(Voting is underway for this year’s BJOL HOF. The full ballot is here. Feel free to cast your votes in the comments section there. We’ll announce the entrants in early January.)
When I saw Frank Thomas’s name on this year’s Hall-of-Fame ballot, I had an automatic response: yes. Of course. Frank Thomas, The Big Hurt, the two-time A.L. MVP, the best pure hitter of his generation, yes. Absolutely.
I imagine that I’m not alone in this reaction. Just looking over the first thirty or so ballots that BJOL readers have submitted for our offshoot version of the BBWAA vote, I saw that only one reader didn’t vote for Thomas. That reader – rgregory - has a policy of not voting for any first-year players. No one, so far, has left Frank Thomas off their ballot because they think he’s not a Hall-of-Fame player.
Which makes sense, because Frank Thomas was a legitimately great player.
More than that, Frank Thomas was a famous player: a place-marker in the history of the game. Thomas, more than any other player, embodied baseball’s transition from the eclectic eighties, to the slugging 1990’s. That was going to be his decade, his and Junior Griffey’s.
For seven years, Thomas hit like the second coming of Jimmie Foxx. During his first seven full seasons in the majors, Thomas crossed the century mark in runs scored, runs batted in, and walks every year. He hit better than .300 every year. He hit 30+ HR’s every year except one. And he wasn’t just crossing over those lines…he hit 46 homers one year. He posted batting averages of .353 and .349 and .343. He drove in 134 runs, and 128. He walked more than anyone since Ted Williams.
Here’s a typical Frank Thomas batting line:
106 Runs, 38 HR, 101 RBI, 109 BB, .353 BA, .487 OBP, .729 OPS.
Pretty good, right? That’s a Hall-of-Fame season.
That was in 1994. Strike-shortened 1994. He played 113 games.
When I saw his name on the Hall-of-Fame ballot, I didn’t needto go look at his career statistics to see whether or not Frank Thomas was a qualified candidate. I just knew it. In the same way that you know it.
* * *
A brief interlude, for some Shakespeare….
Two players, both alike in uniform.
In fair Boston, where they made their names.
One a slugger Mississippi born,
The other who viewed walks as gains.
From voters writerly the die was cast,
A pair of teammates stood in review.
Their career numbers viewed at last,
One got lots of votes, the other only a few.
* * *
Alright…Rafael Palmiero.
I followed Rafael Palmiero’s early career closely, more closely than I followed Frank Thomas. I was really into baseball cards around the time that Palmeiro broke into the majors. I’m sure I’ve told this already, but my brother and I had a system about our collecting: we’d try to find underrated players, and stock up on their cards. Somewhere, I have a bunch of cards of Julio Franco and Glenn Davis and Dave Smith and Joe Carter cards sitting in boxes, waiting to come into their value.
(They weren’t all busts. Nolan Ryan was probably the first players we collected obsessively, a couple years before he was traded to the Rangers, threw two no-hitters, and went from ‘borderline candidate’ to ‘legend.’ I have a lot of Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine cards, too. We did well with the starting pitchers.)
Raffy was one of the guys we targeted: his rookie card (1987 Donruss) was dirt-cheap. I think it was listed at $5 in the first Beckett Baseball Card Monthly guide I ever bought. I think it was still listed at $5 ten years later.
Palmeiro, in his early career, was a lot like Mark Grace: a first baseman with middle-level power and a decent batting average. Grace came up a couple years after Palmeiro, which made it easier for the Cubs to deal Palmeiro away. They shipped Raffy and Jamie Moyer to Texas for Mitch Williams. This was not one of the more commendable trades, in retrospect.
I remember caring a great deal about the 1990 and 1991 batting title races. In 1990, a resurgent George Brett held off Rickey Henderson and Rafael Palmeiro, the only three AL hitters to post batting averages better than .304. In 1991, the great Julio beat out Wade Boggs for the crown. Raffy finished seventh.
Those years were when Raffy first seemed to ‘blip’ onto baseball’s radar screen. I think the average baseball fan knew two things about Palmeiro:
1) He played college baseball with Will Clark, and,
2) He had a good batting average.
