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This is probably a good time to very briefly explain how I ranked these players. Together with Tom Tango (though he might not want credit), I developed a WAR ranking system that is adjusted by era and the quality of competition. I don't want to get into the weeds...
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WOAH! I was as loud a critic of Ivan Rodriguez’ shortcomings as a hitter when he played as anybody, but to say that a catcher who hit .300 or better ten times (and also .297 and .298 once each) “wasn’t a great hitter in total” is a bit of revisionist history, I think. At the end of his age-32 season, he had over 7200 plate appearances in the majors, over 2000 hits, 400 doubles, exactly 250 HR and 1000 RBI and a .306 lifetime BA. His career adjusted OPS was 15% better than average. He was an excellent hitter.
What he *wasn’t* was a good (forgive the pun…) Walker. Never took more than 55 free passes in a season. And after that year – his last with an OPS+ over 100 – he stuck around for seven more seasons mostly on the merits of his glove and his leadership skills, and he hit .274 with a 85 OPS+ . He averaged just 16 walks per season , including just 9 (!) times in 515 PA in 2007. That drags his overall rate numbers down and makes it look like he wasn’t a great hitter, but in his prime, he surely was.
I saw Walker play countless times – nearly all on TV since it is more than 290 miles from my driveway to Coors. Saw him in person once a year. We were at a game in, I’m going to say 1996 because he was playing center field. He played a lot of games in center that year. A deep fly ball to the gap in left-center – Walker ran a very long distance – he was a fast runner but his reactions were even quicker. He caught the ball, slammed into the wall and laid on the field for several minutes. Do not remember if he held on to the ball but he probably did. He went on the DL with one of his more serious injuries. Missed about half of the season that year. If Statcast had existed back then he would have been one of its favorite players. Coors was more wild back then than it is now. But Walker deserves the Hall. Many great players have wide home-away splits. Joe, you have mentioned some of them in previous posts. Thanks for this series. I am totally enjoying it.
Larry Walker was somewhere between a very good major league player and a HOF player. I’m inclined to place him in the very good category because of his home/away splits. They are as follows:
Home: .348/.431/.637 1.068 OPS
Away: .278/.370/.495 .865 OPS
So at home he almost as good a hitter as Ted Williams (.344/.482/.634 1.115 OPS) and away he is a slightly better hitter than Paul O’Neill (.288/.363/.470 .833 OPS). It’s also important to note that Walker’s home splits also include home games not played in Coors so the numbers for games played in CO are probably even more inflated although I was too lazy to do the actual analysis.
So two observations:
1. How good a hitter was Ted Williams?
2. Larry Walker was a really good player and there was more to his game than simply hitting. But don’t see him as a HOF player and certainly not the 75th best player in baseball history.
Understand that the Coors effect is one that may blind us to the other positive aspects of Walker’s game. But I’m not buying that there is a accurate calculation to account for the hitting atmosphere at Coors any more than there is a calculation that can accurately describe how Tris Speaker compares as an outfielder to Willie Mays or Andruw Jones. Those conversations usually devolve into a version of Judd Hirsch arguing about the existence of Area 51 in Independence Day.
I would absolutely place Trammell, Chipper, and Bagwell above Walker. Probably several of the others as well. It’s a fun discussion and didn’t even get to the part about Derek Jeter (Number 77) being better than Walker.
What kills Walker’s HOF candidacy for me isn’t that he was much better at Coors..it’s that he didn’t hit like a HOFer OUTSIDE of Coors. It seems to me that in a neutral stadium he would have had a career very much like John Olerud.
Comparing Larry Walker’s Road OPS to some other player’s overall OPS is comparing apples to oranges. A quick review of a few random player’s OPS splits found that almost everyone has a better home than road split (even Jimmy Wynn!!) for their career. To compare Paul ONeill’s overall line favorably to Walker’s Road OPS (and I don’t know that the comparison was all that close anyway, Walker’s road OPS is 30 points higher than ONeill’s overall OPS) is unfair. Let’s compare ONeill’s Road OPS to Walker’s road OPS, then the comparison is .801 to .865. Frankly’s O’Neill’s Home OPS number wise is about the same as Walker’s Road OPS (.866 to .865).
Chipper’s Home OPS was 80 points better than Road, Bagwell’s nearly 70 and Trammell’s 35. Let’s just give Walker a safe 50 point difference with no Coors and that puts his home at .915 and his overall probably around .890. that puts him in line with Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell, Ryan Braun, Matt Holliday to name a few and just below Ken Griffey Jr, Al Simmons and Mike Schmidt.
The problem with your argument is context. If you make that adjustment based on Coors, taking his OPS to .890, that’s still great, but probably knocks his OPS+ down to somewhere around 130, which is still really good, but only in 8000 PA. Good, but not compared to:
McCovey, OPS+ 147 – 9700 PA
Stargell, OPS+ 147 – 9000 PA
Griffey, OPS+ 136 – 11300 PA
Simmons, OPS+ 133 – 9500 PA
Schmidt, OPS+ 147 – 10000 PA
For me, he’s a no because of Coors and the length of his career.
Appreciate your comments and context.
The Paul O’Neill reference was random and simply based on their being contemporaries as well as being well rounded, lefty hitting, right fielders. Walker is the certainly the better hitter and player. The focus was on his home park hitting stats that make Ted Williams his comp.
Walker’s home stats at Montreal and Coors are as follows:
Montreal: .293/.373/.518 .890 OPS
Coors: .381/.462/.710 1.172 OPS
During his career, he had 8,030 PA’s with 2,501 PA’s at Coors. The difference between his two home fields is enormous. As mentioned in my earlier post, I don’t believe there is an accurate methodology to normalize the Coors effect.
There is a very reasonable case for Larry Walker as a HOF candidate. I can also admit having some difficulty getting past the Coors numbers. Terrific player but my belief is that he is a bit short of being a Hall of Famer.
All you need to know about Coors field in the 90’s, when curveballs didn’t curve, sliders didn’t slide, etc. was that Vinny Castilla was a .333 career hitter there – and a .253 hitter everywhere else. There is no way a Park Factor adjustment could handle all the different types of hitters during that time. If you were a fastball hitter who had trouble hitting the curve, you probably had a bigger advantage vs. hitters who were better hitting a curve. And sluggers and hard line drive hitters were especially deadly there.