With Tuesday’s upcoming announcement of the Class of 2015 for the Baseball National Hall of Fame, I wanted to take a few moments to pay tribute to the Class of “Not Quite Enough,” some of the players who will no longer appear on the BBWAA ballot in future years. The game of baseball has flourished in the last few decades with dozens of terrific players, so many that players with tremendous Cooperstown resumes are getting drowned out in the sea of other candidates who were simply better. All of the players listed here would likely have be Hall of Famers if they had plied their trades in the first part of the 20th century rather than the latter. If any one of these individuals were in the Hall, it would not diminish the overall quality of the body. The newest members of my “Hall of Not Enough” are Don Mattingly, Nomar Garciaparra, and Carlos Delgado.
Let’s start with Donnie Baseball, whose career ended 14 years before the others and has been on the wrtiers’ ballot since 2001. From his first full season as the first baseman of the New York Yankees, Don Mattingly looked, felt and smelled like a future
DON MATTINGLY
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Hall of Fame player. One of the characteristics of a large percentage of Hall of Famers is that they seemed Cooperstown worthy from the early moments of their careers. When you watched Don Mattingly excel on the nation’s biggest media stage, you felt “that is a Hall of Fame baseball player!”
At the age of 23, in 1984, Mattingly led the American League with a .343 average, 207 hits and 44 doubles, finishing 5th in the A.L. Most Valuable Player voting. A year later, he was the junior circuit’s MVP, driving a career high 145 runs and winning the first of his 9 Gold Glove Awards. For a six-year period (from 1984 to 1989), Donnie was the toast of baseball and seemed destined for Cooperstown. His 684 RBI during those years were the best in the sport by a margin and he also had the most doubles and the highest slugging percentage during this time. His .327 batting average was third only to future Hall of Famers and perennial batting champions Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn. His .908 OPS (On-Base + Slugging) was second only to Boggs.
Unfortunately, besides being gifted with a sweet stroke and a slick glove, Mattingly was also gifted with a chronically bad back. At just 29 years old, having just signed a 5-year, $19.3 million contract extension, he was struggling from a stunningly poor 1990 campaign (5 HR, 35 RBI and a .245 batting average through July 24th) when he landed on the disabled list and would not return until mid-September. As a superstar player, his career was essentially finished. He played through the 1995 season but never made another All-Star team and was surpassed by several other left-handed first basemen like Rafael Palmeiro, Fred McGriff, Mark Grace, Will Clark, and John Olerud. Unlike most Yankees in the history of baseball, Mattingly did not get the opportunity to shine on the October stage. The Bronx Bombers lost the 1981 World Series to the Dodgers and didn’t return to the post-season until the inaugural Wild Card year. The Yanks’ 2nd place finish to Boston in the A.L. East was good enough to get into the playoffs before succumbing to Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez and Ken Griffey Jr. in the classic 5-game Division Series matchup. Mattingly hit .417 in that series and never played again.
So Mattingly’s entire Cooperstown candidacy falls during his 6 terrific peak years. This essentially would have been the Sandy Koufax exception. In the first six years of his career, Koufax was a mediocre pitcher, but his final six years were legendary: a 129-47 (.733) record with a 2.19 ERA, three Cy Young Awards and three World Series rings.
Well-liked and well respected, Mattingly debuted on the ballot in 2001 with a respectable 28.2% of the vote, many writers clearly giving him credit for being one of the dominant players of the 1980’s.
Mattingly’s first ballot total of 28% was the highest support he would ever get. Two years later, Eddie Murray became eligible and there is nothing that hurts a player’s Hall of Fame candidacy more than an unfavorable comparison to a contemporary who played the same position. Steady Eddie, with his 504 home runs, 1,917 RBI and 3,255 hits, sailed into the Hall while Donnie Baseball’s support eroded to 14%. The bottom line with Mattingly is that his 222 career home runs, 1,099 RBI and 2,153 hits were simply insufficient. While there are the occasional Koufax-type exceptions, Mattingly’s peak was not in the same league as Koufax’s and anything but a historic “best of all time” six-year peak is simply not enough for a Hall of Famer today if the rest of their career doesn’t measure up.
Fourteen years later, a member of the Yankees arch-rival Boston Red Sox went on a nearly identical early career trajectory. After a cup of coffee in the big leagues in 1996, shortstop Nomar Garciaparra, in 1997 at the age of 23, won the Rookie of the Year Award, leading the league with 209 hits while hitting 30 home runs and
NOMAR GARCIAPARRA
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driving in 98. Excluding an injury-plagued 2001 campaign, Nomar became one of the dominant players in the sport from his rookie year through his age 29 season in 2003. Being the top shortstop in the American League from 1997 to 2003 was the tallest of tall orders, with some guys named Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez also in the league. Excellent players like Miguel Tejada and Omar Vizquel simply paled in comparison to this triumvirate.
