Keith Hernandez has 2,182 career hits. Don Mattingly has 2,153.
Do those look like Hall of Fame-worthy stats to you? Because they sure don't sound like Hallworthy stats to me.
The following 1st basemen with fewer than 2,200 hits are in the Baseball Hall of Fame, having played all or most of their careers from 1900 onward:
Bill Terry 2,193
Harmon Killebrew 2,086
Johnny Mize 2,011
Gil Hodges 1,921
Dick Allen 1,848
George "High Pockets" Kelly 1,778
Hank Greenberg 1,628
Career home runs: Killebrew 573, Hodges 370, Mize 358, Allen 351, Greenberg 331, Mattingly 222, Hernandez 162, Terry 154, Kelly 148. Think about that: Mattingly and Hernandez combined would barely be 2nd on this list.
Career RBIs: Killebrew 1,584, Mize 1,337, Greenberg 1,274, Hodges also 1,274, Allen 1,119, Mattingly 1,099, Terry 1,078, Hernandez 1,071, Kelly 1,020.
Career OPS+: Greenberg 159, Mize 158, Allen 156, Killebrew 143, Terry 136, Hernandez 128, Mattingly 127, Hodges 120, Kelly 109.
.300 batting average seasons: Terry 11 (including the National League's last .400 season, in 1930), Greenberg 9, Mize 9, Kelly 7, Allen 7, Mattingly 7, Hernandez 6 (and just missed 2 others), Hodges 2, Killebrew none (topping out at .288).
30+ home run seasons: Killebrew 10, Greenberg 6, Hodges 6, Allen 6, Mize 3 (plus once leading the NL with 28, but also with 51), Mattingly 3, Kelly and Terry none (despite each playing home games in the Polo Grounds, although Kelly did once lead the NL with 23), Hernandez none (peaked at 18).
100+ RBI seasons: Killebrew 9, Mize 8, Hodges 7 (just missing an 8th), Greenberg 7, Terry 6, Kelly 5 (just missed a 6th, and once led the NL with 94), Mattingly 5, Allen 3, Hernandez 1 (but just missed a 2nd). And Greenberg missed nearly 4 seasons due to war, Mize 3.
World Series appearances: Hodges 6, Mize 5, Greenberg 4, Kelly 4, Terry 4, Hernandez 2, Killebrew 1, Allen 0, Mattingly 0.
Yes, I know, "World Series appearances" is a team stat. Well, these guys contributed to that many of them.
You say Hernandez and Mattingly had back injuries that shortened their careers? So did Greenberg, who retired at age 36. Hodges had a knee injury that ended his status as a productive player at 35.
Kelly is often cited as one of the "Frisch Five," players the Veterans Committee elected due to the advocacy of former teammate and legitimate Hall-of-Famer Frankie Frisch. For this reason, he is on a lot of people's lists of "If you had to drop 5 players from the Hall of Fame, who would be on it?" So barely exceeding him, statistically, doesn't help a case. Not exceeding him at all hurts it.
Along with Hernandez and Mattingly, the only one of these considered to be a good-fielding 1st baseman, let alone a great one, is Hodges. In his time, he was as highly regarded with the glove as Hernandez and Mattingly were in theirs. But, in all 3 cases, that may have been due to the New York media pushing them into the public imagination as such.
Baseball-Reference.com has a "Hall of Fame Monitor," on which a "Likely HOFer" is at 100. Mattingly is at 134, suggesting that he's an easy choice. Hernandez is at 86, suggesting that he falls well short.
B-R also has "Hall of Fame Standards," which is weighted more toward career achievement, and on which the "Average HOFer" is at 50. Mattingly is at 34, and Hernandez is at 32, suggesting that neither comes close.
B-R also has "Similarity Scores," which, weighted toward players of the same position but not completely tied to them (except for pitchers), which shows the 10 players who are most statistically similar to that player.
For Hernandez, those players are, in order from most statistically similar and descending: Wally Joyner, Mark Grace, Hal McRae, Joe Kuhel, Ken Griffey Sr., Chris Chambliss, Cecil Cooper, José Cruz Sr., Joe Judge and Bob Elliott. None of those players is in the Hall of Fame, and the only one who ever seems to get any consideration for it is Grace.
For Mattingly, those players are Cooper, Joyner, McRae, Kirby Puckett, Will Clark, Adrián González, Magglio Ordóñez, Jeff Conine, Tony Oliva and... Hernandez. Puckett and Oliva are in the Hall of Fame, but Puckett, despite being elected in his 1st year of eligibility, is a borderline case; and Oliva had an injury-shortened career, and had to wait until the Veterans' Committee elected him when he was 84 years old. Hernandez and Clark also get consideration, but neither is likely to ever get in.
Based on career offensive statistics, neither Don Mattingly nor Keith Hernandez belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
What about defense? Hernandez was awarded 11 Gold Gloves, Mattingly 9. If a player is the best ever, defensively, at his position, that should be enough to get him into the Hall of Fame, even if he's a flat-out bad hitter.
Ozzie Smith is often called the best-fielding shortstop ever. He is in, and he couldn't hit sand if he fell off a boardwalk. Bill Mazeroski is often called the best-fielding 2nd baseman ever. He is in, and he was an ordinary hitter, who happens to be the only man ever to win a World Series Game 7 with a home run.
Brooks Robinson is, without much doubt, the best-fielding 3rd baseman ever. He is in, and he was a good hitter: While he played 23 seasons, he played them in a pitcher's park, and still managed to collect 2,848 hits, including 268 home runs. He was named American League Most Valuable Player in 1964, in a season in which he hit his career peaks of batting average, home runs and RBIs, leading the League in RBIs.
Is Keith Hernandez the best-fielding 1st baseman of all time? Is Don Mattingly the best-fielding 1st baseman of all time? The fact that their careers largely coincided shows that neither one is, definitively, the best-fielding 1st baseman even of his own time, or even in his own city at that time.
So the best argument for either one gets canceled out by not just the presence, but the proximity, of the other. This wasn't like the 1950s arguments in New York, over center fielders Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Duke Snider; or over catchers Yogi Berra and Roy Campanella. It's more like over shortstops Phil Rizzuto and Pee Wee Reese, who were sparkplugs rather than sluggers.
Were they great defensive 1st basemen? Yes. Was either good enough at it to put them over the top if they are, offensively, borderline cases? Yes. The problem is, their advocates are suggesting that, offensively, they are not merely borderline cases, but good cases. And they're not. Not even when compared to other borderline cases like Hodges and Allen.
(Allen, like Killebrew, started as a 3rd baseman, but was awful, and, in those pre-DH days, his bat had to be kept in the lineup, so they moved him to 1st base, where it was thought he would do the last damage. That worked for Allen and Killebrew. It did not work for former outfielder Dick Stuart, a.k.a. "Dr. Strangeglove," who became Allen's backup on the 1965 Philadelphia Phillies.)
Admit it: If you want either Mattingly or Hernandez in the Hall of Fame, it's because you grew up in New York City, or somewhere near it, in the 1980s, and you love him. It's not because he deserves election. Because he doesn't. Neither one of them does.
And that has nothing to do with character, in either case. It's based solely on performance. Neither one was quite good enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment