Over the past few weeks, I’ve dissected the careers of two pairs of famously joined middle infielders — first Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker, then Ozzie Smith and Mark Belanger. Everyone except Belanger provided surprisingly similar career value, right at the point where most people make the cut-off for Hall of Fame election. As a comparison, and as a way to honor Fire Joe Morgan’s recent Scooby-Doo moment, here’s what the career of an all-time great, sure-fire Hall of Fame second baseman looks like.
The stathead cliche about Joe Morgan is that he himself doesn’t understand what made him a terrific player. His career batting average of .271 is pedestrian, he only hit 268 career homers with a seasonal high of 27, and he posted a 100 RBI season only once in 22 years.
But if you look at the new age stats, made famous in Billy Beane’s book Moneyball (available at your local library), the greatness comes to light:
- eight seasons with 100 walks and eight more with at least 80
- led the league in OBP four times and was second three times
- 689 stolen bases at an 81% success rate
- a career 132 OPS+
- a glove that was above-average through his peak years
Morgan’s best five consecutive seasons were from 1972 through 1976, when he posted at least 4.5 batting wins above average each season, topping off at 6.3 in his second consecutive MVP season in 1976. He finished in the top ten of MVP voting each of the first three seasons of that stretch as well. His typical AVG/OBP/SLG batting line was something like .300/.430/.500, good for a 165 OPS+, and he averaged +6 runs in the field per season.
Hell, here’s every season Morgan spent in the majors. (I’m giving Morgan no positional adjustment, like with second basemen in today’s game, but there might be an argument for giving pre-1980 second basemen a bonus. I just haven’t seen enough discussion of the topic.)
Year PAs Bat Field WAR 1963 30 0 -0.1 0.0 1964 43 -0.3 0.0 -0.2 1965 708 2.9 0.0 5.1 1966 528 2.5 -0.4 3.7 1967 580 2.4 -0.5 3.7 1968 27 0.2 -0.3 0.0 1969 657 1.2 -1.1 2.1 1970 658 1.5 -1.2 2.4 1971 689 1.6 1.4 5.1 1972 680 4.5 0.9 7.5 1973 698 4.8 1.1 8.0 1974 641 4.8 0.5 7.3 1975 639 5.8 1.5 9.3 1976 599 6.3 -0.2 7.9 1977 645 3.3 -1.2 4.1 1978 533 0.7 -1.2 1.1 1979 538 1 -0.7 2.0 1980 562 1.5 0.8 4.0 1981 378 1 -0.2 1.9 1982 554 2.7 0.3 4.7 1983 504 1.4 0.0 3.0 1984 438 0.6 -0.6 1.4
Outside of Morgan’s best five seasons, his career looks similar to Whitaker’s, Trammell’s, and Ozzie’s, a testament of the longevity of all four players. But those five seasons all dwarfed anything put up by the other three. In fact, Morgan’s 1976 was more valuable than ARod’s 2007. Morgan totalled 84 career wins above replacement, well ahead of Whitaker’s 66, Ozzie’s 59, or Trammell’s 55. For a low-average, no-power middle infielder, he sure knew how to play baseball.
By the way, did you know that Joe’s middle name is Leonard?
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Sky is a baseball fan and racket sport afficianado living in upstate NY. His favorite color is orange and is just about ready to give up on his life-long dream to become the next Magnus ver Magnuson (World's Strongest Man). His favorite baseball teams are the Yankees and Red Sox, proving that there's hope in the Middle East.
February 9th, 2008 at 11:09 am
I don’t understand what you’re linking to with your ‘Scooby-Doo moment’ - I’m totally confused.
February 9th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Just wanted to say I really like this series of posts. The graph took me a look or two to figure out (in the ozzie/belanger post)–I first thought it was plotting seasons chronologically, which didn’t make sense to me. But I love the fact that you’re using a graphical approach to analyzing the careers of these players. Makes for a really nice complement to the various JAWS algorithms and such. -j
February 9th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
“Billy Beane’s book ‘Moneyball’”
Was that intentionally written given Joe’s belief that Beane wrote the book?
February 10th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Was wondering the same thing as Evan, but if that were the case, you should have written “Billy Beane’s cadre of malevolent stat-o-computers’ book, ‘Moneyball.’ “
February 10th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
I don’t understand what you’re linking to with your ‘Scooby-Doo moment’ - I’m totally confused.
I think he’s referring to the authors “unmasking” themselves.
I’ll echo justin; I really like these posts. I think the “cutoff” is probably around 55-60 WAR, FWIW, I looked at Bobby Grich’s stats, and found him to be approx. 63 WAR (if I calculated correctly).
February 11th, 2008 at 11:23 am
The Billy Beane writing Moneyball thing was a joke, although evidently not as subtle as the “new-age” or “library” “jokes”. (I couldn’t find a link to the library story, but basically Joe Morgan made fun of people who go to libraries during a Sunday Night Baseball broadcast.)
Yes, I’m just plotting seasons from best to worst. Guess I should re-write that every time, thanks.
