Making the Case for Fred McGriff

[BaltimoreFan]

I get that there needs to be proper perspective, but maybe that down time only needs to be two or three years. For all the flack we rightfully give baseball writers, I don't think the majority of them would be such slaves to their emotions as to start inducting undeserving verygoods left and right. Hell, we can't get Telander to vote for anybody. Five whole years just feels like a lot of time to twiddle one's thumbs, especially in a Hall of Fame as selective as baseball's, where you should really know whether a guy's in or out without half a decade of careful deliberation. Rickey Henderson, we knew he was in for years. Jim Rice, we weren't really sure leaning toward no, but then they let him in anyway so that busload of bitchy New Englanders would just shut their mouths already.

I still think 5 years is the perfect amount of time. It basically ensures that the player will not come back, with the exception of Mario Lemieux (although he was one of the all time greats, so you almost allow that expection). That way that don't do something that would tarnish their career or make voters think differently of them.

The 5 years also sort of gives a time for the player to be "forgotten" by the public. They're out of the media and game so its easier to look back and see their career as a whole. Also the game may "evolve" slightly in those five years. So its easier to see what kind of impact that player may have had on the game.

[AJM]

Crime Dogg is a HOFer.

[BB61]

Crime Dogg is a HOFer.

I was wondering when someone was going to refer to him as that.

[BBTV]

One of the best (if not the best) nicknames for a player in recent memory.

[gingerbreadmann]

You only mention batting stats, so let me start with the same. I used historical Batting Runs from Baseball-Projection.com, which are basically linear weights, a composite batting stat compiled from play-by-play data for each player and adjusted for team, park, league, era, etc to measure the amount a runs a player contributes solely with his bat. You may or may not "believe" in sabermetrics, and even if you don't, this isn't too hard to understand and isn't some wacky concoction made up by a blogger in his parents' basement to fit his own needs. These are pretty tried and true methods of measuring hitting.* Here is McGriff compared to Bagwell, McGwire, Stargell, Perez, and McCovey, in order from their best season to their worst, along with their total career batting runs in the legend. Remember, this is only batting, nothing else. (I removed Larkin and Grace because they are not the best hitters.) McGriff is clearly better than Perez and though his peak is worse than Stargell's, they are roughly equal. Other than that, everyone else beats him considerably.

McGriff is clearly better than Perez and though his peak is worse than Stargell's, they are roughly equal. Other than that, everyone else beats him considerably.

Now for the true value metric, WAR (Wins Above Replacement). This is also from B-P, using the same set of historical play-by-play data and measures the approximate amount of wins a player contributes to his team compared to a replacement player (generally defined as an easily replaceable, AAAA-type player) . This is considered the standard general value stat and is pretty widely used.* (Note: If you have been to Fangraphs.com the WAR values listed there will be different than the ones on BP. This is because they are calculated differently, as there are many different ways to do so, from the data sources to the individual metrics to the constants to the adjustments to the detail. But the general idea is usually pretty consistent.) This adds up Batting runs used above with many other different run values, from baserunning to defense to positional adjustments to replacement level to give the player's total wins produced compared to a replacement player. The gray zone is the Hall of Fame Zone. Someone went through this specific data set and compiled the WAR data for all Hall of Famers. The bottom end is a "Replacement" Hall of Famer - someone who probably doesn't deserve to be one, and is at the level of many non-HoFers in terms of WAR, and the top end of the zone is an average Hall of Famer - someone solidly deserving. Anthing above the zone is clear HoF material, below is not, and in the zone is pretty much borderline.

The left graph is set up like the one above, WAR by season in descending order. The right graph is a more straightforward comparison by season (the season order hasn't changed from graph to graph; it is just choppy because it is measured against a different baseline -- look at the space between Bagwell's line and the gray zone on both and you can tell they are the same), but instead measures the WAR above a Hall of Fame replacement level for that season - or the distance from the bottom of the gray zone on the left graph, by season. Here I removed Grace and Perez because they are much below the HoF zone, even though their career WAR totals are almost identical to McGriff's.

So, I will let this speak for itself. I think it's pretty clear that McGriff misses the cut, though not by too much. He never had that ultraspectacular peak like McGwire or Stargell and wasn't great - his best season is about equal to Bagwell's 5th best. For most of his career, and the most important part (his extended peak), McGriff falls short of the HoF threshold. There are, of course, other factors in this decision (I think that's how Jim Rice got in, if it wasn't people tired of voting on him) besides statistical value, but I don't think they make up the shortcomings.

*In no way, as some might be quick to assume, am I trying to force these stats down your throat as truth. I am just trying to use some stats which are accepted by the sabermetric community and which are fundamentally sound. In no way are these stats fact, just as HR and RBI and BA are not plain indicators of a player's value either. I use these stats for a few reasons: I (and many others) feel they are still much more relevant to value than the traditional stats, I think they are derived from much more descriptive data and calculated much more fairly, and finally, they are composite stats which allow fair comparisons for both hitting and total value.

[infrared41]

Well done Ginger.

[MDC]

Its complicated and uses math, I must agree with you because i dont get it.

I do agree though, and that is convincing

[JayJaxon]

Great great info right there GBM. Although I myself do not use sabermetrics, I gotta respect all of the work that goes into using that data in such a way. Thanks for bringing a different perspective into the conversation.