The concept for my birthday piece, in which I selected the best team of ballplayers who share my December 25 birthday (compiled via Baseball-Reference’s birthday feature), has been spreading around the baseball blogosphere like wildfire, with folks like Baseball Blog’s Aaron Gleeman, The Cub Reporter’s Christian Ruzich, Only Baseball Matters’ John Perricone and Bobby’s Sports and News Bloggy’s Bob Mong chiming in with their own teams. With the above link, it’s officially reached Cluch Hit status, and now everybody can weigh in. Way cool!

Among the seven outfielders on the BBWAA ballot are four heavy hitters who were almost exact contemporaries: Andre Dawson, Dale Murphy, Dave Parker, and Jim Rice. Aiming straight for the chart:

            H   HR   RBI  SB    AVG   OPB   SLG  AS  MVP  GG  HOFS   HOFM   WS  Top 5

Dawson  2774  438  1591  314  .279  .323  .482   8   1   8   43.7  117.5  340   132

Parker  2712  339  1493  154  .290  .339  .471   7   1   3   41.1  125.5  327   150  

Murphy  2111  398  1266  161  .265  .346  .469   7   2   5   34.3  115.5  294   150 

Rice    2452  382  1451   58  .298  .352  .502   7   1   0   42.9  147.0  282   127

No slouches here. Murphy was a Gold-Glove centerfielder who was shifted to rightfield when he got older. Ditto for Dawson, except he kept winning Gold Gloves after the shift. Parker was a Gold Glove rightfielder who became a DH, Rice a mediocre leftfielder who became a DH. Murphy and Rice petered out early; Rice at 36, Murph at 37. Parker had some drug problems, but had a mid-career rebound which gives his candidacy some extra muscle.

Dawson’s MVP award in 1987 with the last-place Cubs is one of the more dubious of all-time, but he was also a two-time runner-up, including once to Murphy, who got big help from his park that year. On the road in ’83, Dawson went .322/.351/.615 while Murphy went .266/.356/.503. In general, Murphy was helped greatly by his home parks (.284/.374/.511 with 206 HR at home vs. .251/.329/.445 with 170 on the road; the splits from Retrosheet are incomplete but not far off). Rice got big help from Fenway (.323/.379/.539 with 156 HR at home vs. .271/.327/.456 with 127 HR on the road). Parker was helped a bit (.297/.346/.495 with 134 HRs at home, vs. .276/.327/.445 and 127 HRs on the road). Dawson is pretty much even (.278/.331/.477 with 147 HR at home vs. .288/.327/.508 and 180 HR on the road). We’re missing bigger portions of Parker, Rice, and Dawson’s splits than the Murphy; the biggest gap is two years of Dawson at Wrigley Field.

Each of these guys has his knocks. Rice has the short career, the least defensive value, and the most park help. Murphy has the short career and some serious park help. Dawson has the low OBP. Parker’s on the lower end defensively and he’s got character issues (though he was seen as an asset during his late-career days in Oakland). None of them have very good postseason resumes, and Parker’s the only one with a ring.

Here’s another look, via their Baseball Prospectus numbers:

           G   EQA   BRAR  FRAR  RAR  RAR/162             WARP3

Dawson  2627   .284  653   321   974   60.1 (40.3/19.8)   106.1

Parker  2466   .286  627   224   851   55.9 (41.2/14.7)    88.0

Murphy  2180   .289  563   287   850   63.2 (41.8/21.3)    90.2

Rice    2089   .300  703   226   929   72.0 (54.5/17.5)    92.6

This isn’t clear-cut by any stretch. My first impulse would be to rule out the guys with shorter careers and heavy park effects — Rice and Murphy. Except that Rice’s hitting really was a hell of a lot better than the other three, even once the park effects are stripped away. In order of career OPS+, they are: Rice 128, Parker and Murphy 121, Dawson 119. You could spin these around any which way and still, there’s not much difference other than Rice coming out on top.

Short of running the BPro numbers for all the Hall of Fame outfielders to see where these guys slot in — something I’m not inclined to do at this late juncture in part because I wasn’t especially satisfied with the payoff in doing so for other positions — I’m left to my gut call on each of these four:

• The hole the middle of Parker’s career (1980-1984), largely of his own making, kept him from 3000 hits, probably 400 HRs as well, and bona fide Hall of Fame status. His defensive value was just about gone by the time he returned to productive playing. Out.

• Murphy’s rapid decline is much more mystifying, but just as troubling. His park splits are disconcerting, as well. Out.

• Rice declined early as well, but he was a head above the others as a hitter, and he had a 12-season string that’s almost without blemish. In.

• Dawson’s longer career gives him a boost as well. In.

So this time around, without further evidence I’m going to pull the lever for the Hawk and Jim Ed, and let the Cobra and the Murph wait for another day. Next year, when all four will likely still be on the ballot, we’ll do it again with whatever’s stats are the state of the art at the time.

Oh, there are three other oufielders on the ballot as well: Brett Butler, Vince Coleman, and Danny Tartabull. You don’t need me to tell you that neither Coleman nor Tartabull were HOFers, because their numbers do it for them:

             H    HR   RBI  SB    AVG   OPB   SLG  AS  MVP  GG  HOFS   HOFM   WS  Top 5

Butler     2375   54   578  558  .290  .377  .376   1   0   0   36.0   50.5  295   124

Coleman    1425   28   346  752  .264  .324  .345   2   0   0   12.9   27.0  138    87  

Tartabull  1366  262   925   37  .273  .368  .496   1   0   0   25.1   31.0  188    99

Butler doesn’t look too great at first, but his Prospectus numbers open my eyes a bit: .286 EQA, 570 BRAR, 434 FRAR and 108.3 WARP3. Despite the fact that he was nowhere near the heavy hitter that the previous foursome was, his ability to get on base and good defense in centerfield (something Win Shares backs up as well) bump up his value to equal with theirs. But it troubles me that he was so unheralded in his time, no Gold Gloves and only one All-Star appearance. With more time to study the issue, and more comfort with BP’s defensive metrics, I might warm to his case enough to consider voting for him, but I’m going to pass this time around. This leaves eight men on my ballot: Blyleven, Carter, Dawson, John, Murray, Rice, Sandberg, and Trammell.

Moving around the horn, there are three infielders on the BBWAA ballot (and none of them futilitymen), second baseman Ryne Sandberg and shortstops Alan Trammell and Davey Concepcion. These three could build a pretty good trophy case to hold their Gold Gloves and other honors; Sandberg won an MVP in 1984, Trammell finished second in 1987 (more on that in a moment) and was the World Series MVP in 1984, while Concepcion had to settle for an All-Star Game MVP in 1982. Here’s a breakout of their accomplishments:

              H    HR   RBI   AVG   OPB   SLG  AS  GG  HOFS   HOFM   WS   Top 3    Top 5

Sandberg    2386  282  1061  .285  .344  .452  10   9  42.7  157.0  346  38,37,34   154

Trammell    2365  185  1003  .285  .352  .415   6   4  40.4  119.0  318  35,29,26   132    

Concepcion  2326  101   950  .267  .322  .357   9   5  29.1  107.0  269  25,25,24   111

Sandberg was an excellent all-around second baseman who combined power, speed (344 steals in his career), and glovework. He scored over 100 runs seven times, drove in 100 twice, and hit 25 or more homers six times, topped 30 steals 5 times (as high as 54) and 20 another 4 times, and won 9 straight Gold Gloves. He keyed the Chicago Cubs to two NL East flags, and hit well in the postseason (.385, 1107 OPS) despite losing causes. Bill James ranks him 7th all-time among second basemen, behind only Joe Morgan, Eddie Collins, Rogers Hornsby, Jackie Robinson, Craig Biggio (!), and Nap Lajoie. Is there even an argument that he doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame?

