TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Friday, January 07, 2005

The Second Half

Here's another hot stove warmer for you, pursuant to our Hall of Fame discussion.

The following players have a strangely unique distinction. They're all pitchers. They share one other characteristic that should be obvious, and another (related) that you'll have to work a little harder to uncover. Score yourself a bonus if you can tell us what the asterisks and parenthetical comments mean.

Roger Clemens, Mike Cuellar, John Denny*, Doug Drabek, Mike Flanagan, Pat Hentgen, LaMarr Hoyt, Greg Maddux, Mike McCormick, Don Newcombe. Jim Palmer (twice), Gaylord Perry, Bret Saberhagen (twice), Johan Santana*, Rick Sutcliffe, Pete Vuckovich*.

Hint: this is a complete list.

Post your answers to The Message Board.

The first person to post the correct answer wins The Crank's Baseball SmartyPants Award, aka The Golden Stirrup, which consists of being cited in this column as an Official SmartyPants. Since the award has no cash value, employees of The Diamond Angle, its member stations, affiliates, and their families are eligible to enter. I'll post the correct answer in a week.

posted by The Crank 8:30 AM

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

2004 Hall of Fame Ballot

Ah, the cold snows of winter, the time when baseball honors its finest with the annual Hall of Fame balloting. As regular visitors to this site and readers of the print version of The Diamond Angle know, we have our own "Hall", the Stars In Their Time, that honors (frequently) the near-misses of the Hall balloting and the generally excellent but not quite inner pantheon among the players of all eras and leagues.

That noted, I would be remiss to let the occasion pass of the annual balloting without throwing my own twelve cents of coal into the stove to keep it hot. So here's my "ballot".

Wade Boggs - YES

Boggs was always a no-brainer as far as I was concerned, but I saw him for virtually all of his peak years at Fenway. He had a phenomenal batting eye, patience and selectivity, and was a studied hitter. Boggs' natural talent, such as it was, had more to do with canny perseverance and maximizing the skills he had. I believe the only truly comparable hitter of the era was Tony Gwynn, but they'd've both fit in very well anytime between 1900 and 1930 in a large crowd.

What I am surprised at with Boggs' induction is that it was so nearly unanimous, with over 90% of the voters giving him the nod. Just five years ago the buzz was that Boggs might well be the first member of the 3000-hit club to be denied a plaque at Cooperstown. Boggs was considered a selfish hitter by the wisdom prevailing when he came up. He was slow and played sodden defense, unlike Gwynn, who was a speed demon and played flashy centerfield. Boggs landed on third base with a thud because the Red Sox had no place else to put him. Also in contrast to Gwynn, Boggs was not well-loved. He had an odd manner to him, referring to himself in interviews in the third person so frequently that we took to calling the practice "Wade Boggs' Disease". Boggs was a centerpiece to a fractious Boston clubhouse during the height of the "twenty-five men, twenty-five cabs" era. He was never the best player on his own club; Jim Rice, Dwight Evans, and Roger Clemens each surpassed his contributions to the club in any given year. His shaky relationship with both media and fans tanked further after his affair with Margo Adams was publicized to great disgusting dimensions, from Boggs going on TV with his long-suffering wife, Debbie, to announce himself a sex addict to Adams appearing in Penthouse. His departure to New York was seen as a manifestation of Boggs before team, as he was upfront that his goals in baseball were to get a ring, get 3000 hits, and get into the Hall. His final stop at the hopeless Tampa Bay, his "home" team, was obviously primarily designed to further these latter two goals, as he'd devolved into a role player and DH in New York. (Boggs' two gold gloves, in 1994 and 1995, came after years of diligent hard work by Boggs to learn the position better. But he was at best an average fielder at his peak. Lobbying for the award and the addition of four New York voters got him the Gold Glove hardware -- remembering here that Rafael Palmeiro won the award at first base in a year when he played only 24 games at the position, it's one won by perseverance and offensive ubiquity as much as glovesmanship. All this to say Boggs' defense was never a Hall credential.) When one puts all these traditionally negative attributes -- at least as far as the baseball writers are concerned -- in the context of Boggs being labeled a Fenway wonder, a one-dimensionasl singles and doubles hitter who'd rather scrape one off the monster than park one over the fence (his only big homer year was 24 -- in 1987, the year of the rabbit ball -- his career high after that was 11) -- it's a miracle that even a .328 career batting average could be considered Hall-worthy by the BBWAA. He only finished in the top ten in MVP voting four times, and then his highest finish was fifth -- never a good indicator for the Hall, since it's the same writers voting on both awards.

