The Hardball Times -- Joe Posnanski http://www.hardballtimes.com/main Baseball. Insight. Daily. en studes@hardballtimes.com Copyright 2013 2013-05-24T08:08:15+00:00 The greatest class of all time? (Part 3) http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-greatest-class-of-all-time-part-iii/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-greatest-class-of-all-time-part-iii/#When:08:01:15 This is the third and final partial reprint of an article that appeared in the 2009 Hardball Times Baseball Annual. It is being published here with permission of the author.

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The 2013 THT Baseball Annual is now available.

The Intro


This is a story about what Hall of Fame Induction Day 2013 might have been, had it not been for all those things I won't mention. If everything was a little different, Induction Day 2013 might have been the most amazing crossroads in baseball history.

Obviously, the first class was the best and most famous Hall of Fame class ever. There have been other good ones—the 1947 class with Lefty Grove, Mickey Cochrane, Frankie Frisch and Carl Hubbell was awfully good. The 1966 class had Ted Willians and Casey Stengel. The 1972 class had Yogi Berra and Sandy Koufax and also Negro Leagues stars Buck Leonard and Josh Gibson; that could very well be the best class since the first.

In 1982, Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson were inducted together. In 1989 it was Johnny Bench and Carl Yastrzemski. In 1999 George Brett, Nolan Ryan, Robin Yount and Orlando Cepeda all went in on the same hot weekend.

None of those really push the first class. Let’s face it: In 1936, you have perhaps the greatest hitter and most intense competitor (Cobb), perhaps the most overwhelming force (Ruth), perhaps the most complete player (Wagner), perhaps the greatest pitcher who ever lived (Walter Johnson) and—one more perhaps—perhaps the most respected gentleman to ever play the game (Mathewson). That seems an impossible group to beat.

But—close your eyes, imagine that some of the bad news of the past 10 years never happened—the Class of 2013 might be even more spectacular.

Fourth Inductee: Craig Biggio


I’d say Biggio’s 1997 season is one of my favorites of all time. It’s a numbers and achievement smorgasbord. In 1997, Craig Biggio played in all 162 games. He won a Gold Glove at second base. He led the league in runs scored despite playing half his games in the dreadful-hitting Astrodome. He banged 37 doubles, eight triples and 22 home runs. He stole 47 bases. He walked 84 times. He got hit by 34 pitches, the third-highest total in baseball history. He led the league in plate appearances, yet he did not hit into a single double play all year.

Of course, 1997 was a year for amazing performances. Mike Piazza had the greatest-hitting season ever for a catcher. Larry Walker had a preposterous season with a .366 average, 49 homers, 46 doubles and a right field Gold Glove. Nomar Garciaparra had a fabulous rookie season with 44 doubles, 11 triples, 30 homers, 122 runs scored and 209 hits. Junior hit 56 homers and drove in 147 runs.

But Biggio’s season stands out because he did so many of those quiet things that go unnoticed, like getting hit by pitches and avoiding the double play. Bill James has told me this is why Biggio became his favorite player; Bill enjoyed having a player he appreciated in a way that so few others appreciated.

In the end, everyone came to appreciate Biggio, though probably for less compelling reasons. He ended up with 3,000 hits, thanks to eight seasons at the end of his career when he was barely an average player. But I prefer to think of Biggio in 1997—baseball people often talk about those players who will do anything to help a team win. Normally they say that when the player’s statistics simply don’t look too good. I think Biggio fit that tag in measurable ways.

Comparison to 1936: Biggio is, of course, nowhere close to the player that Honus Wagner was. But I still think he’s the Wagner stand-in for this class, the do-everything player who showed up every day. You probably have heard the Wagner quote: “I never have been sick. I don’t even know what it means to be sick.” Biggio was a catcher, a second baseman, a center fielder, and he played 150 or more games in 11 seasons and got hit by 285 pitches in his career. He didn’t know what sick meant either.

Fifth Inductee: Sammy Sosa


No matter how many times I see this chart, it amazes me endlessly.

Most home runs in a single season:
1. Barry Bonds, 73
2. Mark McGwire, 70
3. Sammy Sosa, 66
4. Mark McGwire, 65
5. Sammy Sosa, 64
6. Sammy Sosa, 63
7. Roger Maris, 61
8. Babe Ruth, 60

It really is mind-boggling. Sammy Sosa hit more than 60 home runs in a season three different times. I don’t really have much to add to that; it seems to tell a pretty good story. You can make an argument—in fact, it’s more or less inarguable—that from 1998 to 2002, Sammy Sosa was the most prolific home run hitter in baseball history.

