http://www.ocregister.com/sports/-298272--.html
Published: April 28, 2011
Updated: 10:07 a.m.
Ex-Angel Grich is a no-brainer Hall of Famer
By SAM MILLER
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
In 1992, Hall of Fame voters had a ballot of names that included, for the first time, Angels second baseman Bobby Grich, along with other first timers Tom Seaver, Tony Perez, George Foster and Vida Blue, among others. Seaver was elected in his first ballot. Perez got 50 percent, enough to suggest he would be inducted eventually. (He was.) Foster and Blue both got the 5 percent needed to stay on the ballot the next year, keeping themselves in the discussion at least.
And Grich got a measly 11 votes out of 430. His batting average was too low, his milestones too few, his play too unexceptional for voters. He was off the ballot forever.
In 1992, Hall of Fame voters had a ballot of names that included, for the first time, Angels second baseman Bobby Grich, along with other first timers Tom Seaver, Tony Perez, George Foster and Vida Blue, among others. Seaver was elected in his first ballot. Perez got 50 percent, enough to suggest he would be inducted eventually. (He was.) Foster and Blue both got the 5 percent needed to stay on the ballot the next year, keeping themselves in the discussion at least.
And Grich got a measly 11 votes out of 430. His batting average was too low, his milestones too few, his play too unexceptional for voters. He was off the ballot forever.
"Grich had credentials on which an argument could be made for his election to the Hall of Fame," the New York Times' Murray Chass wrote at the time. "But if a sizable number of voters was waiting to vote for him the second year, they cheated themselves and Grich because he won't appear on the next ballot."
But baseball has been, over the past decade, in an Age of Enlightenment. Analysts now look beyond batting average, RBIs and errors to evaluate the whole player. It's now clear that Grich was not only good enough to deserve 5 percent of the vote, but easily good enough to make the Hall of Fame.
Consider Wins Above Replacement, the latest attempt at evaluating a player's total contribution on the field: offense, defense, baserunning and position, all adjusted for ballpark and era, to tell us how many wins a player is "worth."
While no single statistic can tell you everything about a player, WAR comes closest. And, according to the WAR model published by Baseball-Reference.com, Bobby Grich -- worth 67.6 wins in his career -- is the third-best position player ever who is eligible for the Hall of Fame but isn't in it. Among the more than 100 position players who are in the Hall of Fame, Grich would rank 39th, ahead of such uncontroversial Hall of Famers as Willie McCovey (65.1), Ozzie Smith (64.6), Roberto Alomar (63.5) and Dave Winfield (59.7).
By a competing Wins Above Replacement model published by the influential website Baseball Prospectus, Grich does just as well, according to Jay Jaffe, who has written extensively about Hall of Fame standards for the site. He ranks players on a combination of career value and peak performance -- to avoid overrating so-called "compilers" who simply hang around -- and says Grich is the sixth-best second baseman of all-time. There are 20 second basemen in the Hall of Fame.
For players who were kicked off the ballot after just one year, Jaffe says, "Grich is about as egregious as it gets."
So why wasn't he appreciated in his time? He never reached 2,000 hits. He hit for a low batting average. He rarely led the league in any offensive categories. He didn't play on any great teams. And, perhaps most significantly, he played at the wrong time.
Had Grich played in the booming 1990s -- not the offensively depressed 1970s and early 1980s -- he likely would have reached 2,000 hits. He might have hit 300 home runs. The greater offense around him could have pushed him well over 1,000 RBIs and given him multiple seasons of scoring 100 runs.
Once you account for his era, it's clear that Grich was a great hitter, a second baseman who hit like a first baseman. For instance, OPS+ is a stat that takes a player's OPS -- on base percentage plus slugging percentage -- and adjusts it for ballpark, league and era. It's a way of devaluing stats put up in Coors Field in the mid-90s, and appreciating hitting performances in the Astrodome in the early 1980s.
Grich has a career OPS+ of 125, or 25 percent better than an average (100) hitter. Other guys around 125:
Carl Yastrzemski, 129
Jim Rice, 128
Jeff Kent, 123.
Ernie Banks, 122.
Paul Molitor, 122.
And, unlike those guys, Grich did it exclusively at premium defensive positions, and he did it while playing legitimate Gold Glove defense. (By one advanced defensive metric called Total Zone, Grich's 1973 season is the best ever for a second baseman, and Grich ranks seventh all-time in runs saved at that position, according to Baseball Reference.)
Grich could still be inducted by the Veterans Committee, but that committee has been very stingy when it comes to post-war players.
"The thing you run across in terms of the snubs overall is that defense and the ability to take a walk are drastically undervalued by the voters," Jaffe says. "Those are things that just aren't appreciated by the mainstream. They look at batting average first, and home runs, and these guys are not necessarily batting average guys or home run guys."
This position on Grich is nothing new. Back in 1986, the seminal baseball writer Bill James wrote in his annual Baseball Abstract: "I'll say this: if Bobby Grich goes into the Hall of Fame, you're going to have real strong evidence that sabermetrics has made an impact on how talent is evaluated by the broader public."
It has, certainly. But it's two decades too late for Grich and the Angels.
