Author: Graham Womack

Posted on

Any player/Any era: Sandy Koufax

What he did: For the first half of his career, Koufax was a mediocre reliever and sometimes starter for the Dodgers. Then, in spring training 1961, he got a tip on control from catcher Norm Sherry. Koufax proceeded to win 18 games in 1961 and followed with a five-year stretch from 1962 through 1966 where he went 111-34, amassed three Cy Young awards, and one MVP.

But then, just as quickly as it began, it was all over for Koufax. Suffering from arthritis, the southpaw retired after the 1966 season at 30. He was a first ballot selection to the Hall of Fame six years later, and some may consider Koufax the greatest lefthander of all-time. Still, one can only wonder what he might have achieved with a full career. The question here is if there’s an era that might have afforded Koufax this opportunity.

Era he might have thrived in: Early 1990s, Atlanta Braves

Why: I attended a screening in San Rafael on Sunday for a documentary, Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, which included the story of Koufax’s brief but brilliant career. Three things were reinforced to me:

  1. Koufax signed out of college as a bonus baby and thus had to stay in the majors his first two years
  2. He struggled for several early seasons until receiving sage advice from a mentor, Sherry
  3. He burned out as a result of overuse and the general ignorance of teams in those days concerning proper use of pitchers

So the challenge here is to find an organization where Koufax would still receive great advice, but also have time to properly develop and not be worked into early retirement. Enter the Braves, who in the 1990s shaped several young hurlers like John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, Steve Avery (who was briefly great before turning 24) and Jason Schmidt. Even Greg Maddux had just entered his prime when he hit town prior to the 1993 season and did his best work as a Brave.

Imagine Koufax among that bunch, in place of fellow lefthander Avery. Smoltz, Glavine, Maddux, and Avery won 75 games in 1993 and relegated my San Francisco Giants to a 103-59 second-place finish. With Koufax in tow, that number of victories might rise to 85, or more, since the stat converter on Baseball-Reference says a 27-year-old Koufax is good for a 24-9 finish with a 2.51 ERA for Atlanta in 1993.

There’s no telling if the input of the renowned Braves pitching coach in those years, Leo Mazzone, would supersede Sherry’s advice, boost his stats, or help him pitch beyond 30, though I’m thinking it might. Being part of a staff with Glavine, Maddux, and Smoltz could lighten Koufax’s load too, as the trio probably surpassed the talent of Koufax’s rotation mates in Los Angeles, Don Drysdale, Don Sutton, and others.

Needless to say, in this arrangement, my Giants don’t come anywhere closer to the 1993 World Series. From 1963 through 1966, Koufax helped keep the Giants from the postseason every year, going a combined 10-5 against San Francisco, with a 2.35 ERA and 141 strikeouts in 141.2 innings in these seasons. Koufax might not have been the greatest Giants killer, but with the Braves, he strikes San Francisco again.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Posted on

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Mel Harder

Claim to fame: Harder went 223-186 with a 3.80 ERA in a 20-year career spent entirely with the Cleveland Indians, spanning 1928 to 1947. He twice won at least 20 games in a season, made four All Star teams, and finished with a career Wins Above Replacement rating of 42.50, better than Chief Bender, Burleigh Grimes, and Bob Lemon among other Hall of Fame hurlers. Out of many solid pitchers not in Cooperstown, Harder might rank among the best.

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Harder appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot for the Baseball Writers Association of America 11 years, peaking with 25.4% of the vote in 1964. He exhausted his eligibility in 1967 and can be enshrined by a section of the Veterans Committee that considers players whose careers began 1943 or earlier. The committee will next meet before the 2014 election.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? This column was suggested by reader Clay Sigg, who helped me research last week’s post on Cecil Travis. Sigg is writing a book on players who spent their entire career on the same club, and he sent me something on Travis before I started writing. After my article went live, Sigg provided his work on Harder, adding in an email to me, “He’ll grow on you.”

I read over the roughly 900-word biography on Harder, who I admittedly have confused with Mel Parnell before (I think it’s the baseball equivalent of mistaking Upton Sinclair for Sinclair Lewis.) I was impressed with Harder’s stats and durability as both a player and longtime pitching coach after he retired. Sigg noted that Harder is “the lone star to have played 20 years for a single franchise that is not in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.”