What has transpired since Boggs' retirement that greased his way to Cooperstown isn't some reassessment of his character or Boggs' suddenly getting sick (cf. Kirby Puckett). It's the revolution in baseball thinking surrounding on-base percentage. Five years ago hardly a scribe knew what OPS was, much less its importance. But between Billy Beaneball in Oakland and Peter Gammons bandwagoning the term on Baseball Tonight to the plain fact of Barry Bonds' incessantly obvious and irreplaceable value to the otherwise perpetually-flawed Giants, OBP has been embraced by the writers who vote. Boggs' .415 career puts him 9th, career, among players of the post-WWII era. Throw his 100 walk-200 hit seasons on top of the traditional and still slavish love of the raw batting average numbers, and ice it off with that magic 3000th hit in an otherwise unremarkable HoF class, and we get our newest Hall member by a landslide.

As I said at the outset, my personal opinion has been that Boggs was hall-worthy since 1991. That was the year of his tenth .300+ average season, also the ninth time his OBP exceeded .400. Pitchers hated facing him; he wore them out. Rarely has a slow-footed leadoff man with no power received so many intentional walks: he lead the league in IBB six times and finished second once, a remarkable 7-year streak equalled only by the game's biggest sluggers. The feeling of stark inevitability that Boggs would get on base made managers and pitchers yield to four-fingered temptation, hoping to double him up. That he was also perenially among the top three in the league in doubles bespoke the attitude that it was frequently safer to have him on first and running into a double play than at the plate with the mere potential to be on second. Boggs is definitely an odd duck in the modern era, but I think even today he's underrated. The writers who voted for him probably still don't appreciate the impact he had on the lineup behind him. Selfish or not, the effect was real. Boggs may, in point of fact, be the least naturally-skilled player in the Hall of Fame -- which is to say that he may be the most crafty.

Ryne Sandberg - YES

Good lord, what took the writers so long with Sandberg? Well, the fact that he retired at 34, mid-season, and then unretired and then retired early and young a second time (at 37) probably has something to do with it. Writers like guys who seem to have fire in the belly, and Rhino was a bit too laid-back for that school of thought. That he played for the sad sack Cubs, albeit in two of their playoff years, when the great Ron Santo still isn't in the Hall, might also be a factor. I will allow that he's a marginal candidate on raw numbers, and his comparables are all also in the margins of the Hall -- Whitaker and Trammell, Bobbby Doerr, the younger Paul Molitor. But he had enough black ink to be considered seriously, including an MVP and the second-richest (at the time) contract in baseball to show his peak value. He was also the dominant player at his position for a decade, and a legitimate perennial gold-glover and All-Star for a similar period, and that's enough for me at the underrepresented second sack wing of Cooperstown.

Bruce Sutter - NO

I'm going to get some grief on this when readers get down to my "aye" vote on Goose Gossage, but Sutter just doesn't cut it. I'm not of the opinion that the first era of specialist relievers of which Sutter is supposed to be the poster child were "men back when men were men". Of his ten peak years, only six were outstanding, and only three had dominator written on them. His Cy Young was a sort of Mark Davis-like blip in a year without a dominant starter, when he got only 10 first-place votes (Joe Niekro barely lost to him; one flip of first and second place on one ballot would've done it). Yes, he was very good -- as were his comparables, Tom Henke, Jeff Montgomery, Doug Jones, and Jeff Reardon. Since he retired young, he's got a very low GP and IP total, not even to mention a lack of black ink in any meaningful career category. You can argue about his similarity to Rollie Fingers, who is in the hall, and I'd agree; Fingers doesn't belong, either, and got in probably because he was colorful, a good interview, and the one player associated most strongly with the success of the A's dynasty in 1972-74. Sutter -- yet another Cub -- had no such luck.