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Published: April 28, 2011
Updated: 10:07 a.m.
Ex-Angel Grich is a no-brainer Hall of Famer
By SAM MILLER
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
In 1992, Hall of Fame voters had a ballot of names that included, for the first time, Angels second baseman Bobby Grich, along with other first timers Tom Seaver, Tony Perez, George Foster and Vida Blue, among others. Seaver was elected in his first ballot. Perez got 50 percent, enough to suggest he would be inducted eventually. (He was.) Foster and Blue both got the 5 percent needed to stay on the ballot the next year, keeping themselves in the discussion at least.
And Grich got a measly 11 votes out of 430. His batting average was too low, his milestones too few, his play too unexceptional for voters. He was off the ballot forever.
In 1992, Hall of Fame voters had a ballot of names that included, for the first time, Angels second baseman Bobby Grich, along with other first timers Tom Seaver, Tony Perez, George Foster and Vida Blue, among others. Seaver was elected in his first ballot. Perez got 50 percent, enough to suggest he would be inducted eventually. (He was.) Foster and Blue both got the 5 percent needed to stay on the ballot the next year, keeping themselves in the discussion at least.
And Grich got a measly 11 votes out of 430. His batting average was too low, his milestones too few, his play too unexceptional for voters. He was off the ballot forever.
"Grich had credentials on which an argument could be made for his election to the Hall of Fame," the New York Times' Murray Chass wrote at the time. "But if a sizable number of voters was waiting to vote for him the second year, they cheated themselves and Grich because he won't appear on the next ballot."
But baseball has been, over the past decade, in an Age of Enlightenment. Analysts now look beyond batting average, RBIs and errors to evaluate the whole player. It's now clear that Grich was not only good enough to deserve 5 percent of the vote, but easily good enough to make the Hall of Fame.
Consider Wins Above Replacement, the latest attempt at evaluating a player's total contribution on the field: offense, defense, baserunning and position, all adjusted for ballpark and era, to tell us how many wins a player is "worth."
While no single statistic can tell you everything about a player, WAR comes closest. And, according to the WAR model published by Baseball-Reference.com, Bobby Grich -- worth 67.6 wins in his career -- is the third-best position player ever who is eligible for the Hall of Fame but isn't in it. Among the more than 100 position players who are in the Hall of Fame, Grich would rank 39th, ahead of such uncontroversial Hall of Famers as Willie McCovey (65.1), Ozzie Smith (64.6), Roberto Alomar (63.5) and Dave Winfield (59.7).
By a competing Wins Above Replacement model published by the influential website Baseball Prospectus, Grich does just as well, according to Jay Jaffe, who has written extensively about Hall of Fame standards for the site. He ranks players on a combination of career value and peak performance -- to avoid overrating so-called "compilers" who simply hang around -- and says Grich is the sixth-best second baseman of all-time. There are 20 second basemen in the Hall of Fame.
For players who were kicked off the ballot after just one year, Jaffe says, "Grich is about as egregious as it gets."
So why wasn't he appreciated in his time? He never reached 2,000 hits. He hit for a low batting average. He rarely led the league in any offensive categories. He didn't play on any great teams. And, perhaps most significantly, he played at the wrong time.
Had Grich played in the booming 1990s -- not the offensively depressed 1970s and early 1980s -- he likely would have reached 2,000 hits. He might have hit 300 home runs. The greater offense around him could have pushed him well over 1,000 RBIs and given him multiple seasons of scoring 100 runs.
Once you account for his era, it's clear that Grich was a great hitter, a second baseman who hit like a first baseman. For instance, OPS+ is a stat that takes a player's OPS -- on base percentage plus slugging percentage -- and adjusts it for ballpark, league and era. It's a way of devaluing stats put up in Coors Field in the mid-90s, and appreciating hitting performances in the Astrodome in the early 1980s.
Grich has a career OPS+ of 125, or 25 percent better than an average (100) hitter. Other guys around 125:
Carl Yastrzemski, 129
Jim Rice, 128
Jeff Kent, 123.
Ernie Banks, 122.
Paul Molitor, 122.
And, unlike those guys, Grich did it exclusively at premium defensive positions, and he did it while playing legitimate Gold Glove defense. (By one advanced defensive metric called Total Zone, Grich's 1973 season is the best ever for a second baseman, and Grich ranks seventh all-time in runs saved at that position, according to Baseball Reference.)
Grich could still be inducted by the Veterans Committee, but that committee has been very stingy when it comes to post-war players.
"The thing you run across in terms of the snubs overall is that defense and the ability to take a walk are drastically undervalued by the voters," Jaffe says. "Those are things that just aren't appreciated by the mainstream. They look at batting average first, and home runs, and these guys are not necessarily batting average guys or home run guys."
This position on Grich is nothing new. Back in 1986, the seminal baseball writer Bill James wrote in his annual Baseball Abstract: "I'll say this: if Bobby Grich goes into the Hall of Fame, you're going to have real strong evidence that sabermetrics has made an impact on how talent is evaluated by the broader public."
It has, certainly. But it's two decades too late for Grich and the Angels.
More from Angels »
*
COMMENTS | PRINT | EMAIL | **SHARE
