Category Archives: All-Time Greats

January 21, 2023

Bando Passes

Former third baseman and general manager Sal Bando died Friday after a five year bout with cancer. He was a stalwart of the 1970s Oakland Athletics championship teams:

Bando won three consecutive world championships as captain of the A’s from 1972 to 1974, leading the American League in extra-base hits (64), doubles (32) and total bases (295) during the 1973 season, when he hit .287 while playing in all 162 games.
ESPN.com

My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

Bando batted .254 for his career, but posted a .352 OBP, something that was not as appreciated when he played. While he had some decent years slugging, his power was not great overall, and playing in the Oakland Coliseum did not help. He did consistently post high rWARs, however, averaging 5.4 rWAR a season from 1968 to 1978. His best season came early in his prime, seasonal age 25 in 1969. he took advantage of the lowered mound that season to hit 31 home runs among his 59 extra base hits and draw 111 walks for a .281/.400/.484 slash line. While he did not reach quite that level again, he was a championship ballplayer for many years.

December 30, 2022

Remembering Clemente

Jason Mackey reflects on Roberto Clemente‘s lasting legacy as the fiftieth anniversary of his death in a plane crash. He was on his way to help in relief efforts after an earthquake in Nicaragua.

My family went to visit old friends that day, a couple that was very close to my grandmother. Both my mom and aunt worked as baby sitters for the couple’s children. One of the sons-in-law had received a copy of the second edition of MacMillan’s The Baseball Encyclopedia for Christmas. I was fascinated by the book, and as I was leafing through the pages, the son-in-law asked if we had heard that Clemente had died. My dad and I were both shocked.

Clemente was near the end of his career when I started watching baseball. I mostly saw him during the 1971 post-season, in which he played well during both the NLCS and the World Series. Mostly I remembered his great arm:

The article speaks with people who remember so much more about the man, not just the ballplayer.

December 27, 2022

Early Tracker

The Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker discovered just 38 ballots so far, but the trend looks to me like no one getting elected this season. Both Todd Helton and Scott Rolen stand at 77%. Since voters who make their ballots public tend to be “big hall” voters, I don’t think either is polling high enough in this group to over come the private ballot voters.

Helton posted some monster years in his prime with 37.5 of his 61.8 rWAR coming in five seasons from ages 26 to 30. His career .414 OBP and .539 slugging percentages are outstanding. The big draw back for Helton is the Coors advantage. In home games he batted .345/.441/.607. In away games that dropped to .287/.386/.469. Note that he hit 28 triples in home games, just nine on the road.

Rolen best years stretched out over a long period, posting 46.2 of his 70.1 rWAR in eight seasons from ages 22 to 29. He also played a tougher position, third base instead of first. He won eight gold gloves and was Rookie of the Year in 1997. Rolen’s home/road numbers are more aligned also. He did a better job getting on base in his home parks, but hit more homers on the road.

My feeling is that Rolen should get in to the Hall. I would not be upset with Helton gaining recognition, but his case is weaker.

December 4, 2022

Crime Dog Honored

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The Contemporary Era Committee of the Hall of Fame honored one player this year, Fred McGriff:

McGriff was a unanimous choice among the 16 members of the inaugural contemporary baseball era committee, which considered a ballot of eight candidates whose primary contributions to the game took place after 1980. A player needs 75% of the vote to be elected.

McGriff, 59, starred for six different clubs during a 19-year career that ended in 2004. The five-time All-Star clubbed 493 homers and collected 2,493 hits while finishing in the top 10 of MVP balloting in six different seasons, including each season from 1989 to 1993.
ESPN.com

This group rejected the steroid group including Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, and also left out Curt Schilling. It looks like the players agree with the the writers. A number of people thought McGriff should be given a boost since he was known as a clean player, and these voters agreed with that assessment. While his 52 career rWAR is low for the Hall of Fame, it an era without steroids, his production might have been much closer to the top of the league.

McGriff was a favorite of mine throughout his career, and I’m glad to see him elected.

October 9, 2022

Why We Wait Five Years

With Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina playing their final games on Saturday, it seems that many people believe that the two will go into the Hall of Fame together. While there’s little argument against Pujols’s Hall of Fame credentials, Molina is a different story.