It’s an interesting idea, enshrining a player on the basis of his contributions to a franchise, though I’m not sure if it’s enough to merit enshrinement for Harder. There are a few pitchers I would honor first.

Not including active, recently-retired or pre-modern era hurlers, I count nine pitchers with more wins than Harder who are not in the Hall of Fame. In order of victories, these pitchers are:

Pitcher Wins ERA WAR
1 Tommy John 288 3.34 59.00
2 Bert Blyleven 287 3.31 90.10
3 Jim Kaat 283 3.45 41.20
4 Jack Morris 254 3.90 39.30
5 Jack Quinn 247 3.29 49.7
6 Dennis Martinez 245 3.70 46.90
7 Frank Tanana 240 3.66 55.10
8 Luis Tiant 229 3.30 60.10
9 Sad Sam Jones 229 3.84 30.1


I would definitely enshrine Blyleven and Tiant before Harder, and I might even make a case for Martinez, one of the more underrated hurlers in recent decades whose 3.2% of the Hall of Fame vote in his only year on the ballot, 2004, remains somewhat baffling to me. I know Morris and John have their boosters too, as each has received some support on the writers ballot for Cooperstown.

Of the nine pitchers listed above, Harder has a higher WAR ranking than just three:  Kaat, Jones, and Morris. And some of the Hall of Fame hurlers Harder ranks just above for this stat are part of the lower echelon of Cooperstown: Jesse Haines, Catfish Hunter, and Herb Pennock. There are also many non-Hall of Fame pitchers with fewer wins but better WAR than Harder including Vida Blue, David Cone, and Bret Saberhagen.

Harder is certainly a player worth celebrating, and it makes sense his spike in Hall of Fame votes came in the initial election after teammate Bob Feller’s first ballot induction. As an underrated hurler confined to some abysmal Cleveland clubs, Harder paved the way for Feller and others to enjoy great individual success and multiple World Series trips with the Indians. One can only wonder what Harder might have accomplished playing 20 years in a different era or with a better franchise.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? is a Tuesday feature here.

Posted on

Film review: Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story

JewsandBaseballPOSTER


In a town just north of San Francisco, I watched as Sandy Koufax got a round of applause.

No, I wasn’t in a room full of Dodger fans, a nightmare for any longtime Giants supporter who knows only too well how Koufax forged the best years of his Hall of Fame career keeping San Francisco mostly out of the World Series. I was at a screening in Marin County on Sunday of Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story, a film about Jewish ballplayers from the 19th century to present day. For some reason, of the couple dozen players shown onscreen, Koufax got the loudest response. It happened right as my date was getting up to use the restroom, so I told her people were cheering for her, though of course, something else was at work here.

Greats like Koufax, Hank Greenberg, and some of the other Jewish ballplayers depicted in the film seemed to attract followings which transcended their teams and have inspired tributes even decades after retirement. Some of it is probably faith-related, and I noticed at least one person in a yarmulke. I suppose others, like myself, merely try to honor greatness in all its forms and can’t help but be touched by the grace of a Koufax or a Greenberg, who each stayed true to their faith and ideals and persevered through adversity. Their experience brings out the best in sports, no matter their team.

With that said, the film went well beyond the obvious. Last November, I re-watched The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, a nice 1999 documentary about the Detroit Tigers Hall of Famer, but one that doesn’t explore much deeper than him. Jews and Baseball, on the other hand, features players as far back as the 1860s. There are of course the obligatory mentions of names that seemingly arise anytime there’s a discussion of Jewish ballplayers, stars like Koufax, Greenberg, and, in recent years, Shawn Green. But over the 91-minute running time, we learn of such forgotten heroes and would-be greats as Lip Pike, Andy Cohen and Mose Solomon who was touted as “The Rabbi of Swat,” when he joined the New York Giants in 1923. I enjoyed and was somewhat surprised at the history lesson.

Some of it may be a credit to screenwriter Ira Berkow, a retired sports columnist for the New York Times, who penned an engrossing biography of sportswriter Red Smith in my personal collection. The film, which screened as part of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, was directed by Peter Miller, a veteran of the documentary circuit. Miller’s biography shows no baseball-related works, though he has producing credits on three non-sports projects by Ken Burns, who directed the Baseball mini-series that aired on PBS in 1994. Whatever the methodology, the result is something better than a mere cobbling of Koufax, Greenberg and Green anecdotes, which could have been an easy out for this project. This also was a great movie to see with a non-baseball fan.