Actually, there is. The case against Sandberg starts with how inflated his stats were by Wrigley Field. Retrosheet’s home/road data, which covers the first 9 seasons of Sandberg’s career (61% of his total plate appearances), shows him with a .309 AVG/.366 OBP/.504 SLG at Wrigley, and only .266/.319/.401 away. We don’t have post-’90 data, and it’s worth noting that Wrigley became a less extreme hitters park in that timespan, judging by the Park Factor numbers over at Baseball-Reference.com, so it’s possible that split evened out a bit. Overall, he didn’t walk much, which kept his OBP down; five times in his 15 seasons it was below .330. He had a few monster years, which camouflage some mediocre ones, and he was done at 37 after coming back from a year-long retirement at 35. His Gold Gloves might be inflated as well; Win Shares shows Sandberg as the top 2B three times, and #2 at least twice (James lists only the #1 up to 1989). Baseball Prospectus holds his fielding in high regard, showing him at 597 FRAR and 190 FRAA (Fielding Runs Above Average).

Overall, Sandberg’s case isn’t iron-clad. But it’s clear that he spent a solid decade far above average — and sometimes great — on both sides of the ball, at a position not known for heavy hitters. That’s good enough for me.

Alan Trammell was similar to Sandberg, a very solid hitter who more than held his own in the field and on the bases. Though the Ryno had more power, Trammell was better at getting on base. His numbers aren’t far off, taken in context. For his career, Sandberg’s OPS+ (OPS normalized to the league on a scale with 100 being average, as ERA+ is to ERA) is 114; Trammell’s is 110. Like Sandberg, he combined some monster seasons with some fairly middling ones, but those monster seasons really drove his ballclub. He should have been the MVP of the American League in 1987, when he went .343/.402/.551 with 28 HR and 105 RBI, yet he barely lost the vote to 47-HR outfielder George Bell. Win Shares illustrates the injustice: 35 for Trammell, 26 for Bell. His four Gold Gloves may be overstated (but then whose aren’t?); Win Shares shows him as the best in the league only once, and considerably below average among players with as many innings logged at shortstop: 5.04 Fielding Win Shares per 1000 innings, compared to an average of 5.72 for shortstops with over 10,000 innings. Baseball Prospectus holds a kinder view of his fielding, as I’ll get to in a moment. Bill James ranks him 9th overall, right behind Joe Cronin, and ahead of Pee Wee Reese, Luke Appling, Lou Boudreau, and Luis Aparicio–all Hall of Famers. Welcome to flavor country: he’s in by my vote.

Trammell spent 15 of his 20 seasons as the Detroit Tigers’ regular shortstop. He was one of four prospects the Tigers came up with at almost exactly the same time (debuting in 1977 and sticking in ’78) who went on to long, stellar careers that wind up on the fringe of the Hall of Fame — Trammell, his keystone partner Lou Whittaker, Jack Morris, and catcher Lance Parrish. They, along with Kirk Gibson, were the nucleus of the ’84 champs and their ’87 team, which had the best record in baseball but went to an early playoff grave at the hands of the 85-win Minnesota Twins. Had the Tigers at least reached a second World Series, all of their candidacies would be helped thanks to the increased exposure, with Trammell having the most to gain. Instead, the fact that they didn’t win more often may be held against them. Whittaker, who is otherwise inseparably linked with Trammell, was bumped off the ballot in his first year by failing to garner the necessary 5% vote (Trammell got 15.7% in his first season of eligibility, not great but not horrible). Lou’s candidacy, while not a slam-dunk, deserved at least a longer look. He places 13th on James’ list, ahead of enshrinees Nellie Fox, Tony Lazzerri, and Bobby Doerr. He hit .276/.363/.426 with 242 career dingers, and was generally good for about 20 HR and 70 RBI. He won three Gold Gloves and made five All-Star teams. He might not be good enough for the Hall, but he’s not far off.

Davey Concepcion was the shortstop for one of the greatest teams in history, the Big Red Machine, as they won five divisions, four pennants, and two World Series during the 1970s. He wasn’t much of a hitter (his career OPS is below 700), although he wasn’t a total loss with the bat; at his best he put up a few .350 OBP/.410 SLG seasons. But he was a defensive wizard, a sheer pleasure to watch, whose sabermetric stats back his case: five times he posted the best Fielding Win Shares total among NL shortstops, and with an excellent 6.37 WS per 1000 innings. Baseball Prospectus’ Fielding Runs holds him in similarly high regard. Here he is, along with Trammell for comparison:

             G    BRAR  FRAR   RAR  RAR/162  

Concepcion  2488   275   637   912  59.4 (17.9/41.5)

Trammell    2293   546   567  1113  78.6 (38.6/40.1)

This chart actually illustrates the flaw with Concepcion’s case; the two are pretty even with the glove by this measure, but Trammell dusts Concepcion with the bat. Davey was a key component of those Cincy teams, but he doesn’t belong in Cooperstown alongside the big Reds (Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, and Pete… oh, wait). So, to recap: no on Concepcion, and yes on Sandberg and Trammell, joining Bert Blyleven, Tommy John, Gary Carter, and Eddie Murray on my ballot thus far.

• • • • •

I was apparently a bit too optimistic in trying to get through the Hall of Fame ballot in a single weekend, as the voting results will be announced on Tuesday before I can weigh in on my outfield and reliever picks for the ballot. But I’ve already “cast” my vote at the Internet Baseball Hall of Fame, and I’ll continue to weigh in on my choices in the next couple of days.

The BBWAA ballot contains three holdover first basemen who are superficially attractive candidates, in Steve Garvey, Keith Hernandez, and Don Matttingly. Added to this ballot is Eddie Murray, whose credentials are considerably stronger. Cutting straight to the chart of the matter:

             H   HR   RBI   AVG   OPB   SLG  AS  MVP  GG  HOFS   HOFM   WS  Top 5

Murray    3255  504  1917  .287  .359  .476   8   0   3   55.8  155.0  437   142

Garvey    2599  272  1308  .294  .329  .446  10   1   4   31.5  131.0  279   124

Hernandez 2182  162  1071  .296  .384  .436   5   1  11   32.0   86.0  311   136

Mattingly 2153  222  1099  .307  .358  .471   6   1   9   34.1  134.0  263   146 

AS is All-Star appearances, GG is Gold Gloves, WS is Win Shares, and Top 5 is Win Shares in a player’s best five consecutive seasons. Murray’s case is so strong that he’s got not just one but two “magic numbers” for enshrinement: 3000 hits and 500 homers. In fact, only two other ballplayers can claim both of those milestones: Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. You may have heard of them… Murray was a machine, annually good for about a .300-25-100 season for about the first 17 years of his career, and still valuable after that. He never won an MVP award, but he placed in the Top Ten in the voting eight times. He played in three World Series, and though he didn’t do especially well (.169, 4 HR) he was overall pretty solid in the postseason (825 OPS). He’s second all-time in grand-slam homers (19), tied for 6th in all-time games played (3026), 8th in total bases (5397), 8th in RBI (1917), 12th in hits, 14th in extra-base hits (1099), 17th in doubles (560), and 17th in homers. Since he didn’t talk to the media his profile wasn’t very high, and some writers will probably hold it against him, but there’s absolutely nothing but Hall of Fame written all over his candidacy.