Molina’s perception as a Hall of Fame catcher, I believe comes from his performance at the end of his prime, when he hit .313/.361/.481 from 2011-2013, his seasonal age 28-30 years. Before that he hit .268/.327/.361, which is good for a great handler of pitchers. After his peak, he hit .270/.314/.393, trading hits for OBP. In the end, that adds up to an fWAR of 55.7 and an rWAR of 42.3, or an average of 49. No matter how good a catcher one is, 49 does not seem like a Hall of Fame WAR.

I suspect there will be a case made for the intangibles; his leadership, his longevity, his pitch calling and framing, his championships. Maybe all that makes a difference, but I suspect it will take longer for him to get into the Hall than it will Pujols.

September 24, 2022

Pujols at 700

Albert Pujols and the Cardinals let loose a barrage of home runs at Dodger Stadium Friday night to beat Los Angeles 11-0. Pujols hit two of the five St. Louis long balls to raise his career total to 700, only the fourth player in the history of MLB to reach that level. Number 700 was a magnificent shot, a high, arching ball hit a few rows back into the leftfield seats.

Pujols drilled a two-run homer 434 feet into the Dodger Stadium bleachers to make Heaney the 455th pitcher he’s hit a home run against. In the fourth inning, the Dodgers opted to avoid an encore. Phil Bickford, a right-hander, came into the game. Pujols greeted him all the same. Pujols sent No. 700 into the seats beyond left-field for the 5-0 lead and the place in the club with fellas by the name of Babe, Barry, and Hank. The game stopped briefly to acknowledge Pujols’ accomplishment and a highlight reel of his significant homers played on the Dodger Stadium scoreboard.
StLToday.com

Pujols’s career shares a bit more with Hank Aaron than with Barry Bonds or Babe Ruth, as Pujols achieved the feat without a 50 home run season. He hit 40 home runs in a year seven times, his season high 49 in 2006. With his season total now at 21, he has reached 20 home runs for the eighteenth time.

Congratulations to Pujols for going out in style. He will wind up slugging .500 for the first time in a decade, helping the Cardinals win a division, and maybe even getting a chance to be a World Series hero again.

September 11, 2022

Transformative Slugger

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Albert Pujols of the Cardinals tied Alex Rodriguez for fourth place on the all-time home run list when he hit his 696th home run in a 7-5 win over the Pirates. Pujols also doubled in the game, his 684th double. That’s fifth all time, and if Pujols decided to return next season, he would have a decent shot at being the first player with 700 doubles and 700 home runs.

Pujols took us back to the future in terms of what a slugger could accomplish. The great sluggers of the 1940s and 1950s, Ted Williams, Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle did it all. They hit for average, they walked, they slugged. Mantle used to bunt for base hits. The hitters who followed them specialized more. Sluggers concentrated on power. Non-sluggers concentrated on contact. This likely came about due to the increase in strikeouts. You could swing hard, mash the ball when you hit it, but strike out when you didn’t. You could try to meet the ball to put it in play, but not generate much power. It’s Mike Schmidt versus Tony Gwynn.

Pujols went back to the slugger who could put the ball in play. For his career, he struck out in just 10.7% of his plate appearances. He showed sluggers they could be both a leader in batting average and slugging percentage. He made possible players like Miguel Cabrera, Joey Votto, Mike Tout, Paul Goldschmidt, Mookie Betts, Aaron Judge, and so many others. For that we should all be thankful.

July 24, 2022

Hall of Fame Day

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The Hall of Fame induction ceremony takes place today, Sunday, in Cooperstown, NY:

It’s a class highlighted by Red Sox legend David Ortiz, one of the game’s greatest designated hitters. Ortiz achieved first-ballot status, becoming the first player to earn the honor since Jim Thome in 2018. Ortiz was the only player on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America ballot to earn induction this year, further illuminating the polarizing nature of some of Ortiz’s contemporaries.
SportingNews.com

Ortiz was probably the greatest DH, period. Unlike Edgar Martinez, Ortiz had a long history in the post-season where he simply ranked. Take a close look at his situational stats, especially the .653 slugging percentage with men on base and the 3 for 4 with the bases loaded, including a famous grand slam.