His last year in Texas was his breakout performance: after consecutive seasons with 26 and 22 homers, he hit 37. He collection 100+ RBI’s for the first time in his career, and led the league in runs scored. He was 22-for-25 on stolen base attempts.
A free agent, Palmeiro signed a five-year contract with Baltimore, for a sizeable chunk of money. This must count as one of the best big-moneyfree-agent contracts any team has given a player. Palmeiro was steadily great: he hit .319 with 23 homers in strike-shortened 1994. He hit 39 homers in 1995 and 1996, dropped to 38 in 1997, and then went up to 43 in 1998. In five years in Baltimore, he hit 182 homers and drove in 553 runs, while posting an OPS of .916.
He hit free agency again, and the Rangers, being a sentimental team, offered him another big-money contract if he returned to Arlington: five years, for somewhere in the vicinity of $9 million per year.
Palmeiro was approaching his Age-34 season…while the Orioles were lucky to sign Palmeiro at the apex of his ability, any knowledgeable person would concede that the Rangers were buying in on a declining commodity. Having earned his first big-money contract, it wasn’t a sure thing that he’d make good on the second one.
But…he did make good on it. He signed two five-year contracts for megabucks, and played excellent baseball every single year of those contracts.
His first year back in Texas, he hit .324, with 47 HR and 148 RBI’s….those are numbers that will have people talking Triple Crown. He followed that with 39 homers. Then 47. Then 43 and 38. Over his second five-year contract, Palmeiro hit 214 homers, drove in 608 runs, and posted an OPS of .956.
These superlative seasons were sort of lost in the mist, as a lot of players were having big, epic seasons with the bat. Palmeiro hit 396 homeruns over that ten year stretch, but he never won a HR title. He drove in 1196 runs, but never led in RBI’s. During his peak offensive seasons, Palmeiro led the league in nothing…his only black-ink comes in 1990 (hits), 1991 (doubles), and 1992 (runs scored).
Palmeiro still made a blip on the baseball radar. He was now known for four things:
1) He played college ball with Will Clark.
2) Teams kept swapping him for Will Clark.
3) He was a good hitter, and,
4) He won a Gold Glove as a DH.
One of the reasons for Palmeiro’s late success was his improve discipline at the plate. In his twenties, Palmeiro walked in 8.9% of his plate appearances. In his thirties, he walked in 12.9% of his plate appearances. He aged well: he became increasingly selective at the plate, which helped him stay a consistently good hitter well past his peak.
He finished his career with an insanely improbably batting line: 3020 hits, 1663 runs scored, 569 homeruns, 1835 RBI’s, and a .288 batting average. He walked more times than he struck out. He ranks in the top-25 in career hits (25th) total bases (11th), doubles (17th), homeruns (12th), RBI (16th), extra-base hits (7th), and Runs Created (18th).
* * *
While my reaction to Frank Thomas’s name on this year’s BJOL ballot was an emphatic ‘yes,’ my thinking on Rafael Palmeiro’s candidacy has been significantly more muddled.
It’s with that in mind that I’ll present what I think is the single most startling comparison on this year’s BJOL ballot:
Player
|
Win Shares
|
rWAR
|
fWAR
|
Frank Thomas
|
405
|
73.6
|
72.4
|
Rafael Palmeiro
|
394
|
71.8
|
70.0
|
These are three ‘all-encompassing’ measures: statistics that attempts to boil everything a player has done into one metric. All three metrics have different weights and balances, but they come to the exact same conclusion: Frank Thomas and Rafael Palmeiro had comparable value over their careers.
They’re not exactly comparable, of course. Frank Thomas accumulated his value in 2000 fewer plate appearances, the equivalent of about 3.5 seasons. All of the metrics agree that the Big Hurt was a better player than Palmeiro: Thomas had bigger seasons, and added value to his teams. Each player’s five best seasons, according to Win Shares:
Thomas
|
Palmeiro
|
39
|
31
|
34
|
31
|
34
|
30
|
33
|
26
|
32
|
25
|
And rWAR:
Thomas
|
Palmeiro
|
7.3
|
6.9
|
7.0
|
6.3
|
6.9
|
5.7
|
6.3
|
5.5
|
6.2
|
5.3
|
Thomas is the better player. But…Rafael Palmeiro was very, very good. He had fewer great seasons than Thomas, but he had more good seasons than Thomas. His career value, across all three of the advanced metrics, suggest that they’re in the universe as players, if not the same solar system.