The same, alas, cannot be said about the other three candidates. All three have their merits, no question about it — one way or another, they were thought of as among the best in the game in their time. But in a position crowded with Hall of Famers, they don’t quite measure up. I’m of the opinion that with last year’s election of Tony Perez, there are too many first basemen already in to be adding those with 2100 hits and less than 225 HRs. Mattingly’s injury-shortened career works against him, Garvey’s low OBP works against him, Hernandez’s lack of power works against him.

Garvey is a candidate that always gives me some pause. He was the matinee-idol star of my favorite team as a kid, and he put up some nice shiny numbers primarily in the context of a lousy hitters’ park, Dodger Stadium. Basically, Garvey did the things that tend to impress Hall of Fame voters — he scores at 131.0 on the Hall of Fame Monitor thanks to his clockwork ability to rap out 200 hits, hit .300 with 20 homers, drive in 100 runs, make the All-Star team, and have perfectly coiffed hair in doing so. He was great in the postseason overall (.338/.361/.550 with 11 HR and 31 RBI) in helping — no, leading his teams (he never hit less than .286 in an LCS or division series) — to five World Series, he won an MVP award (though Win Shares shows that it was a dubious one, with eight players higher in the same season), four Gold Gloves, played in ten All-Star games and set the National League record for consecutive games played. His career totals (2599 hits, 272 HRs) are certainly better than Mattingly or Hernandez, though he didn’t have as high a peak. The knocks against him are that he didn’t get on base enough (only a .329 OBP despite a .294 AVG), or have enough power (.446 SLG, never topping .500). He’s not a popular candidate thanks in part to his post-retirement zipper problems. Bill James ranks Garvey only 31st among first basemen, while he places Mattingly 12th and Hernandez 16th (Murray is 5th). Goodbye.

Mattingly and Hernandez get their names mentioned a lot because of the New York factor. Both had creepy moustaches. And both get a lot of ink for their glove work. How much does it help them? James’ Win Shares book has Mattingly leading AL 1Bs in Fielding Win Shares only once, with at least three other Top Three finishes (which only cover from 1989 on). Hernandez led the NL only once as well (no Top Threes listed). Garvey cleans up here, leading the NL seven times, including a big chunk of Hernandez’s career. Overall, Garvey scores 2.12 WS per 1000 innings, Mattingly 2.06, and Hernandez 2.02; not a lot to separate them except that Mattingly has about 3000 fewer innings. Here’s a look at the Baseball Prospectus RAR numbers, both fielding and batting:

             G    BRAR  FRAR  RAR  RAR/162  

Murray     3026  1016   189  1205  64.5 (54.4/10.1)

Garvey     2332   531   236   767  53.3 (36.9/16.4)

Hernandez  2088   643   333   976  75.7 (49.9/25.8)

Mattingly  1785   620   232   852  77.3 (56.3/21.1)

Garvey doesn’t do so well here with the leather, while Hernandez jumps further ahead. Overall, on a rate basis, both Hernandez and Mattingly were superior to Murray, thanks to their defense. But Murray’s total production was about 24% more than Hernandez and 41% more than Mattingly, and that’s gotta count for something as well.

Baseball Prospectus provides another way of crunching those numbers by boiling them down to Wins Above Replacement and adjusting for season length and league difficulty. Here are the WARP3 numbers for all of the HOF 1Bs (except for Negro Leaguer Buck Leonard):

                 WARP3

Cap Anson        144.6

Lou Gehrig       140.3

Jimmie Foxx      132.1

Roger Connor     123.0

Willie McCovey   109.3

Johnny Mize      103.7

Dan Brouthers    101.8

Harmon Killebrew  99.5

Tony Perez        97.8

Orlando Cepeda    87.5

Hank Greenberg    84.4

Bill Terry        76.9

Jake Beckley      75.8

George Sisler     73.8

Jim Bottomley     61.7

Frank Chance      46.0

George Kelly      39.1



Eddie Murray     127.3

Keith Hernandez  103.5

Don Mattingly     89.7

Steve Garvey      80.8

Like the catchers, we’ve got some dubious selections at the low end. None of our four candidates look terrible by comparison, and in fact Hernandez starts to look especially good. Of course, there are a dozen others outside the Hall who I haven’t listed who would place well on this chart: Rafael Palmeiro 124.8, Jeff Bagwell 112.5, Frank Thomas 106.8, Mark McGwire 106.7, Will Clark 99.2, John Olerud 98.4, Fred McGriff 97.2, Mark Grace 92.3, Dick Allen 87.3, Norm Cash 85.6, Mickey Vernon 74.7, and Gil Hodges 72.7.

The high totals of the recent players, though, have me questioning the validity of this measure — while it SHOULD be adjusting sufficiently for context (park and league), I don’t know enough about the nuts and bolts of the method to equivocally state that it IS. For all that I’m tossing these numbers around, I don’t profess to say that they’re the answer. And given the way two elaborate systems (Prospectus and James) are contradicting each other regarding fielding, I’m inclined to take each with a grain of salt.

I didn’t vote for any of the Garvey-Hernandez-Mattingly trio last year, and I’m not going to this year. But I’m warming to the possibility that Hernandez belongs. It would take a lot of convincing that BP’s fielding measures are more reliable than James’, and hence enough to elevate Hernandez, before my vote swings. So: yes on Murray, no on the other three, but my ears are still open.

I’m going to skip over the relievers for the moment, since it’s a big can of worms, and move on to catchers.

I was never a fan of Gary Carter. For some reason, I always found him annoying, though I can’t really put my finger on why. It probably had something to do with his earnest, gung-ho attitude combined with the fact that I rooted against the ’86 and ’88 Mets as hard as any teams I ever rooted against. That said, I am absolutely convinced that Gary Carter is a Hall of Famer. I had an unshakeable feeling of watching a Hall of Famer in the prime of his career when I watched him, and I’ll wager that was a consensus perception among those of you reading this right now. If you thought about the question of who was the best catcher in the National League after Johnny Bench declined, there simply wasn’t any other credible answer besides Gary Carter.

Keeping in mind that as a catcher his hitting stats are a bit deflated, Carter still scores well on the James Standards and Monitor methods (41.3 HOFS, 135 HOFM). By his Win Shares method, Carter is fourth among catchers in terms of career value, and in the middle of the top 10 in peak value as well — James rates him eighth overall. Carter hit 324 HRs for his career, topping 20 nine times. He topped 80 RBI eight times and 100 four times — that’s some serious production for a catcher. While he only hit .262 for his career, he was about at a .280 AVG/.360 OBP/.485 SLG level at his peak. He played in eleven All-Star Games (winning the MVP award twice), and won three Gold Gloves. He had a great ’86 World Series, driving in 9 runs, and went for .280 AVG, 4 HR, and 21 RBI in 30 postseason games overall. Everywhere you look, there is evidence of his greatness. Along with Bert Blyleven and Ron Santo (who’s long since fallen off the BBWAA ballot), he’s got a claim on being the best player in baseball history eligible but not yet elected to the Hall of Fame. Carter missed last year by eleven measly votes, but he should have been in several years ago.

