According to the exit polls, Larry Walker is significantly trending upwards in Hall of Fame voting to the point where he is flirting with election in his final year on the BBWAA ballot. At the very least, if he is not voted in this year, he has made a huge mark in his candidacy and could potentially be voted in a post-BBWAA Hall committee in the not too far future.

For Walker’s case, initially it was thought to be hampered by the "Coors Field effect" as his home/road splits do differ, as expected. But over time, as more analysis has been brought to light, it is now widely accepted that Walker’s overall playing ability was without question exceptional, Coors or no Coors.

Now the major question concerning Walker’s case is his durability and if his missed time was significant.  If elected, Walker’s career plate appearances would be the lowest amount since Mike Piazza who spent his career as a catcher and Kirby Puckett whose career was shortened due to injury by an HBP in the eye. In addition to the low career plate appearances, Walker also averaged a low number of games per season.

In relation to recent inductees who also had a low average number of games per season:   

*Each of these players played during a strike shortened season (1981 or 1994)

Compared to Walker, for their career Carlton Fisk, Barry Larkin, and Edgar Martinez averaged a lower amount of games per season but they averaged more games during their 8-year peak.  As far as peak seasons, Walker has the lowest amount of games per season, lower than catchers Piazza and both Pudges.

But did Walker’s missed time have an impact?  One way to quickly gauge per season impact is black and gray ink. As indicated in Baseball-Reference.com, this method was developed by Bill James to measure how often a player led in a variety of "important" stats. For the black ink test, players accumulate the following points for leading the league in a season in the following categories:

• Four Points for HRs, RBIs, or Batting Average
• Three Points for Rs, Hs, or Slugging Percentage
• Two Points for Doubles, Walks, or Stolen Bases
• One Point for Games, At bats, or Triples

For gray ink, the scoring is exactly the same except you accumulate points for being Top Ten in the league in a season in the same categories.

In Baseball-Reference.com, Larry Walker’s batter similarity scores are to:

1. Duke Snider*
2. Ellis Burks
3. Moises Alou
4. Jim Edmonds
5. Joe DiMaggio*
6. Matt Holiday
7. Johnny Mize*
8. Vladimir Guerrero*
9. Lance Berkman
10. Chuck Klein*

*denotes Hall of Famer

The black and gray ink score for Walker and his similarity score counterparts:

Bold indicates HOF’er

One major thing to note, the black and gray ink tests benefit players from yesteryear (like Snider, DiMaggio, Mize, and Klein) because these players were up against 8 teams per league while more recent players are up against 14-16 teams per league.

Larry Walker’s ink numbers are great and his slash line numbers throughout his career have been outstanding (career .313/.400/.565). But if we are evaluating durability, we would need to look further into counting totals rather than percentages.

For instance, Larry Walker led the league in Batting Average 3 times and was Top Ten, 6 times. However, he never actually led the league in Hits and was Top Ten in Hits only once (second in Hits in 1997, his monster MVP season). In contrast, Tony Gwynn led the league in Batting Average 8 times (Top Ten- 15 times) and correspondingly led the league in Hits 7 times (Top Ten- 12 times).

To evaluate durability and counting stats per season, we can modify the black and gray ink tests, and replace the percentage categories with comparable counting statistics.  In these tests, Hits are already accounted for in the 3-point category, so in place of Batting Average in the 4-point category, we’ll use Times On Base (which is the base statistic for OBP and is now of course accepted as a better  indicator of value than BA and Hits). In place of Slugging Percentage in the 3-point category, we’ll use its base counting statistic Total Bases.

If we focus the similarity group with only the modern players who had significant black and gray ink (higher than 5 and 100, respectively), their modified black and gray ink scores are interesting:

On these modified tests that consider only counting statistics, Walker’s numbers take the biggest hit. On the modified test, Guerrero and Holliday surpass Walker in black ink.  In the modified gray ink test, Holliday and Berkman overtake Walker compared to the original gray ink scores. This slight modification in the black and gray ink tests gives us a rough idea on the significance of the time Walker missed per season and its impact.