Tony Oliva, Jim Kaat, Gil Hodges, Minnie Minoso, Buck O’Neil, and Bud Fowler also make it in through committees.

July 21, 2022

Ryan’s Date

There is a Nolan Ryan documentary available for streaming. It seems Ryan, and his wife Ruth, had a great second date:

It was not exactly a romantic outing: He took her to the Colt Stadium to see Koufax pitch.
“He wouldn’t talk to me,” Ruth said. “He wouldn’t get up.”
“We were sitting behind the plate with a bird’s-eye view of Sandy Koufax,” Nolan explained.
NYTimes.com

I’m looking forward to this one.

July 8, 2022

Stars for Cabrera and Pujols

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Under a new agreement in the CBA, Rob Manfred added Miguel Cabrera and Albert Pujols to the All-Star rosters:

Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera have been selected to Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game, the league announced on Friday. Pujols and Cabrera were described by the league as “special selections,” a nod toward commissioner Rob Manfred’s newly obtained power to add one player of historical significance to each roster. (Manfred gained that ability as part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement between MLB and the MLB Players Association.)
CBSSports.com

I remember a game in the 1970s when the rosters were expanded to get Willie Mays on the team one more time, but I can’t find any documentation of that, so it may be a faulty memory. I’m very glad these two greats get one more shot for the baseball world to appreciate their skills.

June 10, 2022

Career Game Scores

The Baseball Musings Batter Rankings are based on a version of game scores for batters. The idea was to rank batters like Bill James ranks pitchers, and to do that I needed a game that acted the same way; centered on 50, with 100 really great and 0 really bad.

Since great players should have great game scores, this spreadsheet shows average game scores (in starts only) for players with at least 1500 games started since 1920. There are two game score columns. The first is the raw game score, the second a part adjusted game score. This second one is the one used in the Batter Ranking calculation. If a batter plays in a park that increases offense, or plays in a high offensive era, the game score is reduce. If the players performs in a poor part for hitters, or in a low offensive era, the game score is increased.

Here is the top 15 from the list:

First Name	Last Name	Birthday	GS	Game Score	Adj, Game Score
Mickey	Mantle	10/20/1931	2269	53.70	55.26
Ted	Williams	8/30/1918	2148	56.50	55.19
Barry	Bonds	7/24/1964	2848	54.61	54.99
Hank	Aaron	2/5/1934	3167	53.46	54.76
Babe	Ruth	2/6/1895	1933	56.41	54.67
Dick	Allen	3/8/1942	1692	52.61	54.65
Willie	Mays	5/6/1931	2821	53.46	54.58
Frank	Robinson	8/31/1935	2680	53.17	54.52
Stan	Musial	11/21/1920	2843	54.42	54.43
Joe	Morgan	9/19/1943	2490	52.45	54.25
Tony	Gwynn	5/9/1960	2319	52.84	54.09
Roy	White	12/27/1943	1736	51.44	54.00
Joe	DiMaggio	11/25/1914	1718	54.74	53.97
Mel	Ott	3/2/1909	2538	54.10	53.90
Willie	Stargell	3/6/1940	2044	52.16	53.89

Average Game Scores, 1920-2022

That’s a pretty good top five. Fans of Dick Allen will appreciate his rank. The most surprising name on the list is Roy White, an outfielder for the Yankees in the late 1960s and through the 1970s. Bill James wrote about how he rates White ahead of a number of more honored outfielders, and this would be another example of that. This has him even with Joe DiMaggio. Note that DiMaggio posted better raw game scores than White, but DiMaggio played in a higher scoring era than White.

The player with the lowest adjusted game score on the list is Leo Durocher at 45.91. Leo would become much more famous as a manager.

