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Hitting: 475 points Fielding: 50 points Base running: 25 points League leaders: 45 points (batting average three times, on-base percentage twice, slugging twice, doubles, homers) MVP award: 25 points Has a weird thing about the number three (wore 33, was married at 3:33 p.m., took three practice swings, etc): 5...
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Really should have been +3 for his “weird thing about the number 3”, no?
And probably another +10 for being the best Canadian player to play for a Canadian team. That’s gotta count for something.
Otherwise….yeah. Real shame he wasn’t already elected years ago.
I wonder what his numbers would be if he was able to stay on the field. He only played more than 140 games 4 times. He only played more than 145 games once. That was his MVP year when he still only played 153 games. He left a lot of ABs out there. On average, he missed 20-30 games/season, not even factoring in the seasons where he was injured half the season. That’s about a month of missed games every season. For a top of the lineup player, that’s close to 100 PAs per season. That’s over 1500 PAs in a career. That’s like adding another 3 seasons. If those seasons were mediocre, he’d be an 85 WAR player.
To me, his injuries were an even bigger factor than Coors Field.
His War7 was 44.6 (with 2 of those seasons in Montreal) which is pretty impressive. And doesn’t WAR account for Ballparks? So why isn’t he already in the HOF?
You’re not going to believe this, but it’s totally true: most baseball fans, even among the many Hall of Fame voters who are baseball fans, are legitimately unaware that WAR and OPS+ are park-adjusted.
I also always wonder about injuries as well. If Nomar just stopped playing after his 29 year old season, he may have been a hall of famer but he could not stay healthy. His WAR7 is above the baseline and it is basically only 6 years rather than 7 (lost his 27 year old season to injury of course). He came up full time as a 23 year old and for the next six years (excluding the injury year) and did 6.6, 7.1, 6.6, 7.4, 6.8 and 6.1 (all BWAR). Then he was done. Added only another 3.7 in BWAR for all of the other years of his career. Basically for his 6 year peak, he was a top 8 shortstop of all time. For 7 year career, he was still top 13. How much peak is enough and how much longevity is enough? Should we reward ability to not getting injured?
He’d be a no for me.
Very good player, obviously, but to me, too many of his career counting totals come from Coors. As mentioned above, had he been able to stay healthy and added another 1000+ PA, then he’d probably be there.
Many of the Hall of Famers I see with fewer PA than Walker either missed time due to the war (Doerr, Dimaggio, Mize), or were selections who played at least some of their time in the 1800’s (Hugh Duffy, Jimmy Collins, Dan Brouthers, Billy Hamilton). Catchers and color barrier victims also fairly prominent.
I’m fine if he makes it; he’d be a much better selection than Harold Baines.
The 2002 A’s won 20 straight games. That is a statistically improbable occurrence, so much so that it had never happened in the American League before.
What was interesting was 2002 was also the “Moneyball” year, i.e. the year Michael Lewis was basing his book on. So in a season where team leadership was using statistics to maxime the probability of success, they did one of the most improbably things ever.
Random indeed!
It could also be an example of the statistical fallacy of cherry picking.
Look at those Moneyball highlighted great draft where the As managed to run circles around the rest of the league, drafting over 8 rounds players they valued in the Top 40 overall.
Those rubes around the league passing on these diamonds in the rough!
Even with his injury-plagued career, he’s #11 all-time in WAR among RF’s, and ahead of 15 Hall of Fame RF’s.
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I never say this, but it seems like not voting for him just shows a lack of intelligence.
For a guy who played through the steroid era in Coors field, his lifetime counting totals resemble Moises Alou. Not quite good enough.
We don’t know for sure what a guy might have been without Coors, but we can take a pretty good guess. Helton would have been similar to John Olerud, and Walker? I’d say very similar to Brian Giles.
Giles was a truly great hitter for about six or seven years, and would likely be a borderline Hall of Famer if he had started with a different team instead of having to crack that Indians lineup, and gotten some full seasons before age 26. Still, his OPS+ is five points behind Walker’s, and that’s a pretty big gap. Reggie Jackson’s OPS+ is two points behind, but a completely different type of hitter.