Another way to express this is using season averages. If we were to compare Walker’s time with the Expos and the Rockies to the focused non-HOF similar counterparts, along with another corner outfielder currently on the ballot:

*The strike shortened 1994 season was not included

When it comes to Hall voting and the players in this table, Lance Berkman was one and done, and is off the ballot.  Bobby Abreu is currently on the ballot and has 6-7% of the vote on public ballots. Matt Holliday will not be on the ballot until 2024 but based on his career WAR and JAWs numbers, he most likely will not get that much traction.

However, from a per season output perspective, Walker’s average totals are on the lower end comparatively. Yes, Walker produced more per game played, but championships are determined by the season and as BJO contributor Daniel Marks recently stated in an article- "seasons matter".

In 1999, Larry Walker led the league in all triple slash line percentages but played only 127 games. From a WAR perspective he put up a 5.1 season (which would prorate to a 6.5 in a full season).  In contrast, in that same year, Vladimir Guerrero played 160 games and put up a lower WAR season of 4.4.  Their season totals were as follows: 

The point being isn’t whether Vlad is better than Walker or not. The point is that seasons matter as does production per season. Even though Walker produced more per game, Guerrero produced more for the season.  Guerrero’s WAR was lower, but in terms of contribution to the team, a GM or manager may very well prefer to take Guerrero’s full season instead of Walker short season based on stability and dependability.

When it comes to career WAR, two 4.0 half seasons equals a 8.0 win full season. However in reality, two half seasons do not equal a whole season. I believe most GMs would rather have their best player hit 140 RBIs for 7 seasons versus a player that hit 70 RBIs for 14 half-seasons. For Walker, he compiled a great deal of WAR during his less than full seasons. To complement his outstanding 1997 MVP full season, Walker has 11 seasons in which he played in 1463 games and amassed 55.1 WAR. That’s an average of 133 games per season with 5.0 WAR, which is outstanding, but the negative side is that he only averaged 82% of games played for over a decade.

In contrast if that same output was performed in 10 seasons, the career WAR numbers would be the same, but he would’ve averaged 146 games with 5.5 WAR per season.  This would be an average of 90% of games played per season and a more significant contribution to his teams. In 10 seasons versus 11 seasons, his per season performance would be more impactful but this is not conveyed in reviewing career WAR totals solely.   

And lastly, as far as counting statistics, another different perspective is to review a player’s rank in these slash line categories for their career. For instance, Carl Yastrzemski played from 1961 to 1983.  From 1961 to 1983 he was second in Hits, second in Times On Base, and first in Total Bases.  It is expected he will rank high in these categories as the years are filtered specifically for the length of his career. This method does not penalize for the player’s length of career because it is custom fit. If we do the same for Kirby Puckett, who played from 1984 to 1995, he was first in Hits, fourth in Times On Base, and first in Total Bases.  

Willie Stargell is a player that is often referenced when discussing Walker’s candidacy due to his low amount of games played per season.  For Pops (1962 to 1982), he was 12^th in Hits, 11^th in Times On Base, and 7^th in Total Bases (3^rd in Home Runs with 475).

Now for perspective, if we use this method on the current borderline candidates on this year’s ballot:

*For Home Runs, Walker ranked 15^th with 383

Andruw Jones and Scott Rolen were not included in this breakdown because a large part of their candidacy relies on their defensive performance (Career dWAR 24.4 and 21.2, respectively).  Walker was terrific defensively as well but not on the same level as these two players (Walker’s Career dWAR is 2.0).  Walker’s candidacy is primarily based on his offensive production and on this list, he is the only one of these borderline candidates that did not to crack the Top Ten in any of the triple slash line categories.  The other players were Top Five in at least one of the categories (former teammate Todd Helton was Top Five in all three).   

When Walker played, he was absolutely magnificent and undoubtedly an amazing talent.  However, when it comes to Hall voting, the question should be if he had a Hall of Fame career. Thanks for reading.

Thanks to Ryan Thibodaux and his team for all of the HOF tracking work. All source data and information was obtained from Baseball-Reference.com.  The Times On Base data listed is TOB w/ ROE.