Most home runs over a five-year period.:
1. Sammy Sosa, 292 (1998-2002)
2. Mark McGwire, 284 (1995-1999)
3. Sammy Sosa, 279 (1997-2001)
4. Mark McGwire, 277 (1996-2000)
5. Barry Bonds, 258 (2000-2004)

The most home runs that Babe Ruth hit over a five-year period is 256.

This is not to say that Sosa was a truly great player; had he gotten as many plate appearances as Reggie Jackson, Sosa would have broken Reggie’s career strikeout record. He was a great hitter for those magical five years, but before that his OPS+ was a fairly pedestrian 106, and afterward it was 109. His lifetime .273 average and .344 on-base percentage do not match up well with other corner outfielders in the Hall. And he often seemed an uninterested or slightly confused outfielder who was never quite sure what to do with his strong arm.

That said, Sosa was very good at one thing. He hit the ball out of the ballpark.

Comparison to 1936: Sosa, like Piazza, is such a unique player he probably does not compare well to any of the first class. He’s more like a Ralph Kiner or Harmon Killebrew or Reggie.

Sixth Inductee: Curt Schilling


Schilling is talking about making a comeback in 2009. It could be tough. Even if he does come back, I can’t imagine he would add much more to his career value. I think now we have to look at his career numbers and try to decide if they are Hall of Fame worthy.

Schilling has won 216 games, which does put him on the low end of the Hall of Fame. His argument would have to be the Don Drysdale argument—that he wasn’t good for very long, but he was very good for as long as he pitched. I don’t like comparing prospective Hall of Fame candidates to current Hall of Famers because situations are so different. Still …

{exp:list_maker}Schilling, like Drysdale, was a right-handed power pitcher.
They both started about 450 games (Drysdale started 465, Schilling 436).
Drysdale had the better ERA (2.95 to 3.46) but that seems to be entirely based on context. Drysdale pitched in a pitcher’s era in perhaps the greatest pitcher’s park ever. Because of this, Schilling has a substantial edge in ERA+ (127 to 121).
Drysdale went 209-166 for mostly good teams.
Schilling went 216-135 for a mishmash of good and bad teams.
Schilling struck out 3,116 batters, 500 more than Drysdale.
Schilling also walked fewer batters and gave up fewer hits. His WHIP is better.
Drysdale threw 49 shutouts to Schilling’s 20. {/exp:list_maker}

Drysdale also had some good postseason moments, including the shutout he threw against the Yankees in the 1963 World Series. But, of course, Schilling has been pretty close to legendary in the postseason. He’s 11-2 with a 2.23 ERA in the postseason, he’s even better in the World Series, and of course he started Game Seven against the Yankees in the remarkable 2001 World Series and pitched the bloody sock game.

All in all, Schilling seems like a better candidate for the Hall than Drysdale. But there are two other factors. First, you can make the same comparison I just made with a dozen pitchers who are not in the Hall of Fame, and Schilling will not come out as good. Second, it took 10 years for Drysdale to get elected into the Hall of Fame.

Personally, I think Schilling is a Hall of Famer. Now, I will admit that unlike many of my colleagues, I like Curt Schilling. Many of the sportswriters and baseball people I know think he’s a loudmouth, a self-aggrandizer, a guy who will say anything. OK. I don’t like him despite those things; I like him because of those things. To me, Schilling is generally fun and over the top and opinionated, he lets his emotions go, and he really has been great in the biggest moments. I don’t agree with him much. But I like that he’s out there.

Comparison to 1936: I suspect that even if Schilling gets in, he will not go first ballot. That’s a guess. Still I see him as the Christy Mathewson of this class. He’s nowhere close to Mathewson as a pitcher or as a statesman of the game. Mathewson remains one of the 10 best pitchers ever, and Schilling is probably closer to 25 or 30. I don’t mean it like that. It’s just that, like the Great Matty, he was awesome in the big moments. And the bloody sock, for whatever else, is about as big a part of baseball lore as Matty’s three consecutive shutouts in the 1905 World Series.

