died laughing.
Was it an Eddie Murphy laugh?
I'm not trying to present an argument for him - I just think its interesting, and certainly different than, say, Rusty Staub. Could an argument be made that he's Ralph Kiner with a long tail to his career?
I don't see the comparison to Kiner. A hitting peak of 166/166/157/157/153 isn't in the same class as 186/184/173/156/146.
McGriff is one hell of an oddity. People notice the freakish consistency in the MVP-type stats, but he wasn't consistent at all, really. He was an inverse ager- if you flip his career around, it makes much more sense from a typical aging perspective.
Look at McGriff's numbers at age 25:
.269 BA
107 UIBB (2nd in league)
132 K (6th in the league)
.525 SLG, (2nd in the league)
166 OPS+ (1st in the league).
A guy with that profile, you'd figure he'd develop into a TTO guy, right? The power would steadily increase, but so would the K's and BB's, and while you'd have some monster peak years with a ~575SLG and 100-130 BB, and that late career would look something like Jason Giambi.
But instead, the UIBB's start dropping from that peak year...the K's remain constant till age 28 or so, then that comes down too. He has a great, but fluky, strike season, but ny age 31, here's what he looks like:
.280BA
59 UIBB
99 K
.489 SLG
119 OPS+
Isn't that the opposite of what you'd expect? He clearly is looking at fewer pitches and/or cutting down his swing with 2 strikes. Why McGriff would have sacrificed his power and batting eye to keep up his BA is beyond me- he was a high K player, but not an ultra high K guy whose BA was dangerously low, like a Ryan Howard or Darryl Strawberry.
It has to be a coaching issue, right? Look at McGriff's age 35 to 37 seasons - the BB's and K's come back up again, but so does the HR power. McGriff's 35-37 seasons are completely consistent with his career up to age 28, and inconsistent with his age 29 to 34 seasons.
So I think 2 questions follow from this:
(1) Was McGriff hurt in his early 30's (the stats could be consistent with a back injury), or was this a coaching/approach issue?
(2) Given McGriff's late-career and early-career numbers, would he have been a HoMer if he hadn't decided to turn into Mark Grace for 5 seasons in the middle of his career?
It could be, it could also be that he was starting his swing a tiny bit earlier to compensate for loss of bat speed- and so had to decide to swing or not a tiny bit earlier, and if the pitch was close the default is swing... Later upon losing a little more speed, he consciously went to a take and rake approach.
Personally I think his mid career lull is what you'd get if someone like Dunn tried to put the ball in play more- a bit more balls in play, but more than offset by the loss in walks and HRs
I think this is exactly right. I find it fascinating, though, because athletes are supposed to be such good innate game theorists- there are those studies that look at, for example, penalty kicks in soccer, and my understanding is that they've found that the kick patterns approach near ideal behavior by both the athlete attempting the kick and the keeper.
Here, there's fairly good circumstantial evidence that McGriff used a subideal approach for several years. I think that its pretty rare; at leat, its pretty rare to see such a stark pattern.
Hitting and defending penalty kicks is simple (on the simple vs complex spectrum, not saying it's easy or hard)
The optimal approach to hitting a baseball even for an individual hitter is far more complex- and changes depending upon who is pitching, who the fielders are, whether the wind is blowing in, or out, the park's dimensions, the [park's altitude...
4709 pa, OPS+ 153
MVP award ranks: -- 17 6 10 10 6 4 8
(The no-show was his 107-game rookie season.)
He continued to play almost every day for another eight seasons, 1995-2002, age 31.6-39.0
5050 pa, OPS+ 121
Does he deserve election this year?
(There seems to be no viable candidate other than newcomers Larkin, Alomar, McGriff, and Martinez.)
Bill Terry, 136 in 7111 PA, he ranks 18th of our 19 HOM 1Bs. Harmon Killebrew, 143 in 9831, ranks 12th. Will Clark, 137 in 8283 PA, ranks 14th with peak and glove factors.
Unelected Tony Perez 122 in 10861, but as noted played a lot of 3B.
