TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Monday, January 10, 2005

Thoughts on some of the players in The Crank's most recent article...

Albert Belle - Man, at this guy's peak he was amazing to watch. It's a shame that the media will probably drop him like a hot potato the first time his name shows up on the ballot (he won't even get Mattingly's support, and he was a better player than Don). He didn't put up enough numbers past his peak, but what a peak!

Herr Old - One of my favorite players, Baines is going to be held out of the Hall of Fame because his knees made him a DH well before his time. Note that he finished with 1628 RBIs. The only reason I bring this up is because for years the Tony Perez crowd argued that Doggie's 1652 made him Hall-worthy. "Most RBIs for a guy not in the Hall" does not a reason make - mainly because there will always be a guy with that title around his neck.

Eric the Red - Chili Davis didn't get much support for the Hall of Fame. The only reason I put these two in the same sentence is because they both suffered from Bobby Bonds disease - they got hung with the tag "The Next Willie Mays." He was amazing early in his career; he had the magic glove that went above the wall to take away homers, and that electric blend of speed and power... 80 steals in a season, and good pop in his bat. He was a player you feared when he came to the plate. Like Straw, his career went south after he joined the Dodgers. He was able to put things back together and have a nice twilight, but what could have been...

Tony "Donut" Gwynn - I spent five year in San Diego, watching Gwynn play. I remember sitting at a Padres game and they ran a highlight film in between innings. A fellow fan sighed and remarked "look, another Tony Gywnn single." Tony was very good at making contact with almost any pitch, but he didn't walk and he didn't hit for power. His 1930's batting average might have impressed back in the day, but now that OPS is such a big deal, it should be noted that he broke 1.000 only once in his career, when he finished fourth in the league in 1994. He finished 5th in 1987, and two top-fives in a 20 year career just isn't that impressive.

Some report that he was stat-driven, that in a locker room full of players unhappy over yet another Padres loss, he would be grinning from ear-to-ear over his three-hit day. Others dispair over the fact that he let his girth expand to the point where he almost affected the tides, that with a little more time on the exercise bike he could have made a run at 4000 hits. I found my insight into Gwynn at an SDSU batting practice a while back. After each college hitter took his swings, he got an in-depth conference with Tony. How many Hall of Famers are giving back to baseball by training the next generation like Gwynn?

McGwire - I don't think you get homers out of a bottle. On the other hand, you can get homers out of a toaster-sized strike zone and the new smaller parks. There's been a huge change in the power game since they powers that be cancelled the World Series in 1994. There used to be a guy called Jolting Joe who had a .579 slugging average. A decade ago that was good for #7 all time. Since then he's dropped to #11. Twelve of the top 20 sluggers of all time have played in the past ten years. McGwire - The Bringer of Dinger - stood out because he was at the start of this surge. Not all of his numbers are due to the higher environment - remember that he broke Al Rosen's rookie homer record with 49, but his 70 are tainted by era if nothing else. Palmeiro will eclipse his homer numbers, that's revealing fact.

Shawon - 203 career walks in 18 seasons. That's 29 fewer than Barry had in 2004. Shawon was fun to watch, but in the end was a more frustrating than anything else.

Rock Raines - The Crank swept Tim's drug use under the rug. I think one thing that hurts Raines here is the fact that Rickey went on to put up crazy numbers. Had Rickey hung them up in the early 1990s, one would look at Rickey and Raines and perhaps think that Raines was a National League Rickey-lite, and if Rickey was a good pick, then Raines was a marginal pick. But Rickey became The Greatest in more than a few categories and left Raines in the dust.

Matt Williams - It's still hard for me to believe that Matty is a broken-down retired ballplayer. I can remember the potential he had when he first came up. If he could only patch that hole in his swing... but he never did. He also never caught on to how pitching worked. Everyone in the ballpark knew that the way to pitch to him was to buzz him high and in to back him off the plate, then to go low and away and he would flail for strike three. His first big cup of coffee was as emergency replacement for Jose Uribe when Uribe's wife died in a childbirth-related incident. They stuck the not-yet-ready Williams out at short and told him not to worry about hitting. He did worry about hitting, mainly because he was so overmatched at that point. In some respects I don't think he ever got over feeling so clueless at the plate. One of the sweetest gloves you ever saw at third...

Robin - He still holds the Division I hitting streak record at an amazing 58 games (ping!). He also holds the record for most nuggies in one trip to the mound. He was a very good player, but never the best on his team. Best in baseball at his position is also a stretch, and a team would have a hard time going to the playoffs if he was the best player on their roster. Simply put, there always had to be a Batman (for a good chunk of his career, vintage Frank Thomas) to his Robin for things to go anywhere. A star, but not a Hall of Famer.

posted by David 10:36 AM