Jim Rice - YES

It's a crime that Tony Perez is in the Hall and Rice isn't, and it's no coincidence that Doggy was on the winning side of the legendary 1975 world series while Rice -- a legitimate team MVP that year -- was out with a late season injury. Rice's presence in the lineup would likely have been the difference maker in the series, but accomplishments are a matter of record and not what-if. In any event, since Rice's career fell off the ladder at the tender age of 34, and he chose to retire rather than phone it in -- in contrast to Doggy, who had 120 fewer homers at that same age and yet after an extra decade of play still didn't top Rice's career 382 homer total (he fnished with 379 and was elected to the Hall in his last year of eligibility, by a razor-thin margin). Rice wasn't a loveable guy as far as the press was concerned, and racism in Boston when he came up surely played a role in his less-than-beloved status. Rice's current career as a sometime coach and broadcaster and a general warmth towards him in New England these days may ameliorate the situation some and rehabilitate his reputation, but whether that translates into a deserved trip to the Hall courtesy of the writers of the Veterans' Committee remains to be seen. This is for sure: he was THE dominant hitter in the AL for five years and among the two or three most feared batters for a decade.

Goose Gossage - YES, sort of

Gossage's 3.01 ERA is slightly queered by one hefty 224-IP year as a starter for the White Sox in his earlier days; take out that year's earned runs, and Goose's career ERA as a reliever is down below 2.87, better than Fingers'. Gossage also has a positive winnings percentage of 124-107 -- despite a net minus of eight wins that year as a starter. He did hang on for an extra five years beyond Sutter, but wasn't the closer during that time, so his save numbers are comparable. Goose finished with over 1000 games pitched, which is saying something (including 16 complete games in only 37 career starts!) Basically we're left with about 300 IP of average pitching from 36 on, so there's a close comparison to be made with Sutter up to that age. Gossage got nine all-star nods to Sutter's three, but barely registered in MVP and not at all in Cy Young. But he was also the decisive player on a couple of championship teams for the Yankees and for the '84 Padres. Given the era, I find the preponderance for Gossage that may be influenced unduly by having seen him pitch a good deal. In any event, my impression was he was a better pitcher than Fingers.

Andre Dawson - YES, but not until Rice is in first.

To this day, when I call the Hawk's bow-legged stance to mind, my knees ache and I cringe. It's bizarre to think that Dawson ended up hobbled, after starting his career as a speedster with Montreal. He never had a thirty-thirty year, but he could've, with 314 career swipes and three 30+ SB seasons and three 30+ HR seasons. 25/25 was typical. His celebrated MVP year was for a last place club, where he got plenty of pitches to hit and all the RBI opportunities, and it was also the rabbit ball year of 1987, so the anomolous 49-homer year must be taken in that context. His career OBP of .323 is below average, and his OPS barely registers. He had a good defensive reputation and won eight gold gloves, although this may have been a function of his speed. He had a gun and reached double figures in Outfield Assists in eight years. His acolytes try to point out how obscure he was, playing in Montreal during his peak years, but I take that with an asterisk; the writers saw him play as much as any other visiting player, even if the fans didn't see him on TV, and he benefited from WGN exposure during the Cub years.

He ended with only 140 more RBI than Rice, with 600 more games played; his career line looks like, well, Tony Perez with speed. But he also has similarities to Billy Williams and Dave Winfield, and has a strong residual reputation among his contemporaries, so I'll give him the marginal nod -- but only as long as Rice gets to Cooperstown first.

Bert Blyleven - YES

I'm not sure how anybody can look at Blyleven's career Win and K totals and not give him the nod. He's Nolan Ryan without an extra five years tacked on past age 40. He had no milestone games, no Cy Youngs, barely registered in the voting, and was an All-Star only twice. He played for teams that ranged from mediocre to awful for virtually his entire career, save the 1979 We Are Family Pirates, where he was part of a staff where nobody won more than 14 games and was thus umremarkable to the stats-inclined. His ERA of 3.31 (118 league-adjusted) doesn't grab you. But man, it seemed like every time I saw this cat pitch -- and I saw a lot of him in the 70s -- he'd just murder the opposition. I strongly suspect Blyleven is the first significant victim of the DH, as virtually all of his games were played in the nine-good-hitters era. Throw a little extra offensive support his way that wins him an extra game a year, the Dutchman is 307-230 and a shoo-in. He probably is not going to get in in part due to a flaky personality and an uneasy relationship with the press and that annoying lack of black ink, but if you look at his ten most comparables, eight are in the Hall -- and the other two that aren't are Tommy John and Jim Kaat (the latter of which, at least, also should be in.)