Bonus Seventh Inductee: Pete Rose


So, 2013 will mark the 50-year anniversary of Pete Rose’s first game in the major leagues. Pete will be 72 years old in April of that year. I think that would make for a great year to induct baseball’s all-time hits leader into the Hall of Fame. Rose, obviously, would be the stand-in for Ty Cobb in that first class.

It won’t happen because, as they say in elections, the math doesn’t work for him. Even if someone could get Rose on the Baseball Writers ballot for the first time,* there is no way he would get 75 percent of the vote. Even if they could get his name on the ballot of the veterans committee—which is now made up of all the living Hall of Famers—he would not get anywhere close to 75 percent of the vote. I think, based on the people with whom I’ve talked about this, Rose would get considerably less support among the Hall of Famers.

*Here’s a little known fact: Shoeless Joe Jackson got two votes in the first Hall of Fame ballot in 1936.

So when people ask: “Do you think Pete Rose will make it into the Hall of Fame?” my honest response has to be: “Not even the slightest chance.”

But I need to put here—especially because this gives me a chance to get in a plug for my new book coming out about the 1975 Reds—that the Hall of Fame really is incomplete without Rose. You know, he is the all-time leader in:
{exp:list_maker}Games played.
Hits.
Plate appearances
Singles
Times on base. {/exp:list_maker}
Beyond that, though, Rose defined baseball for a generation. People hated him. People loved him. But he was inescapable in the way he ran to first base, the unrepentant way he upended second basemen and shortstops on double-play grounders, the way he slid head first, the way he memorized his own statistics, the way he fought for every dollar, the way he switched positions (sometimes midyear) to help the team, the way he treated his teammates (every single Reds player I’ve talked to has a story about Pete Rose being good to him), the way he would go for his fifth hit in a game like it was the most important thing on earth. He wasn’t just a baseball player, he was baseball, for all the good and bad of his time.

I don’t know how long you punish someone for breaking the gambling rule. It’s baseball’s cardinal rule, and Rose’s refusal to admit it or apologize for it for a long time left a sour taste. Still, as far as I know, Pete Rose never threw a game. As far as I know, Pete Rose never adversely affected a game so that he could win a bet. As far as I know, Pete Rose played his guts out for a long time. Yes, he was a troubled guy who did a lot of lousy things, and he let a lot of people down, and it’s at the discretion of the commissioner and the owners whether Pete Rose belongs in the game today.

But I wish that all these years later, they would allow Pete’s name back on the Hall of Fame ballot. Maybe he would not get enough votes—in fact, as mentioned, I’m pretty sure he would not get enough votes. But I would vote for him. There was never another player like him.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Joe Posnanski 2012-12-05T08:01:15+00:00 The greatest class of all time? (Part 2) http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-greatest-class-of-all-time-part-ii/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-greatest-class-of-all-time-part-ii/#When:08:38:15 This is the second partial reprint of an article that appeared in the 2009 Hardball Times Baseball Annual. It is being published here with permission of the author.

image
The 2013 THT Baseball Annual is now available.

The Intro


This is a story about what Hall of Fame Induction Day 2013 might have been, had it not been for all those things I won't mention. If everything was a little different, Induction Day 2013 might have been the most amazing crossroads in baseball history.

Obviously, the first class was the best and most famous Hall of Fame class ever. There have been other good ones—the 1947 class with Lefty Grove, Mickey Cochrane, Frankie Frisch and Carl Hubbell was awfully good. The 1966 class had Ted Willians and Casey Stengel. The 1972 class had Yogi Berra and Sandy Koufax and also Negro Leagues stars Buck Leonard and Josh Gibson; that could very well be the best class since the first.

In 1982, Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson were inducted together. In 1989 it was Johnny Bench and Carl Yastrzemski. In 1999 George Brett, Nolan Ryan, Robin Yount and Orlando Cepeda all went in on the same hot weekend.

None of those really push the first class. Let’s face it: In 1936, you have perhaps the greatest hitter and most intense competitor (Cobb), perhaps the most overwhelming force (Ruth), perhaps the most complete player (Wagner), perhaps the greatest pitcher who ever lived (Walter Johnson) and—one more perhaps—perhaps the most respected gentleman to ever play the game (Mathewson). That seems an impossible group to beat.

