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Written by Bill
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Tuesday, 09 March 2010 09:00 |
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I had a lot of fun participating in yesterday's edition of The Great Bloguin Baseball Debate, about the future of Joe Mauer behind the plate -- both writing the debate post itself, and then participating in a spirited debate in the comments (largely me against the world, but I did get a little help from my friends eventually).
This was my second debate over at Around the Horn Baseball. The first time, I was there to talk about Albert Belle, and ended up (in the comments) talking mostly about Ron Santo. I was shocked to discover that there's this whole group of largely well-informed baseball fans out there who, by and large, don't believe that Santo is a Hall of Famer. It inspired me to write a kind of rambling post about our big Hall of Fame and how it's never been the way you think it used to be. Well, this time I was chatting almost entirely about Joe Mauer, but Santo came up again. Apparently, I started what has become kind of an ongoing thing in the GBBD comments (I've stopped by the comments of other debates now and then, but hadn't noticed the Santo meme). So it got me thinking again about how amazing it is that people don't get it. Three different people in those comments averred that Santo is NOT a Hall of Famer (yes, NOT was usually capitalized).
So today, rather than philosophizing about Halls of Fame, I'm just going to write about Ron Santo and how gosh-darned great he was. Apologies to the great majority of you who know this already.
The current breakdown of MLB position players in the Hall of Fame by primary position (not including those in as something other than players) looks like this:
Catcher: 12
First base: 17
Second base: 17
Third base: 11
Shortstop: 20
Left field: 20
Center field: 16
Right field: 24
If there just weren't 12 great third basemen out there, that would be fine. But there are, of course, and one of the very greatest is still on the outside looking in, while four times as many left and right fielders than third basemen have gone in. That ain't right.
Here's where Santo ranks among third basemen -- not just those 11 little HOF third basemen, but all third basemen, ever (min. 5000 PA, where appropriate):
OBP 26th
SLG 13th
OPS 12th
OPS+ 8th
Hits 11th
HR 8th
Runs 15th
RBI 9th
WAR 7th
Win Shares 6th*
* from Bill James' book by the same name, now several years old; I suspect Chipper Jones has passed Santo by now.
Hopefully that looks plenty impressive already. But some things to note:
- Most important is the era in which Santo played, the worst years to hit in since about 1917. Even factoring in his relatively friendly home park, an average hitter during Santo's time hit .268/.333/.399. Santo has similar rate stats (OBP and SLG, anyway) to Hall of Famer Pie Traynor, but an average hitter in Traynor's time (and park) hit .295/.353/.435. This puts Santo at a huge disadvantage in not only OBP, SLG, and OPS, but also hits, homers, runs and RBI. The adjusted OPS+ tells you a much fairer and more accurate story. No one ahead of Santo on any of those rates or career totals lists suffered through his prime, as Santo did, in the Pitchers' Era of the 1960s (Mathews was active for much of it, but had the vast majority of his good years before the era really got started).
- Santo's doubly disadvantaged by my 5000-PA cutoff; Santo himself had 9396 PA, so a lot of guys sneak past him on those rate lists who had (or are still playing and currently have) just barely over 5000 PA. In particular, Denny Lyons (5028 PA, all pre-1900) is taking up one of the spaces ahead of him on the OPS+ list, so you can pretty much bump him up to 7th right there. I didn't want you to think I was cherry-picking my numbers, but if you raise the cutoff to 7500 PA, Santo ends up 14th in OBP, 6th in SLG, and 6th in OPS. The closest Pitchers' Era competitor in OPS is Brooks Robinson, all the way down at 28th.
- Santo won five straight Gold Gloves and is viewed by the metrics and most observers as a very-good-to-great defensive third baseman.
So add it all up, and you can start to see where those WAR and Win Shares rankings -- sixth all-time at his position -- might be justified (he's also 77th overall among position players in the Hall; every eligible player in front of him except the equally deserving Bobby Grich and Lou Whitaker is in, and there's a very long list of Hall of Famers behind him on the list too).
But no doubt there are doubters. Here's a look at the third basemen you might possibly argue were better than Santo:
Mike Schmidt, George Brett, Eddie Mathews: all-time greats. You'll get no argument from me there.
Wade Boggs: viewed as a legend, yet still underrated. Best career OBP among third basemen, and he's actually third in WAR ahead of Brett. Definitely better than Santo.
Frank "Home Run" Baker: here's where it gets tricky. Baker had a 135 OPS+ to Santo's 125, but in over 2700 fewer plate appearances. Their best four years were very similar, and were all awesome; the main difference between them is that Santo had a decent-sized decline phase, while Baker took two entire years off (one in a contract dispute and one after the death of his wife), and, all in all, faded out much more abruptly. WAR gives the fairly narrow advantage to Santo, 66.4 to 63.7; Baseball Prospectus' WARP3 is more solidly in Santo's favor, 67.7 to 61.2. I think you have to give a slight edge to Santo here -- and even if I thought it was even, I'd give an edge to the one who had to play against black players and a much larger overall universe of professional athletes -- but even if you disagree, you've got to realize that we're talking about the guy who is generally considered either the 4th or 5th best 3B ever and who has been in the Hall of Fame for 55 years. And there's no way you can really break it down and say that Baker is appreciably better than Santo.
Chipper Jones: One of the more underrated players of our era, Chipper ought to be a shoo-in by now. But how does he compare to Santo? Chipper was the much better hitter, even adjusting for era and everything else, but has generally been considered a subpar defender, even spending more than two seasons' worth of games in left field (and he was no great shakes there, either). WAR has Chipper as the 39th best position player of all time, ten wins ahead of Santo; BP makes this one closer, giving Chipper a 72.2 in WARP3. Still, I think you have to say at this point that Chipper was a bit better.