Three other catchers are on this year’s ballot: Darren Daulton, Mickey Tettleton, and Tony Pena. While all three have their merits, none of them stack up to being HOFers. Here’s a chart, tossing Carter in as well:

              H   HR   RBI   AVG   OPB   SLG  AS  GG  HOFS   HOFM   WS   Top 3    Top 5

Carter     2092  324  1225  .262  .335  .439  11   3  41.3  135.0  337  33,31,30   141

Daulton     891  137   588  .245  .357  .427   3   0  30.9   25.0  159  31,29,23   101

Peña       1687  107   708  .260  .309  .364   5   4  22.8   97.0  175  21,21,17    84

Tettleton  1132  245   732  .241  .369  .449   2   0  29.0   17.0  184  27,24,24   111

AS is All-Star appearances, GG is Gold Gloves, WS is Win Shares, and Top 5 is Win Shares in a players best five consecutive seasons. Daulton and Tettleton were hitters first, catchers second. Both had low batting averages, but high OBPs and SLGs — efficient but underrated offensive threats out of the Gene Tenace mold. In other words, sabermetric darlings. Each had some very good seasons, and Daulton at his best helped propel the Phillies to the ’93 World Series, but neither had the longevity required of a HOF catcher. Peña is a horse of a different color, a defensive whiz who had a reputation as being one of the best handlers of a pitching staff. His offensive contributions are a thin gruel compared to the meaty chunks offered up by the other two. Does his D make up for it? Not via Win Shares, it doesn’t. Pena’s longer career and good glove doesn’t offset Tettleton’s value with the bat, and Tettleton isn’t close to being a Hall of Famer.

Here’s a look at the candidates using another measure: Baseball Prospectus Runs Above Replacement (BRAR is Batting Runs Above Replacement, FRAR is Fielding Runs Above Replacement, and RAR/162 boils it down to a per season rate with the batting/fielding breakdown in parentheses):

             G   BRAR  FRAR   RAR  RAR/162  

Carter     2296   514   649  1163   82.1 (36.3/45.8)   

Daulton    1161   250   210   460   65.6 (34.9/29.3)

Peña       1988   138   570   708   57.7 (11.2/46.4)

Tettleton  1485   429   175   604   65.9 (46.8/19.1)

Carter is clearly at least one or two heads above the other three. He’s the only one of the bunch who combined the offense/defense package (Daulton doesn’t fare too badly, actually) and did it for much longer than the rest.

Though he’s not on the ballot, a catching contemporary of Carter ought to be in the Hall as well: Ted Simmons. Here’s a comparison of the two:

              H   HR   RBI   AVG   OPB   SLG  AS  GG  HOFS   HOFM   WS   Top 3    Top 5

Carter     2092  324  1225  .262  .335  .439  11   3  41.3  135.0  337  33,31,30   141

Simmons    2472  248  1389  .285  .348  .437   8   0  44.5  125.0  315  30,28,28   127



             G   BRAR  FRAR   RAR  RAR/162  

Carter     2296   514   649  1163   82.1 (36.3/45.8) 

Simmons    2456   565   328   893   58.9 (37.3/21.6)

Simmons was a slightly better hitter than Carter, and for a longer time. He topped 20 HRs six times, 90 RBI eight times, and at his peak carried around a 900 OPS. His James numbers are right there with the Kid, and he’s ranked 10th in the NBJHA among catchers. Older than Carter, he suffered in comparison with Bench, particularly on defense. That he played a good portion of his career as a DH (279 of his 2456 games) has more to do with his being a good enough hitter to keep in the lineup than it does with his being a lousy defensive catcher (though the DHing hurts his numbers in the RAR analysis). How does he compare to the other HOF catchers? Here’s a chart, sorted by career RAR:

              G    BRAR  FRAR   RAR   RAR/162  

Fisk        2499   622   527   1149    74.5  (40.3/34.2) 

Bench       2158   597   495   1092    82.0  (44.8/37.2)

Berra       2120   542   501   1043    79.7  (41.4/38.3)

Hartnett    1990   504   487    991    80.7  (41.0/39.7)

Dickey      1789   515   457    972    88.0  (46.6/41.4) 

Cochrane    1482   453   298    751    82.1  (49.5/32.6)

Lombardi    1853   456   203    659    57.6  (39.9/17.8)

Campanella  1215   338   319    657    87.6  (45.1/42.5)

Ferrell     1884   252   397    649    55.8  (21.7/34.1)

Schalk      1762   128   496    624    57.3  (11.8/45.6)

Bresnahan   1446   333   182    515    57.7  (37.3/20.4)

Props to blogger Bob Mong, who did this number-crunching over at Baseball Primer; I’m presenting it in slightly different form. This is a tough mix to grapple with, in part because it includes a couple of the Hall’s more dubious selections in Ferrell (whom Veterans Committee voters apparently thought was his brother, pitcher Wes) and Bresnahan, whose candidacy was aided by him dying a few weeks before the election, garnering a swell of sympathy. We’ve got five legitimately great two-way catchers with long careers, two more every bit as great but with injury-shortened careers (Campy and Cochrane), a good-hit/no-field (Lombardi), a good-field/no-hit (Schalk), the dubious two (who end up pretty even with the one-way guys), and Josh Gibson, who’s no help here.

There’s a chasm between those top five (or seven) and the next tier, both in terms of career value and rate. Carter fits squarely in the top group, with the highest career value and tied for the third highest rate; in other words he’s not only a Hall of Famer, but a Hall of Famer with a claim on being the all-time best at his position (I’m not saying he IS, just that he’s up there). Somewhere in that chasm belong Simmons, Joe Torre at 905 and 66.4, and Bill Freehan at 796 and 72.7. That distinction is really a problem for another day. None of them are on the BBWAA ballot, but Carter is, and he gets my vote.

Around this time last year, I put together a two-part review of candidates on the Baseball Writers Association of America ballot for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The pieces were possibly the most popular of any I’ve written for this site (one was a Clutch Hit), and were very well received. Since my thinking on the various candidates hasn’t changed all that much, I’m going borrow liberally from what I wrote then. So if this seems like déjà vu all over again, you’re probably right. In this installment, I’ll consider starting pitchers.

Before I delve into this, a few caveats. The Hall of Fame is a deeply flawed institution which has been particularly sullied by dubious choices on the part of the Veterans Committee, especially when it comes to the hitter-happy 1930s. So I’m not of the opinion that arguing that so-and-so was better than this or that dubious choice makes one a Hall of Famer. Having said that, my tastes in the Hall of Fame tend to run towards the inclusive, rather than the exclusive, especially among players whose careers I’ve seen. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a good thing, but it is a bias of mine. Hand in hand with that bias, I tend to place more weight on career value than peak value — I do think that longevity counts for something. Finally, my choices are guided by several tools invented by Bill James, but I don’t promise any rigidly consistent methodology in the choices I’ve made.

Twenty men have won 300 games in the big leagues and every single one of them is in the Hall of Fame. On the career wins list, of the next group of 23 pitchers, going down to 249 wins, 13 are in, two (Maddux and Clemens) are mortal locks, and four are nineteenth-century freaks of nature whose pitching stats bespeak a much different ballgame. This leaves four pitchers from that group sitting outside the Hall. Three of them are fairly similar in terms of their basic career statistics and their careers overlap considerably: Bert Blyleven, Jim Kaat, and Tommy John. The fourth pitcher is Jack Morris.

