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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Sunday, September 02, 2007Lone Star Ball: Morris: Debunking the Sammy Sosa, HOFer myth—Part 1Can Sammy Sosa survive a test…uh…a Keltner Test that is.
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Posted: September 02, 2007 at 04:31 AM | 102 comment(s)
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"8. Do the player's numbers meet Hall of Fame standards?
This is where it gets tricky...the HOF tests put him in the middle of the pack, but realistically, the only HOF caliber numbers he has are his home runs and RBIs. His career OPS is not that impressive...he trails, among others, Moises Alou, Bobby Abreu, Jim Edmonds, and Nomar Garciaparra in career OPS. He's not in the top 100 in career hits. He's got the homers, but almost nothing else."
Taking Abreu at random, the following HoF RFers have worse OPS+ than Abreu:
Paul Waner
Willie Keeler
Al Kaline
Enos Slaughter
Dave Winfield
Because Abreu is now (apparently) entering his decline phase, while everyone else had to play through theirs, including Sammy (128). Winfield's at 129 and I don't/didn't hear any complaints about his election.
600 HRs. Everything else is a footnote, which tells the limits of the Keltner test.
I used to be an extreme small-Hall guy but I've come around to the point of view that the Hall of Fame is the size that the Hall of Fame is and while it's perfectly reasonable to argue that there are guys on the outside (e.g., Santo, Blyleven) better than guys on the inside (e.g., Traynor, Hunter), you should more or less take the overall size of the Hall of Fame as a given in these debates.
That said, one thing I've noticed as the Hall of Merit project nears completion is just how big the Hall of Fame is. For example, the Hall of Merit elected Keith Hernandez on the first ballot. From the comments I read, I think that people were accurately assessing Hernandez's value and his election wasn't a "mistake" in any sense, but I'll be damned if I'd ever thought of Keith Hernandez as being a Hall-of-Famer.
That's not only because he's gone through a decline phase in 2005 and 2007 but also because he spent four years in the major leagues as a below-average hitting toolsy outfielder. His first season as an above-average hitter was 1993 at age 24 when he put up an OPS+ of 108. That's a perfectly reasonable figure for a 24-year-old rookie. The problem is Sosa was already in his 5th season that year and had 1,411 plate appearances before then.
If you're going to use career rate stats to evaluate Sosa's HOF resume, then I think to be fair you really should start his "career" in 1993 or, at the earliest, 1992.
In those 11 seasons he played in 1618 games, hit 502 homers, and drove in 1309 runs while scoring 1135. Just because we all know that RBI are overrated doesn't mean they have no value, and when the numbers are THIS high, they mean something. That coupled with his .943 and everything he meant to the game during his peak, before the great "disillusionment" is plenty enough for me.
600 homers is a lot of homers. It's not his only career value, but even if it were, it's enough.
And yes, I'm being nitpicky, but only because I find the article's premise to be ridiculous, and I get the sense he's being contrary just to be contrary here. You can make the case that he's not Inner Circle, unlike all the other 600 HR hitters, but if you can't put Sammy Freakin' Sosa in the Hall of Fame, you might as well tear it down.
Egregious example:
Here's how that question should have gone:
Another one:
Yes, an easy no - other than the four years where the answer was YES!!!
I especially like the end, where he sums up "So...under the Keltner test, Sosa appears to be a fringe HOFer, at best, rather than the slam-dunk HOFer that many seem to consider him."
Yes, if you cherrypick numbers, ignore past standards, and squint really, really hard, you can turn Sosa from a slam-dunk HOFer into a borderline case. Good show, Commander!
Grace: 127, 130, 106, 143, 127, 126
Sammy: 98, 108, 127, 123, 128, 99
Now, Grace was slick with the glove, but in those years Sammy was no slouch in right, either. I doubt he was below average defensively. I'd wager his VORP was better as well. Certainly he had more value on the basepaths. So, I'd say he was better than Grace (and probably the best player on the Cubs) in '94 and '96, as well as 1998 on.
Grace is pretty much the face of the Hall of the Very Good. I say it's a pretty good mark in Sosa's favor that his younger days compare favorably with Grace's peak.
Or maybe like Nolan Ryan? Sosa is most famous for 600 HR and for hitting 60 three times -- when you consider that 60 has only been reached eight times and Sosa has three of those, it's a very impressive feat. So he has some extreme single-season totals and an extreme career total in a marquee stat, as Ryan did in strikeouts -- in the context of a long career as an obviously very good player much of the time. (Ryan's a little more extreme than Sosa, granted.)
You could argue that both Ryan and Sosa have been overrated in the media; people do argue that constantly. But their achievements really are unique, and they're unique in an important way, not Vandermeer- or Wambsganss-unique.
But obviously, with a Hall around its current size, Sosa is well within the bounds.
:-)
And his OPS+ of 128 is a bit misleading because OPS overvalues SLG over OBA, and Sosa's OPS is somewhat lopsided on the SLG side (.344/.535).
Someone mentioned that his first 4 mediocre seasons should not be held 'against' him. But those seasons in his early 20s were an 'opportunity' given to Sosa to put up numbers, an opportunity which some other players don't get. He did what he did in those seasons.
That number will continue to bump upward, but I doubt it will ever get to 600+ without a Pete Rose/ Rafael Palmiero situation causing it. Sosa should be in.
Doesn't OPS+ already take that into account?