But—close your eyes, imagine that some of the bad news of the past 10 years never happened—the Class of 2013 might be even more spectacular.

Second Inductee: Roger Clemens


When Dan Duquette made his now famous “twilight of his career” comment, Roger Clemens was 34 years old, and he had won 11 or fewer games for four straight years. Pitcher victories, of course, is a very flawed way of looking at how a pitcher is performing.*

*During the 1994 strike year, for instance, Clemens’ record was 9-7 but he had a 177 ERA+ and was averaging about a strikeout per inning. You could argue pretty convincingly that he was the best pitcher in the American League that year. David Cone won the Cy Young because of his 16-5 record, but Clemens had a better ERA, more strikeouts and pitched in a better hitter’s park.

Still, it is pretty striking for a great pitcher—a guy who has a real argument as the greatest pitcher ever—to win only 40 games from age 30 to 33.
Here’s an incomplete list of recent pitchers who won more than 40 games from age 30 to 33: Andy Ashby, Tom Browning, Mike Caldwell, Pat Dobson, Dock Ellis, Chuck Finley, Larry Gura, Bruce Hurst, Larry Jackson, Bob Knepper, Jim Lonborg, Doc Medich, Fred Norman, Bob Ojeda, Bob Purkey, Kirk Rueter, Bryn Smith, Kevin Tapani, Bob Veale, Woody Williams and Geoff Zahn and Tom Zachary. I could not find anyone whose last names begin with I, Q, U, X, or Y. That’s why I gave you the extra Z.

The question here: how would we view Clemens now if he really was in the twilight of his career?

After the 1996 season, Clemens was 192-111 (a .634 winning percentage) with a 145 ERA+ and 2,590 strikeouts. That ERA+ is telling—it is, post-deadball, the second-best ERA+ for any pitcher his age. Only Lefty Grove, who has his own argument as the greatest pitcher in baseball history, had a higher ERA+ (152).
So I would say that even if Clemens had limped to the finish line, he’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer. If he had just plugged along for four or five more years, he would have gone way over 3,000 strikeouts, he would have surely approached 250 wins, he already had three Cy Young Awards* and so on. As it turned out, he had a bit of renaissance after Duquette let him escape Boston. You may have heard about that.

*And he certainly should have won the award in 1990 when he went 21-6 with a 1.93 ERA and led the league in shutouts. He lost out to Bob Welch, who won 27 games that year despite an ERA that was a full run higher than Clemens. Welch’s 1990 is amazing—from June 5 to August 2 he went 10-2 despite a 4.38 ERA. In both of his losses, he did not go five innings.

Comparison to 1936: Clemens fills the role of Walter Johnson, the Big Train, who was the most dominant pitcher of his time. It’s hard to compare a pitcher from deadball to a pitcher from the Meso-Selig, but it is worth noting that Johnson had his last truly dominant season when he was 31, which not coincidentally was the last year of deadball. He was often very good after that—he went 23-7 with an excellent 149 ERA+ in 1924—but even then he wasn’t the immortal Walter Johnson like in 1910 (1.36 ERA, 313 Ks), 1913 (36-7, 1.14 ERA) and 1919 (1.49 ERA, and, by the record books, no home runs allowed).

Bill James, in most moods, calls Walter Johnson the greatest pitcher who ever lived, but he says that Clemens certainly has a case.

Third Inductee: Mike Piazza


Here, in my opinion, are the five best players selected after the 40th round in the draft:

5. Marcus Giles. He was drafted by the Atlanta Braves in the 53rd round. He’s been pretty dreadful the last two years, but he had a terrific year in 2003: .316/.390/.526 with 21 homers and 101 runs scored. Pretty good for a second baseman. I will say that as the brother of Brian Giles—who was just beginning to flash some talent in the big leagues when Marcus was drafted—I’m surprised he didn’t go a few rounds higher.*

*Marcus also went to school with NASCAR titan Jimmie Johnson. Just a useless tidbit I had to share with someone.

4. Al Cowens. He was selected by the Kansas City Royals in—get this—the 75th round out of Compton High back in 1969. Of course, the Royals were an expansion team, and they were trying to fill out their system. Still, think about that: They went 75 rounds deep. And they didn’t stop there. In the 76th round they took John Behrens, in the 77th they grabbed a catcher named Robert Proechel, in the 78th they took another catcher named Bill Akers. I was going to keep going, listing off every player the Royals took after Cowens but it turns out they went 90 rounds in 1969, even though every other team stopped drafting after the 76th (only the expansion Montreal Expos even went that far with the Royals).

