In a sense, B. J. Surhoff can be seen as an American League Craig Biggio.   He came up with Milwaukee—then an American League team—as a catcher, and hit .299 with 68 RBI as a 22-year-old rookie catcher.  He ran well, stealing 21 bases in 1988.  He continued to catch for several years, but his bat was going backward, he was losing his speed, and he was not an outstanding defensive catcher anyway.  After a really unimpressive season at age 27 it was decided to move him to third base.

             He hit a little better after he stopped catching, eventually moved to left field and DH, and had a fine season in 2000, getting 207 hits including 28 homers.

             I don’t really see the 2 votes going to B. J. Surhoff as being anything unusual, and I don’t see that they call for comment.   Surhoff’s career won-lost contribution (221-227) is essentially the same as Marquis Grissom’s (221-229).   Surhoff and Grissom were both one-for-four on what we could call the Mondesi test, their "one" being that they were well liked.

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Performance at Age 28

            All 36 of the players were still in the majors at the age of 28, and 34 of the 36 were regulars or quasi-regulars, the two exceptions being Lenny Harris, who was never a regular, and Al Leiter, who was still getting his career established.   Not all of them played well, however; Surhoff had a won-lost contribution of 14-17, Carlos Baerga at 11-15, Bobby Higginson, 9-11, Benito Santiago 10-17, and Bret Boone 8-17.  

            Marquis Grissom stole 76 bases in 1991, 78 in 1992, and hit around .300 with 20 homers in his best seasons.   He was a good defensive center fielder and had a long career, but his career OPS, .732, was well below the league average for his era, and below the norm for a center fielder.  He played for very good teams.

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Performance at Age 29

All 36 players were still in the major leagues at the age of 29, but ten of them were battling injuries that reduced their playing time or their effectiveness (those ten being Raul Mondesi, Benito Santiago, Bert Blyleven, Mark McGwire, Carlos Baerga, Larry Walker, Don Mattingly, Ellis Burks, Kevin Brown and B. J. Surhoff.)  Several of those players overcame those injuries, and their best years were still ahead of them; others never did come back.   But the rate of injuries among these players did not increase for several years after age 29, so that the aggregate value of the 36 players was actually higher at age 32 than it was at 29. 

            At the age of 29 three of these players had MVP-quality seasons—John Olerud (28-0), Jeff Bagwell (28-3) and Alan Trammell (27-3).   Trammell probably should have won the MVP Award over George Bell (1987), Olerud hit .354 with 22 homers, but was buried behind the historic slugger’s duel of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and Bagwell finished third in his vote behind Larry Walker and Mike Piazza.   It is my view that Bagwell was probably more valuable than was Walker. 

            Three other players in our group played at an All-Star level at age 29—Tino Martinez, who drove in 141 runs for the Yankees, Edgar Martinez, who hit .343 for Seattle, and Dale Murphy, who played as well at age 29 as he had in his two MVP seasons.

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             It seems like we talk a lot about Lee Smith here at Bill James Online.   He is one of those players whose name always comes up, and it is hard to get it exactly right.

             With a won-lost contribution of 184-93, Lee Smith ranks in Win Shares Value at 230, not far from Marquis Grissom (220), and B. J. Surhoff (218), but whereas Frenchy and Jobbers received less than a handful of votes each, Smith came in at 263.

             In part, of course, this is legitimate.  The WSV formula compares a player to a replacement level of .250, which is unrealistically low.   Compared to .400 replacement level, Smith would be far ahead of Surhoff or Grissom, while compared to a .500 level, Surhoff or Grissom would rank behind you and me; they would have negative scores.  A player with a career winning percentage of .665 is a better Hall of Fame candidate than a sub-.500 player, regardless of how much more playing time the .500 player was able to accumulate.

             We use two minimum standards to consider a player a Hall of Famer:  300 Career Win Shares, or 100 more wins than losses.    Smith is nowhere near 300 Career Win Shares, but he is at +91.

             That said, it is my opinion that Lee Smith is not a good Hall of Fame candidate, and I would not support his election, based on three arguments.   First, modern baseball fans and contemporary baseball media over-rate and over-value the contributions of the bullpen, and this is now being reflected in a rush to induct Closers into the Hall of Fame.   Since 1992 the BBWAA has elected two catchers to the Hall of Fame, two first basemen, two second basemen, two left fielders, two center fielders, one DH—and four Closers.   And, if Lee Smith is the standard of a Hall of Fame closer, then there are several more who will need to be inducted in the next ten years.

             Closers don’t pitch that many innings.  Yes, they do pitch important innings, but in order to project the value of a closer up to the level of the value of a position player, you have to give him a leverage index of 3.5 or 4—in other words, you have to assume that a typical batter/pitcher outcome when a closer is on the mound is 250% to 300% more important than a typical batter/pitcher matchup in another situation.   The problem is, it’s just not true; the innings that are pitched by a closer are not that important.