---------------------
No. It effectively weights OBA as 1.25 or so, but the most accurate weight has been shown to be around 1.8.
If you look at the latter, you've got to consider Bobby Bonds a legit HOF candidate. A blurb on Bobby:
YMMV.
Best Regards
John
Then he averaged 58 homers a years in his 5 seasons from age 29 through age 33. Somehow I have hard time reconciling his adding 25 homers a year for five seasons with the notion that his ultimate numbers suggest election to the Hall of Fame. Subtract those 125 homers and now he's a guy falling short of 500 homers, with an OPS+ probably 10 points lower...
What a great idea, take the first five years of every players career, make an average of that, and ignore everything else. Heck why have them even play more than five years? Every player should have five years to establish themselves as a hall of famer, if they fail, then they are out.
Brilliant!
I mentioned Winfield in the OP, but it was 1:00 at night and I was happily tired after Clay's no-no. Here's a very quick rundown of Winfield using the KT:
1. Best player in baseball? MVP seasons? All Star?
I'd have to say no. In his 3 best seasons (1979, 1984, 1988) there was always someone a bit better (who was also better in the years before and after), and he wasn't really robbed at all. Tough standard. 12 time All Star, FWIW.
2. Best on team?
Padres: yes. Yankees: arguably, at least before Rickey and Donnie joined up. Latter part of his career? No.
3. Best at position?
Main competition was Parker, Evans, and Gwynn. So yes in some years.
4. Impact on pennants?
Surprisingly, he only made it to the postseason twice. Yankees came somewhat close in the mid-80's, but didn't make it. No real advantage over Sosa.
5. Good enough past his prime?
Yes, tho it was injury plagued, including the missing 1989 season. Had a 137 OPS+ at age 40.
6. Very best outside the Hall (discussing from the viewpoint of his first year of eligibility)? Best at his position?
Santo & Minoso are the top two position players not in (I won't bring up Dick Allen here): Minoso is comparable if you give credit for the color barrier. So, arguably.
7. Most comparable in Hall?
Yes. Nobody with 1833 RBIs is outside looking in.
8. HoF standards?
Black Ink was only 4, oddly enough. "HoF Standards" tho is 55.4, 47th all time (Sosa BTW is 50.8, 70th).
9. Evidence he was better or worse?
None that I can think of. Excellent defensive OFer in his prime, with a gun for an arm, if that hasn't been counted yet. Some whisperings from some quarters that he wasn't "clutch", which in his case is just sour grapes.
13. If he was best on team, could they win it all?
In his prime, arguably, even tho he only did it once (and then he was like 2nd best, behind Alomar).
14. Impact on history and sportsmanship?
He killed a seagull once. Other than that had a rep of a gentleman and "elder statesman".
Very comparable outcome to Sosa, so I guess we have to revoke Winfield's election.
Is the Keltner List good enough that it can be used regularly after passing its prime?
My implicit point was that Sosa's leap in performance from a 34-homer-a-year guy to a 58-homer-a-year guy was not a "natural" occurrence, and if his career HR total is the main argument for his HoF inclusion (unlike, say, a more well-rounded player like Barry Bonds), then you had to look at that total in the context of PEDs, and if you correct for that (which is why I called those "extra" homers) then Sosa becomes more like a 475-homer guy. Similarly, if you "correct" Bonds' HR totals, you still have a guy with more than 600 homers.
Should a 475-homer guy be Hall-worthy? Maybe, maybe not. Should a 600-homer guy be Hall-worthy? To me, that's the Sosa case... He's a 475-homer guy who "somehow" hit 600 homers, and I think you have to consider the environment in which he hit them... If 600 is the new 475, then 600 isn't, on its own, a sure-fire HoF number.
Kiko, you wrote:
While that is a legitimate point, you have to wonder how much developing in the Majors rather than at AA helped the finished product. Additionally, if you remove those seasons (in order to improve his rate stats), you also lose out on 69 (and counting) home runs. Given everything else about Sammy, to include the PED allegations, does he get in with 540 dingers? Or does that become the new bar mentioned by p8p?
My view: I didn't like the guy. I thought his media persona during all of 1998 was a sickening act. I am suspicious that a guy who never hit more than 40 HR suddenly averaged 61 per season over a 4-year span. I'm really suspicious of a guy who hit .257/.308/.469 (777 OPS, 19.43 AB/HR) in 4000+ AB through age 28 suddenly exploded to hit .310/.396/.662 (1.058 10.08 AB/HR) with 243 HR over the next four season.
I mean, the guy hit 207 HR in 1088 games prior to the 1998 season. He proceeded to hit 243 over the next 637 games.
I don't think of him as a great player, nor a Hall of Famer.
But you can't keep him out.
That's not what I did. I ignored the first four years of Sosa's career--approximately 15% of his career at-bats---and instead focused on the period when he began hitting over 30 homers a year. By the end of that five-year period, Sosa had accrued about 1/2 of the career at-bats he'd attain through 2005.
After more than 4,000 at-bats, I think it's fair to use the established level of performance as a sort of lens through which you can view later performance. Some players have radically different career arcs. It's unusual, though, to find an established power hitter whose HR totals suddenly go up by 25 annually. Something else was up, IMO, and I'm just trying to take that into account.
Similarly, Koufax benefitted from a great pitcher's park in an era that already suppressed offense, and you have to take that into account today when viewing his eye-popping numbers from 40+ years ago.