At least one former ballplayer was in attendance Sunday, a San Francisco native named Ed Mayer who pitched for the Cubs in 1957 and 1958. Mayer was passing out replicas of this card to moviegoers on Sunday:

I chatted with Mayer after the film, and he told a story that bears repeating here. The film drew parallels between black and Jewish ballplayers, who each faced stereotypes from opposing players and fans. While Mayer said that in the minor leagues he endured anti-Semitic taunts from a fan in Minneapolis and was denied entry to a members-only club in Phoenix, he said blacks had it tougher.

Mayer recalled a minor league bus trip in Georgia with future 22-game winner Earl Wilson. At a service station, Wilson attempted to buy a Coke and had a gun pulled on him by the station owner. Mayer wound up buying the coke for Wilson from the owner and noted to me, “If he knew I was a Jew, he would’ve shot me too.”

Posted on

Is it time for the Hall of Fame to have another mass induction of Old Timers?

The National Baseball Hall of Fame held its first election in 1936, and the backlog of worthy players quickly became apparent. Although 40 future Hall of Famers received at least one vote for Cooperstown in 1936 from the Baseball Writers Association of America, just five were enshrined. Legends like Rogers Hornsby, Tris Speaker and Grover Cleveland Alexander needed multiple tries with the writers for a plaque. Earlier stars needed their own committee.

Between 1939 and 1949, 30 long-retired baseball greats were enshrined by an Old Timers Committee. Twenty-one of these inductions came in 1945 and 1946, nearly doubling the Hall of Fame in size. Early stars like Ed Delahanty, King Kelly, and others received their busts this way, and it may have seemed most Cooperstown-worthy players from 1920 and before were recognized.

More than 60 years later, another backlog is apparent.

The evolution of baseball research in recent decades along with the rise of Web sites like Baseball-Reference, Retrosheet, and Baseball Think Factory has made it easier to study and compare long-dead players who might otherwise be lost to history or only the most ardent baseball historians. There are dozens of notable baseball figures from 1920 or earlier who might merit induction to Cooperstown.

Here are eight men I would enshrine:

  1. Doc Adams: I emailed John Thorn for his picks, and he replied less than 30 minutes later with Adams and two other men he called “early giants,” Jim Creighton and William R. Wheaton. Adams is mentioned in Ken Burns’ Baseball (for which Thorn served as senior creative consultant) and was president of the New York Knickerbockers ball club from the 1840s to 1862. Adams helped devise the rules for the first official baseball game in 1846, pioneered the position of shortstop, and even sewed early balls himself.
  2. Pete Browning: Named the 2009 Overlooked 19th Century Baseball Legend by the Society for American Baseball Research, Browning hit .341 in a career than spanned 1882 to 1894, leading the league in batting three times. One of my regular readers let me know that Browning also was the first player to use a Louisville Slugger bat.
  3. Ray Chapman: A serviceable Cleveland Indians shortstop for nine seasons, Chapman was just entering his prime at 29 when he was killed by a pitched ball in August 1920. His death led to the banning of the spitball pitch, which helped end the Deadball Era.
  4. Bill Dahlen: From 1891 to 1911, Dahlen was a mainstay at shortstop, accumulating 2,461 hits and a career Wins Above Replacement rating of 75.9, tops of any eligible, non-enshrined player.
  5. John Donaldson: In June, I chronicled this Negro League and semi-pro hurler who won 363 games between 1908 and 1940 and was later the first black scout in the majors.
  6. Shoeless Joe Jackson: He’s in the Hall of Merit, the Hitters Hall of Fame, and he far surpassed Cooperstown playing standards. I’ve said it before: Why not forgive Shoeless Joe? With his .356 career batting average, Jackson would’ve had a plaque decades ago had he not helped throw the 1919 World Series. He’s inspired literature, film, and remains a tragic figure. If there were a mass induction of Old Timers, Jackson might be the only name most fans would know or care about.
  7. Bobby Mathews: Bert Blyleven has nothing on this guy as an underrated hurler long denied Cooperstown. Mathews went 297-248 with a 2.86 ERA, playing from 1871 through 1887, his 4,956 career innings 15th most all time. I recently looked at the Hall of Fame candidacy of Blyleven who has a few more career innings and a lot more strikeouts than Mathews. But Mathews has the most wins of any eligible pitcher not in Cooperstown.
  8. Spottswood Poles: A reader told me of Poles, who’s been described elsewhere online as “the black Ty Cobb.” In the midst of his 15-year career, Poles earned a Purple Heart in World War I as a sergeant in the 369th Hell Fighters. My reader told me this unit “had the Germans running in fear, since the 369th had many ball players that could throw grenades twice as far as any German had ever seen.”

