HOF: The Case for Bagwell

With the Hall of Fame vote coming up (the results will be released on January 6th), I thought it might be nice to link to the pieces I wrote last year regarding a handful of players that were up for consideration but who failed to be enshrined. Here are those links.

Edgar Martinez – Is There Room for a DH?
HOF – Tim Raines .
Is McGriff Hall Worthy ?
HOF: Mammoth McGwire Misunderstood ?
HOF: Who am I ?

In addition, here is my recap on how the voting actually turned out last year in HOF: What Should Have Been.

As for the vote this year, there seems to be growing support for the candidacy of Jeff Bagwell. Should be be enshrined in the Hall of Fame?

PRO

(1) Bagwell spent his entire 15 year career with the Astros. I know this really doesn’t matter, but in the world of money grubbing by players you have to tip your hat to Bagwell for this accomplishment of staying with one club.

(2) He was the 1991 NL Rookie of the Year, and in 1994 he was named NL MVP. He also finished in the top-10 in MVP voting five times on his way to 2.89 Career MVP Shares, the 35th highest mark in league history.

(3) He was named to four All-Star teams.

(4) He had 1,529 RBI – 45th all-time – and he also scored 1,517 runs, good for 62nd all-time. No player eligible for the Hall of Fame with 1,500 runs and 1,500 RBI isn’t in the Hall.

(5) He finished his career with a .408 OBP, the 40th best mark ever.

(6) He finished his career with a .540 SLG, the 35th best mark ever.

(7) He finished his career with a .948 OPS, the 21st best mark ever. This is a simply stupendous accomplishment for a guy who spent so much of his career hitting in the Astrodome.

(8) Bagwell led the league in runs three times – with a high of 152. In fact, he scored 143 and 152 runs in 1999-2000, and amongst first basemen only he and Lou Gehrig ever had back-to-back seasons of 140+ runs in the history of baseball.

(9) Bagwell hit .297 with 449 homers, 1,529 RBI, 1,517 runs and an OPS of .948. In the history of baseball, only 10 men have reached each of those totals in their career, and oh what a list it is: Stan Musial, Barry Bonds, Mel Ott, Alex Rodriguez, Babe Ruth, Manny Ramirez, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams and Mr. Bagwell.

CON

(1) He spent his entire career with the Astros. Did anyone notice how great he was since they never saw him play in person or on television?

(2) The strike in 1994 ruined what was shaping up to be a historic season. Bagwell hit .368 with 39 homers, 116 RBI and 104 runs scored… in 110 games. Along the way he led the league in RBI and runs, not to mention SLG (.750) and OPS (1.201). If he had kept that pace up over 160 games he would have produced a line of .368-57-169 with 151 runs scored. If he had produced a season for the ages like that, would more people have taken notice of him?

(3) Despite his tremendous work, other than 1994, was he ever even considered the best first baseman in baseball with players like Fred McGriff, Mo Vaughn, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Carlos Delgado and Todd Helton around?

VERDICT

Bagwell should be a lock. In addition to being a tremendous person and teammate, he was also a dynamic player. His career totals stack up well against pretty much any man who ever played first base, and it’s not his fault there were so many tremendous hitting first basemen in the game when he played. Bagwell was also widely regarded as one of the best base runners in baseball in his career, even with less than scintillating speed, and that reputation should augment the glowing numbers. The Hall of Fame candidacy of many players has been exaggerated of late, but if Mr. Bagwell is enshrined the voting body will be making a decision that will undoubtedly stand the test of time.

By Ray Flowers

The Hidden Truth

While doing my daily run around the world of sports last week, I came across a very interesting article written by Jeff Passan that you can find at Stimulants Gain Attention. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what the piece was about.

Normally, I avoid all the talk of steroids and performance enhancing drugs (PED). Sure, I sometimes delve into the topic, I can’t avoid it entirely in my line of work, but honestly most of the time I try to pay attention to what is happening on the field and let the legal wrangling and the blowhards deal with PED’s. However, Mr. Passan’s column was so illuminating I thought I simply had to break it down. Here are some of the highlights of the piece.

1- 108 players in 2009 were awarded a free pass for drug use. What do I mean? 108 major league players were granted a TUE or Therapeutic Use Exemption to take drugs on the banned list. These 108 baseball player all were being treated for ADHD or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. That’s nearly nine percent of all players, more than double the population at large. “It looks fishy,” said Dr. Ari Tuckman, the VP of the Attention Deficit Disorder Association. “It doesn’t mean it is, but it looks that way.”

2- In 2006 there were 28 players granted a TUE.

3- In 2007 MLB started testing for stimulants.

4- In 2007 the number of TUE’s quadrupled to 103.

You do the math.

5- Though baseball says they have tightened the rules for TUE, in 2008 the number of players on the list increased from 103 to 106. “A healthy percentage of applications for new TUE’s was rejected,” MLB Players Association director Michael Weiner said

6- ADHD drugs are not steroids. However, they do bring a heightened sense of alertness, and an inner calmness, two traits that clearly might have just a wee bit of an effect on a hitter. “In the most general sense, almost everybody does better on a stimulant,” Dr. Tuckman said, “which is something Starbucks and Coca-Cola figured out long ago.”

