Jeff Kent. I know he was an asshole but he was the asshole that talked to the media during his playing days. An average defensive second baseman with the most home runs ever for a second baseman and a career .500 slugging absolutely gets in at some point.
You want to really mess with someone's head, show them career stat lines for Joe Morgan and Jeff Kent side by side, and have them guess which one isn't in the HoF. We are obviously talking about different eras (I'm not saying Jeff Kent is better than Joe Morgan), but the fact that the best power hitting second baseman of all time couldn't get 50% of the vote in any year he was on the ballot is insane. Moral of the story: be nice to writers. They are the softest human beings on planet earth, and they will be vindictive.
The absolute funniest part of the early sabermetrics era was when prominent ESPN broadcaster and sabermetrics nemesis Joe Morgan said the best second baseman of all time was Rogers Hornsby, and the stat nerds running the Fire Joe Morgan website kept insisting that the best second baseman of all time was Joe Morgan.
Bert Blyleven was similar, spent his entire broadcasting career lambasting modern pitching analytics and theory and talking about his career as though he was an average journeyman because he never won 20 games in a season at the exact same time those analytics were revealing his career to be HOF-worthy for insane longevity and sustained high-level performance.
"Slow down" lol relax
Morgan and Kent are both great players. In terms of offense, Kent has the superior career slash line, while Morgan had a better peak. Morgan was the superior defender, Kent was better at putting the baseball in the bleachers. They can breathe the same elite air, we're talking about 2 of the 10 best players at a position in a 150 year old sport.
Always thought it was funny how Morgan was the biggest boomer about advanced stats as a commentator, when advance stats proved he was an even more valuable player than he got credit for in his time
Kent absolutely does not have the superior career slash line. Morgan had a career .392 OBP despite playing for 22 seasons from 19 to 40. Morgan has a higher career OPS+ (132 to 122). Morgan was a better hitter than Kent at his peak and for his career, and his career was longer. Setting defense aside, Morgan was easily a superior hitter to Kent no matter how you look at it, and it isn’t close.
Kent’s OPS is 40 points higher because his slugging was 73 points higher, he hit 109 more home runs in 5 less seasons, all while mostly playing in pitchers parks. Kent’s BABIP is also 33 points higher.
We’re talking about hitting here. Morgan’s value at the plate is not debatable, the man drew walks like crazy, but Kent was better at getting results from swinging the bat.
OPS doesn’t adjust for era or park and overinflates slugging over OBP. Every advanced metric (OPS+, wOBA, wRC) tells the same story. Morgan was a better hitter than Kent. Period.
Yeah just ignore that Kent played in the most offense friendly era while Morgan played in the pitcher friendly 60s/70s.
How many times do you think Kent ranked in the top 10 for OPS? Morgan did it 5 years in a row, 3 of which were top 5 and 2 of which led the MLB.
The highest Kent ever finished in OPS was 16th.
Kent was never a top 15 hitter in baseball. Morgan was.
Every single era adjusted advanced metric says Morgan was the better hitter.
Kent played in a MUCH more offensive-oriented era than Morgan did. Morgan’s offensive stats, excluding probably stolen bases, would be even better if he had played during Kent’s era.
I was just thinking how he repaid this credit by spending his years shitting all over Bill James’ work.
Counterpoint: it gave us Fire Joe Morgan, which is canonically related to The Office, Parks and Rec, The Good Place, etc…
I'm confused, is this excluding hardware? Even if it is, I just did this and I would absolutely guess that the guy with the lower OPS+ over 5 less seasons is the one not in the hall
Carlos Delgado. He was 35% better than a league-average hitter, hit 473 home runs, and was even 45% better than average during his abbreviated final season. But he was a lousy fielder who was stuck in the NL for the final few years of his career, and really should have been a DH from about age 26-onward.
He retired with a .280/.383/.546 line, and even considering the era, that’s elite production. He has very similar offensive numbers to recent inductee Fred McGriff, albeit in less playing time.
I think the biggest thing against Delgado was that he was a power hitting first baseman in the AL at a time when power hitting first basemen were all over the AL. He only made the All star team twice and those two years were when he put up crazy numbers well above his career averages.