Anyway, Cowens finished second in the MVP voting in 1977, and he was outstanding that year: he hit .312/.361/.525 with 23 homers, 112 RBIs, 98 runs scored, 16 stolen bases, and he won a Gold Glove in right field. Cowens never came close to matching that season, though in 1982 he did bang 39 doubles and 20 homers for a terrible Seattle Mariners team. Anyway, he is undoubtedly the best 75th round draft pick in the history of any sport.

3. Jeff Conine. Another Royals pick, he was taken in the 58th round of the 1987 draft. Again the Royals kept drafting even after everyone else went home—they took the last four players of that draft, including a shortstop named Stewart Anthony in the 74th round.

My favorite Conine fact is that he was, apparently, a world-class racquetball player.* He was a good athlete who had a good career—he finished with 1,982 hits, more than 200 homers and more than 1,000 RBIs. I will say, though, that as a racquetball star I was always surprised he didn’t walk more. I don’t know why I connected those two things; I guess I just figured his hand-eye coordination had to be so good he would have a superior strike zone judgment. He did not. As it turned out he struck out about twice as often as he walked.

*Remember when ESPN would show racquetball matches? And they didn’t just show them every so often; no, racquetball was on about as much as the World Series of Poker is on ESPN2 now. I think it’s fair to say that the network has come a long way.

2. Keith Hernandez. He was a 42nd-round pick of the St. Louis Cardinals, and I think he has a pretty strong Hall of Fame case. I played this game on my blog not too long ago, but it’s worth playing again:

{exp:list_maker}First baseman No. 1: .296/.384/.436, 2,182 hits, 426 doubles, 60 triples, 162 homers, 1,071 RBIs, 1,124 runs, 128 OPS+, one MVP award, one batting title, 11 Gold Gloves.
First baseman No. 2: .307/.358/.471, 2,153 hits, 442 doubles, 20 triples, 222 homers, 1,099 RBIs, 1,007 runs, 127 OPS+, one MVP award, one batting title, nine Gold G)loves. {/exp:list_maker}
No. 1 is Hernandez. No. 2 is Don Mattingly. I suspect neither one will make it into the Hall of Fame. But if one does, I would choose Hernandez, even without his Seinfeld appearance. With it, he’s a slam dunk.

1. Mike Piazza. The Dodgers famously took him in the 62nd round as a personal favor to Tommy Lasorda, who was a childhood friend of Mike’s father Vince.
Piazza had more or less flopped as a first baseman at the University of Miami (a spot that Lasorda had apparently helped secure), and after transferring to Miami-Dade Community College he missed much of the season with an injury. It seems pretty unlikely that he would have been drafted had he not known Lasorda, and so the greatest hitting catcher in the history of baseball could easily have found himself in the cubicle next to you at work had his dad not palled around with Lasorda.

Mike promised Lasorda he would learn how to catch if he got drafted. And so he went to winter ball and worked hard to become a catcher. Piazza’s defensive skills have often been mocked, and he certainly could not throw. In 1996, base runners stole 155 bases with him behind the plate, and he only managed to throw out 34 (82 percent success). That is more or less how it went for Piazza. He also committed a lot of errors, had numerous passed balls and so on. But he also has his defenders—including teammates—who say he handled pitchers pretty well and blocked the plate and so on.

Anyway, that’s almost beside the point. Piazza could really swat. Piazza has the top three OPS+ seasons for catchers, including his remarkable 1997 season when he hit .362/.431/.638 with 40 homers, 124 RBIs and 201 hits. He’s the best-hitting catcher in baseball history.

Comparison to 1936: He doesn’t really have a good comp in the first class because, honestly, there really isn’t a good comp in baseball history for Piazza.

Next: the rest of the class.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Joe Posnanski 2012-12-04T08:38:15+00:00 The greatest class of all time? (Part 1) http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-greatest-class-of-all-time/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-greatest-class-of-all-time/#When:09:00:15 This is a partial reprint of an article that appeared in the 2009 Hardball Times Baseball Annual. It is being published here with permission of the author.

image
The 2013 THT Baseball Annual is now available.