The studies that have shown this are based on the effect on *team* runs per game. One cannot make the assumption that the same effect applies to a specific *individual* player. Cyril Morong has demonstrated that, for a cleanup hitter, OBP and SLG have about the same weight, whereas for a leadoff hitter OBP is approximately 3 times as valuable as SLG. Sosa, obviously, wasn't being used as a leadoff hitter, but as a middle-of-the-order hitter, and his value is much more fairly reflected by a model which attempts to consider the role in which he was actually used rather than a generic "one-size-attempts-to-fit-all" approach.
-- MWE
Well, it is within the realm of possibility. Consider:
- Sosa has terrific natural power.
- The era itself was conducive to the 60-HR barrier being breached by someone (smaller parks, lighter and harder bats, livelier baseballs, better weight training and nutrition, a shrinking strike zone, and pitchers being actively discouraged from pitching inside).
-Sosa's seasons of 66, 63, 50 and 64 HR from 1998-2001 occurred during the four seasons of the age a hitter's power generally peaks (late 20s-early 30s) and coincided with the seasons he garnered the most hits (198, 180, 193, 189), AB (642, 643, 625, 604), doubles (116), and percentage of balls in play being hits (.302 BA). A power hitter getting between 30-45 more hits will translate into a lot more taters. Ergo, Sosa improved both his contact and plate discipline at the same time his power spiked. If the home runs came first, then the walks, I could see pitchers avoiding his "new-found" power. However, the home run spike seemed to coincide with greater selectivity, more consistent contact and many more opportunities while playing half his games in a good home run park.
Again YMMV
Best Regards
John
Sosa's not inner circle, but I do think he's a deserving HOFer. And I had a different experience watching him while I lived in Chicago. It was indeed clear that he was not a complete ballplayer, especially on the basepaths and in the field. That was true also on the South Side, where it was clear Frank Thomas wasn't a complete ballplayer. But this isn't the measure of greatness. Sosa changed the game more than almost anyone I've seen; he changed the scoreboard and he changed the other team's strategy. (Thomas did this even more so, though in different ways.) You wouldn't trade him for an average hitter with better fielding and baserunning skills, but his strengths made more of an impact than his weaknesses.
I think Bill James said there were only a handful of players who were above average in every category. If I recall, he ran one set of numbers and ended up only with Willie Mays. Did he run it again and end up only with Joe Morgan and Tris Speaker? I can't recall exactly. Anyway, being a complete player is not the same as being a great player.
_____________________________
I wouldn't use the term 'demonstrated'. Morong's is just one way to look at the issue. Another is lwts by batting order. From The Book, here is that for overall and the cleanup batter:
Overall) .323/.475/.776/1.07/1.397/-.299out
Cleanup) .337/.504/.802/1.09/1.436/-.319
The cleanup values are all higher, but I don't see a relative preference for the slugging part of production over the on-base part.
In his first five full years in the majors (1925-29), Red Ruffing was 39-93 (with a 93 ERA+) for unspeakably awful Red Sox teams. Mutiply that winning percentage (.295) by his career 498 decisions, and that's...147-351.
That's gonna leave a mark.
Then he averaged 58 homers a years in his 5 seasons from age 29 through age 33. Somehow I have hard time reconciling his adding 25 homers a year for five seasons with the notion that his ultimate numbers suggest election to the Hall of Fame. Subtract those 125 homers and now he's a guy falling short of 500 homers...
Should a 475-homer guy be Hall-worthy?...He's a 475-homer guy who "somehow" hit 600 homers
This is a plea for you to stop using statistics so terribly to make your point. I hate to rehash these arguments, but it seems that they must be repeated in every Sosa thread until people stop saying the same ridiculous things about his home run hitting before 1998. You cannot use the home run totals from strike and injury-shortened seasons and compare them to full seasons at face value. If you simply adjust his 1993-97 plate appearances to match his 1998-2002 plate appearances, Sosa averaged 40.35 HR in his age 24 to age 28 seasons.
Furthermore, most players do not reach their power potential until their late 20s. There's a reason many fantasy websites tout a player's age 27 season as a possible breakthrough performance. Especially considering that Sosa was a toolsy, part-time player in the Majors immediately prior to his age 24 season, you wouldn't think that his improvement as a full-time starter that year would be his ultimate level of play. If you look at his age 26 and 27 seasons, when one might expect him to start reaching his HR potential, you'll see that Sosa moved to the top the league as a power hitter. He was second in the NL in home runs in 1995, and in his age 27 season of 1996, Sosa very likely would have led the league in HR if not for being hit by a pitch in late August. He hit 40 HR despite missing the final 6 weeks of the year with a broken bone in his wrist. Sosa had hit double-digit HR in each of his final 3 full months of the season and was on pace to tie McGwire's MLB-leading 52.
Sosa's power fell off a bit in 1997, which should not be at all surprising. We've seen in several instances lately how difficult it is for a player to recover his power in the immediate aftermath of a wrist injury. He came into his age 29 season of 1998 with a healthy wrist and improved discipline, and we all know what followed. Certainly there is much room for argument with regard to how Sosa attained his 1998-2002 level of performance. Please don't base your claims on the facts that he had never hit more than 40 HR, averaged 34 over his previous 5 years, or added 25 HR per year over his "benchmark" level. Sosa was one of the top few HR hitters in baseball in his age 26 and 27 seasons when no one is accusing him of using PEDs, and to assume that you should base his peak power on his age 24 season is ridiculous. If you continue to call him a 475-homer guy and refer to his "extra" 25 HR per season, I will be highly disappointed.