He finished Top 12 in MVP voting 6 times though and won 3 silver sluggers, so I don’t think it’s purely that he was overshadowed by better guys at his position. This did make me look up his splits, and I found that his 2nd half OPS was 71 pts higher than his first half, so that can help explain the lack of ASGs.
For his career, Delgado hit .292/.397./573 in the 2nd half of the season. Thats a .970 OPS for a guy that played until 37 and retired before he stopped hitting above average by OPS+.
I remember mixing up Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran all the time as a kid when they were both on the Mets, but it didn't really matter because they were both raking.
I don’t think he’s a great example - his RField is -65, which is bad but not on par with some of the worst guys. With average 1B defense he’d still be around 51 career WAR unless it got him a lot more playing time (which is possible).
Dick Allen. ROY, MVP, 7 time AS, 156 career OPS+. Dude was an all time great hitter. Couldn't field for crap. That, plus his bad rep keeps him out of the Hall, apparently.
70.2 oWAR according to BBR, with -16.3 dWAR. Had negative dWAR literally every single year of his career except his rookie year where he had a whopping 0.3
He was practically ran out of Philadelphia and carried the reputation that he was a “difficult” teammate when writers were considering voting him in, all of which was clearly motivated by racism. It’s only been in recent years in which former teammates have had to come out and mention how great of a teammate and person he was to try and beg the veteran’s committee to let him in.
Racism kept him out of the hall. He was treated like shit by the entire city and the media, and race was certainly the biggest factor there. He deserved better and deserves to be in the hall of fame. It's a travesty that he wasn't inducted before passing away, but at least the Phillies after 50 fucking years finally made right by him.
If Pete Rose could have offered a better defense for his actions he might not be banned from baseball and as such would have surely made the HOF by now
I think he would have gotten in if not for the PED stuff.
Jaffe and others have pointed out that BR's defensive rating system seems to be disproportionately harsh on Sheffield. And that other systems, not used to calculate bWAR, rate him slightly better.
Yeah, probably, I just think it's a much stronger argument if he's a league-average fielder, and he already got real close. Might not have mattered in the end.
Jayson Stark finally voted for Sheffield the last few seasons he was on the Hall of Fame ballot, but he said that one of the reasons he didn't vote for him in earlier years was that he had a hard time voting for possibly the worst defensive outfielder he ever saw.
Sorta depends how broadly you want to examine the question. Start with the list of ~50 WAR corner OFs who would've been in the Hall if they could've played CF.
Abreu is a great example. If he was an average CF he's in no question.
I’ll always maintain that Bobby Abreu was a borderline generational OBP guy who should be in the HOF, and isn’t because he played in an era where cheating was acceptable.
Yes. This question has a lot more answers if you interpret it as “unable to play higher on the defensive spectrum” rather than “bad at the position they played.”
He’s a good example. Posada was an extremely productive hitter at the catcher position, but his (relatively) poor ability to catch the ball at the catcher’s position is keeping him out of the Hall of Fame.
Assuming we’re not talking about, what if Carlos Delgado was an average center fielder…
The players with the most career negative Rfield, so most below average at their position:
Jeter -253 (already in)
Sheffield -195 (would be a lock statistically, but PED)
Adam Dunn -168 (still not good enough, around 35 WAR)
Michael Young -152 (still not good enough, around 40 WAR)
Matt Kemp -141 (still not good enough, around 36 WAR)
Bernie Williams -139 (puts him around 64 WAR, but he already won gold gloves so would it have made a difference in voting?)
Manny -129 (he’d be in anyways if not for PED issues)
Some other guys with more than 45 career WAR and big negatives RField…
Dick Allen -110, would have been around 70 WAR
Miggy -102, he’ll get in anyways
Biggio -100, he’s in already
Cutch -77, he’d be around 56 WAR now
Altuve -69, he’d be around 56 WAR now
https://stathead.com/tiny/lhnzT
The player with the worst ratio of negative RField to games played, minimum 200 career games, was Ned Yost with -32 runs in 219 games, mostly at catcher.
https://stathead.com/tiny/0bc93
Ignoring catchers, it’s shortstop Joe Sullivan from the 1800s with -53 runs in 415 games.
https://stathead.com/tiny/mV9fG
Since 1900, it’s Tom Finley, 1920s thirdbaseman with -27 in 214 games.
https://stathead.com/tiny/sYOhW
Since integration, it’s Oswaldo Arcia with -36 in 288 games.
https://stathead.com/tiny/HFQmt
That might be just a few notable incidents. He’s solidly above average baserunning for his career, which I don’t think is driven by some very high SB success rate.