May 22, 2022

Romo and History

It’s nice to see Sergio Romo has a sense of history as he climbs the all-time pitching appearance list. Here Romo talks about Walter Johnson:

“He was an infamous flame-thrower, and a guy who commanded a lot of respect,” said Romo. “He pitched a lot of innings, and he did it throwing gas. I actually play with Walter Johnson every now and again in MLB: The Show, The’ve got a lot of greats in that game. Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey… a lot of those guys.”
FanGraphs.com

I have run into ballplayers without awareness of the greats who came before them Maybe one of the strengths of video games is that today’s players can appreciate the past stars.

April 21, 2022

Another Crowd for Cabrera

Miguel Cabrera went 0 for 3 Thursday afternoon as his Tiger beat the Yankees 3-0. With Cabrera needing one hit for 3000 in his career, a large crowd show up at Comerica Park. He came up in the bottom of the eighth with men on second and third, and the Yankees intentionally walked him, drawing boos from the fans. Casey Abell thought the same thing I did, the Yankees should have pitched to Cabrera since at this point he is one of the poorer hitters on the club.

The good thing for the Tigers is that they’ll draw another big crowed on Friday as his fans are anxious to see him reach the milestone.

April 19, 2022

Cabrera on the Cusp

Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers just singled in the second inning of the Yankees game at Detroit. That brings his career hit total to 2996, putting him in striking distance of the magical 3000 hit level. Keep your eye on Detroit the next few days, as four hits can easily come in one game.

The Yankees lead the Tigers 3-0 in the bottom of the second inning.

April 15, 2022

75 Years

Happy Jackie Robinson Day! It’s a good Friday for the celebration of the baseball icon.

Here is everyone who started that day, ordered by hits. I’m not surprised to see Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio near the top of the list, and it was a pretty good day for future Hall of Famers. Robinson went one for three with a sacrifice and a GDP.

February 20, 2022

The Case for the Hall

David Laurila’s weekly notes column discusses Graig Nettles rank among the best third basemen of all time and Johan Santana‘s Hall of Fame case.

February 6, 2022

Fact of the Day

David Laurila posts his weekly notes column with this fact:

Ted Williams hit five home runs in games that ended 1-0. That’s a record.
FanGraphs.com

Williams hit .307/.455/.509 in 39 1-0 games, scoring six runs and driving in nine. That’s 35 for 114 with six doubles, a triple, and the five home runs. The Red Sox went 23-16 in those games.

January 30, 2022

Reset

I saw this idea this morning:

The @SFGiants should re-sign @BarryBonds and put him in a game to reset his hall of fame clock.
— Brandon Hart (@TheBrandonHart) January 26, 2022

I’m not sure that would work now. The BBWAA and the Hall of Fame changed the eligibility period from 15 years to ten years about the time the PED players started to appear on the ballot. As we saw with Jim Rice and Bert Blyleven, it took 15 years for the reporters who didn’t like them to get swamped by the newer reporters who didn’t have personal interactions with the players. If the Giants tried this now, the writers or the hall would make a rule saying you can’t reset the clock.

The Giants should have signed Barry Bonds in 2012 as a pinch hitter, so he would have been kept off the ballot until 2018. That would have given him the 15 years for the older voters to clear out.

I suspect the various veterans committees will put him in the Hall, unless someone makes up a new rule to stop that.

January 25, 2022

Papi Gets the Big Call

The Baseball Writers voted David Ortiz into the Hall of Fame, the only player to pass the 75% threshold in 2022. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens failed to reach the Hall on their final ballot:

Ortiz is a different story, despite his own PED suspicions. A 2009 New York Times story reported that Ortiz was among 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing substances during a round of tests conducted in 2003. Those results were supposed to remain confidential and were done to see if the league had reached a threshold to conduct regular testing.
Ortiz has long denied that he used banned substances, and in 2016, commissioner Rob Manfred said the tests in question were inconclusive because “it was hard to distinguish between certain substances that were legal, available over the counter, and not banned under our program.”
Manfred added that during subsequent testing Ortiz “has never been a positive at any point under our program.”
ESPN.com

Congratulations to Ortiz! I think my Ortiz moment came many years ago when I took my nephew to a Red Sox game. Ortiz came up in the bottom of the ninth with a chance to win the game. I told my nephew that earlier in the year I was at a game Ortiz won with a walk-off home run. Of course, Ortiz let loose with another to win that day’s game. Ortiz recorded 20 walk-off RBI in his career. My stats on this go back to 1974, and only Rickey Henderson and Albert Pujols own more, at 21. Dusty Baker and Andre Dawson also have 20. That’s very good company.