Winfield had 465 homers. Yeah I still would take Dave over Sammy given a choice but it's pretty close, as my analysis above demonstrates. Sammy is comfortably over the de-facto line for the Hall; he easily beats out at least half-a-dozen HoF RFers (albeit most from the early part of the century or even earlier). If you want a Hall with just 100 members come out and say so; else Sammy qualifies. I can probably find flaws in most of the "middle" tier HoFers; the only "perfect" guys were the likes of Ruth, Wagner, or Mays, in which case your Hall has 50 members.
Were you watching on WGN with the sound turned down?
I can't imagine how you define greatness if you never saw it in Sosa.
Looking at the whole LWTS table by BOP in The Book, two things become apparent:
1. Extra-base hits are most valuable in the middle of the order. The LWTS for doubles, triples, and HRs are all highest for the #4 and #5 hitters (singles too, for that matter).
2. Walks are less valuable in the middle of the order. The #3 spot in the order has the lowest LWTS value for the walk; the #4 spot is tied with #8 for the third lowest value, behind the #9 spot (although all of those are within .001).
I look at the whole table as supporting the argument that Morong's data also demonstrates - OBP is less important relative to SLG in the middle of the order than it is at the ends of the order, and there's no real reason to assume, in Sosa's case, that his OPS+ significantly overstates his value in that context.
-- MWE
As to the underlying point about Bonds the Elder, I think he's a fringe HOF candidate. He wouldn't embarrass the HOF if he were in, but there's no compelling <u>reason</u> to put him in, either; it's not an injustice that he's not in. Of course, being the best right fielder over an extended period of time is a very good thing, but I don't think this is the right analysis. To select someone's best stretch and say he was the best at his position over that specific stretch is the weakest form of excellence.
Consider someone who was the third best RF in the league every year over a ten-year stretch. He would likely be the best RF overall in the league over that ten year stretch -- but without ever having been the best (or even second best). Is that, by itself, really HOF-level of greatness?
Now, if he had the best ten-year stretch of any player of his era, that would be a different story -- but that's not what we're talking about here; we're talking about someone who was the best only over one specific ten-year stretch.
On the "importance" of OBP and SLG. Saying that OBP should receive a higher weight is not the same thing as saying it's more important. (It can be viewed as the same thing as saying it's under-rated by OPS.)
Why don't you judge "importance" by the weight? Because you haven't adjusted for variances -- SLG has a higher variance than OBP so, given equal "importance", OBP would receive a higher weight. In other words, it is "easier" to increase 1 point in SLG than it is to increase 1 point in OBP so they shouldn't be treated as equal -- but that also means that in terms of "importance" you shouldn't compare a 1 point change to a 1 point change.
If you want to assess "importance" statistically, you can use the STANDARDIZED coefficient (the "raw" weight multiplied by the ratio of the independent variable SD to the dependent variable SD). When I ran this regression several years ago (at the team level for the 94-02 period or something like that) you find that OBP and SLG are virtually equal in importance. Run it season by season and you find it bounces around a lot from year-to-year -- which is a bit odd -- with OBP being much more important some seasons and SLG being much more important in other seasons.
And then, for the next five seasons, he averaged 60 homers a year (okay---58.4).
I'm just sayin' that those numbers make Sammy Sosa the most fearsome, dangerous, productive home-run hitter EVER, if you look at a multi-year span.
Those numbers make Sammy Sosa a 600-home-run hitter.
And I don't buy it.
I buy that Sosa was a great power hitter, one of best half-dozen of his era, even if he never touches the PEDs. But you don't go from a 40-homer guy over five seasons (again, that right there puts Sosa in some pretty exclusive company) to a 60-homer guy over the next five seasons---nearly a 50% increase over already huge numbers---just through "maturation," "small strike zones," and "smaller ballparks."
And where are all these other hitters that Jeff Pentland has helped "shorten their stokes"? Or does that only work in combination with other training "techniques"?
1) Sammy Sosa used PEDs, and thus his peak should be discounted by some X% that makes his peak no longer HoF quality.
2) Sammy Sosa's peak was not HoF quality by the numbers.
Your argument in post 42 is argument (1), while your argument in the article is quite expressly argument (2). While there is a reasonable case for (2) - google "Danny" and "Sammy Sosa" at BTF - you did not make it in the article at all, and now you seem to have shifted to (1).
Except, of course, Sammy did. Unless you think those "extra" homers are somehow illegitimate, because he was on the sauce, or got lucky, or the Magical Dinger Fairy visited his house.
For the Hall to leave out a guy with six hundred flippin' home runs is insane. I mean, we're not talking about Dave Kingman here. Geez.
I don't understand... the person you are responding to didn't write the article.
Okay, let me change my comment from "You don't go from a 40-homer guy..." to "I believe you don't go from a 40-homer guy..."
So you're right---I don't know. I believe.
And yes, I am making argument No. 1, that when viewed throught the PED lens, I believe Sosa's HoF case is much weaker than if one chooses to ignore the PED issue, because I believe that Sosa used PEDs and that he benefitted to the tune of 100+ home runs.