Lee Smith - YES

So both the Gossage and Sutter fans will get on me about this one, but I insist Lee Smith be put in the Hall of Fame and on a higher pedestal than those guys. The bad rap on Smith was he was the first of the only-one-inning save guys; career, he had 1022 games pitched but only 1289 innings pitched, so the numbers certainly support the contention. So what? Smith had a better ERA against league than any of the guys (Gossage, Sutter, Fingers) in this middle category, he pitched longer than any of them, and he ratcheted up the major league record of 478 saves. It's not clear what, if anything, the saves stat is going to mean, but here's another stat for you: Lee Smith finished the game more times than any other pitcher in history -- 802 times. Eighty percent of the games Lee Smith pitched, he finished. Smith was the closer for five different teams, and all five of those teams got worse when he left them. If Smith was used for only one inning at a time, that's not his fault: he was as dominant as a pitcher can be over a 20-year period in the role he was given, and who's to say he wouldn't've been just as good pitching two innings at a time? When Lee Smith came into the came -- slooooowwlllly came into the game -- the game was coming to a conclusion.

Jack Morris - YES

I think pitchers are seriously under-represented in the Hall, in part because pitching is a lot harder to do consistently well than hitting, so I'm all for letting more marginal candidates in. Morris, as his supporters are all too eager to tell you, was the winningest pitcher for a decade, and his career 3.90 ERA was a partial function of pitching in the old bandbox of Tiger Stadium. He won with good Tiger teams, he won with bad Tiger teams, then went on to win championships with Minnesota and Toronto and put in one of the most spectacular World Series pitching performances of the post-war period. Had not the strike intervened in his last year, he may have even gone to the post-season with his fifth team, Cleveland. 254 wins, 175 complete games, 2478 strikeouts, but no Cy Youngs. Doesn't consistent excellence count for something?

Tommy John - NO

John was an excellent pitcher in his prime, and was a workhorse. The surgery that now bears his name helped his longevity, and he finished as high as second in Cy Young balloting in both the AL and NL. He has a bunch of rings and eight of ten most similar pitchers to John are in the Hall, and one of the others is Jim Kaat, who should be. But John was just never a dominant pitcher -- a very good pitcher at times, certainly worthy of Stars in Their Time, but 288 wins by themselves aren't quite enough.

Steve Garvey - NO

I won't beat the Steve Garvey horse dead...much. But for a first baseman, with fewer than 300 homers in 19 seasons, and completely average OBP and OPS, lots of slick fielding and good PR won't get you over the hump.

Alan Trammell - YES

Trammell and his double-play mate, Lou Whitaker, are one of the greatest duos in baseball history. They are remarkably close in similarity -- 868 -- and both remarkably close to Ryne Sandberg's career totals in major stats. I think the lack of gaudy totals in any one category for either of these guys, and the lack of national reputation that preceeded an era with truly gaudy numbers cropping up for Shortstops and Second Sackers will inevitably keep them out. With Cal Ripken coming up as the standard by which modern shortstops will be judged, it doesn't look good, but that doesn't mean Trammell wasn't the best of the type that preceeded him.

Dave Parker - NO

In 1990 I was at Spring Training in Mesa, Arizona, when Parker was playing out his nine with the Brewers. The game was rained out (yes, it rains in Arizona) and I started talking to him on his way to the team bus. It dawned on me after we'd been talking for a minute that he had mistaken me for somebody else entirely; to this day, I have not one idea who that person might have been.

The Cobra has better numbers than Kirby Puckett, but Puckett shouldn't be in the Hall. He has very comparable numbers to Tony Perez and Billy Williams, Harold Baines, Andre Dawson, Rusty Staub, Vada Pinson, Dewey Evans -- a virtual catalog of marginal Hall cases, with the exception of Williams. He doesn't stand out much.

Don Mattingly - NO

God, I hate hearing the Mattingly hall talk. Five outstanding years does not a career make.

Dave Concepcion - NO

I'm a little torn by leaving Concepcion out of the Big Red Machine juggernaut, but if you start letting guys in on the basis of the company they kept, the next thing you know they'll have voted Phil Rizzuto into the Hall. Hey, wait a minute....!

Dale Murphy - NO

See Mattingly. Peak excellence combined with being a nice guy does not make you a member of Olympus.