Here are the votes. Scott Rolen polled 63.2%, just behind Bonds and Clemens. Curt Schilling is gone from the ballot at 58.6%. Todd Helton, 52% and Billy Wagner, 51% are the only other players to get at least 50% of the vote.

January 25, 2022

Hall of Fame Day

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The BBWAA announces the Hall of Fame vote for 2022 on MLB Network tonight at 6 PM EST. Given the current vote tracker, now at 48% of the vote, it looks like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens won’t make it. The early reveals, who tend to favor the pair, did not show a big increase toward the duo. David Ortiz is on the edge, and since the late reveals tend to be less generous, Oritz might fall just short.

January 24, 2022

Approaching Fame

David Schoenfield at ESPN.com reviews the candidates and the current known voting for the 2022 class of the Hall of Fame.

Nothing has changed much as the ballots continue to be revealed. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens continue to be net +2, while David Ortiz remains in the low 80% range. We’ll know Tuesday night how the vote finished.

December 28, 2021

Ballot Movement

The Hall of Fame vote tracker shows David Ortiz, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens the only players over 75% with about 20% of the ballots in. Bonds and Clemens picked up a couple of votes where writers changed their mind from last season, and four of the five new voters on the list voted for the pair.

I am curious how the votes for Bonds and Clemens will shift this season. I can believe that many writer see waiting for the tenth ballot as the correct punishment for the pair. As more votes come in, we’ll see how many more writers have changed their minds.

The idea of writers waiting until the last minute to vote for the pair may have more credence, given this article by Sheryl Ring urging voters to leave Clemens off the ballot due to his affair with Mindy McCready. I don’t know if you need to publish that article if it was a sure thing Clemens would not get the votes.

December 7, 2021

Kurkjian to the Hall

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The baseball writers honored Tim Kurkjian with a Hall of Fame nod:

After four decades of covering Major League Baseball, longtime writer and ESPN analyst Tim Kurkjian is the 2022 winner of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s Career Excellence Award (formerly the J.G. Taylor Spink award).
The award, the highest honor awarded by the BBWAA, is given out annually “for meritorious contributions to baseball writing.” Kurkjian, who turns 65 on Friday, will be recognized at Hall of Fame ceremonies this summer.
ESPN.com

I worked with Kurkjian at ESPN and he is not only one of the brightest people covering the game, he’s also about the nicest person covering the game. Congratulations on a well deserved honor!

Correction: Edited for spelling.

December 5, 2021

Six to the Hall

Two veteran committees elect a combined six former players to the Baseball Hall of Fame:

Six baseball legends were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2022 as part of the institution’s Era Committees election cycle in results announced Sunday night on MLB Network. Bud Fowler and Buck O’Neil were elected from the Early Baseball Era Committee ballot of 10 candidates, while Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Minnie Miñoso and Tony Oliva were elected from the 10 Golden Days Era Committee candidates.
MLB.com

Congratulations to all. The election of Buck O’Neil will make many people happy. Former Twins did very well in this election as well. Dick Allen was left out again.

November 18, 2021

Herzog Turns Ninety

Whitey Herzog turns 90 years old soon. With that anniversary approaching, he talked with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the current state of baseball:

“None of that is going to shorten the games at all, until we can lower the amount of pitches that they throw. I watch every game at home. I generally don’t go to bed until 11 at night when I’m watching the West Coast games and when the teams throw 340 to 360 pitches every night, there’s no way you can shorten the games.
“I sit and watch an 0-2 pitch — a perfect pitch on the black — (the umpires) never ring anybody up. It’s always a ball.
“And now the count is two strikes and a ball but the power pitchers can’t throw a ball three inches off the outside of the plate where a hitter might get himself out. They can’t pitch three inches off the inside corner. They’re two feet or a foot-and-a-half out of the strike zone. Now, its 3-2. Then the batter fouls off a pitch and fouls off another one and the announcer says, ‘We’ve got a quality at-bat’ when the hitter should have been on the bench after three pitches if they ring him up and call the pitch on the ‘black.’
StLToday.com

It sounds like Herzog wants a bigger strike zone, although he didn’t really come out and say it. He does feel that calling more pitches strikes will force batters to swing earlier.