Beyond this, there are many other players at least worth mentioning here. Ten men appeared on the ballot for 2010 Overlooked 19th Century Baseball Legend (side note: does anyone know who won?) Beyond Adams, Dahlen, and Mathews, the nominees were:

  • Ross Barnes
  • Bob Caruthers
  • Jack Glasscock
  • Tony Mullane
  • Harry Stovey
  • George Van Haltren
  • Deacon White

Browning, Caruthers, Dahlen, Glasscock and Jackson are in the Hall of Merit — the Baseball Think Factory-version of the Hall of Fame — but not Cooperstown. Others in this class include:

  • Cupid Childs
  • George Gore
  • Paul Hines
  • Home Run Johnson
  • Charley Jones
  • Sherry Magee
  • Hardy Richardson
  • Joe Start

Beyond this, here are a few names I found studying WAR rankings and batting similarity scores on Baseball-Reference:

  • George Burns
  • Lave Cross
  • Herman Long
  • Dave Orr

And here are six more players who don’t rate as high for career stats but each achieved some renown in their day for various reasons:

  • Babe Adams
  • Mike Donlin
  • Dummy Hoy
  • Duffy Lewis
  • Deacon Phillippe
  • Frank Schulte

I think it would be overkill to offer my opinion on all the players here though if anyone wants to take up the torch for any of these men or lobby for a ballplayer I didn’t mention, please feel free to add a comment or email me.

Who knows, maybe the Hall of Fame will take notice.

Related: A compilation of posts about Cooperstown and a link to my Tuesday feature, Does he belong in the Hall of Fame?

Posted on

Any player/Any era: Dom DiMaggio

What he did: I mentioned DiMaggio in a post here Tuesday on why Cecil Travis belongs in the Hall of Fame. Were it up to me, I’d enshrine them both. Each man might already have a plaque in Cooperstown were it not for World War II service taking three full, prime seasons out of the middle of their careers. I believe that’s something baseball should celebrate rather than penalize.

As it stands, DiMaggio made seven All Star teams, was counted as one of the best defensive outfielders in his era, and finished with a .298 lifetime batting average. For years, his Boston Red Sox teammate Ted Williams had a pamphlet in his museum listing the reasons DiMaggio belonged in Cooperstown. He had some traction with the Baseball Writers Association of America, appearing on their Hall of Fame ballot nine times and peaking with 11.3 percent of the vote in 1973. Still, the Veterans Committee failed to enshrine DiMaggio, Travis too, within their lifetimes even as each man lived into his nineties and died within the last five years.

To a certain extent, DiMaggio seems like a poor man’s version of Ichiro Suzuki, with his fine defense, solid hitting, and similarly shortened career. What if DiMaggio, like Suzuki, played for the Seattle Mariners today?

Era he might have thrived in: Current

Why: To ensure his place in Cooperstown, DiMaggio would need a full career and a home team known for great defense. The Mariners might be that team.

As Sports Illustrated noted earlier this year, Seattle has begun to preach defense and a fielding metric known as Ultimate Zone Rating. Their cavernous ballpark, Safeco Field has caused them to emphasize pitching and promote players like Franklin Gutierrez, known as much for preventing extra base hits in center field than smacking them himself. I wonder if fellow center fielder DiMaggio would do even better. DiMaggio has a lower career fielding percentage than Gutierrez, .978 to .989, but twice had more assists in a season than Gutierrez has had his entire career. I also think having Suzuki in right field could boost DiMaggio’s numbers.

