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Let’s talk about his career. What shows up on the back of his baseball card. The flashy columns of data on the Baseball-Reference page.
He was a compiler. That’s the first thing we can say about him. He played an astonishingly long time, and he was good for the entirety of that career. His career batting line is astonishing: the two most memorable benchmarks for a hitter’s greatness are 3000 hits and 500 homeruns. He cleared the bar on both counts. Lou Gehrig and Ted Williams and Babe Ruth and Jimmie Foxx and Mickey Mantle and Mel Ott can’t say that. He can.
Neither of those benchmarks, in isolation, is convincing proof of a player’s greatness. It is possible for a player of average offensive skills to approach 3000 hits: Omar Vizquel collected 2877 hits, but he had a career OPS+ of just 84. By rate, Adam Dunn is the tenth most prolific homerun hitter in baseball history. Ryan Howard is 13th. Juan Gonzalez is 14th. None of these men are considered great players.
But in combination, the two benchmarks are a more telling accomplishment. To hit 500 homeruns and collect 3000 hits suggests a broader range of skills. He is not a pure singles hitter. Nor can he be judged as purely a power hitter.
We’ll throw in another detail: though he had a power-hitter’s tendency to strike out, he also walked a fair amount. He walked about as much as he struck out.
The compiled stats are impressive, but there’s more to the story.
He played a long time, but he was rarely the best at any facet of the game. He led the league in something just four times. Or three times, actually: one of his Black Inks is a tie.
He crossed 500 homeruns, but he never led his league in homeruns all by himself. He collected 3000 hits, but he never led the league in that category. He collected 1600+ runs scored and 1800+ RBI’s, monumental career totals for those categories, but he has just one tic in the Black Ink to show for that.
He was very, very good. But he wasn’t great. He never won an MVP Award, though he appeared on the ballots nine different years.
The newer metrics support this. We consider a season of 30+ Win Shares to be a very good year: he had three 30+ Win Share seasons: 33, 31, and 31. Per 162-games, he averaged 23.4 Win Shares.
Despite this, he amassed an impressive number of career Win Shares. We like to think of 300 Win Shares as one measure of greatness, but 300 ain’t nothing to our guy. He is credited with more than 400 Win Shares.
How about WAR? His best season, according to Baseball-Reference’s WAR, clocks in at 7.1. His next-best year is 6.6. His best year after that is 5.6. Per 162 games, he averaged a WAR of 3.66. But his career WAR is solidly above the 60.0 tally that makes someone a reasonable candidate.
He was a first baseman. You all know that. He didn’t add a tremendous amount of value with his glove, but he did win three Gold Gloves awards. He wasn’t an exceptional runner, but he wasn’t a plodder, either.
That’s what his career looks like. That’s what you’d glean by glancing at the back of his last Topps baseball card, if that card was lucky enough to include WAR and Win Shares on it.
Now: who am I describing?
* * *
Before I continue, I want to talk about consistency.
I don’t want to talk about ‘consistency’ of baseball players in their careers…not Lou Gehrig or Hank Aaron. That is relevant to our discussion, but that’s not what I want to talk about here.
I want to talk about internal consistency. Consistency of thought.
I have two little kids, which means that I spend 97.3% of my day trying to figure out how to keep them alive and fed and in moderately clean clothes, and 2.7% of my day wondering how I’ll help guide them towards becoming the best versions of who they are.
One of the things I struggle with, within that 2.7% component of my parent-life, is maintaining some approximation of consistency with them. All of the manuals you get about kids, all the books and brochures that concerned relatives pass along, stress the importance of consistency: "If you want your child to go to Princeton, you should read bedtime stories in a consistent voice." Or: "When you find your child tossing lit matches at his younger brother, remember that consistent consequences should be doled out to insure that the behavior stops." Stuff like that.
I am terrible at this. For a thousand reasons that are tied directly to who I am, I find it extraordinarily difficult to be consistent. Sometimes, when my three-year old is trying to pull his socks on, I can manage to get myself into a state of Buddha-like patience with his struggle, gently encouraging him to pull the sock over his heel. Most times, after thirty seconds, I end up pulling them on myself. Let’s get out the door, kiddo.
I wish this wasn’t the case. I'm sure that my kids would be better off if I was steadier in my interactions with them. It is something I am working on. I understand deep breathing helps.
Okay. Back to baseball.
* * *
I was describing Rafael Palmeiro, of course. That’s what the headline suggested this article would be about, and that’s what it is about.