So now you're questioning the HoF credentials of Stan Musial. Great.
I kid, but it's related to one of my points: context matters. As Dandy Little Glove Man said so well, it's possible that Sosa's 60-homer seasons weren't chemically created. You clearly suspect them, but do you agree that that dandy explanation is a plausible explanation too?
As someone already mentioned, you're mashing together three different arguments:
1. Sosa's number's aren't HoF-worthy.
2. Sosa used PEDS.
3. PED users shouldn't be in the HoF.
I can see both sides to each of these arguments, but really, you should pick one at a time.
History proves that players establish clear rates of performance early on, vary precisely with the changes predicted by their age, and have predictably steady declines. Every variation from that demands an explanation, and should be treated as illegitimate.
Right?
The 4 corner OF's immediately above him are Musial, Aaron, Robinson, and Ott. The 4 right below are Kiner, Stargell, Heilman, and Yaz. The only player close to Sosa's peak level who's not in is Charlie Keller (41.8).
Outside his peak Sosa was not as great a player as these other guys (except Keller, whose whole career was a brief but outstanding peak.) I haven't calculated career rankings yet since I only ran seasons with 200+ AB through the formulas, but my answer is that Sosa is clearly in the HOF based on his stats unless your hall is so small that you need to kick Willie Stargell and Yaz out.
Pretty much any case against Sammy rests on how you think baseball should treat PED users, and how comfortable you are with punishing Sammy for them, considering he's never tested positive or had Balco-type detail brought to light about him. Unlike McGwire, I don't think he's ever even been accused by an ex-teammate. Jose Canseco mentioned Sosa in his book, but had no first hand knowledge, they never played together and Jose was just making the stats + "just look at him" argument.
So what is it that separates that era from this one?
In his first five years in the AL, Al Simmons averaged 16 home runs a season. Over his next five, he averaged 28 per season. The totals aren't absolutely as huge as Sosa's, but 16 HR was a very respectable, leaderboardish total in the mid-20s. Then Simmons hit his prime as the league offense took off overall (DMN's point in #44).
And if you think I spent the last two-and-a-half hours looking for that example, I assure that I just logged back into this thread, saw the remark, and leafed over to Al Simmons as a shot in the dark to see if he'd ever done anything Sosesque. It's probably not really very rare at all ...
I don't understand this. You didn't see greatness in his 1998-2002 peak?
He did more than just hit home runs -- not that I understand why you seem to think that all-time great levels of home runs are really not that big a deal. He was hitting for high averages, drawing lots of walks... OPS's of 1.000 for each year (including an OPS of 1.174 one year) except 2002, when it was "only" .993.
Come on now. He dramatically improved his plate discipline, notwithstanding the increase in intentional walks.
If drawing walks is wholly and entirely a function of pitchers being afraid of a hitter's power, then the career statistics of Willy Mo Pena, Dave Kingman, Tony Armas, Steve Balboni, Ron Kittle, and Dick Stuart simply cannot be explained. I guess they didn't really happen, then.
Possibly nothing more than the lack of a single player good enough to hit 60 HRs. In the 1998 National League, 2,565 home runs were hit. In the 2006 National League, 2,840 home runs were hit. That's an argument <u>for</u> Sammy Sosa to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, not an argument against him.
Yep.
I fear there is a mythology rapidly being forged, which posits that home runs were cheap and plentiful then, but nowdays only real and clean heroes hit them. This mythology just takes as a given that home run rates have declined, when in fact they haven't in any meaningful way.
NL HR/G, 1998-2207:
1998 1.00
1999 1.12
2000 1.16
2001 1.15
2002 1.01
2003 1.05
2004 1.10
2005 0.99
2006 1.10
2007 1.02
I'm not suggesting that guys who hit 475 homers aren't Hall-worthy... I'm asking if hitting 475 homers is enough to hang your Hall hat on....
As someone already mentioned, you're mashing together three different arguments:
1. Sosa's number's aren't HoF-worthy.
2. Sosa used PEDS.
3. PED users shouldn't be in the HoF.
I can see both sides to each of these arguments, but really, you should pick one at a time.
The only point I've been making in my posts is that I believe Sosa was on PEDs during his 5-year stretch of averaging almost 60 homers a year, and that if you're going to use that incredible peak as being a point in his favor when considering Hall-worthiness, I think you have to take the "environment" into account and realize that his 600 homers may not be the same as, say, Frank Robinson's 586. I'm not convinced that Sammy Sosa was "naturally" the greatest 5-year home-run hitter of all time, even though the raw numbers show he did hit the most. Of course the era in which he played was conducive to offense, but let's face it, a lot of hitters were putting up huge numbers while using PEDs. I don't have proof, I don't know who did and who didn't.
Similarly, I don't need to have proof that many congressmen/women routinely put their own and their corporate donors' interests ahead of the interests of the public, and often engage in illegal/unethical practices to further those interests. If I just focused on those that were exposed, and assumed that all the rest were clean, then I'd have to be pretty naive. And if I believe it when Congressman A votes on legislation favoring Company B while maintaining that their relationship was an irrelevant coincidence, then that would be like my believing Sammy Sosa all of a sudden averages almost 60 homers a year for five years because he shortened his swing and learned better pitch recognition. It's fishy, we all know it, and sure, that legislation that gives the corporation a $20 million tax break may also deliver a new road that benefits the public, just as Sosa may still have been one of baseball's top sluggers, but I wonder why we couldn't have the new road without the $20 million tax break, or why we couldn't have 49 or 54 homers instead of 66.
