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A Rose By Any Other Name is Not in the Hall of Fame
Every guy with more than a passing interest in sports has a couple of arguments he makes all the time and passionately believes in, even though all his friends (and everyone else he tells) think he’s crazy.
I have two. The first one we can dispense with quickly—the best player eligible but not in the Baseball Hall of Fame is Bert Blyleven. He just is. Take my word for it.
The second one is a bit weirder, so I’ll elaborate.
Pete Rose doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame. But it has nothing to do with gambling. Leave aside gambling, and I still argue that Pete Rose doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame on his merits.
Now, I’ve actually thought this for a long time, but—tired of the bizarre stares and “who farted?” looks I normally get when I say this out loud—I have been in the habit of keeping this thought to myself for a while.
I’ve been emboldened recently, though, by reading the hottest sports book out there right now, Michael Lewis’s Moneyball. Moneyball is the story of Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s, and their ability to win by exploiting the irrationality that pervades baseball scouting and conventional wisdom. In addition, it’s also a clarion call, showing that the long-marginalized statistical research known as sabermetrics is not just for geeks anymore—Beane is an adherent, his protégé J.P. Ricciardi is running the Blue Jays, and Theo Epstein and sabermetric founding father Bill James are in charge in Boston.
It is from reading James’ excellent books that I came to understand the first thing (though by no mean a second or a third) about baseball statistics. The two key statistical ideas I’ve learned from James are these:
1. Statistics that average things are always far more useful than statistics that just count things.
2. Statistics are interesting to the extent that they take on the aspect of language and actually tell us things.
Averages are useful, but some averages are better than others. Specifically, on-base percentage and slugging percentage are both vastly more useful than batting average if your goal is to use statistics to determine who is the more valuable player—that is, who actually contributes to teams winning ballgames. On-base is more useful because it actually credits players equally for singles and walks—just as players are on the field. Slugging percentage is more useful because it correctly notes that not all hits are created equally—extra-base hits are much more valuable than singles.
If you accept this Reader’s Digest version (except less funny than Humor in Uniform) of the statistical argument, you’ll see why power hitters (especially those who walk a lot) are much more useful than singles hitters. You’ll also see that great hitters should be determined by OBP and slugging (or OPS—on-base plus slugging) rather than by batting average and singles.
Which brings us back to Charlie Hustle. What is Pete Rose? He’s the most prolific singles hitter of all time. He’s known for playing as hard as anyone. (Notice, however, that the Hall of Fame is about playing exceptionally well, not exceptionally hard.) He also has inflated career stats because he played well past his usefulness. But how does he look when meaningful statistics are the ones we really care about?
He had a career OBP of .375, which is solid but not spectacular. It’s not in the top 100 all-time, even though Rose was a singles hitter. (Tim Salmon, for instance, is at .390.)
He had a career slugging percentage of .409, which is laughable for most Hall of Fame hitters.
His career OPS was .784. To put that number in perspective, you have to hit about .800 nowadays not to be considered eminently expendable. The .784 also ranks him sixth on his own Reds teams of the ‘70s, behind non-HoFers George Foster and Ken Griffey, and behind Hall of Famers Joe Morgan and Johnny Bench—a second baseman and a catcher, both of which you would expect less hitting from than corner infielder/outfielder Rose.
Oh, yes, and it puts him about 50 points behind all-time luminary Mike Greenwell.
You don’t have to listen to me, but Pete Rose is just not a Hall of Famer.
(The Average Mulder will be back next week to raise the entertainment level and Minnesota references back to their regular standards.)
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