Running down the points:
Metric
|
Raffy
|
Games
|
2831
|
Hits
|
3020
|
Homers
|
569
|
RBI's
|
1835
|
Walks
|
1353
|
Strikeouts
|
1348
|
Black Ink
|
3
|
Black Ink Catag*
|
R, H, 2B
|
MVPs
|
0
|
MVP ballots
|
10
|
Career Win Shares
|
430
|
Top-3 Win Shares
|
31, 31, 30
|
WS/162 Games
|
22.6
|
Career WAR
|
71.6
|
Top-3 WAR
|
6.9, 6.2, 5.7
|
WAR/162 Games
|
4.1
|
Position
|
1B
|
Gold Gloves
|
3
|
Stolen Bases
|
97
|
A quick note about the asterisk next to ‘Black Ink’: I was only counting the categories that a fan would recognize as an important indicator. Raffy’s official Black Ink count is eight: Baseball-Reference credits him for leading in putouts (three times) and Total Zone Rating (twice). I didn’t count those. If you think I’m cheating Raffy by not counting those things, I’m not going to talk you off the ledge.
So I’ve described Rafael Palmeiro to you.
By both our website’s reckoning, and the reckoning of the BBWAA voters, this is the profile of a borderline Hall-of-Fame candidate. Raffy remains on our ballot, though he’s not getting a tremendous wellspring of support (19.1% during the last vote). He dropped off the BBWAA ballot last year, collecting just 4.4% of the writer’s vote.
A borderline candidate. That’s who we described.
* * *
Another consistency-of-thought example.
28 BBWAA voters cast votes for the AL MVP in 2012. Of those 28 voters, 27 of them voted Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout as the first- and second-best player in the league.
This struck me, and continues to strike me, as a demonstration of the inconsistency of our thinking.
Let’s say you were one of the voters swayed by Miguel Cabrera’s impressive Triple Crown numbers. Let’s say that you put Miggy first because he posted a .330/.44/139 batting line. Hell, I’ll be generous: let’s say that you put Miggy first because he put up those impressive Triple Crown numbers on a playoff team.
Let’s say you voted for Miggy because a) the traditional stats matter, and b) the MVP should play for a winner. Let’s say that’s your reasoning for putting Cabrera first.
Why did you pick Mike Trout second?
Adrian Beltre had more impressive Triple Crown numbers (.321/36/102) than Trout (.326/30/83), and Adrian Beltre’s team reached the playoffs. So did Josh Hamilton (.285/43/128). So did Robinson Cano (.313/33/94). All of those guys better traditional numbers than Trout, and they all played on better teams than Trout.
And if you were one of the more sabermetrically inclined voters…if you were convinced by Trout’s massive edge in WAR, how come you slotted Miguel Cabrera (7.2 WAR) ahead of Robinson Cane (8.4) and Justin Verlander (7.7)? If you were one of the voters who preferred Mike Trout’s all-round skills to Miguel Cabrera’s one-dimensional slugging, how come all of you guys listed Miggy over higher than Cano (a good second baseman) Adrian Beltre (a great 3B) or Adam Jones (a Gold Glove CF on a playoff team) over Miggy on your ballot?
Why did everyone decide it had to be some ordering of Miggy and Trout? Why didn’t any of the ballots cast reflect a clear line of thinking, one that extended beyond a coin-toss between two players?
The exact same thing happened in 2013: the guys who loved Chris Davis’s impressive power explosion didn’t love it enough to rate him ahead of Trout, and the guys who voted for Trout’s superior WAR still slotted Miguel Cabrera over the more all-round players Josh Donaldson and Robinson Cano.
I don’t mean to slam the voters: if I had a ballot in 2012 or 2013, I’d probably vote for Trout/Miggy, too. I’m only point this out to communicate how difficult it is to be consistent. All of those writers who argued for Trout over Cabrera were consistent, all the way to the second spot in their ballot. The same holds for everyone who supported Cabrera: they stayed true to their beliefs just long enough to write their guy in the #1 slot, and then they caved to the opinions of the WARriors. .
It’s hard to be consistent. Put your socks on, kid, and let’s go.