I don't necessarily disagree with your main point - that Sosa probably used PEDs. But how do you explain the numbers that Steve quotes right above your post? The fact is, leaguewide home run rates have not fallen with the advent of more stringent PED testing.
I don't know the historical home-run rates well enough to know if that three-year run from 1999-2001 of 1.143 homers per game representing a 9.4% higher home-run rate than in the years since, is "meaningful," but it sure seems like home-run rates have declined since 1999-2001. And perhaps it's all due to pitcher-pool-dilution, or to subtle changes in approaches to hitters in reaction to the increase in homers...
Well then I guess I don't know the technique of cherry-picking endpoints well enough to know that if one decides upon a particular three season-run, which excludes the one season in which the player in question achieved his greatest success in the stat in question, but the results are nonetheless "meaningful," but it sure seems like home-run rates haven't declined over the period of 1998-2007.
You compare 1998---the low point immediately preceding the three-highest years in the last 10, and compare it to 2006, a year sandwiched by the two lowest years since '98. So Sosa hit 66 homers in '98, a year in which homers weren't being hit as frequently as last year. Maybe once hitters looked around in '98 and saw two muscle-bound sluggers putting up freakish homer run numbers, that kick-started a PED explosion that resulted in the increase in '99-'00-'01.
Or maybe it's just random fluctuation.
But it's hard to look at your 10-year list and not notice that the three-highest home-run seasons were all before PED testing, and that since those three years, home runs rates have been lower every year---on average, almost 10 percent, comparing the most recent six years to the previous three. Like I said---and I wasn't being flippant---I don't know how that 10% greater HR frequency during those three years compares with other, random three-year stretches that are then compared to stretches that bracket them. And I have no explanation for why home runs were suddenly down in 2002-03, before testing. The higher rate in '99-'01 was probably a combination of diluted pitching, juiced ball, smaller ballparks, PEDs, etc.
And speaking of PEDs, I think Sosa was on them when he was averaging almost 60 homers a year over a five-year span. I believe that, among other things, that is a reason why he has reached 600 homers for his career. The only opinion I was trying to get across is that his career numbers therefore need to be assessed in the context in which they were amassed, which I guess seems pretty obvious. But it was a response to a couple in the first half-dozen posters who seemed to believe that 600 homers made Sammy a shoo-in.
You compare 1998---the low point immediately preceding the three-highest years in the last 10, and compare it to 2006, a year sandwiched by the two lowest years since '98.
No, I don't. Kiko Sakata did that. But his essential point is clearly valid: the HR/G line between 1998 and today doesn't trend downward.
But it's hard to look at your 10-year list and not notice that the three-highest home-run seasons were all before PED testing
Nor is it hard to notice that the three-lowest were also before serious PED testing.
since those three years, home runs rates have been lower every year---on average, almost 10 percent, comparing the most recent six years to the previous three
Well ...
maybe it's just random fluctuation.
Because ...
I don't know how that 10% greater HR frequency during those three years compares with other, random three-year stretches
You would if you looked at HR frequency rates. They're freely available.
NL HR/G, 1969-1997:
1969 0.85
1970 0.90
1971 0.77
1972 0.63
1973 0.80
1974 0.70
1975 0.76
1976 0.58
1977 0.89
1978 0.74
1979 0.89
1980 0.81
1981 0.71
1982 0.92
1983 0.84
1984 0.87
1985 0.96
1986 1.01
1987 1.16
1988 0.84
1989 0.76
1990 0.79
1991 0.86
1992 0.78
1993 0.91
1994 1.11
1995 1.07
1996 1.21
1997 1.09
Just a few three-year (and more) stretches in there with 10%+ swings, huh.
And speaking of PEDs, I think Sosa was on them when he was averaging almost 60 homers a year over a five-year span.
So do I.
I believe that, among other things, that is a reason why he has reached 600 homers for his career.
I don't believe you have begun to amass evidence that PED use significantly increased Sosa's HR production. It might have, but it might also not have, and your arguments are utterly unpersuasive.
The only opinion I was trying to get across is that his career numbers therefore need to be assessed in the context in which they were amassed, which I guess seems pretty obvious.
As those of every player, every time.
That may be the single dumbest thing I've read this year. You didn't think he was great in 2001? Puh-lease.
My reasoning could be totally wrong, and I'm not really arguing one way or the other. The same process in reverse gives Dawson roughly 30% more HR over his career had it been from the mid-90s till now--569. If he had 569 HR, he'd probably get elected, which would mean that Sosa with 40 more probably should, too. MSMers will think they need to make an era adjustment, and think they know what adjustment to make. A lot hinges on whether they know what the heck they're doing or not, and my hunch is that they'll discount post-1994 offense much more than they should, especially since offense isn't actually dropping much if at all anytime soon.
WTF?
MLB Batting Average, 1970-2005:
1970 .254
1971 .249
1972 .244
1973 .257
1974 .257
1975 .258
1976 .255
1977 .264
1978 .258
1979 .265
1980 .265
1981 .256
1982 .261
1983 .261
1984 .260
1985 .257
1986 .258
1987 .263
1988 .254
1989 .254
1990 .258
1991 .256
1992 .256
1993 .265
1994 .270
1995 .267
1996 .270
1997 .267
1998 .266
1999 .271
2000 .270
2001 .264
2002 .261
2003 .265
2004 .266
2005 .264
My reasoning could be totally wrong
Are you freaking kidding me?