Willie McGee - NO

I wouldn't vote for him, but his pathetic vote total this year -- just barely staying on the ballot with 5% of the vote this year -- makes me wonder what the sportswriters were watching. He was a classic leadoff man, with speed and contact, but the OBP was very mundane at .333 career. He won an MVP for a pennant winner, which is something, and won two batting titles, including the odd year of 1990 when he won the NL title two months after he'd been traded to the AL. He didn't walk much. I can't decide who was uglier -- Willie or Lenny Dykstra (Otis Nixon gets some consideration as well) -- they sure didn't pick centerfielders for their looks in the NL in the 80s.

x-Jim Abbott - NO

It's a sign society has opened its doors that when Abbott first came up, the story was that he was pitching with one hand missing, and when he finished his career, they were talking about his missing location and velocity instead. Abbott was as nice as advertised, at least in my experience. Watching him warm up in the bullpen at Fenway will be an enduring memory.

x-D. Strawberry - NO

I suppose I could insert the usual "remember when Strawberry was a sure-fire Hall of Famer?" recollection in here, but it's boring. Dwight Gooden is a better subject for speculation.

x-Jack McDowell - NO

Black Jack had about three dominating years and blew the arm out. I am left wondering whatever happened to his rock and roll band, which was actually pretty good. Does making millions of dollars as a baseball player kill your ambition to be a rock star?

x-Chili Davis - NO

Davis was not spectacular, but he was a money player, good for a $15 bid in most rotisserie leagues any year. Underrated because he didn't make contact as much as was the fashion; his .360 OBP looks a lot better today than his .274 AVG looked back in the day.

x-Tom Candiotti - NO

With Greg Swindell, he was one of the guys who was supposed to take the late 1980s Cleveland team to the show -- the Cory Snyder, Joe Carter, Brett Butler, Mel Hall, Brook Jacoby -era Clevelanders. Swindell was no Roger Clemens, and Candiotti was no Mike Boddicker. He managed 15 years as pretty much the epitome of the league average starter, and honestly, that's something few people on the planet can claim.

x-Jeff Montgomery - NO

Yawn. Yet another 300-save guy. You want one-inning, he threw 868 innings in 700 career appearances.

x-Tony Phillips - NO

Like the Cobra, part of the drug culture of 80s baseball, so who knows where he could've ended up had he not had a few detours. I loved Tony Phillis in his prime though, as one of the few true supersubs -- a guy who could play a half dozen positions and managed to get nearly a full season's worth of games played rotating around for Tony LaRussa and Sparky Anderson. A respectable .389 OBP weighted down by a lack of extra base power, he probably would've been snapped up by Billy Beane were he playing today.

x-Terry Steinbach - NO

The rock of the late 1980s Oakland dynasty, Steinbach was an outstanding receiver and probably could've played another three or four years had he chosen to do so. His offensive contributions were mostly in small spurts -- with the exception of a truly anomolous 1996 season where he hit 35 homers and 100 RBI in his free agent season, which got him a new contract in Minnesota for half what he'd been making in Oakland, a truly odd free agent walk. Class act.

x-Mark Langston - NO

Langston was among the best lefties in the AL for a while, but had the misfortune to pitch for some pretty bad Seattle and California teams. He was a very slick fielder and a good athlete, and early in his career looked like the second coming of Steve Carlton -- he had a wicked fastball, but never quite harnessed it to full effect.

x-Otis Nixon - NO

Yet another cocaine user of the 1980s -- this ballot seems to be full of them -- Nixon actually did multiple suspensions and rehabs for his problem. Nixon was the premiere speedster who was also supposed to be part of that winning late 1980s Cleveland club, but found himself as a tradeable commodity largely because of the continuing attraction of pure speedsters to teams that felt they needed just one more piece. So he found himself making ten different stops in 17 seasons in the bigs, having success most notably with the first three of the Braves' division winners starting in 1991. Nixon had no power and precious little contact or plate discipline, which just goes to show you what a good glove and the ability to steal -- 620 career sacks (good enough for 15th all-time) -- will get you. Had Nixon had half the plate discipline of Rickey Henderson, he might've topped 1000 steals; he stole 59 as a 38-year old. He once stole six bases in one game. Despite the fact that I've called him one of the ugliest players to ever grace an outfield, I've always liked him, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on.

posted by The Crank 11:01 PM

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim can no longer claim the dumbest name in sports. The Angels, in an attempt to carve out more market share from the Dodgers, have changed their name. But due to contractual obligations with the city that built their stadium, they need to have the word Anaheim somewhere in their team name. Hence the monstrosity that was just announced.

Of course, "The Los Angeles Angels" in its own right is kind of a silly name, as Los Angeles means "The Angels". More or less we have a team named The The Angels Angels of Anaheim.

For more silly team names, see Small Cities, Crazy Names.

posted by David 8:23 AM