The flip side, of course, is that DiMaggio’s career batting average would almost certainly dip. The stat converter on Baseball-Reference.com says his lifetime clip would be .283 if he played his entire career on a team like the 2001 Mariners, .275 if he played for the current, lackluster squad. Beyond this, playing today, DiMaggio wouldn’t have the man who taught him to hit while he was with the San Francisco Seals in the Pacific Coast League, Lefty O’Doul. He also wouldn’t be in the same lineup as Ted Williams. Suzuki is hitting .331 lifetime. I doubt DiMaggio would come anywhere close to that in the modern era.

Defense, admittedly, is rarely a man’s ticket to Cooperstown, so DiMaggio might actually have less of a chance playing now were his batting average to drop significantly. Still, when given an opportunity, DiMaggio’s greatness shown. In 2004, I had a chance to interview him. DiMaggio seemed like as good a man off the field as on.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a ballplayer might have fared in a different era besides his own.

Posted on

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Cecil Travis

Claim to fame: Travis broke in with the Washington Senators in 1933 and quickly emerged as one of baseball’s best infielders. Playing primarily at shortstop, Travis hit above .300 eight of his first nine seasons, making three All Star teams. He peaked in 1941 at 28 when he hit a career-high .359, led the American League with 218 hits, and finished sixth in Most Valuable Player voting. He would never again approach stardom.

The United States entered World War II in December 1941, and Travis spent nearly four years in the military. Most established ballplayers served by playing on USO ball clubs. Travis is one of the few who saw combat, and he paid a heavy price, suffering frostbite to his feet in the Battle of the Bulge and just avoiding amputation. He played just three more seasons, never again hitting above .300.

There are those who say Travis’s feet were permanently damaged, though his New York Times obituary in 2006 reported him once saying his timing was gone after the war.

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Having begun his career before 1943, Travis can be enshrined by a section of the Veterans Committee that meets once every five years and will reconvene for the 2014 election. Travis never appeared on a Hall of Fame ballot for the Baseball Writers Association of America.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? If we merely analyze Travis’s career stats, his numbers don’t come close to Cooperstown standards. But statistics aren’t why Travis deserves a plaque.

Travis is among a small number of players who might already be in Cooperstown if not for losing prime years from the middle of their careers to military service. Dom DiMaggio is the only other member I know of in this club. Of course, there may have been many minor league or amateur players on their way to good things in baseball before wartime duty changed this. If anyone reading has such a relative or friend, please feel free to contact me. I’d love to write something.

Were it up to me, I’d enshrine Travis, DiMaggio too, who I once interviewed. I’m generally in favor of Cooperstown recognizing special circumstances when it comes to truncated careers of good players, for a variety of reasons. Travis had no choice being drafted and was willing to fight. I think the Hall of Fame should honor him for that, not ding him.

I’m not the only person singing praises. A fellow member of the Society for American Baseball Research, Clay Sigg recently sent me a short biography he wrote on Travis. It featured a quote from Ted Williams about his and Joe DiMaggio’s 1941 seasons. Williams said, “Hell, in 1941, Cecil Travis was just as good as either of us! Cecil Travis is one of the five best left-handed hitters I ever saw.” In the 1995 book on Williams’ top hitters, Ted Williams’ Hit List, co-author Jim Prime noted that Bob Feller included Travis with Joe DiMaggio, Jimmie Foxx, Charlie Gehringer, Hank Greenberg, Al Simmons and Williams on his own list of all time toughest hitters.

I recently reviewed a DVD of color 8 mm film footage by another former Senator, George Case, which is being marketed by his son, George Case III. Incidentally, Case III emailed me on Monday evening while I was working on this post. I let him know what I was up to. Case III wrote back:

Thanks very much Graham – I think you know my opinion – definitely YES – and if his career hadn’t been shortened by his combat experience in WWII – I believe he would have put up HOF numbers – I know my dad certainly had his opinion as he knew first-hand, as a teammate, how great a ballplayer Cecil Travis was … Cecil was very quiet and extremely modest, and my opinion is that he would have definitely been elected to the HOF had he NOT played so many years in Washington and had he NOT suffered his injuries during his service to our country that shortened his career.

It amazes me that Travis seemingly never appeared on a Hall of Fame ballot. I recently compiled a dream lineup of players who got zero votes for Cooperstown, but those men at least were somehow nominated. If Travis had worn Yankee pinstripes, rather than Senators attire, perhaps the New York press would have pushed for a different outcome. Some players just have bad luck, I suppose.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? is a Tuesday feature here.