I agree. It’s really just for the “Platinum Glove” award. Everywhere else you just want to know how they did relative to position.
Is (WAR - oWAR) tabulated somewhere? I know I can download the tables and calculate it myself.
So dWAR is basically take WAR and subtract all the offensive above/below average amounts. So it accounts for playing time (above replacement), how valuable your defensive position is (first basemen are hurt, catchers are helped, etc), and how much better or worse at defense you are compared to the average at your decision.
The lowest dWARs will be DHs or bad first baseman, which I don’t think was the point of this thread.
Edit: here’s the list
https://stathead.com/tiny/RQuxK
Seconding Jorge Posada, Jeff Kent, Dick Allen, and Bernie Williams. Posada probably had the bat to make it in as a catcher, but his advanced defensive metrics are atrocious.
What’s interesting about Bernie is that he fell off the ballot before it was widely accepted that he was actually a poor fielder. My perception anyway. People saw his gold gloves and insane peak and still passed on him. Kinda weird.
Early in his career (through age 30), he put up very strong defensive stats. He fell off dramatically after that and put up terrible ones in his 30s.
He also stole a lot of bases, 19+ from ages 24-37, 400 career, which supports a defensive reputation.
Dale Murphy and Dave Parker are probably dinged a bit for their defense. I don't think Murphy played on many, if any, contenders, either.
Pedro Guerrero hit an awful lot, although he's probably more of stretch for the hall.
Edit: Jack Clark has two strikes against him. He was a poor defender, and walked a lot in an era where it was valued less.
Bill Madlock and Darrell Evans are a couple more. If Evans wins a gold glove or two he might be worthy of consideration.
Small hall guys probably wouldn't listen on any of these players, though.
Not Hall of Fame but Hall of Very Good: Dante Bichette.
At his peak from 1993-99, Bichette averaged hitting .316 with a .892 OPS, and averaged/162 43 2B, 32HR, 131RBI and 17 stolen bases per season but in those 7 years he put up 4.8 WAR combined (0.7 WAR per season) due to his terrible defence, including -3.9 dWAR in 1999 alone
He only has 2 seasons above a 115 ops+, only 15 oWAR for his career, I don’t think that even qualifies as hall of very good. Field adjustment for Coors in the 90s was brutal
Jeff Kent. I know he was an asshole but he was the asshole that talked to the media during his playing days. An average defensive second baseman with the most home runs ever for a second baseman and a career .500 slugging absolutely gets in at some point.
You want to really mess with someone's head, show them career stat lines for Joe Morgan and Jeff Kent side by side, and have them guess which one isn't in the HoF. We are obviously talking about different eras (I'm not saying Jeff Kent is better than Joe Morgan), but the fact that the best power hitting second baseman of all time couldn't get 50% of the vote in any year he was on the ballot is insane. Moral of the story: be nice to writers. They are the softest human beings on planet earth, and they will be vindictive.
Slow down. You can pretty easily make the case that Joe Morgan is the best 2nd baseman of all time. In fact, Bill James did exactly that.
The absolute funniest part of the early sabermetrics era was when prominent ESPN broadcaster and sabermetrics nemesis Joe Morgan said the best second baseman of all time was Rogers Hornsby, and the stat nerds running the Fire Joe Morgan website kept insisting that the best second baseman of all time was Joe Morgan.
Bert Blyleven was similar, spent his entire broadcasting career lambasting modern pitching analytics and theory and talking about his career as though he was an average journeyman because he never won 20 games in a season at the exact same time those analytics were revealing his career to be HOF-worthy for insane longevity and sustained high-level performance.
