My good friend Bill has been kind enough to encourage my foray back into the blogosphere, especially as it coincides with a busy time for him personally and professionally.  I offered to give him a break once a week or so, and he graciously accepted.  It’s especially convenient because yesterday, when Bill finished fisking the Prime 9 list of “best players of the 1980s,” he offered up his own replacement list that, while better than Prime 9’s, still has a couple problems.

As a quick review, here’s are the two lists side-by-side:

First, let’s talk about second base, where both Bill and the MLB Network have mirrored the BBWAA’s inattention to one of baseball’s criminally underrated players.  Check out the following table (ooh, I feel like a circa ’97 Rob Neyer!), all statistics are from 1980-1989:

As you’ve probably guessed, Player A is Lou Whitaker and Player C is Ryne Sandberg.  Player B is Willie Randolph.  It’s true that Sandberg played a season and a half less than Whitaker and Randolph, but since we’re only considering a player’s contributions during this decade, it’s pretty clear that Sweet Lou has them both beat, isn’t it?  If intangibles are important, all three played got into two postseasons during the decade, and played fairly well.  Whitaker is the only one to win a title.  Of the three, Whitaker has the most plate appearances, most hits, most doubles, most homers, most RBI, and most runs scored.  Sandberg, however, played for a higher profile team, was the acknowledged leader of the club (while Whitaker was always paired with Trammell), and had bigger seasons.  Lou was more consistent, never reaching the highs of Sandberg, but also never ebbing as low, which reduced his profile even further.

At third base, it appears that both Bill and Prime 9 have substituted “career value” for “’80s value” in choosing Mike Schmidt over Wade Boggs.  Schmidt is, without a doubt, the greatest 3B of all time, and his contributions in the 1970s make him the 16^th most valuable hitter of all time, according to WAR.  However, while Schmidt was hot in the early part of the ‘80s, he progressively slowed down as the decade wore on.  For the full decade, Schmidt’s WAR is 57.1.  If we don’t give him credit for 1985, when he started more than 100 games at 1B, Schmidt fares even worse, at 51.8.  Boggs, on the other hand, despite getting a late start in ’82, quickly established himself as one of the game’s great hitters and dominated the late part of the decade.  From 1985-1989, Boggs’ WAR never dipped below 8.2 in a season, peaking at 9.1 in 1987.  For the decade, Boggs wound up with 60.5 WAR, which would have topped Schmidt’s decade even if we included ’85.  Boggs’ dominance of the ‘80s actually make him, as far as I can tell, the second most valuable player of the ‘80s, behind only Rickey Henderson.

I have to give credit where credit’s due, both of Bill’s additions to the list are right on.  Stieb dominated the 1980s .  Looking at cumulative WAR for the decade, here are some relevant names:

I don’t pretend that WAR is a perfect tool to analyze pitchers, but it’s readily available and is easy to add up, and when we do we find not only that Stieb outclasses the rest of the league by leaps and bounds, but that apparently Charlie Hough and Teddy Higuera have a hell of a Hall of Fame case, to say nothing about Bob Welch and John Tudor.  According to WAR, Gooden and Saberhagen added more value to their teams in the 80s than Morris, despite playing just six seasons each.

According to WAR, Murray just ekes out Keith Hernandez for 1B of the 80s as well (45.0 to 43.4), probably because WAR vastly overvalues the defensive contributions of a 1B.  Other prominent 1B from the ‘80s fall short (Will Clark 37, Mattingly 33.1, Hrbek 27.9).  By the way, Bill’s contention that Mattingly and Hrbek are about even is ridiculous to me, and I have the same retro-‘80s-hetero-mancrush on old T-Rex just like Bill does.  They are almost exact contemporaries (Mattingly: ’82-’95, Hrbek: ’81-’94), so there’s no difference in era.  As you can see above, Donnie Ballgame definitively has the higher WAR for the decade, and wins for career value as well 39.8 to 35.4.  It’s closer than you’d expect, and Hrbek was a very good player for the decade, but Mattingly’s better, particularly when you take into account Hrbek’s more pronounced platoon split.  Also, I would give Mattingly extra credit in this comparison, since his back injury wrecked his career but wasn’t his fault.  Hrbek basically ate, fished, and lazied his way out of the league.

Other interesting ‘80s WAR tidbits:

Go ahead, guess who the 2^nd most valuable centerfielder is for the 1980s, according to WAR.  You won’t guess.  You’ll never guess.  I’ll just tell you.  Murphy leads the way with 35.5 WAR for seasons in which he was primarily a CF.  Coming in third for the decade is Chet Lemon (a highly underrated player), with 32.  Coming in second, just ahead of Lemon is, perhaps, the most underrated player of all time, Dwayne Murphy.  Murphy patrolled CF for the A’s from 1978-1987, then stuck it out for two years as a reserve with the Tigers and Phillies.  So his career is nicely encapsulated within the decade itself.  Murphy was a great Three True Outcomes talent, drawing as many as 102 walks in a season, and striking out 123 times at his peak.  He had good mid-range power and fluked into a 33 HR season in ’84.  He also was an unparalleled defender, winning six consecutive Gold Gloves to start the decade before his bat started to slow and power began to wane, and he was forced onto the bench.  Murphy’s 32.5 WAR during the decade is one of baseball’s great forgotten performances, and made all the more remarkable as Murphy spent all of ’88 and ’89 on the bench, and was a part-timer in ’86 and ’87.

Finally, while I’m on the fence about him as a Hall of Famer, Andre Dawson gets royally screwed by the Prime 9 system.  Dawson was primarily a CF from ’80-’84, and posted a 29.3 mark in those five seasons.  Upon moving to rightfield, the positional adjustment hurts him, but he still manages to put together 12.9 for the rest of the decade.  If we chose three outfielders, instead of choosing a LF, CF, and RF, Dawson’s 42.2 allows him to slide into the third outfield spot behind Rickey and Dale Murphy.