If you look at Nomar, Jeter and A-Rod for the four-year period of 1997-2000 (while Rodriguez was still with Seattle), you could easily make the argument that Nomar was the best of this remarkable trio.
1997-2000 seasons AVG HR RBI Runs OPS OPS+ WAR
Nomar Garciaparra .337 113 420 440 .963 142 27.6
Alex Rodriguez .304 148 451 467 .933 138 29.2
Derek Jeter .325 68 329 496 .880 128 25.0
Nomar was hurt in 2001 while Rodriguez signed a $252 million free agent contract with Texas and, by his own admission, started using steroids because of the pressure of living up to that contract. So let’s leave A-Rod out of the next comparison, which is simply between Nomar and Jeter, covering a full seven year period of 1997 to 2003.
1997-2003 seasons AVG HR RBI Runs OPS OPS+ WAR
Nomar Garciaparra .325 169 653 674 .929 135 41.0
Derek Jeter .319 117 530 817 .860 124 37.4
Despite the fact that Garciaparra missed nearly the entire 2001 season due to injury, he still amassed greater power numbers to Jeter’s during this seven year period. This does not mean that he was considered Jeter’s better (or even his equal). Jeter also had four World Series rings on his finger. Still, just using their regular season numbers through 2003, Nomar was the superior player.
We all know that things changed dramatically after 2003. Nomar’s defensive skills were declining significantly in 2004; he was traded the Cubs in the middle of the season as part of a four-team deal in which the Red Sox upgraded their defense with Orlando Cabrera and shortstop and Doug Mientkiewicz to share time at first base with Kevin Millar. This was an enormously controversial trade because “Nomah” was immensely popular in Beantown but it worked for Boston as they broke the Curse of the Bambino with their first title since 1918.
Cabrera and Minetkiewicz did not go onto have stellar careers, but Nomar, constantly battling injuries, didn’t either; he never played more than 122 games in a season and only had one more that could be considered an enhancement to a Cooperstown resume. He retired at the age of 36 after playing 65 games with the Oakland A’s in 2009.
Still, Nomar had one of the greatest offensive runs for any shortstop in the history of the game. Among retired players who played more than 50% of their games at shortstop and had at least 5,000 plate appearances, in the history of baseball, Nomar’s OPS+ of 124 is behind only Honus Wagner and Arky Vaughan and it’s better than 16 shortstops already in the Hall of Fame. Sports Illustrated’s Jay Jaffe has a neat Hall of Fame ranking system (listed as “JAWS” on www.baseballreference.com) which combines a player’s 7-year peak Wins Above Replacement (WAR) with their overall career WAR. Garciaparra’s 7-year peak WAR of 43.0 is 13th best among shortstops in MLB history and better than 10 Hall of Famers at the position.
I’m not suggesting that all of this means that Nomar Garciaparra belongs in Cooperstown, but he is very close and would fit in with many players from the first half of the 20th century who are already enshrined. Just comparing to Mattingly for a minute, here is how their 6-year peaks compare (excluding Nomar’s injury-plagued 2001 season).
Best 6 years AVG HR RBI Hits OPS OPS+ WAR
Don Mattingly (1984-1989) .327 160 684 1,219 .902 147 32.8
Nomar Garciaparra .326 165 645 1,186 .932 137 40.6
(‘97-’00, ’02,’03)
These numbers are eerily similar which is why the first halves of their respective careers are a mirror image of each other. The key difference of course is that Nomar played a premium defensive position so if you had to pick one for the “Koufax exception,” it would be Nomar.
For a moment, let’s get back to Mattingly and compare him to other first basemen who were from his era. The purpose here is to demonstrate whether he was truly a unique talent during his best years. Was he perhaps worthy of Hall of Fame consideration despite only having those six seasons which were Cooperstown caliber?
Let’s compare the six year peak of Mattingly to near-contemporary Will Clark, who was just three years younger and made a nearly equally impressive splash between the ages of 23 and 28 from 1987 to 1992.