Josh, I have Grich at . I did a bunch of other 2B’s, too, which I should be posting soon. Personally, I think an extra win during a peak season is worth more than 1 win during a crappy season in terms of Hall of Fame voting. Great players have great seasons, but I don’t think they should have to have a long career if those extra seasons aren’t very good. I’ve been working on a system that assigns Hall of Fame credit exponentially instead of linearly each season and requires many more mediocre seasons to equal a couple great seasons. It’s not ready yet, but it put Ozzie, Whitaker, and Trammell at EXACTLY the same level, which I agree with based on their career arcs.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
I have Grich at 62 career WAR — good match, Josh. He had two stellar fielding seasons according to TotalZone: +25 in 1973 and +16 in 1975, both at second base. Considering his career was 3-5 years shorter than Whitaker and Trammel, that’s an impressive total. On the other hand, he didn’t have any truly spectacular seasons. I’d put him a step, not a leap, beyond the Tiger duo.
February 12th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Thanks, Sky.
February 12th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I’ve been working on a system that assigns Hall of Fame credit exponentially instead of linearly each season and requires many more mediocre seasons to equal a couple great seasons.
I’ll be interested to see that, although philosophically it’s difficult to resolve whether greatness or total value should be rewarded “more” in these types of discussions.
February 12th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Josh, I totally agree about peak vs. longevity and I don’t think there’s a best answer. It’s fun to think about and discuss, though. The only reason I’m doing these career profiles/graphs is because I’m not as familiar with many historical players as I’d like to be. I outlined some thoughts on a HoF metric in this Baseball Fever thread if you’re interested: http://baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=72764
February 12th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
I read the thread and there are a couple things you said that I have some quibbles with, most of which are merely opinions.
Players have value to teams on a per-season basis. Peak performances are based on seasonal numbers and need not be consecutive.
The issue of whether a player’s peak seasons needs to be consecutive is one that I waver on, but I think of it in a slightly different way. If you think of baseball in a Platonic way, then a baseball player’s stats are a “sketch” of his form. The greater the sample, the more accurate the sketch; for Stephen Drew we have an Etch a Sketch of the type of player he is, for Jeff Kent we have a Mantegna.
When we are evaluating a player’s career, we are doing more than simply totaling his WAR, that’s the point of these posts, we are trying to figure out how good he was and who was he as a player. So, when we are evaluating Ozzie Smith, we know a great deal, which can be summarized as “maybe the best defensive player ever, a slap hitter who walked enough to be a productive hitter at his best, and a good baserunner”, and we can picture in our minds Ozzie both statistically and as he was in Busch in 1985. As a side note, this is what, I believe, people are looking to honor in Hall of Fame voting. I think this also fits in with your comment The only reason I’m doing these career profiles/graphs is because I’m not as familiar with many historical players as I’d like to be..
Consider the case of Barry Bonds (or to be less controversial, Toby Harrah) as the “posterboy” for separate peaks in a career; when considering his career, who is he? Is he the dynamic MVP from the early 90s, the slowly declining slugger from the late 90s, or the Ted Williams ‘57 clone? It seems somehow “wrong” to combine those disparate players into a FrankenBonds, although I don’t really have a solution. My next problem dovetails with another point you made
Additional seasons can only bolster a Hall of Fame candidacy.
I disagree with this (somewhat). If a player “falls of a cliff” proverbially speaking, I think we should recognize that, and not give him quite as much credit as someone who leaves the game while they still can play a little bit at the MLB level. I think less of Craig Biggio the player because I saw him suck at the MLB level for quite some time before he retired.
I agree with this next comment and think it could potentially be very interesting if researched, and be made applicable to cases such as the John Santana trade: where is the point of team quality where it becomes worth it to give away future equity for a small to medium level improvement in the present?
As far as what team you put the player on, I agree that it should be neutral, but I don’t think it has to be an average team, or one single theoretical team. You could take every single team in history, add your player, see how the win total or playoff probability changes, and then average all those scenarios. Or come up with a theoretical distribution of teams.
February 14th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Josh, good stuff. A few thoughts…
The method I outlined follows from a “players have value by helping their teams win the most games in a given season.” There are many other views to take, such as Tango’s idea that you want to figure out how great a player was based on his numbers — the longer he sustains those numbers, the more sure it’s not a result of luck. (Your Platonic model.) That’s another good method, but it suffers from the fact that players’ true talent level are constantly changing. The more playing time you require for a player to prove his greatness, the more chance you’ll be including numbers that weren’t put up when he was truly great.
If you’re going to use any sort of algorithm to spit out HoF rankings, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you can’t include all the little details of a player’s career. You can’t assign points to “best defensive player ever” or “brought fans back to the game” or “re-defined the way people play second-base”. Those things might matter in many definition of the Hall of Fame, but any objective measure needs to be strictly objective. I agree that balancing peak and longevity is the trickiest thing. Personally, I favor high peaks. I’d rather see a player have five truly amazing seasons worth 10 wins each than ten All-Star seasons worth 5 wins each. Hanging on for five years as a league-average (2-win) player should count next to nothing and is nowhere near one 10-win season.
February 17th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
The more playing time you require for a player to prove his greatness, the more chance you’ll be including numbers that weren’t put up when he was truly great.
I think this is the tension my “model”, more like an idea, has with the idea you need to find a player’s greatness.
Anyway, this conversation has made me think about this issue. Thanks :)