Posted on

Three players who could win the Triple Crown this year

With two months left in the regular season, there is a chance baseball history could be made this year. I count three players, as of this writing, with at least a shot at becoming the first Triple Crown winner in 43 years. While the odds are probably against any of these men prevailing, the fact they’re within range seems noteworthy in itself.

Miguel Cabrera, Josh Hamilton, and Joey Votto are each among the top six in their leagues for batting average, home runs and runs batted in, the three statistical categories that constitute the Triple Crown.

Here’s how the race looks currently:

Player League Batting Average Home Runs Runs Batted In
Miguel Cabrera AL .351, 2nd 26, 2nd 93, 1st
Josh Hamilton AL .362, 1st 23, 4th 75, 6th
Joey Votto NL .322, 1st 27, 1st 72, 5th

Of the three, Votto is statistically closest and might have the best shot. Hamilton appears too injury-prone to rack up sufficient home run and RBI totals, talented though he may be, and a reader pointed out that Jose Bautista has a fairly insurmountable home run lead, with 32 currently. The reader also said more American League hitters should emerge as batting crown contenders, such as Robinson Cano who does his best work in the second half.

Regardless, it interests me that this Triple Crown push is occurring in an oft-proclaimed year for pitchers. I wonder if there’s a correlation, or if it’s a fluke and if in any season, a few top players will be within range of the Triple Crown.

It doesn’t seem so outrageous that solid league-wide pitching could lower the offensive bar enough to make it easier for one or two outlying players to lead all three categories. This kind of thing has happened before. The last time baseball had a Triple Crown winner, when Carl Yastrzemski did it in 1967, the American League had a 3.23 earned run average and a .236 batting average. The year before that, Frank Robinson won his Triple Crown in an American League that boasted a 3.44 ERA and .240 batting average.

Those seasons are nothing compared to 1968, when pitchers were so clearly favored that the height of the mound was subsequently lowered. In what may have been the greatest year for pitchers beyond the Deadball Era, the National League had a cumulative 2.99 ERA, a league-wide WHIP of 1.12 and almost another Triple Crown winner, with Willie McCovey nabbing the home run and RBI crowns but finishing a distant eighth in the batting race.

In fact, 2010 might not be enough of a pitcher’s year to favor a Triple Crown winner. Sure, a lot of pitchers were on pace to win 20 games as of the All Star break, and the NL batting average is a relatively puny .257, with the AL not faring much better at .263. But for some odd reason, the NL ERA is 4.38, while the AL ERA is 4.21. Of the 14 Triple Crown seasons in baseball history, just five came in years where the league ERA was above 4.00. Those seasons are:

  • Rogers Hornsby 1922 and 1925
  • Jimmie Foxx 1933
  • Lou Gehrig 1934
  • Mickey Mantle 1956

Granted, Triple Crowns have been won in years favoring hitters. Both seasons that Hornsby triumphed, the National League batted .292 overall. Also, it bears mention that the sample size of Triple Crown winners is so small, with 12 players in baseball history having accomplished the feat that it’s difficult to make determinations one way or another. (Side note: Wikipedia lists Hugh Duffy as having won the Triple Crown in 1894, while Baseball-Reference.com says he finished second in RBI that year. I’m deferring to the latter site. Someone should update Wikipedia, unless I’m missing something here.)

I don’t know if there’s any rhyme or reason regarding the Triple Crown. Still, I would love to see Cabrera, Hamilton or Votto prevail.

Posted on

The 10 Most Underrated Baseball Players of All-Time

Roberto Clemente: Almost criminally underrated and had he not died heroically in a plane crash in 1972, he’d be even less remembered. Despite amassing 3,000 hits, doing his best work at the plate in the 1960s when pitchers reigned supreme, and also being an outstanding right fielder, Clemente was not included in recent books I reviewed about the 25 greatest baseball players of all-time and the 20 greatest hitters.

Honus Wagner: In five or ten years, Alex Rodriguez will retire and debate will begin anew if he was the greatest shortstop ever. Some will say his power can’t be ignored, others will say the best is Derek Jeter who caused Rodriguez to shift to third base, and a few self-righteous sportswriters will probably pen columns saying Cal Ripken Jr. was more consistent– which is funny because Wagner lasted longer than any of those men and his .328 lifetime average and 3,420 hits is better too.