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Of course, if hitting was the only thing Walker was great at, he wouldn’t be much of a Hall of Fame candidate.
Giles had some steroid taint on top of it. Of course he was nowhere near Hall worthy.
Player 1’s would be slightly more valuable over their career because there are a few more odd days than even days.
March 31st, May 31st, July 31st, August 31st make it a slightly uneven split.
I think you leaving out one very important part of the pre humidor Coors story. Yes, the ball traveled farther and there was more outfield fair territory to place balls in, but also pitchers had a hard time throwing balls with movement, meaning everything was basically a fastball. Fastballs were fastballs, curveballs and sliders turned into slightly slower fastballs, etc. If you were a good fastball hitter you had a bigger advantage over someone who was just ok at hitting one, but was able to handle curves and sliders too. I don’t know if Walker a good fastball hitter, although I bet he was, but ballpark adjustments do nothing to balance this aspect of altitude affects.
That makes no sense. How do you think ballpark effects are calculated? By what actually happened on the field there, which includes how much farther the ball traveled, all of the odd and even days, and yes even how pitches are affected. He was facing the same pitches in the same conditions as everyone else, and he killed them — better than everybody else.
There are fastball hitters and junkball hitters, but at Coors everything was a fastball, which aids fastball hitters disproportionately – how could that effectively be calculated in the ballpark effect? Same with pitchers as junkball pitchers couldn’t moved the effectively and got hammered disproportionately, but they have the same ballpark effect as fastball pitchers. Ballpark effect at Coors treated everyone the same when in fact everyone was effected differently based on their personal characteristics. Personally, I think Walker was perfectly suited for Coors and there is no way adjustment for ballpark effect could truly calculate his advantage.
All MLB hitters are fastball hitters. What is your evidence that every player was affected differently?
Some are a lot better than others and some have a difficult time hitting junk. When there is very little junk, who do you think has the advantage? I’m just saying the park affect for Coors in the 90’s is very different and not as easy to judge as every other park because of lack of ball movement.
It takes evidence to show that there’s a big or significant difference in how Coors Field affected batters with different abilities against breaking balls. Maybe there is and maybe there isn’t, but there needs to be evidence. I don’t think that Coors changed the relative effectiveness of breaking balls so much that it needs to be accounted for.
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But even if Walker is much weaker on breaking balls than other players are, and Coors turned this into a significant difference in how he hit there, it still remains to be shown why it makes Walker less worthy of the Hall. No other neutralization works in this manner. The reason why there are park factors is not to make things “fair”; it’s to account for the fact that a run in Coors is worth a smaller fraction of a win than it is elsewhere. And since a home run on a fastball is worth the same fraction of a win as a home run on a breaking ball is, or whether Walker or a great breaking ball hitter hit it, there’s really no reason to incorporate any change.
This goes down the path that was debated early on during the park-adjustment sabermetric discussions. Jorge Posada (I think) was held up as the example: do we attempt to “adjust away” his peculiar/individual/unique abilities and how they may be suited to each park in order to find his “true” capabilities, or do we consider his adaptation to each situation as part and parcel of his ability and just adjust for environment? The consensus came down on the latter, which I believe Has proven to be a better approach.
I don’t remember what Posada’s individual abilities are, but yes, I believe the latter approach is better, and so do the people that invented WAR and other sabermetric stats.
Walker was a pretty free swinger, didn’t look at too many strikes and his swinging strike percentage was always one of the highest on any team he played on, including with the Expos. It’s tough to tell what caused his decline since the humidor started in 2002 and he was getting up in age/suffering from injuries at the very same time. His last very good year was 2002, but dropped off right after that. Was it the age or the humidor starting to give a penalty for free swinging.
I look at Larry Walker’s batting as a free swinger (his fielding and base running is a different story) and look at Bobby Abreu as a selective hitter and they have similar WARs. I think if you put Abreau in Coors he wouldn’t put up the numbers Walker did, but he would put up much better numbers than Walker on the road.