             When people are asked to emphasize something or de-emphasize something, based on their intuitive judgment, they’re going to mis-position it; I think that’s just a fact.   I think that we are emphasizing bullpens to an extent that exaggerates their real importance, and I think that we are rushing to put Closers into the Hall of Fame based on that exaggerated sense of their importance.   It is my opinion that we need to slow down and think a little bit more carefully about what we are doing.

             One reason that Closers are as dominant as they are, of course, is that they only pitch one inning at a time.   Many closers, like Lee Smith, were failed starting pitchers.   Freed from the responsibility of pitching multiple innings, they are able to come in and throw gas for one inning, and this enables them to be very effective pitchers.

             That’s great—but is that a good reason to put that pitcher in the Hall of Fame?   I’m not sure that it is.   If Gary Bell (1960s starting pitcher, won-lost record of 121-117). . .if Gary Bell had been able to come into the game and throw high heat for one inning at a time, I would predict that he would have been an extremely effective pitcher—but would that have been a good reason to put Gary Bell in the Hall of Fame? 

             If a certain set of players is given an advantage, by the role that they play, we typically adjust for that advantage in evaluating the player.   If a player is allowed to bat an unusual number of times with runners in scoring position, driving up his RBI count, we adjust for that when we evaluate him.   If a home run hitter plays in a home run park, if a pitcher pitches in a pitcher’s park, if a starting pitcher pitches for a team that scores a lot of runs, we adjust for that—but where do we adjust for this?

             Look, Mariano Rivera is a Hall of Famer; I’m not arguing that.   Probably Trevor Hoffman is a Hall of Famer.   Lee Smith is not Mariano Rivera, and he’s not Trevor Hoffman.   Do you really think that, if he had pitched all of his career as a starting pitcher, Mariano Rivera would have a career ERA of 2.23, or Trevor Hoffman an ERA of 2.87?   Maybe a Closer needs to be "centered"—that is, made a .500 pitcher—not at the league ERA, but at 50 points or 100 points less than the league ERA.

             We can’t adjust for this now, because we don’t know enough right now to know how to adjust for it.    We need to think it through.

             Third—my third reason for opposing Lee Smith’s selection to the Hall of Fame—is that I don’t feel that he is the best qualified reliever to go in next, even if we decide to put another relief pitcher in the Hall of Fame (which I don’t really think we should be in any hurry to do.)

             Smith was an interesting player, a very impressive player, and a very good player; a .665 career winning percentage is nothing to be sneezed at, even if that’s not the real figure.  It is my judgment that he does not belong in the Hall of Fame.  

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Performance at Age 30

            The best player in this group, at the age of 30, was Larry Walker in 1997.   Walker hit .366 with 49 homers, 130 RBI.   This was before Bonds and Sosa and McGwire and Luis Gonzalez put up the funny numbers, and those were big, big numbers at the time.   He was aided, of course, by playing in Colorado, but even adjusting for that, Walker was a great player and that was a very good year.

            I consider a Win Share Value of 40 to be an MVP season; players don’t always win at 40, and they sometimes win with figures in the low 20s, but I consider "40" to be equivalent to an MVP season.   The top three 30-year-olds in this group were Larry Walker, 1997 (39), Cecil Cooper, 1980 (38), and Jeff Bagwell, 1998 (37).   Two other players in the group played at an All-Star level at age 30, those two being John Olerud and Rafael Palmeiro.

            All 36 players were still in the majors at the age of 30.   However, ten players in the group were sub-.500 players by age 30 (Don Mattingly, Dave Parker, Ellis Burks, Kirk Rueter, Bret Boone, Marquis Grissom, Charles Johnson, Edgar Martinez, Lenny Harris and Carlos Baerga.) 

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            95% of the voters in the most recent Hall of Fame balloting did not feel that Juan Gonzalez was a Hall of Famer, and for that I would like to congratulate them.   He wasn’t.

            Juan Gonzalez won two MVP Awards, driving in 144 runs in 1996 and 157 in 1998.   He also drove in 140 runs in 2001, 128 runs in 1999, and hit 46 homers with a .310 average in 1993, which I regard as his best season.  Obviously, that’s a good player.

            He was not a legitimate MVP, and he should never have been seriously considered for those awards.   First, he played in 1996 and in 1998 in the best hitter’s park in the American League, which inflated his numbers.   Second, MVP voters have always over-rated RBI, while ignoring the players (like Tim Raines in this group) who create RBI situations.   Gonzalez played in excellent RBI conditions.   Third, what really drives an offense is the on-base percentage.   Gonzalez’ on-base percentages, because he didn’t walk, were not great; they were good, but not great.    And fourth, Gonzalez was not a good defensive player. 