Darrell Evans: Another underrated 3B who should probably go in if we're interested in giving the position its due (not that I'm advocating for that), Evans still falls well short of Santo. He had a longer career, but was never quite the player Santo was either at the plate or in the field.
Brooks Robinson: This is the one you were waiting for, right? The only contemporary of Santo who can really be compared to him. Brooks wasn't nearly the hitter Santo was; in only one season did he manage to top Santo's career OPS+, and he ended up just a touch above average for his career at 104. But of course he's also viewed as the greatest glove man in the position's history, and WAR agrees, giving him 69.2 wins, 2.8 ahead of Santo. WARP3 is not as impressed; Santo wins, 67.7 to 61.7. I don't think anybody can really be sure what to do with this one, but I have a pretty good idea. The defensive stats from back then are a lot less trustworthy than they are now. We know they were both awfully good with the glove, and that Santo was a much better hitter (in what at the time was the better league). Brooks hung on for a long time, and was a great player, but Santo had a much better peak and I think, in the end, had just a slightly better, though shorter, career.
And that's it -- there's really nobody else who spent more than half their careers at 3B who can even be compared to Santo. This cheats a little bit by ignoring A-Rod, who almost certainly will have spent more time at 3B than SS by the end -- but comparing with A-Rod certainly shouldn't be a Hall of Fame criterion. This means that these Hall of Famers are not better than Santo:
Jimmy Collins. Good player. Good fielder. 13.5 WAR short of Santo. Career ended in 1908.
George Kell. Almost exactly half Santo's WAR. Inducted 26 years after he retired, and does anybody know why? Seemed like a great guy.
Freddie Lindstrom. Maybe the single worst Hall of Famer after the inexplicable Tommy McCarthy. Barely makes the top 500 position players, WAR-wise. One of Frankie Frisch's buddies.
Pie Traynor. There was a time he was viewed as one of the all-time greats. We know now that he was a beneficiary of those crazy inflated 1920s numbers.
So there it is. I have Ron Santo as the sixth-best third baseman of all time, and he'd be fifth among twelve Hall of Famers at the position. If you think I'm wrong, you could put him all the way down to 8th all-time and 7th among Hall of Famers. That's a Hall of Famer. It just is. He's not a Hall of Famer because Andre Dawson and Bruce Sutter and Jim Rice are in; he's a Hall of Famer because he's legitimately one of the very greatest players who has ever played the position. And it amazes me that some people still don't see that.
Whew. I'll leave you with what Bill James wrote about him in the New Historical Baseball Abstract (where he just happens to rank Santo as the 6th-greatest third baseman). This is oddly similar to what I wrote last time I wrote an ATH-inspired post about Santo, but I swear I hadn't looked at this for at least six or seven years:
Players who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo were elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1960s, players who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo were elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1970s (lots of them), players who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo were elected into the Hall of Fame in the 1980s, and players who were nowhere near as good as Ron Santo were elected to the Hall of Fame in the 1990s.... Look, certain things just do not happen. Rivers do not run uphill, iron does not become gold, time does not go backward, whores do not become virgins, pigs do not give birth to lions, supermodels do not marry auto mechanics, and politicians do not forget about the next election. There is no alchemy by which the Hall of Fame may become what it never has been. Ron Santo towers far above the real standard for the Hall of Fame.
Amen.
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I wrote this a couple of years back, but it's relevant to this discussion, so I'll repeat it here.
Here is why there are relatively few third basemen in the Hall Of Fame.
Left handed throwers cannot play third base.
Okay... so there is a bit more to it than just that, but that is the key reason third base has been perceived as a weak position historically, with few Hall Of Fame (HOF) members.
The other fact is that third base is a more difficult position defensively than first base.
For the purpose of this discussion, I will be ignoring Negro League players, as there is no real way to do a statistical comparison.
So I'm going to look at third base in terms of how it compares to first base, because, let's face it, if a guy is a good enough fielder to play third base for any length of time he generally will not be a first basemen until he has shown he can no longer handle third base. How many players can't handle first base and are moved to third base as a result ?
A way to look at it is to see who all the first basemen in the HOF are.
Anson
Beckley
Bottomly
Brouthers
Cepeda
Chance
Connor
Foxx
Gehrig
Greenberg
Kelly
Killebrew
McCovey
Mize
Murray
Perez
Sisler
Terry
Now let's remove the lefty throwers, because they cannot play third base even if they are athletic enough to do so. Leaving us with this list.
Anson
Cepeda
Chance
Foxx
Greenberg
Kelly
Killebrew
Mize
Murray
Perez
Now here is the list of third basemen in the HOF. Ironically enough, there are exactly as many righty throwing first basemen as there are total third basemen.
Baker
Boggs
Brett
Collins
Kell
Lindstrom
Matthews
Robinson
Schmidt
Traynor
This brings the talent base closer together, as you can see. The first basemen are still better hitters as a group, but they also brought less value to the table defensively and that has to factor into evaluating how good they were.
The other thing to look at is this sub-group of righty throwing first basemen in the HOF.
Anson
Foxx
Killebrew
Perez
All of these guys were third basemen early in their careers, and eventually moved to first base.
The end result is that you have to consider a player's position when evaluating him for the HOF. Third basemen have to be compared to third basemen, shortstops to shortstops, first basemen to first basemen,etc. Obviously this isn't the only consideration, but it is an important one.
And THAT'S why Ron Santo should be in the HOF...