So what gives? Why was I so convinced of Frank Thomas’s candidacy, and so ambivalent about Rafael Palmeiro?
* * *
Getting back to that Shakespeare….you probably guessed that the characters in our tragedy were Jim Rice and Dwight Evans, two teammates with comparable batting lines, but very different results from the BBWAA voters.
Here are their traditional numbers:
Player
|
AB
|
R
|
HR
|
RBI
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
OPS+
|
WAR
|
Rice
|
8225
|
1249
|
382
|
1451
|
.298
|
.353
|
.502
|
128
|
47.2
|
Evans
|
8996
|
1470
|
372
|
1384
|
.272
|
.370
|
.470
|
127
|
66.7
|
These are very comparable players. Rice has a better batting average, and the better slugging percentage. But Evans makes up ground because he walked a lot more than Rice, and grounded into fewer double plays. Rice drove in more runs, but Evans scored more runs. Evans was an excellent defensive outfielder, playing a difficult right field. Rice was a competent defensive player, who covered the smallest left field in the majors. They played on the same team, over similar years….there are no park effects that tilt the numbers unfairly.
Jim Rice appeared on the ballot in 1995, getting 29.9% of the vote. That number increased steadily: he crossed over 50% in 2000, and was elected to the Hall in 2009.
Dwight Evans appeared on the ballot in 1997, getting 5.9% of the vote. He received 10.4% of the vote. Then he received 3.6% of the vote, falling off the ballot. He received fewer votes from the BBWAA in three years on the ballot than Jim Rice received in his first year.
So how come the BBWAA elected Rice, and dropped Evans from the ballot?
Simple: first impression bias.
Jim Rice, as rookie, finished third in the AL MVP vote in 1975. He hit .309 on the year, with 22 homers and 102 RBI’s. Two years later, in 1977, Rice hit .320, and won the AL HR title. A year after that he won the MVP. He had a monster year in 1978: 46 homers, 139 RBI’s, .315 BA. He won two legs of the Triple Crown. He tallied 406 total bases, which was the first time anyone had crossed 400 since DiMaggio, if my memory of old baseball cards holds up. A year after that Rice won his third consecutive homerun title, again with 39. He hit .325, drove in 130 runs and scored 117. He finished fifth in the AL MVP vote.
When Jim Rice appeared on the Hall-of-Fame ballot, that’s what people who saw him play remembered. He was a hitter: he was feared. There wasn’t a question of whether or not he was a Hall-of-Famer….there was only the question of what the final line on his plaque would look like.
Dwight Evans, as a rookie, didn’t set the world on fire. His first year in the majors, Evans hit .223 with 10 homeruns. Let’s just put that alongside Rice:
Player
|
BA
|
HR
|
RBI
|
Evans
|
.223
|
10
|
32
|
Rice
|
.309
|
22
|
102
|
Yeah, it’s underwhelming. Evans was better as a second year player: he was actually quietly excellent. While he posted a not-too-inspiring batting line of .281/10/78, he had a great defensive season: Total Zone Rating rates Evans’ 1974 and 1975 seasons as two of the twenty best defensive seasons by any right fielder over the last half century.
That was the book on Evans: an elite defensive right fielder, but a bottom-of-the-order bat. That perception of Evans didn’t change until 1981, Dewey’s tenth season in the majors. Suddenly, he became one of the elite hitters in baseball, leading the AL in walks and homeruns, and finishing third in the AL MVP vote.
He was, with the exception of a dismal 1983 season, an excellent player for the next nine years….from 1981 to 1989. His average season over that nine-year stretch was:
Years
|
G
|
R
|
HR
|
RBI
|
BB
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
OPS+
|
1981-1989
|
146
|
98
|
26
|
93
|
95
|
.281
|
.388
|
.498
|
139
|
Evans, like a few players, had his peak years in his thirties. This caused him to be underrated, even when set against a teammate and direct contemporary, like Jim Rice.