* * *
So here’s the twist with that description: I wasn’t really describing Raffy in that first section. I was describing Eddie Murray. It just happens that a description of Eddie Murray’s career happens to fit exactly with Rafael Palmeiro’s career:
   
Metric
|
Raffy
|
Ed. Murray
|
Games
|
2831
|
3026
|
H
|
3020
|
3255
|
HR
|
569
|
504
|
RBI's
|
1835
|
1917
|
Walks
|
1353
|
1333
|
Strikeouts
|
1348
|
1516
|
Black Ink
|
3
|
4
|
Black Ink Catag*
|
R, H, 2B
|
HR, RBI, BB, OBP
|
MVPs
|
0
|
0
|
MVP ballots
|
10
|
9
|
Career Win Shares
|
430
|
437
|
Top-3 Win Shares
|
31, 31, 30
|
33, 31, 31
|
WS/162 Games
|
22.6
|
23.4
|
Career WAR
|
71.6
|
68.3
|
Top-3 WAR
|
6.9, 6.2, 5.7
|
7.1, 6.6, 5.6
|
WAR/162 Games
|
4.1
|
3.7
|
Position
|
1B
|
1B
|
Gold Gloves
|
3
|
3
|
Stolen Bases
|
97
|
110
|
There are a few small differences. Win Shares likes Eddie Murray a bit more, while WAR prefers Raffy. Eddie Murray tied for the AL lead in homers in the strike-shortened 1981 season (with BJOL write-in candidates Dwight Evans and Bobby Grich, and unlikely-to-ever-be-a-write-in-candidate Tony Armas). Raffy led in doubles. Eddie Murray didn’t win any MVP’s, but he came closer than Raffy did. On the other hand, Raffy showed up on one more MVP ballot than Eddie, 10 to 9.
But every statistical argument that people cite in not endorsing the candidacy of Rafael Palmeiro is absolutely applicable to Eddie Murray. Both players are compiler: both men amassed extremely impressive career counting stats, including 3000 hits and 500 homeruns, by posting reliably good production over staggeringly long careers. Both men were steady. Both men were steadily good.
* * *
Which gets us to the great elephant in the room. Late in his career, Rafael Palmeiro failed a steroids test. On the central issue of his era, Raffy was on the wrong side of the line. He took steroids. He cheated.
And Eddie Murray, at least by every account I can find, was on the right side of the central drug issue of his era. When the 1980’s drug scandals leaked, the Baltimore Orioles were one of the first teams to encourage testing. Murray, a star on the team, strongly supported testing, and used his position as a leader on the team to push it through.
That’s the difference between them. That is, I will grant, a big difference to some of us. Eddie Murray was good enough to be Eddie Murray. Rafael Palmeiro took performance-enhancing drugs that allowed him to become Eddie Murray.
We have no idea how much the drugs helped: we don’t know if a drug-free Raffy would have been 70% Eddie Murray, or 92% Eddie Murray, or 100% Eddie Murray. We don’t know if Palmeiro started taking drugs when his power spiked, or if he started taking them when his career was winding down, and he started missing fastballs. We’re speculating.
I think that’s fine. Really, I do. Speculate all you want.
But please be consistent with it.
If you are one of the individuals who believes that performance-enhancing drugs made a good career look like a great one, please apply that universally. If you are going to hold off from supporting Rafael Palmeiro, hold off from supporting Tim Raines, who admitted to using cocaine during the games of his peak performance. We don’t know how much cocaine helped Raines, so we can’t really say that he would be a Hall-of-Fame caliber player without the drug. The same hold for Keith Hernandez: he is a borderline player who used a drug that potentially enhanced his performance. Don’t write-in him as a candidate if you’re going to hold your nose at Raffy. Don’t vote for Mark McGwire, either. There is no telling what his career numbers would have looked like with the substances he was buying in bulk at the GNC.
And if you are one of the moral absolutists….if you think any cheater, no matter how good they were, should be kept out, I encourage you to be consistent with that. If you aren’t supporting Barry Bonds or A-Rod or Clemens…well, you shouldn’t crow Willie Mays, either. Or Willie Stargell. Start a campaign to get their plaques off the wall in Cooperstown, because they used performance-enhancing drugs, too.
And if you are a moral absolutist, please don’t make apologies for poor Joe Jackson, who took dough to throw World Series games. And don’t weep for Pete Rose, who gambled on games as he made the calls in the Reds dugout.
Be consistent.
And if you are like me, if you believe that players have always sought competitive advantages, and if you think that the current the spiral of trying to figure out the cheaters from the cheated is useless and damaging, if you want to just vote for the best players and be done with it, then it’s time to acknowledge that Rafael Palmeiro…the man with no MVP’s and three ticks of Black Ink…the man with 3020 hits and 569 homeruns…Rafael Palmeiro the compiler...had a career worthy of the Hall of Fame.
David Fleming is a writer living in Wellington, New Zealand. He welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com.