23-28 age seasons AVG HR RBI Hits OPS OPS+ WAR
Don Mattingly .327 160 684 1,219 .902 147 32.8
Will Clark .303 151 595 1,022 .893 152 31.8
Clark never on an MVP during his age 23-28 peak but finished in the Top 5 four times and made five All-Star teams. He shows a higher OPS+ (152 to 147) even though his actual OPS was lower because of the fact that he was hitting in the damp air of Candlestick Park in San Francisco while Mattingly benefitted from the short right-field porch at Yankee Stadium. Anyway, Will the Thrill never even got a whiff at Cooperstown: he was one and done in 2006, not even getting the necessary 5% of the vote to remain on the ballot. This is the most favorable comparison one can make for Don Mattingly: these six years represent his entire candidacy.
Next, let’s compare Mattingly’s best years to the best six years of fellow on-the-ballot first baseman Fred McGriff, also three years younger. To be fair to the Crime Dog, he did become a full-time player until 1988, his age 24 season, so we’ll compare Mattingly at his peak from ages 23-28 to McGriff’s peak from ages 24-29.
Six-year peak (ages) AVG HR RBI Hits OPS OPS+ WAR
Don Mattingly (23-28) .327 160 684 1,219 .902 147 32.8
Fred McGriff (24-29) .284 208 573 927 .924 155 30.7
There’s not much to choose from here, Mattingly was a better defensive player which explains the higher WAR but McGriff went on to finish his career with 493 home runs, more than double Mattingly’s career output of 222.
Moving on, let’s compare Donnie Baseball’s peak numbers to those of Carlos Delgado, not a contemporary but a first baseman who is on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time this year and, like Will Clark, will almost certainly not last to see another chance. For Delgado (who, like McGriff, began his career in Toronto), his best six years were between the ages of 26 and 31 (from the 1998 to 2003 seasons, right in the heyday of the McGwire-Sosa home run mania).
Six-year peak (ages) AVG HR RBI Hits OPS OPS+ WAR
Don Mattingly (23-28) .327 160 684 1,219 .902 147 32.8
Carlos Delgado (26-31) .295 237 741 979 .998 155 31.6
So let’s remember that we are comparing Delgado’s best six years to Mattingly’s. As in all of these comparisons, Mattingly has a much more gaudy batting average, but Delgado has vastly superior power numbers. Needless to say, however, it’s not fair to compare power-hitting numbers from 1984-1989 to 1998-2003 as apples to apples. Home runs during
CARLOS DELGADO
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Delgado’s peak were up dramatically across the sport and it was not purely a result of players using steroids. Other factors (new hitter-friendly ballparks, possibly a livelier baseball) were also in play. Still, the metric OPS+ compares players across eras and ballparks and Delgado’s is still superior to Mattingly’s. The only reason that the Yankees first baseman has a slight, slight edge in WAR over this time is because of his Gold Glove caliber defense. Mattingly at his best might have been a better pure hitter but Delgado produced more runs.
Finally, let’s look at the career numbers of Mattingly, Clark, McGriff and Delgado side by side:
Career AVG HR RBI Hits OPS OPS+ WAR
Don Mattingly .307 222 1,099 2,153 .830 127 42.2
Will Clark .303 284 1,205 2,176 .880 137 56.2
Fred McGriff .284 493 1,550 2,490 .886 134 52.4
Carlos Delgado .280 473 1,512 2,038 .929 138 44.3
When you see the stark difference in career numbers, it’s hard to explain why McGriff would have had just marginally more support than Mattingly with the Hall of Fame writers over the last several years. Last year McGriff, in his 5th year on the ballot, earned just 12% of the writers’ votes (compared to 8% for Mattingly’s 14th attempt). (Incidentally, it’s also hard to see how Clark could have been so summarily dismissed until you remember that the writers’ didn’t have WAR or OPS+ as statistical tools to consider when Clark was up for induction).
As for McGriff vs Mattingly, the Crime Dog never won an MVP award but, after a mid-season trade from San Diego, he was the integral cog in the Atlanta Braves’ post-season run in the thrilling 1993 NL West chase, when the Braves won 104 games to the Giants’ 103. Let’s also remember that McGriff was a key component of the Braves’ 1995 world championship, ironically Mattingly’s last season.
Like McGriff, Delgado also never earned an MVP award, but you can argue that he was cheated out of one because he finished second in the 2003 voting to Alex Rodriguez, then of the Texas Rangers during the height of his chemically enhanced career. Delgado will almost certainly share Will Clark’s fate of being on the Hall of Fame ballot for just one cycle.
Puerto Rico native Delgado is a fascinating study for the “Hall of Not Enough.” He made a great first impression early in 1994 when, as a rookie, he blasted a mammoth home run at the Sky Dome on Opening Day. Remember, the 1994 Toronto Blue Jays were coming off their 2nd consecutive World Series title. Just like Mattingly in New York in the early 1980’s, Delgado was just a little too late to his team’s post-season party (the Jays have not returned to October baseball since).