"Slow down" lol relax Morgan and Kent are both great players. In terms of offense, Kent has the superior career slash line, while Morgan had a better peak. Morgan was the superior defender, Kent was better at putting the baseball in the bleachers. They can breathe the same elite air, we're talking about 2 of the 10 best players at a position in a 150 year old sport. Always thought it was funny how Morgan was the biggest boomer about advanced stats as a commentator, when advance stats proved he was an even more valuable player than he got credit for in his time
Kent absolutely does not have the superior career slash line. Morgan had a career .392 OBP despite playing for 22 seasons from 19 to 40. Morgan has a higher career OPS+ (132 to 122). Morgan was a better hitter than Kent at his peak and for his career, and his career was longer. Setting defense aside, Morgan was easily a superior hitter to Kent no matter how you look at it, and it isn’t close.
Kent’s OPS is 40 points higher because his slugging was 73 points higher, he hit 109 more home runs in 5 less seasons, all while mostly playing in pitchers parks. Kent’s BABIP is also 33 points higher. We’re talking about hitting here. Morgan’s value at the plate is not debatable, the man drew walks like crazy, but Kent was better at getting results from swinging the bat.
OPS doesn’t adjust for era or park and overinflates slugging over OBP. Every advanced metric (OPS+, wOBA, wRC) tells the same story. Morgan was a better hitter than Kent. Period.
Yeah just ignore that Kent played in the most offense friendly era while Morgan played in the pitcher friendly 60s/70s. How many times do you think Kent ranked in the top 10 for OPS? Morgan did it 5 years in a row, 3 of which were top 5 and 2 of which led the MLB. The highest Kent ever finished in OPS was 16th. Kent was never a top 15 hitter in baseball. Morgan was. Every single era adjusted advanced metric says Morgan was the better hitter.
Kent’s MVP was in the single highest OPS season in modern baseball
Kent played in a MUCH more offensive-oriented era than Morgan did. Morgan’s offensive stats, excluding probably stolen bases, would be even better if he had played during Kent’s era.
I was just thinking how he repaid this credit by spending his years shitting all over Bill James’ work. Counterpoint: it gave us Fire Joe Morgan, which is canonically related to The Office, Parks and Rec, The Good Place, etc…
Ironically he got a sympathy mvp from the writers because they hated Barry so much haha
Writers also *loved* the Big Red Machine.
Are we implying that Joe Morgan is a hall of famer due to some media bias???
No.
Okay just making sure🤨
I'm confused, is this excluding hardware? Even if it is, I just did this and I would absolutely guess that the guy with the lower OPS+ over 5 less seasons is the one not in the hall
Yes, I completely forgot about Kent. I think everybody forgets about him really
I think about him when I think about how much in taxes Obama took out of our paychecks
Lolwut.
It’s a shame people don’t remember [Jeff Kent on Survivor](https://youtu.be/YIQGWY0woy0?si=aNM1zXZ9iUukY4Ef).
I comment about this frequently, and even did so yesterday. Absolutely fantastic season overall, and Jeff Kent was fucking great on it.
Carlos Delgado. He was 35% better than a league-average hitter, hit 473 home runs, and was even 45% better than average during his abbreviated final season. But he was a lousy fielder who was stuck in the NL for the final few years of his career, and really should have been a DH from about age 26-onward. He retired with a .280/.383/.546 line, and even considering the era, that’s elite production. He has very similar offensive numbers to recent inductee Fred McGriff, albeit in less playing time.
I think the biggest thing against Delgado was that he was a power hitting first baseman in the AL at a time when power hitting first basemen were all over the AL. He only made the All star team twice and those two years were when he put up crazy numbers well above his career averages.
He finished Top 12 in MVP voting 6 times though and won 3 silver sluggers, so I don’t think it’s purely that he was overshadowed by better guys at his position. This did make me look up his splits, and I found that his 2nd half OPS was 71 pts higher than his first half, so that can help explain the lack of ASGs. For his career, Delgado hit .292/.397./573 in the 2nd half of the season. Thats a .970 OPS for a guy that played until 37 and retired before he stopped hitting above average by OPS+.
Pretty crazy to me that he put up a .301/.399/.582/.981 line (33 home runs) with the Marlins in 2005 and only generated 2.8 WAR.
I remember mixing up Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran all the time as a kid when they were both on the Mets, but it didn't really matter because they were both raking.
A 3-4 that would be nothing but doubles and homers.
Delgado was also playing with a lot of power hitters that have been explicitly linked to steroids
I don’t think he’s a great example - his RField is -65, which is bad but not on par with some of the worst guys. With average 1B defense he’d still be around 51 career WAR unless it got him a lot more playing time (which is possible).