Tim Raines: Raines is Rickey Henderson if he played his best years in Montreal, had a well-documented drug problem, or hadn’t set the stolen base record.

Bobby Grich, Lou Whitaker: A pair of great second basemen who were one-and-done Hall of Fame candidates, receiving less than five percent of the vote from the Baseball Writers Association of America their only time on the Cooperstown ballot, disqualifying them from future votes.

Ted Simmons: Bill James ranks Simmons, another one-and-done, as the 10th best catcher in baseball history. I have a hunch Simmons and Whitaker might be future Veterans Committee picks, but it’s no sure thing.

Kevin Brown: Fans may remember Brown’s $15 million annual contract from the Dodgers or his prickly personality or his being mentioned in the Mitchell Report after he retired. When Brown hits the Hall of Fame ballot later this year, he may become the best pitcher shunned by voters. If Albert Belle peaked with less than eight percent of the BBWAA vote, I don’t see Brown faring much better, no matter his 211 wins, string of dominance from the late 1990s, or his having one of the best Wins Above Replacement ratings of non-inducted pitchers.

Rick Reuschel: A 214-game winner who had at least 17 victories four years and made three All Star teams, Reuschel received exactly two Hall of Fame votes in 1997. This earns him the nod here over Bert Blyleven, another hurler long since underrated but one who should finally get a call from Cooperstown in January.

Jeff Reardon: I hear talk of Dan Quisenberry being a superb relief pitcher ignored by most Hall of Fame voters. Reardon has over 100 more saves, twice as many strikeouts, and played four more seasons than Quisenberry even as both men debuted in 1979. Like Quisenberry, Reardon was a one-and-done Hall of Fame candidate.

Sammy Sosa: Meet the most underrated player of the Steroid Era. Sosa was the Chicago Cubs in his prime, having a hand in more than 30 percent of their runs in 2001. The New York Times reported Sosa flunked a steroid test in 2003, making him one of many in his era who probably juiced. Then again, most did so with more protection in the batting order.

Related: A compilation of “Best Of” lists I’ve written here

Posted on

Any player/Any era: Nate Colbert

What he did: Colbert hit 173 home runs in a 10-year career and was often the best player on historically bad teams. In perhaps his best season in 1972, Colbert had 38 home runs and 111 RBI for a San Diego Padres club that was a National League worst 58-95. Those Padres hit .227 as a team, had a .283 on-base percentage and scored 488 runs. I wrote here in a post last Friday that Colbert had a hand in 32.78 percent of San Diego’s runs in 1972.

Baseball was and is a team sport, and in order to thrive, players generally need help. Babe Ruth had Lou Gehrig and others, Willie Mays had Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda, and in recent years, Barry Bonds did a lot of his best work with Matt Williams or Jeff Kent batting near him. It’s one reason lone wolves like Colbert and Wally Berger intrigue me. If Colbert had the talent to put up good numbers with almost no help, just imagine what he might have accomplished with a solid supporting cast.

Era he might have thrived in: I played around with the stat converter for Colbert’s career numbers on Baseball-Reference.com and found his totals would have spiked on the Philadelphia Athletics, Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees powerhouses of the 1920s and ’30s. For our purposes, let’s suspend disbelief about how the color of Colbert’s skin as an African American would have kept him from the majors. On the 1929 A’s, Colbert might have soared to spectacular heights.

Why: That Philadelphia club won 104 games, beat the Chicago Cubs in five games in the World Series, and was chronicled in an August 1996 cover story in Sports Illustrated as “The Team That Time Forgot.” The story suggested that those A’s, not the 1927 Yankees were the greatest team of all-time. I’m not sure if I believe that, but I think Colbert may have done his greatest work in Philadelphia.

Other teams in history scored more runs than the 901 that the 1929 A’s had, such as the 1931 Yankees who scored 1,067, but Colbert would have been in the same batting lineup with the A’s as Hall of Famers Mickey Cochrane, Jimmie Foxx and Al Simmons. And unlike Boston and New York, which had unfriendly confines for a right-handed hitter like Colbert, the A’s home, Shibe Park, boasted a 312-foot left field short porch from 1926 until 1930.