            For reasons that I have never really understood, RBI men do very well in MVP voting, but often do not do as well in Hall of Fame voting.   Boog Powell, George Foster and Steve Garvey did much better in MVP voting, over the course of their careers, than Luis Aparicio, Phil Rizzuto and George Kell; George Bell did better than Wade Boggs.   Albert Belle did better than Rod Carew, and Cecil Fielder did better than Lou Brock.   Gil Hodges did better than Richie Ashburn.

            In general I argue that the MVP voting system was well-designed and works well, while the Hall of Fame system is a rolling train wreck.   In this respect, however, the Hall of Fame voters seem to get it a little better than the MVP voters do.

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Performance at Age 31

            Jeff Bagwell once more had an MVP-type season at age 31, drawing 149 walks while hitting 42 homers, driving in 126 runs.   Barry Larkin also won an MVP Award in the strike-shortened 1995 season; he was 31, and Dale Murphy had his last outstanding season with the Braves at age 31, hitting .295 with 44 homers.   Roberto Alomar also played at an All-Star level at age 31, while pitchers Jack Morris and Kevin Brown both had their best seasons at age 31. 

            I had thought that we might see that whereas Hitting Value peaked at age 26-27, Fielding Value would peak earlier, but this did not happen in this study; these 36 players had their best fielding season at the age of 26, the same as their best hitting season.  However, their fielding ability did fade very, very rapidly after age 28, so that whereas this group of 36 players retained 89% of their peak hitting value at age 32, they retained only 52% of their peak fielding value at the same age, and whereas they retained 65% of their peak hitting value at age 35, they retained only 19% of their peak fielding value by age 35.   This chart gives their aggregate fielding won-lost record by age:

            It is also interesting to note that these 36 Hall of Fame candidates were, in total, merely average fielders, no better than a group of non-Hall of Famers.   They were much better than average fielders as young players, but were below-average fielders by the age of 30, and, as many of them were outstanding hitters whose batting ability kept them in the game until they were near 40, their defensive negatives just piled up and piled up, until in the end they were just average in the field.

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             Tino Martinez was a good left-handed hitter and a very good defensive first baseman—a player in the Don Mattingly mold, not quite as good as the original. 

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Performance at Age 32

            As noted before the aggregate performance of these 36 players rallied at age 32 to its highest level since age 28.   Bret Boone played at a near-MVP level, driving in 141 runs for a Seattle Mariners team that won 116 games; the MVP Award went to his teammate Ichiro Suzuki (Mob Nickname:  Churro).   Nine others in the group played at an All-Star level at age 32:  Cecil Cooper, Barry Larkin, Mark McGwire, Tim Raines, John Olerud, Jeff Bagwell, Kevin Brown, Jack Morris, Al Leiter and Alan Trammell, while Larry Walker hit .379 with power for Colorado, but missed the "All-Star" designation because he was out a month with an injury—and also by that time the numbers in Colorado were crazy with the combination of steroids and thin air, so that you had to hit about .300 to be considered average.

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            Here’s the other thing:  If you want to put another reliever in the Hall of Fame, why would you choose Lee Smith rather than John Franco?   In what way was Lee Smith better than John Franco?   You’ve got contemporary relievers here—Smith 1980-1997, Franco 1984-2005, both of them mostly National Leaguers.   Here’s a stat comparison:

            Why is Smith ahead of Franco?   Because he had more Save opportunities?  Because he was more impressive on the mound?  Because he had more strikeouts?

            Franco has a better ERA, and a better ERA park-adjusted.   RSAA is Runs Saved Against Average, the Lee Sinins stat, and it is park-adjusted.

            Franco, as he aged, slipped into the left-handed short reliever role, and pitched very well in that role for five years, whereas Smith in the same time frame bounced from team to team to remain in the Closer role; basically, he went wherever somebody was desperate for a Closer.   He was a league-average pitcher from ages 34 to 37, but he was a league-average pitcher with 40 Saves a year.   I can’t see how that makes him better than Franco.

            We have crossed the second threshold, by the way.  I presented this chart yesterday—or tried to; it didn’t run too well:

GROUP A

Win Share Value 450 or more

Obvious Hall of Famers

GROUP B

Win Share Value 400 to 449

Obvious Hall of Famers

More-than-Qualified Hall of Famers of a type who are almost universally selected fairly quickly.

GROUP C

Win Share Value 350 to 399

Fully qualified candidates who are presumptive Hall of Famers

unless there is some peculiar reason they should not be.   In general,

I endorse the Hall of Fame candidacy of these players.

GROUP D

Win Share Value 300 to 349

Qualified Hall of Fame candidates of a type that are selected more often than not,

often after a long wait.  In my view there are some players in this range who

are good Hall of Fame candidates, and some who are not.

GROUP E

Win Share Value 250 to 299

Marginal candidates.  