When did I miss the memo here, that spelled out how it was acceptable to be blatantly ignorant of fundamental facts?
It's late. . . that construction really doesn't make any sense at all, does it?
Whereas no other power hitter ever drew a walk because the pitchers were afraid.
Gosh darn it, they earned those!
No, none at all, man. If Sosa had played his peak in the "'70s and '80s" and managed a whopping 378 home runs (over 34 per year!) in those conditions, he's have been an excellent HOF candidate, just like he is now.
....
1997 1.09
Just a few three-year (and more) stretches in there with 10%+ swings, huh.
Well I certainly could have saved myself typing a couple hundred words if I had bothered to look up historic home run rates. Those 10%-higher totals in '99-'00-'01 seemed suspicious to me, but it's clear that those are just normal year-in year-out fluctuations as opposed to some sudden significant swing.
It seems that the era produced conditions that overall made it not unlikely that someone could reach the previous single-season HR record, and perhaps the reason only three men did was because they were home-run freaks who were perfectly poised to exploit the conditions.
Gosh darn it, they earned those!
----------------
There are 3 defensible reasons why Sosa's BB rate increased:
1) he layed off a higher % of bad pitches
2) he is thrown more balls because of the pitcher's fear
3) he gets more BB as a byproduct of going deeper in the count due to swinging and missing more often (trying to hit HR)
From observation, I believe in Sosa's case it was mostly the last 2, although he certainly may have improved his discipline slightly. And the Prospectus article I mentioned in post 62 also sees it the same way
Not to mention you're deducting 20 points from his career batting average and applying it to his peak. During his peak Sammy hit over .288 6 times, including 5 times over .300 and twice over .320.
edit: Disregard, I see it was a hypothetical career HR and batting average line, not a peak.
Sounds like the HOF lock known as Jim Rice.
Agreed. Duffy doesn't seem to want to give Sosa much credit for anything. As far as Duffy is concerned, Sosa's historic home run numbers were really the "only" thing that impressed Duffy -- as if they weren't that big of a deal ("He rarely did anything that impressed me, watching the games, other than hit homers."). And Sosa's improvement in plate discipline was mostly just due to "pitcher's fear" and... ... "swinging and missing more often (trying to hit HR)"; Sosa was still a "wild swinger who lacked discipline." And, oh, Sosa never seemed to make any "smart" plays.
It almost seems as if Duffy is stuck in a time warp and is decribing the pre-1998, non-stathead favorite Sosa. However, most people realized the player Sosa made himself into in 1998, and gave him the credit he deserved.
I also think that using Sosa's current level of ability to make conclusions as to "why" his plate discipline improved during his prime is a bit dubious. And, for what it's worth, Sosa's current plate discipline against lefties is good, as is his performance against them; he can't hit righties anymore.
Really? They do have the same OPS+ and not incomparable career lengths--Sammy putting up about a season and a 1/3 more time.
But Sammy's peak is way higher:
201, 169, 160, 160, 141
Rice is:
158, 154, 148, 141, 137
Rice was more consistent and did not put up a below 100 OPS+ season any time between his first and last years, but Sammy's peak is in a different league. Rice's best season would be Sammy's 5th best. Given that, I think Sammy, rightly, would have a huge edge, no matter when they played.
Besides, a 10% reduction in his HRs gives him 540. Justifying a 20% reduction means ignoring the fact that Rice also played during seasons with HR rates equivalent to Sosa's prime in 1985 and 1986. Sammy was in the top 10 in HRs 11 times in his career, Rice 7. I don't think they'd look the same no matter when they played.
Watching him, it seemed pretty obvious that the main skill Sosa learned in mid-career was to lay off the breaking ball in the dirt. Once he stopped being a sucker for that pitch, he became a far tougher out.
A dramatic mid-career improvement in the ability to recognize and thus not go fishing after the most traditional of waste pitches is rare, but not unprecedented. Frank Howard, Willie Stargell, and George Foster all come to mind as guys who achieved it and thus, like Sosa, took their game to a whole new level.
----"It almost seems as if Duffy is stuck in a time warp and is decribing the pre-1998, non-stathead favorite Sosa.
------------------------------------------------------
I thought my post was clear that I was well aware of Sosa's numbers, and was simply giving my impressions watching him play everyday as a sabermetrically knowledgeable fan. I admit that I have a bias because I strongly disliked Sosa's persona, and that this almost certainly colors my view.
If you want me to admit that Sosa's stats during his 5 yr peak are those of a great batter, I'll do it. But in his other seasons he was merely passable to good. His career WARP2 is 7.2 per 162 G. M Grace, who was compared to Sammy in an earlier post I think, had a WARP2 per 162 G of 6.8, not much below Sammy. And I believe that Grace was a bit better player than his stats, while Sosa was a bit worse (just my subjective impression). And I haven't even mentioned steroids yet.....
Even that's not really accurate. Outside of his Himalayan 5-year peak, Sosa was still kind of all over the place: rather than "passable to good," he fluctuated from bad to excellent. His was an extraordinarily steep and unusual career arc (Foster is about the only guy who comes to mind as comparable in this regard), and thus it makes summing-it-all-up-in-one-figure stats such as career WARP as unusually non-helpful in assessing Sosa.