The stat converter has Colbert from 1972 leading the 1929 A’s with 47 home runs and also racking up 160 RBI and a .296 batting average. My guess is that Colbert would have finished with better than 50 home runs and a .300 batting average if he’d learned to take advantage of that short porch. There’s no telling what his presence in the lineup could have done for Foxx and Simmons who each hit better than .350 with 30-plus home runs, surrounded by a couple of outfielders remembered today only by baseball history buffs.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides the one he played in.

Posted on

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Bert Blyleven

Claim to fame: Blyleven finished with 3,701 strikeouts, 287 wins and 60 shutouts, ninth-best in baseball history. I named Blyleven one of the 10 best players not in the Hall of Fame and included him in a poll of players yet to be enshrined. As of this writing, Blyleven is the only player with more than 75 percent of the vote in my poll, besting others like Roberto Alomar, Gil Hodges, and Pete Rose.

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Blyleven has made 13 appearance on the writers ballot and has two more years of eligibility remaining.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Before I offer whether I think Blyleven belongs in Cooperstown, let me say first that I think he will almost certainly be enshrined. Blyleven is one of 12 players who have received at least 50 percent of the vote in their 13th year of eligibility from the Baseball Writers Association of America. These players are:

  • Rabbit Maranville, 62.1 percent, 1953
  • Bill Terry, 72.3 percent, 1953
  • Sam Rice, 50.6 percent, 1962
  • Red Ruffing, 70.1 percent, 1964
  • Ralph Kiner, 75.4 percent, 1975
  • Enos Slaughter, 68.9 percent, 1978
  • Gil Hodges, 60.1 percent, 1981
  • Jim Bunning, 63.3 percent, 1989
  • Orlando Cepeda, 57.2 percent, 1992
  • Bruce Sutter, 76.9 percent, 2006
  • Jim Rice, 63.5 percent, 2007
  • Blyleven, 74.2 percent, 2010

Of the group, only Hodges and Blyleven don’t have a Cooperstown plaque. I suspect Hodges might eventually, courtesy of the Veterans Committee and that Blyleven probably will get inducted on his next go-round with the writers in January.

The question is less if Blyleven gets in than when and how. The writers inducted six of the players, Maranville, Terry, Ruffing, Kiner, Sutter and Jim Rice, while the veterans tabbed Bunning, Cepeda, Sam Rice, and Slaughter. Blyleven reminds me of fellow power pitcher Bunning, albeit with better stats and less polarizing political views. Maybe that’s enough for the writers. Interestingly, Bunning got an equal percentage of the vote in his 12th year on the ballot that Blyleven got in his 13th year, on similarly weak ballots. Bunning then saw a drop in his votes, exhausted his 15 years of eligibility, and was enshrined at the first opportunity for the Veterans Committee.

Perhaps Blyleven will also need the veterans, though like I said, I think he gets in with the writers. Rafael Palmeiro is going to hit the ballot this December, he will be shunned, and the writers will need someone to honor. They may turn to Jeff Bagwell, who will be newly eligible as well and looks like a first ballot Hall of Famer. But I think Blyleven should see a boost as well.

I don’t know if I personally would honor Blyleven. Like Nolan Ryan, he lost a lot of games. It’s also hard to picture him as being dominant enough on any one team to denote him wearing their cap on his plaque. Then again, the same can be said for Dave Winfield or any number of Veterans Committee selections over the years. And he’s a better pitcher than a lot of men already in Cooperstown.

There’s something else worth mentioning here. In a classic scene in Bull Durham, Kevin Costner’s character bitterly says that the difference between a .250 and a .300 hitter is one hit a week. In Blyleven’s case, the difference between early enshrinement and where we sit now may have been about one win a year. His average full season, as listed on Baseball-Reference is 14-12 with a 3.31 ERA. If he’d averaged 15 wins, Blyleven would have 309 career victories and would have been inducted in about the same amount of time as someone like Don Sutton.

Sutton won 324 games, played on far better teams than Blyleven by and large, and still needed five tries on the writers ballot to earn his plaque. In fact, Sutton is one of several 300-game winners who were far from first ballot inductions, but ultimately no shot to be overlooked. Even in the modern game, 300 victories still usually equals eventual enshrinement, no matter what.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? is a Tuesday feature here.