* * *
One of Bill’s lines about the Hall of Fame is that our rememberance player’s personality fades over time: when it comes down to getting elected to the Hall-of-Fame, the jerk draw even with the saints. Jim Palmer was a charismatic guy who gave good interviews. Steve Carlton never talked to the press. Guess which one got more votes from the BBWAA voters.
Carlton. The guy with fewer friends, and more wins.
But whereas our remembering of a player’s personality fades, our perception of the quality of that player lasts. And that perception is significantly shaped by how a player does in his early years: by the success that player had as the baseball-watching public starts to take note of them.
* * *
Here are the batting lines of Frank Thomas and Rafael Palmeiro in their twenties, converted to an 162- game season:
Player
|
Years
|
PA
|
R
|
H
|
HR
|
RBI
|
BB
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
OPS+
|
WAR
|
Thomas
|
90-'97
|
724
|
119
|
191
|
39
|
129
|
110
|
.330
|
.452
|
.600
|
182
|
7.1
|
Raffy
|
‘86-'94
|
677
|
94
|
180
|
22
|
85
|
61
|
.298
|
.364
|
.480
|
131
|
4.3
|
These are incomparable players. Frank Thomas is a perennial MVP candidate. Rafael Palmeiro is a very good player: an All-Star level player.
Here they are in their thirties, again converted to 162-game seasons:
Player
|
Years
|
PA
|
R
|
H
|
HR
|
RBI
|
BB
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
OPS+
|
WAR
|
Thomas
|
98-'08
|
688
|
93
|
157
|
35
|
111
|
103
|
.276
|
.389
|
.515
|
134
|
3.5
|
Raffy
|
95-'05
|
700
|
97
|
169
|
41
|
120
|
90
|
.282
|
.375
|
.539
|
133
|
4.1
|
Frank Thomas declines…his production essentially halved when he hit his thirties. But Rafael Palmeiro’s production stays at the same level….he continues to play like an All-Star.
Looking at their Win Shares:
Age
|
Thomas
|
Raffy
|
21
|
n/a
|
1
|
22
|
13
|
7
|
23
|
34
|
17
|
24
|
33
|
17
|
25
|
32
|
22
|
26
|
25
|
26
|
27
|
28
|
24
|
28
|
28
|
31
|
29
|
39
|
17
|
Total
|
232
|
162
|
In their twenties, Frank Thomas outpaces Palmeiro comfortably, netting 232 Win Shares to Raffy’s 162. In their thirties, this flips:
Age
|
Thomas
|
Raffy
|
30
|
25
|
21
|
31
|
16
|
30
|
32
|
34
|
18
|
33
|
1
|
24
|
34
|
16
|
31
|
35
|
23
|
23
|
36
|
12
|
25
|
37
|
3
|
18
|
38
|
21
|
19
|
39
|
17
|
12
|
40
|
5
|
11
|
Total
|
173
|
232
|
Over the second-half of their careers, Palmeiro makes up ground on Thomas. Again, I don’t want to mislead you into thinking they are directly comparable: Frank Thomas nets his 232 Win Shares in a little over seven seasons. Raffy gets his 232 Win Shares over ten full seasons. Frank Thomas certainly had more impactful seasons: it is only their career value that is directly similar.
* * *
Frank Thomas is a Hall-of-Famer. My perception of his career is accurate: he was a truly great player for the first half of his career, and a useful player for the second half.
I’ve completely missed, until now, just how good of a career Rafael Palmeiro had. I missed it because his peak wasn’t nearly as brilliant as Thomas’s, and because that peak happened later in his career, when I had already concluded that Palmeiro wasn’t great.
Frank Thomas came to the majors as a great player. So did Jim Rice.
Rafael Palmeiro came to the majors, and gradually became a great player. So did Dwight Evans.
Palmeiro gets, finally, my vote.
Dave Fleming is a writer living in Wellington, New Zealand. He welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com.