If you neutralize their stats at BB-Ref, these three actually do have some passing similarity if you look at their per-162 line:
Sosa's at .270/.339/.524 with 109 runs created
Rice is at .298/.351/.500 with 113 runs created
Dawson's at .285/.330/.493 with 100 runs created
As I said way back early in this thread, looking at career rate stats under-rates Sosa because he spent the first four years of his career being a minor-league talent playing in the major leagues.
Dawson suffers a bit from the same thing at the end of his career - he had a lot of "hang-on" time. He also has the best defensive value of the three.
FWIW, "neutralized" Sosa still has 603 homers with a career high of 63 (twice), but I'm not sure how "neutral" those numbers are (I know at one time BB-Ref just neutralized runs scored but assumed that the relative mix of components - S, D, T, HR, etc. - stayed unchanged).
In terms of career, Rice, Sosa, and Dawson are probably pretty decent comps. I do think that Sosa's easily got the best peak of the three, though. Rice's peak - which is what his HOF case is largely built on - was really only 1-3 years at the end of the 1970s. He then coasted on reputation for a few more years. Whereas Sosa had a legitimate 4-5 year peak that I think would have shown up in any era (even if he wouldn't have hit 63 homers twice in the 1970s or '80s).
1) He hit a lotta homers.
2) Only somebody on steroids could hit that many homers.
3) Roiders shouldn't be in the Hall.
4) QED, this guy is out.
5) Meanwhile, the guy who hustled and had heart and could throw out a runner with a baby elephant on his back is in, his 87 OPS+ notwithstanding.
1) He hit a lotta homers.
2) Only somebody on steroids could hit that many homers.
3) Roiders shouldn't be in the Hall.
4) QED, this guy is out.
I think that sort of thinking does occur more than occasionally, and it isn't just a recent phenomenon. It occurs just about anytime a guy's stats are just off-the-charts great, going beyond established standards and expectations. Bill James made a convincing argument that it was the line of thinking that caused Vern Stephens to be greatly underrated:
1) He hit 39 HRs and drove in 159 freaking runs as a shortstop.
2) Only somebody benefitting from an extreme park effect could do that.
3) Park effects shouldn't fool us.
4) QED, this guy wasn't that great.
Chuck Klein has tended to be similarly dismissed. A similar over-compensation for park and era effects tends to have many modern folks pooh-poohing Sandy Koufax.
Slightly?!?!? Did you see Sammy play with any regularity over the course of his career? He went from a guy who never saw a 1-2 slider in the left-handed batters box that he didn't love, to a locked-in hitting machine. His batting skill and discipline improved more over the course of his career than almost any player who ever played MLB.
AROM,
I'm curious where Jason Giambi's 6 year peak ranks, and how you view his HOF qualifications based on that peak. Also, isn't the definition of peak as six consecutive years perfectly tailored to a pro-Sosa HOF case?
Even I wouldn't go that far. He was, at times, a locked-in hitting machine. But evil Sammy would still show up for substantial stretches during those years. In 98, it was kinda freaky. He'd catch up to McGwire ... then start trying to hit a homer on every pitch ... fall behind McGwire ... calm down, get a couple singles to right, go nuts and catch up to McGwire ... then become evil Sammy again.
Of course my memory might be crap on that but nevertheless, Sammy was never as consistently disciplined as Bonds (obviously) or even McGwire I don't think.
I agree. But Sosa's improvement in that regard, not just from '97 to '98, but also from '98 through 2001, was remarkable. And his decline was a function not only of deteriorating bat speed, but also of a lapse back into his old bad habits.
Ok, he wasn't as locked-in as the most locked-in hitter of our time. But he was up there. And considering he started in the bottom 5% of hitters in the MLB, and topped out easily in the top 20%, maybe top 10%, he did have a huge transformation over the course of his career.
Sammy's decline really began with the Salomon Torres beaning. A lot of Cubs fans noted that Sammy had moved further back off the plate (and he stood really far off the plate to begin with) and this change led to much difficulty reaching those outside pitches again.
Looking at his careet RC, Sosa's 54th, and surrounded by these guys:
Robin Yount-1655
Willie Mac-1638
Tony Gwynn-1636
Tim Raines-1636
Edgar Martinez-1631
Sammy-1619
Larry Walker-1619
Dewey Evans-1612
Harold Baines-1606
Harmon Killebrew-1606
Rod Carew-1595
Walker, Evans and Baines are in my HoVG. The only other guy here who peaked post-1993 is Edgar and I know opinions are divided on him (though he obviously had less defensive value than Sosa). The others here are probably better than Sosa. That suggests to me that he's not a strong career candidate, he's a peak/prime candidate.
That's quite clear. But think about this: career value is not his strong case for the HOF ... and he's got over 600 career home runs. Even with the most severe era adjustment, that's awfully impressive.
It's odd, there numbers are all reasonably close- it just that insetad of Giambi being better at 5 catergories- and Vaughn at 10- it's Giambi in 8 and Vaughn 2- (average by 1 point and triples by 2)
Gimabi is ahead in everything else, more walks, fewer Ks, more homers, RBI, runs, Slugging OBP, not by huge margins, but it all adds up.
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