           W    L   ERA+  HOFS   HOFM   WS   Top 3    Top 5    AVG

Blyleven  287  250  118    50   113.5  339  29,23,23   114    26.36

John      288  231  111    44   100.0  289  23,19,19    86    23.73

Kaat      283  237  107    44   120.5  268  26,22,22    88    22.64

Morris    254  186  105    39   108.5  225  21,20,20    94    18.36

Wins and losses you’re familiar with. ERA+ is the ratio of the pitcher’s ERA to a park-adjusted league average, multiplied by 100. A 100 denotes a league-average performance (adjusted for park), a 120 represents a performance 20 percent better than league average. HOFS is short for Hall of Fame Standards, a metric Bill James invented which awards points to players based on their career accomplishments (“One point for each 150 hits above 1500, limit 10,” etc.). One hundred is the maximum score; 50 is an average Hall of Famer. HOFM is short for Hall of Fame Monitor, another Jamesian metric which attempts to assess how likely an active player is to make the Hall. Like the Standards system, it awards points based on accomplishments. A score of 100 means a good possiblity of enshrinement, a 130 is a lock. Baseball-reference.com computes scores in both of these systems for every player, and lists the criteria here.

The next four columns relate to Bill James’s new metric, Win Shares, which he introduced a year ago in his New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. I’m not about to go into detail here about Win Shares except to summarize that it boils down the value of a player’s season (based on runs created or allowed, plus defense, and their context) to a simple integer. A score of 30 represents an MVP-candidate season. WS is the player’s career total in Win Shares; the Top 3 are his top 3 seasons, the Top 5 is a total of his five best consecutive seasons, and the AVG is projected to 43 starts per season (a high total given all of these pitchers spent most of their careers in 5-man rotations).

Of Blyleven, John, and Kaat, none are overwhelming on the basis of their peaks; Kaat and John each had three 20-win seasons, Blyleven just one. But all had extremely long careers, John at 26 years, Kaat at 25, and Blyleven the baby of the bunch at 22. All of them come from a time period which is somewhat over-represented in the Hall; six 300-game winners (Carlton, Ryan, Sutton, Niekro, Perry, and Seaver), plus Hall of Famers Fergie Jenkins (285-226, 115 ERA+, seven 20-win seasons in an eight-year span), Jim Palmer (268-152, 125 ERA+, eight 20-win seasons in a nine-year span), and Catfish Hunter (224-166, 104 ERA+, five straight 20-win seasons). Those three all had longer (and higher) sustained peaks than these three, not to mention hardware in the shape of Cy Young Awards (three for Palmer, one each for Jenkins and Hunter), while our fair trio won none.

So these three are not clearly better than the bottom ranks of the enshrined from their era. But each of them has their additional merits which warrant consideration.

Blyleven ranks number five on the career strikeout list, having been passed by Roger Clemens in 2001 and Randy Johnson in 2002. He is also in the top 10 in shutouts (#9, with 60). He came up big in the postseason (5-1, 2.47 ERA , with World Series wins for champions Pittsburgh in ’79 and Minnesota in ’87). And his curveball had the reputation as being the best in the game. He spent most of his career with some mediocre (but not horrible) Minnesota and Cleveland teams, and rarely outperformed them by significant margins in the Won-Loss columns — he was an inning-eating horse who stuck around for the decision most of the time. But his ERAs relative to the league were excellent, as was his consistency — outperforming the league average by 15 percent or more (that is, an ERA+ of 115 or better) for the first nine years of his career and fourteen times overall. He won in double figures seventeen times, and won 17 or more games seven times. He is the best pitcher eligible for the Hall of Fame who isn’t in yet. He gets my vote.

John was a much different type of pitcher than Blyleven — a finesse pitcher who relied on ground balls rather than strikeouts and gave up more than his share of hits. A prototype, in fact, of certain breed of successful left-handers (Bill James calls them the Tommy John family of pitchers). He had a fairly concentrated peak, winning 80 games over a four-year span from 1977-80 and reaching the World Series three times. In the six-year span from 1977-1982, his teams made the postseason five times, and he was the best or second-best starter on his team (using Win Shares) in all but the last of those seasons, when the Angels acquired him late in the season. What’s amazing is that span started when he was 34 years old and had overcome an unprecedented surgical elbow-reconstruction procedure which now bears his name. He did very well in the postseason (6-3, 2.65 ERA) and was subjected to one of the most questionable pitching moves in World Series history, being pinch-hit for in the fourth inning of a 1-1 Game 6 (at a time when his ERA on the series was 0.69). The next two Yankee relievers allowed seven runs in two innings, allowing Tommy Lasorda’s Dodgers to finally best the Yanks in the Fall Classic. He had an ERA+ of 115 or better eleven times. He won in double digits 17 times. He’s got a huge intangible hanging beside his name. His case isn’t as strong as Blyleven’s, but it’s strong enough to get my vote.

Kaat was a remarkably consistent performer for the Minnesota Twins for a 12-year span, a teammate of Blyleven’s for the better part of four seasons (their 1970 division-winning rotation also included Jim Perry and Luis Tiant — a foursome with at least 215 career wins apiece). Had the Cy Young Award been given in both leagues instead of just one overall, he likely would have won in 1966, when he went 25-13, 2.75 ERA, and he would have been in the mix in ’65, with an 18-11, 2.83 for a pennant-winner. Until David Cone won 20 games in 1998, Kaat held the record for the longest drought between 20-win seasons (eight years). He won in double digits 15 times (he lost in double-digits 16 times), won 17+ games six times, but had a 115 ERA+ or better only six times. A lefty, he tacked on a successful second career as a middle reliever, which enabled him to set a record for the longest gap between World Series appearances (1965-1982). Oh, and he also won 16 straight Gold Gloves, though a look at his raw fielding stats suggests several somebodys weren’t paying attention–five times in that span his Fielding Percentage was below .930, though his range factors were always 50-100 percent higher than the league average at the position.

I’ve voted for Kaat before in the Internet Baseball Hall of Fame balloting, and advocated him elsewhere. And from the hundreds of games I’ve watched that he’s been doing color commentary for the Yankees, I think he’s a helluva guy. But the more I examine his case, the more I’m convinced he falls behind Blyleven (which is obvious) and John (which is less so). What separates John from Kaat, in my mind, is that John’s peaks elevated his teams to the postseason, and Kaat’s did not. Kitty’s teams made it twice while he was a starter, but they weren’t close to being his best seasons. In his best seasons with the Twins (1962 & 1966), they were second in the American League, but several games out of first. In his best seasons with the White Sox (1974 & 1975), they were at best a .500 club. It’s bad luck and bad timing, but it does count for something in this hair-splitting contest. So, out.

Morris had a shorter career than that trio (“only” 18 years), but his peaks were fairly high. He was the de facto ace on three World Champions(the ’84 Tigers, the ’91 Twins, and the ’92 Blue Jays), and he put up some stellar performances in the postseason (7-4, 3.80), most notably a 10-inning 1-0 complete game in Game 7 of the ’91 Series — a performance which, in my mind, rates as high as any no-hitter I ever saw (and as a matter of fact, I did watch Morris’s no-no, on April 7, 1984 against the White Sox). He won 20 or more games 3 times, topped 17 victories eight times, and was in double-digits 14 times. He had an ERA+ of 115 or better seven times. And unlike the above three pitchers, he had a very clearly identifiable peak in terms of W-L and ERA+ that lasted awhile. From 1983-87 he was 94-54 with an ERA+ of 120. But… Morris’s career ERA and ERA+ are nothing to write home about, and they especially took a hit during the last two years of his career, raising his overall ERA from 3.73 to 3.90. And he got tagged pretty hard in the 1992 postseason, though the Jays won it all.