The Intro


The word “steroids” will not appear in the rest of this story. Nor will the letters “HGH” or the phrase “performance-enhancing drugs.” There will be no clear and no cream, not in drug form anyway, no further mention of BALCO or former trainers in jail or former trainers testifying in Congress or, really, any former trainers at all. There will be no mention of injections, no statistics designed to cast suspicion based on odd aging patterns and no theories offered on where the blame should fall. Not here.

None of these things will be mentioned here because, I suspect, you may have read an article or two about all that. I suspect you already know that the out-of-whack power numbers of what we like to call the Meso-Selig Era (or simply the Age of Bud) may not have been entirely natural. I suspect that you may be tired of hearing about all that or, at the very least, could use a break. I sure could. That’s why I’m writing this.

Trouble is, I also suspect that when you run across the names Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens in just a few paragraphs, you will be hit by a wave of emotion, something from the gut, something about them as people and as sportsmen and as wonders of chemistry. I suspect it will be weird to see their names and read a bit about their accomplishments and not get a single word about the charges and counter-charges and suspicions that have hounded them and branded them as athletes and men. It seems a bit like writing a story about Darth Vader and failing to mention the whole “he turned to the dark side” thing.

But, for a few minutes, I would ask you to forget all that. This is a story about what Hall of Fame Induction Day 2013 might have been, had it not been for all those things I promised not to mention. If everything was a little different, Induction Day 2013 might have been the most amazing crossroads in baseball history.

Obviously, the first class was the best and most famous Hall of Fame class ever. There have been other good ones—the 1947 class with Lefty Grove, Mickey Cochrane, Frankie Frisch and Carl Hubbell was awfully good. The 1966 class had Ted Williams and Casey Stengel. The 1972 class had Yogi Berra and Sandy Koufax and also Negro Leagues stars Buck Leonard and Josh Gibson; that could very well be the best class since the first.

In 1982, Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson were inducted together. In 1989 it was Johnny Bench and Carl Yastrzemski. In 1999 George Brett, Nolan Ryan, Robin Yount and Orlando Cepeda all went in on the same hot weekend.

None of those really push the first class. Let’s face it: In 1936, you have perhaps the greatest hitter and most intense competitor (Cobb), perhaps the most overwhelming force (Ruth), perhaps the most complete player (Wagner), perhaps the greatest pitcher who ever lived (Walter Johnson) and—one more perhaps—perhaps the most respected gentleman to ever play the game (Mathewson). That seems an impossible group to beat.

But—close your eyes, imagine that some of the bad news of the past 10 years never happened—the Class of 2013 might be even more spectacular.

First Inductee: Barry Bonds


I know I promised not to mention anything about, well, you know. But I do wonder sometimes if Barry Bonds’ story would have played out a little bit differently had he been a center fielder his whole career. You probably know that Bonds played center field his entire rookie season in Pittsburgh. His arm was a touch weak for the position, but he obviously had the speed and the instincts to be an outstanding center fielder. The next year, though, the Pirates traded Tony Pena to St. Louis for a package that included Andy Van Slyke. Bonds slid over to left so that Van Slyke could play center field.

And Bonds was, of course, an excellent defensive left fielder—he is probably acknowledged as the best defensive left fielder ever, for whatever that is worth. He won eight Gold Gloves as a left fielder, which is more or less like winning the Olympic 100-meter butterfly eight times against the current.*

*It’s worth saying here that we have passed the point of absurdity when it comes to the Gold Gloves. I’m not talking here about the many flaws of the award itself—like the managers’ and coaches’ insistence on giving Derek Jeter three Gold Gloves, the obvious importance of offense in the Gold Glove voting and so on. No, I mean, specifically, that it is absurd the Gold Glove voters continue to treat all outfielders the same. Everyone in baseball knows that playing left field is wildly different from play center field, and playing center is night and day to playing right. And yet, when it comes to the Gold Glove voting, they throw all of them into the same pool.

If the Gold Glove rules had decided to give four Gold Gloves to the four best infielders instead of breaking them up by position, you would imagine that no first baseman would ever win an award. That’s how it is with left fielders now. The Gold Glove voters will often pick three center fielders which is what they should do based on the current rules—but the current rules are ridiculous. Break ‘em up.