So what do we have here? Well, approximately 15 percent of all major league players are using prescription medication that could be said, in the least, to give the user a more heightened ability to focus. Given the requirements of the game, a game that goes on day after day for six months, you often hear that players are more mentally tired than physically worn down. Do you think a little pick me up in the form of a TUE leading to medication might help? I’m not saying that there aren’t some players who legitimately might have a medically condition, but double the rate of the general population? To say that seems unlikely would be kind.

In the end, this problem will never go away. Those that want to cheat will likely always be one step ahead of those that are trying to catch them. Those that can skirt by legally will likely do everything they can to gain that little extra edge. And to be truthful, is there really any difference between having a TUE or stealing signs on the field? You might even be able to make a cogent argument that stealing signs is actually worse because it informs you how the play will develop (if you take a drug, you still have to read, react and perform). I don’t know if there is any way to put all of this “drug” stuff behind us, but if there is I’d be 100 percent behind it because for far too long the story hasn’t been about what happens on the field, it’s been about what has happened in the doctor’s office.

By Ray Flowers

Death of the Hero?

Have all the heroes disappeared in the world of baseball? In case you missed it, and how could you, the New York Times has reported that Sammy Sosa tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003 as one of the 104 major leaguers who failed the “confidential” drug testing that led to Major League Baseball instituting a sport wide steroid testing policy that they continue to follow until this day. Do we have proof that this accusation is true? Of course we don’t since the records that are being reported on are secret and that the “source” for the story is anonymous fearing a potentially stiff legal penalty for divulging privileged information. Much like Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez, Sosa never officially failed a major league drug test (the 2003 tests weren’t “official,” that didn’t happen until the following year of 2004 after a high enough percentage of players failed the first test in 2003 to kick in official sanctions), but that certainly won’t help to remove the tarnish that has set in with regards to their legacy.

This whole performance enhancing mess has been discussed ad nauseam, and I have no intention of repeating what has been said in so many corners. I would however like to pose the following question:

Who is the greatest home run hitter in baseball the past 25 years?

Barry Bonds is widely regarded to have cheated during the second half of his career, so he is out.

Sammy Sosa? From a 175 lbs rookie to the cover of Muscle and Fitness magazine with biceps bigger than my thighs. Shocking that he likely cheated.

Mark McGwire? Next.

Rafael Palmeiro? The biggest hypocrite on Earth? I never liked that guy anyway, especially after he did those Viagra commercials and then claimed he didn’t take the product. Yeah, right.

A-Rod? Please. That guy is so phony that he would stand out in a room of fake money in a Secret Service vault (for those of you that don’t know the Secret Service, those folks that run along next to the presidential motorcade with dark glasses an ear microphones, are the branch of government that investigates phony money).

Manny Ramirez? Thought he apparently made it out of the initial barrage clean, his recent test failure certainly casts a huge pale of suspicion over everything he did previously.

So amongst guys who have played the bulk of their careers since 1980, we are left with two names – Jim Thome and Ken Griffey Jr.

As of this writing Thome has 553 home runs, the 13th best mark in baseball history. As for Griffey, his number is 617, so he becomes the king of the modern day home run hitters. In fact, If not for a series of injury filled campaigns from 2001-04, Griffey likely would be closing in on 700-home runs instead of 620. Think I’m full of it?

Consider that Griffey had hit at least 40-home runs each year from 1996-2000. Even if we posit that he would slow a bit with age, let’s cut that number all the way down to a very conservative 30 a season (after all he hit 35 in 2005 when he returned to health), how many extra home runs would he have hit during his four injury filled seasons? In those four seasons Griffey had 1,027 ABs, an average of 257 a year. Given that he averaged 582 the previous five seasons when he was blasting 40 homer a year, let’s again play it conservative and give him 550 at-bats a season at the rate of 30 homers a year. That equates to one home run per 18.33 ABs. If we add an extra 300 at-bats a season, remember he averaged 257 in that time and we are positing 550 a year, that would given him an extra 16.4 home runs a season. 16.4 times four years equals an additional 66 home runs, which when added to his total of 617 brings The Kid up to 683 in his career. Like I said, within shouting distance of becoming just the fourth man in history to record 700 big flies without the aide of artificial stimulants in his career.

We’ll likely never know the truth of who did what, when, but for my money, and face my opinion is the one that counts given that I’m the one penning this article, here is my top-10 list of home run hitters who have ever played the game.

755 – Hank Aaron
714 – Babe Ruth
660 – Willie Mays
617 – Ken Griffey Jr.
586 – Frank Robinson
573 – Harmon Killebrew
563 – Reggie Jackson
553 – Jim Thome
548 – Mike Schmidt
536 – Mickey Mantle

Long live Ken Griffey Jr., truly one of the most complete players, steroid enhanced or otherwise for that matter, who ever played the game of baseball.

By Ray Flowers