Most people don’t remember that Delgado, who was a catcher in the minor leagues, started his major league career as a left fielder. The ’94 Jays had John Olerud (fresh off a .363, 107 RBI campaign) at first base and future Hall of Famer Paul Molitor as the designated hitter. Rickey Henderson had been acquired in July trade from Oakland but then re-signed with the A’s in the off-season so Delgado had the honor of replacing a legend in left. Besides his opening day tater, Carlos got off to a terrific start overall, blasting 8 home runs with 18 RBI in his first 13 games. But he slumped terribly after that, batting just .183 with one home run in his next 30 contests, resulting in a return to the minor leagues. He hit just .195 overall in parts of the 1994-95 seasons, with just four home runs in 67 games after than initial outburst.
In his first year as a full-time player, in 1996, he hit 25 home runs and then blossomed with 30 or more home runs in ten consecutive seasons (the last two of which were with Florida and the New York Mets) while never tallying less than 99 runs batted in. He played three more seasons in New York, enjoying a last hurrah in 2008 at the age of (with 38 HR and 115 RBI), only to succumb to several hip surgeries which ended his career the next year.
Having missed the Blue Jays glory years, Delgado just got one chance on the October stage (with the Mets in 2006) and he flourished: he hit .351 with a 1.199 OPS in the LDS against Los Angeles and LCS against St. Louis. He was on deck when Adam Wainwright struck out Carlos Beltran with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th inning as the Mets lost 3-1. Delgado was a fun player to watch; he was a bit flamboyant on the field, pounding his fist in the glove at first base after a key out.
One of the many neat features of the excellent website Baseball Reference (www.baseballrefernce.com) is the list of a player’s “Similarity Scores.” This takes a player’s career statistics and compares them to every other player in the history of baseball. The two most similar players to Carlos Delgado (from a career statistical standpoint) are David Ortiz and Jason Giambi. Ortiz, of course, is still playing and will become less “similar” as he piles up more numbers. The third most similar player to Delgado is Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Famer Willie Stargell (and Delgado is in fact the most similar player on Stargell’s list).
Aaaaaah, Willie Stargell, Pops. He’s similar to Carlos Delgado? Now it’s getting interesting. Forgetting for a fact that Delgado played during a much more hitter-friendly era than Stargell, let’s just look at their career numbers.
Player G PA AVG HR RBI Hits OPS OPS+ WAR
Willie Stargell 2360 9027 .282 475 1,540 2,232 .889 147 57.5
Carlos Delgado 2035 8657 .280 473 1,512 2,038 .929 138 44.3
The “Similarity Score” system, which was created by Bill James nearly 20 years ago,
WILLIE STARGELL
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doesn’t account for modern metrics such as OPS+ and WAR and Stargell is superior (which is what we would expect). However, the other side of this is that Stargell played into his ‘40’s while Degado was finished at 37. The point of this exercise is not to determine whether Delgado was Stargell’s equal, but if he’s even close, doesn’t that mean that he deserves serious Cooperstown consideration and doesn’t it prove how jam-packed with talent the current ballot is?
So let’s dig deeper. Is there something besides Stargell’s superior OPS+ and WAR (not to mention his 1979 October heroics with the “We Are Family” Pirates) that proves that these two men with nearly identical career HR and RBI totals were not equal. The answer of course is the era in which they played. Stargell debuted during the pitcher-dominated 1960’s, Delgado during the homer-fest ‘90’s. But how can we show it?
There’s another terrific tool on the Baseball Reference site called “Neutralized Batting” which essentially provides fascinating “what if” scenarios. The simulation adjusts a player’s career statistics to whatever hitting environment you wish to provide. So, in the most extreme case, if Hank Aaron had played his entire career in a season-long ground-hog day with the 2000 Colorado Rockies, the system predicts he would have hit 1,003 home runs. Is that so silly? Aaron hit 755 home runs despite playing in the pitcher-friendly 60’s and achieved the total through longevity, never hitting more than 47 in a single season.
So we can just call it “this is your life” or “Trading Places.” What if Willie Stargell, instead of beginning his career in 1962 in Pittsburgh, began his career in Toronto in 1994 and followed Carlos Delgado’s career path (giving Pops a few extra years with the Mets because he played several more seasons)? By the same token, what if Delgado had played his entire career in the 1960’s and 1970’s in Pittsburgh? Going year by year, this is what the numbers look like in this simulation.
Simulation provides projected statistics that assumes each player played in the years and on the teams that the other ACTUALLY played.