What would have happened had Bonds stayed in center? I suspect that—even though his personality hardly made friends and influenced people—he would have received more respect during the early part of his career. Take a look at this comparison between two sons of excellent players, Ken Griffey and Barry Bonds, from 1990 to 1998.

{exp:list_maker}Griffey: .304/.384/.582 with 271 doubles, 27 triples, 334 homers, 957 RBIs, 879 runs, 127 stolen bases, nine gold gloves.
Bonds: .305/.438/.600 with 279 doubles, 40 triples, 327 homers, 993 RBIs, 1,000 runs, 328 stolen bases, eight Gold Gloves. {/exp:list_maker}
It’s pretty clear: Griffey was great, but Bonds was better in almost every way. He got on base a lot more and, as such, scored many more runs. He stole 200 more bases. He even had a better slugging percentage. The year-by-year Win Shares numbers—which take into account defense, of course—are even more stark:
{exp:list_maker}1990: Bonds wins 37-24
1991: Bonds wins 37-30
1992: Bonds wins 41-25
1993: Bonds wins 47-29
1994: Bonds wins 25-20
1995: Bonds wins 36-9
1996: Bonds wins 39-28
1997: Tied 36 win shares apiece
1998: Bonds wins 34-29. {/exp:list_maker}
This has been brought up many times—Bonds was pretty clearly the superior player, and yet Griffey was pretty commonly considered the best player in baseball at the time. The conventional reasoning for this is that Griffey was just so much easier to like—he played with a smile, he tilted with charisma, he did not seem to have disdain for his teammates. These are only perceptions, but they are powerful ones.

Personally, I think the center field thing is at play here. Griffey, of course, played center, and he fit the image we have of the great center fielder, the image of Mays and Mantle and DiMaggio and Snider and the rest. He could chase down fly balls, and he could hit the big home runs. He could make leaping catches at the wall, and he could steal (a few) bases.

The (awful) Fogerty song they play at ballparks everywhere is called “Centerfield.” That’s the place to be. Dale Murphy was a do-everything center fielder in the early-to-mid-1980s, and he won a couple of MVP awards. Fred Lynn showed off that all-around play in ’75 and became the first rookie to win the MVP award. Eric Davis, Kirby Puckett, Amos Otis, Cesar Cedeno, this archetype of the fast and powerful center fielder is firmly in our minds. And Griffey represented it.

Bonds, meanwhile, played left field, and to be honest there had never really been a left fielder quite like him. Left fielders are generally specialists. They are remarkable hitters like Ted Williams or base stealers like Rickey Henderson and Lou Brock or immense sluggers like Frank Howard and George Foster. Bonds, I think, did not quite fit the imagination playing left field. Something was just a little bit off. He may have been a better offensive player than Griffey, but Junior was a center fielder and that made him better.

I will not play amateur psychologist here, but the general thinking seems to be that it was a lack of respect that pushed Bonds to bulk up and after 1998 to put together the greatest flurry of offensive numbers in the history of baseball. If there was a lack of respect, I think a great deal of it came from Bonds playing left field. He put up Willie Mays numbers, but most people refused to see him like Willie Mays. The rest, of course, is in the record books.

Comparison to 1936: Bonds takes on the role of Ruth in this class, of course. The arguments will rage about Ruth vs. Bonds. Ruth played in an era without black or Latin players, with day games, with train travel and without relief specialists. Bonds played in an era with trainers and nutritionists, better equipment, tight strike zones and body armor. There’s no way to compare them, really. All you can do is take one more glance at their most famous seasons and be in awe.

{exp:list_maker}Bonds in 2001: .328/.515/.863, 73 homers, 137 RBIs, 129 runs, 177 walks, 259 OPS+.
Ruth in 1927: .356/.486/.772, 60 homers, 164 RBIs, 158 runs, 137 walks, 226 OPS+. {/exp:list_maker}

And both men had better seasons statistically. Ruth in 1920 had a 256 OPS+ and famously hit more home runs than any team in the league. Bonds in 2004 had a 263 OPS+ and an absurd .609 on-base percentage which is what happens when you are intentionally walked 120 times. Bonds was intentionally walked more times than anyone in the American League actually walked. With nods to Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle and the rest, I think Ruth and Bonds are the two greatest offensive forces in the history of the game.

Next: the second and third inductees.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Joe Posnanski 2012-12-03T09:00:15+00:00