Prior to last season’s exercise, I could see voting for Morris, and I have argued vehemently in his favor in the past. Guys who win 254 games in their career don’t grow on trees (after Clemens and Maddux, who’ve surpassed that mark, the next closest active players are Tom Glavine at 242 and Randy Johnson at 224). He’s not a horrible choice, though his raw ERA would be the highest of any Hall of Famer — higher than Burleigh Grimes (3.53 ERA, 107 ERA+), Waite Hoyt (3.59 ERA, 111 ERA+), Herb Pennock (3.60 ERA, 106 ERA+), Jess Haines (3.64 ERA, 108 ERA+), Ted Lyons (3.67 ERA, 118 ERA+), Red Ruffing (3.80 ERA, 109 ERA+). With the exception of Grimes and Ruffing, those guys don’t do very well on James’s older metrics — in the low 30s on the HOFS and the 70s or lower on the HOFM (which is NOT to say that those were bad pitchers).

What swayed me against Morris was examining his Win Shares pattern (which I didn’t have at this time last year). The seasons where he looks big by traditional measures (wins, mainly) don’t make as big a dent as far as Win Shares. He earned only 14 WS for the ’84 Tigers (behind Dan Petry’s 16), only 18 for the ’91 Twins (behind Kevin Tapani’s 21 and tied with Scott Erickson), and only 15 for the ’92 Jays (behind Juan Guzman’s 16). The main reason Win Shares penalizes him is the same reason his candidacy otherwise sticks out awkwardly; it’s the runs, stupid. His ERA+ in those three seasons is only 112; nothing to be ashamed of, just not particularly impressive if you’re trying to make a case for him carrying a team to victory. It’s simply tough to make a case for him as an elite pitcher with the high ERA. I’m going to pass on him as a candidate for now.

There are a handful of other starting pitchers on the ballot — Sid Fernandez, Danny Jackson, Darryl Kile (RIP), and Fernando Valenzuela — but none have a shot at being elected. Fernando is the only one who’s got a case (his phenomenal 1981 season and his role at bringing Latino fans to the game are his two prime qualifications), and Eric Enders does a good job over at Baseball Primer of making it via the Keltner Test. I wish Fernando had enough juice, but a 173-153 record and a 103 ERA+ doesn’t cut it in Cooperstown by any standard.

I was going to squeeze relief pitchers into this piece, but I decided it needed a bit more homework than just a quick revision of last year’s analysis. So that will come in a later installment (greaaaat, another open-ended series for me to keep up with). Back soon.

Happy New Year to everybody out there. I gorged myself on college football today, watching more ball in a single afternoon than I had all season long. But the day wasn’t completely wasted. I put together a page I’ve been itching to do for some time: the Futility Infielder of the Year Award.

Though I’ve bestowed the title before (on Luis Sojo at some point last year), this is the first time I’ve ever devoted a page to it, or explained my reasoning. The purpose of the award, if you need it spelled out, is to honor achievement among futility infielders both past and present, on or off the field. The voting body consists of my lazy butt and the idiot who brushes my teeth, and the decision of the judges is final. The award carries no cash value and may not be exchanged even with a receipt.

The 2002 winner is Minnesota Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, who in the face of contraction led his team to the AL Central title. For more on Ron’s award, see his new page in my Wall of Fame. And yeah, I’ll get around to Looie’s page pretty soon as well. In the meantime, best wishes to everybody for a great 2003!

Like a father hinting his children that he didn’t need ANOTHER tie this Christmas, Joe Torre recently spoke out in favor of the Yanks paring their crowded rotation. But Torre finds himself now swimming in plaids and (pin)stripes, as the Yanks have purchased yet another expensive accessory to add to his collection: Cuban defector Jose Contreras agreed to a 4-year/$32 million contract last week.

The move leaves the Yanks with six starters under contract, one slated for arbitration, and one on the verge of re-signing. It’s also left the Yankees’ chief rivals in the AL East and in the Contreras pursuit, the Boston Red Sox, bawling like babies. Sox president Larry Lucchino called the Yankees signing “ludicrous,” adding this tart assessment: ” The evil empire extends its tentacles even into Latin America.”

On the surface, Lucchino’s sour-grapes whines might hint at an organization that’s reeling. The Sox have bypassed, either by choice or necessity, several big-name free-agents this winter, including Jim Thome, Jeff Kent, Tom Glavine, Edgardo Alfonzo, and their own Cliff Floyd. Their “marquee” signings are bullpen fodder with names like Timlin, Embree, Fox, and perhaps Ramiro Mendoza. A Sox-hater might imagine them muttering who they have to **** to get a star to sign with them. They were reportedly ready to match the Yanks dollar-for-dollar and year-for-year on Contreras, and even made subtle overtures such as hiring former Cuban pitching star Euclides Rojas as bullpen coach and using Cuban legend Luis Tiant as a recruiter. But in the end, the Yanks’ allure (and perhaps King George’s do-or-die mandate to his front-office troops) won out, and Contreras will wear pinstripes.

Is this a sign that Boston’s boy-wonder GM Theo Epstein doesn’t carry the clout to close a deal? It’s tempting to bash away, but also misguided. Lucchino’s embarrasing conduct aside, the Sox are working to position themselves among the more enlightened organizations in the game, hiring sabermetric guru Bill James as an advisor, promoting the savvy Epstein despite his youth, and from owner John Henry on down, talking the kind of clear-headed, analytical talk that makes statheads dewy. They’ve also exhibited a very definite plan this off-season, and have stuck to it thus far. In the face of insurance companies’ unwillingness to back contracts of over three years, the Sox have shied away from long-term deals, which helps not only by keeping payroll down but by avoiding contracts which will becoming albatrosses down the road.

As for the petulance of Lucchino, let’s remember a couple of things. First off, the Red Sox were one of twenty-nine teams to ratify the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (the Yankees were the lone dissenter). That CBA includes a mechanism to penalize spend-happy teams in the form of a luxury tax to be phased in over the course of four years. In 2003, payroll over a threshold of $117 million will be taxed at a rate of 17.5 percent; the Yanks current $158 million payroll would mean a tax of $7.2 million. In 2004, the threshold will rise, and the tax will be steeper (22.5 percent, with 30 percent for repeat offenders), and so on. So the corrective mechanism is in place with or without the scolding of schoolmarm Lucchino. The method to King George’s madness, if there is one, is that beyond 2003, the Yanks only have Mussina, Contreras, and Weaver signed from among their starters.