The whole discussion is worth the read, although sometimes Herzog does come across as the typical, “We did it better in my day,” old-timer.

November 14, 2021

Pitching Greats

A couple of winters ago I created a series of graphs that looked at the best pitchers by ten year spans who at some point ranked number one in the Bill James Starting Pitcher Rankings. Since that time I expanded the coverage of the Day By Day Database. This spreadsheet contains a graph with pitchers who spent at least 100 days in the number one slot based on dates between April and September. It’s a list of many of the greats of the last 80 years, and the graph shows how they rose and fell. I hope you enjoy it!

November 12, 2021

Leyland’s Legacy

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette prints a series on the legacy of former manager Jim Leyland. The whole article is well worth the read, but long time readers of Baseball Musings know that I agree with Leyland on how to deal with the antics of the opposition:

One time in Montreal, Bonds and others grew frustrated at Pascual Perez’s antics on the mound. That’s when Leyland offered a solution that holds true to this day when talking about not liking what an opposing pitcher is doing on the mound.
“I’ll never forget Leyland saying, ‘If you want to put a stop to it, there’s a yellow line that goes from left field to right field. Hit the damn ball out of the ballpark, and you can stop all the dancing,’” Bonds said.
Post-Gazette.com

There’s also a great story about how Leyland got away with smoking in hotels.

November 10, 2021

Posey and the Greats

Dave Fleming at Bill James Online makes the case for Buster Posey as the best player of his generation. He also makes a great comparison of Posey to Mickey Cochrane:

Their other commonality – the other trait the two men share – is that both players were winners.
Cochrane played in three World Series with the Athletics, and then found himself fire-saled to Detroit. He immediately led the moribund Tigers franchise to consecutive World Series appearances as catcher-manager. He collected three championships over a short playing career.
And before he had turned twenty-eight, Posey had matched him on the rings. Buster didn’t make it all the way back this year, but he pulled two other Giants squads into the playoffs, including the Cinderella team that is his last.
BillJamesOnline.com

My dad grew up a Yankees fan and loved Bill Dickey, but he thought Cochrane was the best catcher of the ERA.

October 30, 2021

Clemente in Buffalo

A Roberto Clemente fan in Buffalo, who has a mural of the Hall of Famer on the side of his salon, finds out about an important connection between the city and the ballplayer:

Burgos had just been told of an all-but-forgotten piece of local baseball lore nailed down by Brian Frank, a baseball historian who founded the Herd Chronicles. On April 25, 1954, in the second game of an International League doubleheader against the Buffalo Bisons at the long-vanished Offermann Stadium, Clemente – then a 19-year-old outfielder with the old Montreal Royals – ripped his first hit of the season.
No one knew it at the time, but it was a gateway moment in baseball history. For the young Clemente, a native of Puerto Rico, it was the first regulation hit on the mainland of his professional career. Thousands more followed as he became one of the greatest players in the game.
BuffaloNews.com

The whole article is well worth your read, especially as this is the 50th anniversary of Clemente’s World Series MVP.

September 8, 2021

Sponge Worthy

Larry Walker is a big Sponge Bob Square Pants fan, and wore a Sponge Bob pin on his lapel at the inductions ceremony today, Wednesday:

His love for the Nickelodeon character is real and everlasting.
The now-iconic shirt Walker wore during his election call will also be immortalized in Cooperstown.
The shirt is on display in the Hall, right next to Joe West’s umpire mask. Did he know wearing that piece of clothing would end up being a part of baseball history when he wore it? Probably not, but having SpongeBob in Cooperstown brings Walker’s adoration for the cartoon character and his Hall of Fame journey full circle.
ESPN.com

I’m a Sponge Bob fan because he made his Krabby Patties with love.