Simulated G PA AVG HR RBI Hits OPS
Willie Stargell 2369 9380 .304 527 1,829 2,487 .954
Carlos Delgado 2052 8397 .259 429 1,290 1,851 .866
So the simulation gives Pops an extra 52 home runs if he had played from 1994-2014 and takes 44 home runs away from Delgado if he had played from 1962-1977. This is exactly what we should expect considering that Delgado played in an era where players routinely hit 50, 60 even 70 home runs and Stargell played in an era where the greatest home run hitter ever was never above 47. Notice something else here: the simulation gives Stargell an additional career 353 plate appearances and takes away 260 from Delgado. This is because a higher run scoring environment gives players extra at bats in games, which is another factor in the higher home run totals of the 1990’s and early 2000’s.
So, Carlos Delgado is not Willie Stargell. Big surprise. But he still did have a terrific career. Until 1997, only 21 players had hit more than 429 home runs. Only one (Dave Kingman with 442) is not a Hall of Famer and there is no controversy about any of the other 20. So maybe it’s not fair to try to compare him to Willie Stargell, a first-ballot Hall of Fame player. What if we compared him to a more controversial selection, one who needed 15 tries to make it through the writers’ ballots? I’m speaking specifically about the great Red Sox slugger Jim Rice, who was inducted to Cooperstown 6 years ago after enduring a frustrating bridesmaid status for the previous 14 elections.
Jim Rice was like Don Mattingly in that he burst onto the scene at a young age and anybody watching him felt like they were looking at a future Hall of Fame player. From 1977-1979, he won an MVP trophy (in ’78 with 46 HR and 139 RBI) and finished in the Top 5 the other two years. But after 1979, Rice’s numbers tailed off, battling injuries and inconsistency and was finished as a useful player at the age of 36, retiring after the
JIM RICE
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1989 season. Unlike Mattingly, he did have a few more MVP-caliber seasons later in his career but, because he retired at a relatively young age, he didn’t put up the home run totals you would expect from a Hall of Fame slugger. He finished his career with 382 and thus didn’t make the cut in the minds of many writers for years.
But Rice did finally get over the finish line on his 15th and final try on the BBWAA ballot. Rice certainly benefitted in his final few runs at the ballot with a new-found respect for his accomplishments. His overall numbers, achieved in the 1970’s and ‘80’s, looked better each year as the writers were struggling with their overall disgust with the steroid era.
So now let’s look at Delgado’s and Rice’s career numbers side by side…
Player AVG HR RBI Runs Hits OPS OPS+ WAR
Jim Rice .298 382 1,451 1,249 2,452 .854 128 47.4
Carlos Delgado .280 473 1,512 1,241 2,038 .929 138 44.3
Delgado would probably have Jim Rice on the top of his “similarity score” list if it weren’t for the younger slugger’s significant home run advantage. Rice’s WAR is slightly higher because he was actually a respectable defensive left fielder and Delgado was a below average first sacker.
OK, so now let’s look at the “this is your life” or “Trading Places” simulation and pretend that each man inhabited the other’s body (Delgado spending his career in Boston, Rice with Toronto, Florida and New York).
Simulated AVG HR RBI Runs Hits OPS RC (Runs Created)
Jim Rice .312 410 1,616 1,389 2,629 .893 1,632
Carlos Delgado .279 464 1,492 1,220 1,998 .925 1,465
Delgado still has the home run advantage but Rice’s edge in RBI and runs scored give him a significant edge in RC (Runs Created) because, after all, this game is about scoring runs, right?
So Rice has the overall edge here but it’s not a dramatic difference, not a big enough difference for one to be a Hall of Famer and the other to be a first-ballot axe. I will acknowledge that some might look at this analysis as an argument that Rice shouldn’t have been inducted but 75% of the baseball writers came to the conclusion that he was worthy. The writers are judge and jury here. If 75% of them come to the conclusion that a player is Cooperstown worthy, that’s a pretty high standard and I’m pleased that Rice finally made the Hall.
Now, unfortunately for Delgado, he will and should be knocked off the ballot this week because there’s no credible argument that he’s one of the ten best players among the group being considered this week. Don’t feel too badly for him; he did make nearly 150 million dollars playing baseball! The purpose of this was simply to give credit to a really terrific and under-appreciated career. Overall, it was every bit as good (if not better) than Don Mattingly’s and nearly as good as Jim Rice’s.
Don Mattingly, Nomar Garciaparra, and Carlos Delgado: welcome to the Hall of Almost. You all did great deeds on the diamond and are worthy of praise if not plaques in Cooperstown.