Which still doesn’t explain what the hell they’re doing right now. With a deal to Roger Clemens reportedly imminent, the Yanks will have Clemens, Contreras, Orlando Hernandez, Sterling Hitchcock, Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte, Jeff Weaver, and David Wells on their roster. Figure El Duque is as good as gone, because twenty-nine other teams view him as a front-line starter and hey, how many Cuban defectors does a rotation need? Figure Hitchcock will be moved with the Yanks eating most of the salary, because in the end, even saving $2 million will seem attractive to Brian Cashman and company. That still leaves a surplus, and unlike the last offseason, everybody in this puzzle looks to be pretty healthy. Here are a few options:

Peddle Pettitte? The Phillies had been interested early in the offseason, but the addition of Kevin Millwood for a sack of doorknobs has quelled that need. Still, Dandy Andy may be moved if the Yanks can’t sign him to a longer deal whose average salary is lower than his current one. Given the Yankee brass’ attachment to Pettitte, not a likely possiblity and not a happy day in the Bronx if it happens, but a viable alternative.

Move Moose? No Yankee official or mainstream publication has even uttered those words, but given the long-term money they’ve got tied up in him and Mussina’s erratic performance last season, the thought should cross somebody’s mind. Undoubtedly, the Yanks would have to eat a good chunk of that contract, since few other teams could afford him, and they’d have to admit they erred just two winters ago when they made him their marquee pickup. Not bloody likely.

Wait on Weaver? At $4 million, he’d be a bargain in the rotation but an expensive playmate for Steve Karsay down in the bullpen — more expensive than Mendoza, who he’d essentially replace. A waste of talent and relatively inexpensive youth, but not beyond the pale.

Resist Rocket? The Yanks clearly don’t need him at this juncture, just as they didn’t need Wells last winter with their rotation seemingly set. But Steinbrenner’s sentiment is carrying the day, despite his edict to cut costs. These 40-year-old warhorses are luxuries, and George stands to pay a luxury tax for the privelege of stabling them.

What the Contreras signing does, more likely than not, is get the Yankee front office off the hook in their quest to cut payroll. They’ve got their work cut out for them just trying to move dead-weight contracts such as Hitchcock, Raul Mondesi, and Rondell White, without Uncle Georgie lavishing Cuban cigars and other expensive imports on them. Any forward progress in reducing payroll will now be a bonus. And given the king’s ransom other rotation alternatives looked to cost the Yanks — cheap talent with bright futures in the form of Nick Johnson and Juan Rivera — this is still a preferable alternative. It’s only money, and if Steinbrenner wants to spend it, by George, let Larry cry a river about that.

It’s my 33rd birthday today. Given the timing and my resolve never to work on my birthday, I’m simply re-running the column I did last year. Happy holidays to everybody celebrating something today, and enjoy the following encore presentation…

December 25 marks a holiday for most of this country and probably, for most of my readership–if so, my sincere wishes for a happy holiday to you. For me the day is somewhat more paradoxical: I’m Jewish and thus don’t celebrate Christmas, which is fine by me because I’m none too fond of that red and green color scheme. It also happens to be my birthday, number 32 to be exact.

I’ll spare you the tales about how this combination of circumstances influenced my psyche while growing up (long story short: people forgetting birthday bad, never having to work or go to school on birthday good) and, as usual, move onto the baseball angle in all of this. Baseball-reference.com lists 65 players as being born on December 25, including Hall-of-Famers Pud Galvin and Nellie Fox, and future Hall-of-Famer Rickey Henderson. Henderson is undoubtedly the best major-leaguer born on this day, but then again, he’d be the best major-leaguer born on any one of over three hundred other days, too.

Given that there are 253 members of the Hall of Fame (including executives), having two or three HOFers born on any single date is an above-average representation. Still, having spent some time looking over the resumes of the 65 ballplayers with December 25 birthdays, I can’t make any claims for the All Xmas Team I’ve assembled. They’re exceedingly long on futility infielders and backup catchers, short on outfielders, first basemen, and power hitters in general. Their pitching is pretty solid, though they don’t really have a closer.

Pos  Name (Years)                 AVG   OBP   SLG   HR

C    Quincy Trouppe (1952)       .100  .182  .100    0   

1B   Walter Holke (1914-1925)    .287  .318  .363   24

2B   Nellie Fox (1947-1965)      .288  .348  .363   35

3B   Gene Robertson (1919-1930)  .280  .344  .373   20

SS   Manny Trillo (1973-1989)    .263  .316  .345   61

LF   Jo-Jo Moore (1930-1941)     .298  .344  .408   79

CF   Rickey Henderson (1979-)    .279  .402  .419  295

RF   Ben Chapman (1930-1946)     .302  .383  .440   90



C    Gene Lamont (1970-1975)     .233  .278  .371    4

IF   Tom O'Malley (1982-1990)    .256  .329  .340   13

IF   Joe Quinn (1884-1901)       .261  .302  .327   29

IF   Bill Akers (1929-1932)      .261  .349  .404   11

OF   Red Barnes (1927-1930)      .269  .347  .404    8

OF   Gerry Davis (1983-1985)     .301  .370  .397    0

PH   Wallace Johnson (1981-1990) .255  .316  .332    5



Pos  Name (Years)                 W    L    S   ERA

SP   Pud Galvin (1875-1892)      364  310   2  2.86   

SP   Ned Garver (1948-1961)      129  157  12  3.73

SP   Ted Lewis (1896-1901)        94   64   4  3.53

SP   Charlie Lea (1980-1988)      62   48   0  3.54

SP   George Haddock (1888-1894)   95   87   2  4.07

RP   Al Jackson (1959-1969)       67   99  10  3.98

RP   Lloyd Brown (1928-1940)      91  105  21  4.20

RP   Eric Hiljus (1999-)           8    3   0  4.72

RP   Charlie Beamon (1956-1958)    3    3   0  3.91

CL   Jack Hamilton (1962-1969)    32   40  20  4.53

A few words about the selections:

* Quincy Trouppe spent twenty-two years in the Negro Leagues before receiving a 10-at-bat cup of coffee with the Cleveland Indians in 1952, at age 39. He was a fine player in his day, making All-Star teams everywhere he went and accumulating a lifetime Negro League Average of .311. He also won a Negro League championship as player-manager of the Cleveland Buckeyes. Bill James rates him the #7 catcher of the Negro Leagues in the New Historical Baseball Abstract. One more interesting note about him: during the height of World War II, he had trouble securing a passport to play in the Mexican League. The league’s president intervened, and made arrangements for Trouppe’s services in exchange for those of 80,000 Mexican workers. You could look it up.

* Manny Trillo played most of his career as a second baseman, and a slick-fielding one at that, winning three Gold Gloves and setting a record for consecutive errorless games. But Nellie Fox also won three Gold Gloves at 2B, so I took the liberty of moving Trillo to SS (where he had limited experience). I’m sure he and Nellie would have made a fine double-play combo. Trillo is the only Christmas-born ballplayer whose real name is Jesus.

* Jo-Jo Moore and Ben Chapman both crack Bill James’ Top 100 lists by postion. Moore ranks 77th among LFs, Chapman 55th among CFs (I put him in right because he played a good portion of his career there). Chapman was, by all accounts, an aggressive ballplayer who fought a lot. He stole as many as 61 bases, and had some power as well. He later managed the Philadelphia Phillies for parts of four seasons and is most noted for baiting the rookie Jackie Robinson with racial epithets. Schmuck. We’ll let Trouppe manage this squad, just to rub it in Chapman’s face.

* Red Barnes–don’t you love that name? Gerry Davis did pretty well in 73 ABs for the Padres, but missed out on their glory year of 1984. There’s now an umpire with the same name, but I can’t figure out if its the same guy.