Walker’s WAR is 73 and Abreu’s is 60, so I wouldn’t say they’re similar, though their oWARs are similar. But they’re similar on the road… Walker had a 113 OPS+, Abreu 118. Don’t know if that’s much better for Abreu.
I missed your comment that 2002 was Larry Walker’s last very good year. Well, his OPS+ from 2003 to 2005 went 121, 154, 130. If that’s not very good, I wonder what your requirement for very good is. The truth was he was not only very good, but great, from 1991 all the way through his last year, except for a couple of sub-120 years in Denver, which were still very good.
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The only part of Walker’s game that really ever declined was that he couldn’t play as many games. And he became a below-average defender his last two years. But his hitting stats don’t show any decline at all when he went to STL. And he was awesome in the playoffs in 2004, though he stunk in 2005. He likely could’ve been at least a very good hitter for another five years if his body had allowed it.
And Bobby Aubreu loses a lot in the WAR game for defense (justified), but what if the ballpark adjustments for Coors in the 90’s don’t truely reflect Walker’s hitting- which I believe is the case?
The park factors are accurately reflecting Walker’s hitting as well as they’re supposed to.
I guess we can agree to disagree on if the Coors Field affected Walkers stats in his favor over and above ballpark adjustments based on the type of hitter he was. You are obviously of the opinion that ballpark adjustments are infallible.
I just look at his mediocre Home/Road splits throughout his career (with the noted exception of 1997) his time with the Expos (when given his age a normal baseball player’s prime years) and even his minor league stats (which were generally average to slightly above average) and I come to the conclusion on his Rockies stats, “Hey, wait a minute”.
No, I think it’s entirely possible that Walker made better use of the advantages of Coors than did his teammates or the opposing hitters. I don’t know what it means for park factor to be “infallible”. I do know that park factor is not supposed to include an adjustment at the individual level.
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I don’t know what it means for a player’s home/road splits to be “mediocre”. I do know that a typical player hits significantly better at home, whatever the ballpark, and Walker’s 120/80 career split doesn’t seem out of line.
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Did you happen to look at Walker’s teammates’ tOPS+ for Coors? I doubt it… well, here they are for him and some of his better and most frequent Coors teammates:
– Walker 141
– Galarraga 147
– Castilla 146
– Bichette 146
– Neifi Perez 145
– Burks 135
– Pierre 128
– Cirillo 154
So it looks like Coors actually helped Walker LESS than it did his most frequent Coors teammates.
I’m sure you adjusted those players for pre and post 2002 Coors, since that is my whole argument. And I noticed no Todd Helton, who was there pre and post 2002.
It probably because you don’t have much of an argument as Larry Walker’s numbers were inflated by Coors and they can’t be correctly adjusted by ballpark adjustments. This is not like the 1930’s Baker Bowl where you can adjust for the ballpark – there is no know way to adjust for the type of pitches thrown at 1990’s Coors Field caused by altitude affects.
Actually, the consistency of the above tOPS+ shows that hitting in Coors is very accurately and even precisely adjusted for by the park factor. And again, it shows that Walker’s hitting was not helped more by Coors any more than his teammates’ was.
This is a thing that I have watched & listened to – mostly with annoyance – for a LONG time. It’s easy to lob the grenades & move on to the next thing. Applying numbers & examples – like Poz is trying to do – has not happened much. And, I for one as a Denverite LOVE it. Yes, there is a difference. Does it need to be accounted for? Yes. Does it mean every player who ever played well & called Denver home should be discounted as if they were on steroids? Well, if you think so, get BENT man! Larry Walker ROCKED. The guy was my favorite by a freaking MILE. I sat in the right field stands & watched this guy hit the CRAP out of the ball – when most all your boys were NOT doing it in the SAME park! He threw it back in with the same ferocity. I watched one-hoppers that GOT MEN OUT AT HOME. He deserves & if he ever makes it I’ll be in Cooperstown to watch the induction.