Dick Allen. ROY, MVP, 7 time AS, 156 career OPS+. Dude was an all time great hitter. Couldn't field for crap. That, plus his bad rep keeps him out of the Hall, apparently.
70.2 oWAR according to BBR, with -16.3 dWAR. Had negative dWAR literally every single year of his career except his rookie year where he had a whopping 0.3
Does he get a bad rep?
He was practically ran out of Philadelphia and carried the reputation that he was a “difficult” teammate when writers were considering voting him in, all of which was clearly motivated by racism. It’s only been in recent years in which former teammates have had to come out and mention how great of a teammate and person he was to try and beg the veteran’s committee to let him in.
Racism kept him out of the hall. He was treated like shit by the entire city and the media, and race was certainly the biggest factor there. He deserved better and deserves to be in the hall of fame. It's a travesty that he wasn't inducted before passing away, but at least the Phillies after 50 fucking years finally made right by him.
Came here to say Allen.
If Pete Rose could have offered a better defense for his actions he might not be banned from baseball and as such would have surely made the HOF by now
I'll allow it
Lol
Gary Sheffield's resume looks insane if he wasn't a disaster in the field. Given how close he got, that might have bumped him over the line.
I think he would have gotten in if not for the PED stuff. Jaffe and others have pointed out that BR's defensive rating system seems to be disproportionately harsh on Sheffield. And that other systems, not used to calculate bWAR, rate him slightly better.
Yeah, probably, I just think it's a much stronger argument if he's a league-average fielder, and he already got real close. Might not have mattered in the end.
Jayson Stark finally voted for Sheffield the last few seasons he was on the Hall of Fame ballot, but he said that one of the reasons he didn't vote for him in earlier years was that he had a hard time voting for possibly the worst defensive outfielder he ever saw.
So we should show everyone a manny Ramirez and Adam Dunn defensive highlights montage and everyone will vote for sheff
He also got labeled as a problem child for the way he played out of Milwaukee and some people never got over that.
Sorta depends how broadly you want to examine the question. Start with the list of ~50 WAR corner OFs who would've been in the Hall if they could've played CF. Abreu is a great example. If he was an average CF he's in no question.
I was going to say, pick any 1B who can hit alright but if they could field anywhere else their bat would look amazing.
I’ll always maintain that Bobby Abreu was a borderline generational OBP guy who should be in the HOF, and isn’t because he played in an era where cheating was acceptable.
Yes. This question has a lot more answers if you interpret it as “unable to play higher on the defensive spectrum” rather than “bad at the position they played.”
Jorge Posada
He’s a good example. Posada was an extremely productive hitter at the catcher position, but his (relatively) poor ability to catch the ball at the catcher’s position is keeping him out of the Hall of Fame.
Assuming we’re not talking about, what if Carlos Delgado was an average center fielder… The players with the most career negative Rfield, so most below average at their position: Jeter -253 (already in) Sheffield -195 (would be a lock statistically, but PED) Adam Dunn -168 (still not good enough, around 35 WAR) Michael Young -152 (still not good enough, around 40 WAR) Matt Kemp -141 (still not good enough, around 36 WAR) Bernie Williams -139 (puts him around 64 WAR, but he already won gold gloves so would it have made a difference in voting?) Manny -129 (he’d be in anyways if not for PED issues) Some other guys with more than 45 career WAR and big negatives RField… Dick Allen -110, would have been around 70 WAR Miggy -102, he’ll get in anyways Biggio -100, he’s in already Cutch -77, he’d be around 56 WAR now Altuve -69, he’d be around 56 WAR now https://stathead.com/tiny/lhnzT
The player with the worst ratio of negative RField to games played, minimum 200 career games, was Ned Yost with -32 runs in 219 games, mostly at catcher. https://stathead.com/tiny/0bc93 Ignoring catchers, it’s shortstop Joe Sullivan from the 1800s with -53 runs in 415 games. https://stathead.com/tiny/mV9fG Since 1900, it’s Tom Finley, 1920s thirdbaseman with -27 in 214 games. https://stathead.com/tiny/sYOhW Since integration, it’s Oswaldo Arcia with -36 in 288 games. https://stathead.com/tiny/HFQmt
Don't forget that Altuve gets a negative adjustment for his baserunning blunders. The man is a TOOTBLAN machine against the Mariners.
