By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2017/07/30/bags-the-rock-and-pudge-roll-to-cooperstown-today/
Nothing worked against Jeff Bagwell and Ivan Rodriguez but innuendo and, in Bagwell’s case, one or two overcrowded
ballots. They step into the Hall of Fame today, hand in hand with Tim Raines, two representing the triumph of evidence
over innuendo and one representing the triumph of analysis over emotion.
Neither Bagwell nor Rodriguez were ever proven to have used actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances.
Bagwell chose not to address the issue in any form, at any level, until after his playing career ended; Rodriguez slapped
Jose Canseco back down convincingly in his own book,
They Call Me Pudge.
I-Rod enters the Hall of Fame as a first-ballot election, the second catcher after Johnny Bench to achieve it; Bagwell
had to wait as long as Jacob did to be allowed to marry Rachel. Raines, who once overcame a cocaine addiction (and
went to his team’s front office for help, without waiting for an arrest or a show trial to get it), waited a decade for
the Baseball Writers Association of America to acknowledge what we stat geeks knew since Bill James at maximum
and Allen Barra (in
Clearing the Bases) at minimum.
Bagwell averages 150 on the Bill James Hall of Fame batting monitor (average Hall of Famer: 100) and meets 59
of James’s Hall of Fame batting standards. (Average Hall of Famer: 50.) He wasn’t one of the greats with a glove
at first base, but neither was Lou Gehrig. He produced 219 runs per 162 games lifetime and 8.2 runs created per
27 outs lifetime, and that was playing the bulk of his career in, ahem, a park (the Astrodome) that normally ate
hitters for three squares a day.
His shoulder began betraying him in 2005, and he acknowledged in due course that the blame belonged to him:
he’d taken up weight lifting earlier in his career but took it too far (Noah Syndergaard, take notes): the practise
invigorated him so much that he lost track of lifting strictly for baseball and lifted like a bodybuilder, compromising
his shoulder and probably keeping him from reaching 500 home runs or even 3,000 hits.
Bagwell also proved you could hit like hell using Von Hayes’s batting stance or a reasonable facsimile, spreading
his feet to either end of the batter’s box and squatting as if inching his way into a hot bath without incurring third
degree burns on his tail. Tim Salmon had a nice career with the same stance but he wasn’t half the player Bagwell
was.
Like Bert Blyleven on the mound, Raines needed the James/Barra crowd for his Hall of Fame case to convince at
long enough last. Barra audaciously lined up Raines’s fifteen best seasons to those of a certain Cooperstown ineligible
with the same skill set—an early-in-the-order switch hitter with a little power who could extort his way on base.
The conclusion: In their fifteen best seasons Raines took 204 fewer games to reach base 34 more times and produce
9.3 more runs per season than it took Pete Rose.
Barra marshaled as much of the data as he could and concluded further that Raines’s perception in the public eye
was probably compromised by having quite a few less impressive teammates than had Rose in his best seasons.
So if perception means something to Hall of Fame voters, and it does, that distinction made it more difficult to see
Raines’s actual greatness than to have seen Rose’s, and Rose may well be a statistically overrated player.
And that’s not accounting for Raines’s superiority in taking extra bases once he reached base. Deep analysis tells
you Raines went first-to-third, second-to-home, and even first-to-home on followup hits more often than Rose did
and thus accounted for who knew how many extra runs.
Without a glaring statistical bench mark by which to go it was harder to see Raines being as great as he really was,
but if looking deeper is a crime then we should all aspire to be guilty and serve our sentence without complaint.
You don’t need to compare him strictly to Rose to make his Hall of Fame case, of course—in fact, with a mere 62
games difference between their careers, Raines reached base more often and scored more runs than Tony Gwynn
—but if you go by wins above a replacement-level player Raines was worth four more than the average Hall of Fame
left fielder.
It’s probably fair to surmise people remember Rodriguez for three things: 1) Appropriating Carlton Fisk’s nickname;
2) holding the ball as J.T. Snow plowed him at the plate to secure the win sending the 2003 Marlins to the World Series;
and, 3) being somewhat better behind the plate than he really was.
No, we’re not saying I-Rod was a schlump with what they used to call the tools of ignorance. He was terrific at killing
baserunners, to the tune of 46 percent lifetime, well above the major league average. Planning a life of crime on the
bases wasn’t a great idea with him behind the plate.
The bad news is that the pitchers who threw to him saddled him with a catcher’s 4.59 earned run average, 25 points
higher than the league averages for his career. Of course, in one way it’s unfair to him: Rodriguez rarely had great
pitching staffs to work with. If one way to judge a catcher is whether he improves his pitching staffs, it’s more fair
to say of him that he did what he could with what he had.
But 4.59 behind the plate isn’t Yogi Berra, whose record includes that the pitchers who threw to him when he was
the Yankees’ full time catcher (and who weren’t named Whitey Ford, the only bona fide Hall of Fame pitcher he ever
got to work with as a full-time regular catcher) pitched better than at any other time in their careers, including those
times when they threw to other Yankee catchers.
And it’s not Johnny Bench, whose record in the same criteria wasn’t as good as Yogi’s but should have been better.
The issue compromising Bench in that department: Cincinnati pitching staffs in Bench’s career and just before and
after were dogged by injuries.
Rodriguez’s Cooperstown case favours his hitting, and in his time he was just about the best hitting catcher who
wasn’t named Mike Piazza. In his peak seasons he posted very impressive on-base percentages for a chunky guy
who made his living behind the plate. He might have hung in a little too long, hurting his career percentages, but
he did hit 311 lifetime home runs.
He meets 58 of the Bill James Hall of Fame batting standards, eight above the average Hall of Famer; he scores
a whopping 226 on the Bill James Hall of Fame batting monitor—126 above the average Hall of Famer. His 68.4
WAR are third lifetime among catchers and about 16 above the average Hall of Fame catcher.
One of the real surprises in I-Rod’s record: He has no significant black ink at the plate. He never led his league
in any offensive category while leading in a few defensive ones, especially when it came to killing baserunners.
One that stands out: he led his league twice among catchers turning double plays; he finished top ten in that
category eleven times.
It doesn’t mean he was quite as good all-around as Berra, Bench, or Gary Carter. But he was a better all-around
catcher than Piazza, Bill Dickey, and Mickey Cochrane, and he was at least as good all-around as Carlton Fisk and
Roy Campanella. He won one World Series ring and probably deserved more; he’s maybe the fourth best all-
around catcher ever to play the game.
Neither Rodriguez nor Bagwell were named in the infamous Mitchell Report, charged formally or disciplined by
baseball government, or caught failing any drug test to which they were subject. So show real evidence against
them or put a sock in it.
But now that you’re a Hall of Famer, I-Rod, return Carlton Fisk’s nickname
now.
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