My first glance is that Larkin and Alomar are easy, then McGriff fits in with the top of the backlog, and Edgar a little behind it. But that's just my own thoughts, not a guess at what the electorate would do . . . I wasn't a big fan of Terry's election, I do like McGriff a little more at first glance.
[Win Share Value = Win Shares + ((Win Shares - Loss Shares) / 2)]
James states that players with Win Share Values of 400 or more can be described as "More-than-Qualified Hall of Famers of a type who are almost universally selected fairly quickly." I don't know how many eligible players have not been elected with 400, but it seems safe to assume that it can't be a large number.
One thing that should be noted about McGriff's selection is that his contemporaries on the field loved the man. Considering that the panel included Greg Maddux, Jack Morris, Ryne Sandberg, Lee Smith, Frank Thomas and Alan Trammel, his election shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.
Also, he has a lot of the traditional signposts: led in HR twice, hit .300 four times, eight 100-RBI seasons. He was a very fine postseason hitter.
In other words, I see a lot of light between him and Harold Baines. I may or may not agree, but unlike Baines's selection, with McGriff I can definitely see the case.
Let's acknowledge and celebrate the man's accomplishment. Congratulations, Crime Dog.
For HOM purposes, 1B/DH:
1. Lance Berkman
2. David Ortiz
3. Jason Giambi
4. Fred McGriff
Coin flip on in/out
5. John Olerud
Everyone else short
Not mentioned here, McGriff had excellent road relative stats that boost his profile.
Though it's conducing to his bat only type of profile, his WPA is strong.
Unelected HOMers:
Lance Berkman - 52.64
David Ortiz - 50.59
Jason Giambi - 48.29
Fred McGriff - 43.19 - I think his road/relative rates help separate him from the pack from a hitting perspective.
Carlos Delgado - 42.71
Frank Howard - 41.70
Rusty Staub - 40.96
Boog Powell - 40.28
Mark Grace - 40.19
Brian Giles - 40.08
Jack Clark - 38.80
Bobby Bonds - 38.63
He's not going to make my 2023 HOM ballot, but he's maybe in the 25-40 range of close.
I did a quick look at a direct contemporary - Rafael Palmeiro. He's at 71.9 bWAR and bumps up to about 74.5 with similar adjustments. Both his 1994 and 1995 were very good seasons. I know Palmeiro's got 3 seasons advantage -and hence is why he's regarded higher, but McGriff's the better (albeit slightly) rate hitter with better hitting at his peak. So I compared their 162 game averages. McGriff has the tiniest edge in hitting, Palmeiro picks up a couple wins from baserunning and double play avoidance and another 8 wins in fielding. However the replacement runs average is 25 for Palmeiro vs. 22 McGriff. They are both first basemen at the same time, similarly long careers. McGriff is in the NL from 1990-1997 but for that difference to be the entire reason that the average of 25 and 22 is mind boggling. 1st is where most of the sluggers who couldn't field would've played and while McGriff was no standout, he wasn't atrocious outside of maybe 1-2 seasons, one of which he was in the AL already.
Does the amount of freely available talent that could only DH (but couldn't play first) skew the replacement level for the AL for that long in the 90's. I mean Mark McGwire was playing first for the Cards in the 90's (and his bat was worth it). I feel like there's something missing here and it's either underrating McGriff by a couple of WAR for his career (possible) or overrating Palmeiro by at least the same amount if not more.
I guess in conclusion - McGriff is really close with strike credit and some of those replacement levels get ironed out, because Palmeiro's seem way higher and over the course of a long career, that difference could be making a 5WAR difference, 5 WAR with the strike credit and such that might make a lot of others consider McGriff a viable candidate.
McGriff thru his age-30 season: 153 OPS+, led league twice in home runs (with 36 and 35!!)
And after: 119 OPS+, no black ink
Palmeiro thru 30: 133 OPS+, led league in hits, doubles, and runs scored all in different seasons
And after: 132 OPS+, no black ink
Palmeiro was better at defense and baserunning. He also has about 2000 more PAs, though here we get into murky PED waters involving recovery time.
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