There are many players in this range who are in the Hall of Fame;

there are dozens or hundreds who are not.   In my view, players in this range should in general not be selected to the Hall of Fame, unless there is some unusual reason why they should.

GROUP F

Win Share Value 200 to 249

Fringe candidates.  

There are players like this who have somehow managed to get into the Hall of Fame, because Hall of Fame voting is often not well considered, and there may even be one or two players in this range who should be in.    But in general, players in this range of stature

do not belong in the Hall of Fame.

GROUP G

Win Share Value Less than 200

Players who are not Hall of Famers.

             We have crossed now into group "E", the marginal Hall of Fame candidates.   There are a substantial number of Group-E candidates who ARE in the Hall of Fame, and more are added all the time, but I don’t in general endorse their candidacy. 

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Performance at Age 33

            Our study of 36 players includes 7 pitchers.   At the age of 33 the overall performance of these 36 players began to slip noticeably; beginning at age 33 it goes down every year, and by increasing percentages.   However, the seven pitchers in this group actually had their best years at age 33.   Blyleven at age 33 was 19-7 with a 2.87 ERA—one of his best seasons, his best won-lost record.  Kevin Brown at age 33 was 18-7 with a 2.38 ERA for San Diego.   Jack Morris at age 33 was decent (15-13), and Al Leiter was decent (13-12).   Kirk Rueter at age 33 was fading (9-12, high ERA), but Lee Smith was very good (47 saves, 2.34 ERA), and John Franco at age 33 had 30 saves in a strike-shortened 1994 season .

            Among the hitters, Roberto Alomar remained at something close to an MVP level, hitting .336 for Cleveland with 100 RBI and 113 runs scored.   Seven others were at an All-Star level:  Rafael Palmeiro (43 homers, .296), Kevin Brown, Mark McGwire (58 homers), John Olerud (.300, 102 RBI), Cecil Cooper (203 hits, 30 homers, 126 RBI, .313), Edgar Martinez (.327, 103 RBI), Bert Blyleven and Jeff Bagwell (130 RBI).  

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            I really don’t see Jack Morris as a Hall of Fame pitcher.   He played for very good teams through most of his career; a lot of runs were scored for him, and this made his won-lost records look better than they should have—not that he was a bad pitcher, but that he was good rather than great.   I see him as being a very good pitcher in six seasons:

            In 1985 and 1987 he was better than his won-lost record reflects; in the rest of these seasons his won-lost record is a fair reflection of how he pitched.   But the rest of his career, he was really just another pitcher:

            In these seasons his individual won-lost contribution was 109-132, but, because of the runs that were scored for him, he was credited with a won-lost record of 130-117.

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Performance at Age 34

            There are a lot of power hitters in this group, and at the age of 34 many of the power hitters had good seasons.    Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs, leading the way:

            McGwire was the oldest player in the study to have an MVP-quality season; in fact, after age 34 no player was really close to an MVP level. 

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            There were 33 players on the Hall of Fame ballot this year.   When I was doing this study I decided to include three more players, just because I was interested in them, and they could be on the Hall of Fame ballot, although they’re not.   Those three are Cecil Cooper, Ellis Burks and Lou Whitaker.

            There are players like Cooper who are in the Hall of Fame. …Jim Bottomley, George Kelly, Roger Connor.   If he was in the Hall of Fame he wouldn’t be the worst player in there, but I’m not saying he should go in.

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Performance at Age 35

             By the age of 35 this group of players was in serious decline, having lost 38% of their peak value.   Mark McGwire repeated as the best player in the group, belting 65 more Home Runs, and other players played well, but only three players in the group (McGwire, Martinez and Kevin Brown) played at a true All-Star level at age 35:

             Ellis Burks actually had his best season at age 35; it’s hard to tell because he’s all over the map, but that is his best season, hitting .344 for the Giants.  On the other hand, by the age of 35 five of the 36 players were out of the majors, Juan Gonzalez had only one at bat, Carlos Baerga scored only 6 runs, and Jack Morris and Roberto Alomar had won-lost contributions of 11-18 and 11-19. 

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             Ellis Burks is sort of the second coming of Reggie Smith, a graceful, stylish center fielder who played very well for Boston in 1987-1988, ages 22-23, but had injuries after that that prevented him from reaching his potential.  He later re-surfaced as a good player in the National League, driving in 128 runs for Colorado in 1996—his only hundred-RBI season—and hitting .344 that season and for San Francisco in 2000.   He’s not a Hall of Famer, but there are guys in the Hall of Fame who weren’t any better than he was.

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Performance at Age 36

            By the age of 36 the group of players had lost 51% of their peak value, and no player in the group was truly at an All-Star level at age 36.   The best players in the group were Palmeiro (22-8), Edgar Martinez (19-3) and Jack Morris (18-10).

            This is nine players in today’s group, so we’ll break it off here and resume tomorrow with Dale Murphy.