* Wallace Johnson was a pretty good pinch-hitter whose claim to fame was the hit that put the Montreal Expos in their first (and only) postseason in 1981. He’s now a coach with the Chicago White Sox.

* Three of the pitchers on this team made their names in the 19th century, when pitching and pitching stats were much different. Galvin had back-to-back 46-win seasons in 1883 and 1884, making over 70 starts each year. He won 20 games or more ten times, and lost 20 games or more 10 times as well. George Haddock went from 9-26 in 1890 for Buffalo of the Players League to 34-11 with Boston of the American Association the following year. Ted Lewis won 47 games over two seasons for the Boston Beaneaters in 1896-1897.

* Ned Garver was a hard-luck pitcher who managed to go 20-12 for a St. Louis Browns team that went 52-102 in 1951. This performance so impressed MVP voters in the AL that he finished second to Yogi Berra.

* Speaking of pitching for lousy teams… at 8-20 with a 4.40 ERA, Al Jackson could have easily been mistaken for the ace of the 1962 Mets (though Roger Craig had an equal claim). Jackson managed to lose 88 games in a 5-year span, four of those with the Mets. He’s spent several years as a pitching coach, and I believe was recently hired somewhere.

One more thing I discovered: The first Christmas-born ballplayer, Nat Jewett (who I’m guessing didn’t celebrate either), was a member of the 1872 Brooklyn Eckfords of the National Association, who went 3-26 for the season. Sweeeet. You learn something new every day, even on your birthday…

I’ve been too busy, and perhaps too restrained, to celebrate the end of the Eric Karros era in Los Angeles. Karros, along with Mark Grudzielanek, was traded on December 5 to the Chicago Cubs for Todd Hundley. The fact that Hundley’s been a disaster for four of the past five seasons notwithstanding, this is a long overdue move for the Dodgers. Karros’s subpar production did as much to cost the Dodgers a shot at the playoffs in each of the past two seasons as all of their major pitching injuries — Kevin Brown, Andy Ashby, Darren Dreifort, Kevin Brown, Kazuhiro Ishii, Kevin Brown, and that guy with a goatee and a $105 million contract who keeps getting hurt — combined. Here are his stats for the past two seasons:

             PA    OBP    SLG    OPS    EQA   RARP

Karros 02   573   .323   .399   .722   .262    6

Karros 01   485   .303   .388   .691   .247   -5

Basically, Karros was about dead even with a replacement level first baseman, the kind of guy who you can acquire for a suitcase full of laundry or a swatchbook of shag carpet samples. He put up these stats while costing the Dodgers over $14 million in that timespan, playing hurt, being a team player, a veteran presence, a steady influence, and a complete waste of a lineup spot.

Karros spent twelve seasons with the Dodgers, twelve seasons in which the team won exactly zero playoff games. While it isn’t fair to hold him personally responsible for the entirety of that goose egg, he’s been far less productive than meets the eye. His supporters can point to the five 30 HR/100 RBI seasons put up in a tough hitter’s park, but I’ll point right back at that anemic career .325 OBP and .457 SLG. He basically had a nice five year run (1995-1999), and has been living off that for too damn long. His colorless mediocrity exemplifies why I lost interest in the Dodgers. True, the front office bears the responsibility for keeping him around and overpaying for his presence long past his prime, and Jim Tracy continued to write him in the lineup card right up to the bitter end (though the word from the L.A. Times is that both Karros and Grudz frequently clashed with Tracy).

Upon Karros’ departure, Dodger fans rightly hoped that the team could use some of the money freed up by the trade to make a run at a big-name free-agent to play first base, such as Jeff Kent or Cliff Floyd. They never seriously pursued Kent, and ended up losing out to the Mets on Floyd, but on Friday, the Dodgers announced that they had reached an agreement with the Crime Dog, Fred McGriff. Terms were not disclosed, but the contract is believed to be only $3.75 million for one year.

Here are McGriff’s stats over the past two seasons:

             PA    OBP    SLG    OPS    EQA   RARP

McGriff 02  595   .353   .505   .858   .295   29

McGriff 01  586   .386   .544   .930   .315   41

The Dog has been about 35 runs a season better with the stick than Karros, although several people over at Baseball Primer point out that McGriff’s glovework is, to put it politely, lacking: “The Tribune Co. could have saved millions by foregoing McGriff’s paychecks and just rolling wads of money slightly to his left or right.” Ouch! Baseball Prospectus’ Fielding Runs numbers (via their player cards) show Karros as gaining back about 60% of the difference over the past two years via his fielding:

             FRAR (Fielding Runs Above Replacement)

Karros 02     32

Karros 01     21

McGriff 02     3

McGriff 01     3

I’d be lying if I said I had as good a grasp on BP’s fielding stats as I do their batting and pitching stats, but those are their numbers, and it’s true that fielding does count in this consideration. Adding it all up, over the past two years, McGriff is 76 runs above replacement level, Karros 54 — a difference of about 2 wins in the standings.

Even though he’s a 39-year-old stopgap solution for the Dodgers, and even though I’ve railed against him in the past, I think McGriff represents a significant upgrade for the boys in blue when it all shakes down. A .350 OBP/.500 SLG season at that low price, combined with the highlight film of the Crime Dog pursuing his 500th HR (he’s at 478) will be a net positive, so long as Jim Tracy gives the Dog the day off against lefties; he managed only a .620 OPS against them last season (compared to .926 against righties). Good move for the Dodgers.

• • • • •

Speaking of the Dodgers, I’ve got a couple other related links to pass on. First up is Dodger Blues, a hilarious, vitriolic site which celebrates “the futility, disappointment, and humor of the Los Angeles Dodgers.” The site starts with a clock which calculates the elapsed time since “the last great Dodger moment” (Kirk Gibson’s home run), and offers features such as the Asshole of the Moment (currently Todd Hundley), the Crappy Brother (which points out how the Dodgers are suckers for the Chris Gwynns, Wilton Guerreros, and Mike Madduxes of the world), and a list of Greatest Dodger Moments which features the Don Sutton-Steve Garvey brawl, Carlos Perez’s attack on a water cooler, GM Kevin Malone challenging a fan to fight, and various other meltdowns. If I weren’t such an East Coast Yankee-rooting sellout, this is what my Dodger fandom might have become.

Next up is an assessment of Fernando Valenzuela’s Hall of Fame worthiness. Baseball Primer’s resident Dodger fan Eric Enders tackles the issue via the Keltner List, a 15-part examination of a player’s qualifications and contributions. The Keltner List, developed by Bill James, asks relevant questions about each player such as as “Was he the best player in baseball at his position?” and “Did he have an impact on a number of pennant races?” and “What impact did the player have on baseball history?” While Valenzuela’s numbers come up short (173 wins doesn’t take you to Cooperstown these days, nor should it), Enders does point out how many of the intangibles work in his favor, including this one:

Valenzuela had more impact on baseball history than any other player currently on the ballot. In 1982, when the average major league baseball game was attended by 20,766 fans, the games in which Fernando pitched drew an average of 43,312. That is as big an impact as any player has ever had on attendance, with the possible exception of Babe Ruth.

Fernando is one of my all-time favorites, and I truly wish he did have a spot waiting for him in Cooperstown. But his uniqueness and longevity (he’s still pitching professionally in the Mexican Winter League at age 41) ensure that he’ll be remembered in the annals of baseball as long as any Hall of Famer. Fernandomania lives on!