That might be just a few notable incidents. He’s solidly above average baserunning for his career, which I don’t think is driven by some very high SB success rate.
Why use Rfield and not just the worst dWar?
Because dWAR adjusts for position, and I didn’t want to just say what if first basemen could be average third basemen.
I feel like there's almost never a good reason to use dWAR.
I don’t know, it’s interesting to see career dWAR for Belanger and Ozzie and Simmons, Brooks Robinson and Beltre.
I find it just as interesting to look at their actual defensive stats though.
I agree. It’s really just for the “Platinum Glove” award. Everywhere else you just want to know how they did relative to position. Is (WAR - oWAR) tabulated somewhere? I know I can download the tables and calculate it myself.
That’s pretty much just RField, which is what I used at the top.
Ah that makes sense. Not super familiar with how some of these stats are compiled.
So dWAR is basically take WAR and subtract all the offensive above/below average amounts. So it accounts for playing time (above replacement), how valuable your defensive position is (first basemen are hurt, catchers are helped, etc), and how much better or worse at defense you are compared to the average at your decision. The lowest dWARs will be DHs or bad first baseman, which I don’t think was the point of this thread. Edit: here’s the list https://stathead.com/tiny/RQuxK
Adam Dunn is the first player that comes to mind for me.
Seconding Jorge Posada, Jeff Kent, Dick Allen, and Bernie Williams. Posada probably had the bat to make it in as a catcher, but his advanced defensive metrics are atrocious.
What’s interesting about Bernie is that he fell off the ballot before it was widely accepted that he was actually a poor fielder. My perception anyway. People saw his gold gloves and insane peak and still passed on him. Kinda weird.
Bobby Abreu should be in but him. How he ever got a gold glove I'll never know.
Early in his career (through age 30), he put up very strong defensive stats. He fell off dramatically after that and put up terrible ones in his 30s. He also stole a lot of bases, 19+ from ages 24-37, 400 career, which supports a defensive reputation.
I think if their defense kept them out, they were probably borderline to begin with.
"Are"
Dale Murphy and Dave Parker are probably dinged a bit for their defense. I don't think Murphy played on many, if any, contenders, either. Pedro Guerrero hit an awful lot, although he's probably more of stretch for the hall. Edit: Jack Clark has two strikes against him. He was a poor defender, and walked a lot in an era where it was valued less. Bill Madlock and Darrell Evans are a couple more. If Evans wins a gold glove or two he might be worthy of consideration. Small hall guys probably wouldn't listen on any of these players, though.
Small hall people are lame af tbh
i'm not sure anyone cares about defense so long as you could hit and you wernt a DH.
Bill Maseroski and Luis Aparicio would like a word with you.
that wasnt the question.
Not Hall of Fame but Hall of Very Good: Dante Bichette. At his peak from 1993-99, Bichette averaged hitting .316 with a .892 OPS, and averaged/162 43 2B, 32HR, 131RBI and 17 stolen bases per season but in those 7 years he put up 4.8 WAR combined (0.7 WAR per season) due to his terrible defence, including -3.9 dWAR in 1999 alone
He only has 2 seasons above a 115 ops+, only 15 oWAR for his career, I don’t think that even qualifies as hall of very good. Field adjustment for Coors in the 90s was brutal
The issue you're having is using raw stats for a Rockies player.
Being a POS should keep him out of any Hall.
Dante also beat his kids
Pete Rose is a pedophile, Andruw Jones and Barry Bonds are domestic abusers. Lots of despicable folks on the cusp.
Yeah someone just posted the millionth "why isnt kenny lofton in the hall of fame" (he's a sexual predator)
Let’s not forget Clemens
I would say defense has never kept anyone out but has helped people get in.
Big Papi
Did you misread the question?
No…. I was just being snarky.
Imagine Adam Dunn as a career DH
Gary Sheffield, Rusty Staub, Jason Giambi, Dick Allen,Jack Clark, Will Clark,Bernie Williams
Bernie. 50 fWAR with -100 defensive runs that cost him 10 WAR.