A Place at the Table for Rafael Palmeiro – But Which Table?

by Asher B. Chancey, Baseball Evolution

 

A couple of years ago, I was watching a ballgame on Fox Game of the Week, and the camera panned over to the Indians dugout where hitting coach Eddie Murray sat, studiously examining the field as his players warmed up between innings. As he watched, some sportscaster made reference to Murray's 3000 hits and 500 home runs, and maybe even his 1900 RBIs, and called Murray "one of the All Time Greats." Eddie Murray was a very good, very consistent ball player. He is a top 100 ball player. But he is, in my mind, a bit overrated.

 

Now that Rafael Palmeiro has reached 3,000 hits, the talk begins about his place in baseball history. We all know he is headed into the Hall of Fame, and rightfully so, but where does he rank among the great players is the question everyone will be asking. The answer really won't officially come until Palmeiro reaches some other milestones - 600 home runs, 2000 RBI, 600 doubles being the main ones which come to mind. While none of these milestones is a sure thing, a funny thing happened to Rafael Palmeiro this season on the way to hit number 3,000 – he has actually not been playing too badly. It is possible that Palmeiro will stick around long enough to get the remaining home runs (34) RBI (174) and doubles (17). What will happen to his career AVG, OPS, and K/BB ratios as he holds on to reach these milestones is what I am curious to see.

 

The 600 doubles and 600 home runs would really be an impressive feat. Only four players have ever hit 600 home runs, and only 12 players have ever hit 600 doubles, but only one player has ever done both – Hank Aaron. Here is the list of the top home run and doubles combinations[i] in history:

 

Player

 

2B

HR

Total

Hank

Aaron

624

755

1379

Barry

Bonds

563

703

1266

Babe

Ruth

506

714

1220

Stan

Musial

725

475

1200

Willie

Mays

523

660

1183

Raphael

Palmeiro

583

566

1149

Frank

Robinson

528

586

1114

Carl

Yastrzemski

646

452

1098

Eddie

Murray

560

504

1064

Ted

Williams

525

521

1046

Cal

Ripken

603

431

1034

Lou

Gehrig

534

493

1027

Reggie

Jackson

463

563

1026

Dave

Winfield

540

465

1005

Mel

Ott

488

511

999

Jimmie

Foxx

458

534

992

George

Brett

665

317

982

Mike

Schmidt

408

548

956

Andre

Dawson

503

438

941

Ken

Griffey Jr.

423

518

941

Fred

McGriff

441

493

934

Sammy

Sosa

351

583

934

 

If Palmeiro does in fact reach the 600/600 plateau, he will not only join Hank Aaron as the only member of that club, but he will also join Aaron, Bonds, Ruth, and Musial as the only members of the 1200 HR+2B club. Still very select company.

 

The Runs Batted In issue is another one altogether. If Palmeiro gets to 2000 RBI, he will join a club that only has two members – Ruth and Aaron. That is legend stuff. You don't take the third seat at a table that Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron are sitting at without everyone in the restaurant turning to look and ask themselves, "who is THAT?!?!" To have a list, any list, which reads "Aaron, Ruth, Palmeiro" would say quite a bit.

 

Unfortunately for Palmeiro, if he gets to 2000 RBI, he may become the poster child for RBI cynicism. There are plenty of RBI critics out there, Bill James I suppose being the most visible, who think that RBI are overrated because they depend more on the team a player is on than the player's actual abilities.[ii] As Palmeiro moves up the RBI list, passing Ted Williams, Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, Stan Musial, and Lou Gehrig, there will be no shortage of people who will point out what a meaningless accomplishment this is because Palmeiro is clearly inferior to all those players. This would, of course, also be unfortunate for the RBI.

 

Unfortunately for Palmeiro (and the fact that I have begun two straight paragraphs with those words should give you an indication of what I think of him), he is a career milestone horse, like Aaron, Yastrzemski, Ripken, and Murray, to name the more prominent ones.[iii] While his career milestones will certainly be impressive in the end, his individual season dominance and his career averages tell us more about Palmeiro than his career milestones.

 

Perhaps the jumping off point for any discussion of career averages would be OPS+ (although I think Keith would refer to batting runs). For those just joining the party, OPS is on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, a formulation that Peter Gammons discovered in 1999[iv] which is a very accurate gauge of a player's ability (though again Keith would refer to batting runs). OPS+ is OPS adjusted over the course of time for era, ballpark, and some other things. Basically, a player with a 100 OPS+ is an average player, a player under 100 is below average, and a player above 100 is above average (. . . the snozzberries taste like snozzberries . . .).

 

The all time leader in OPS+ is none other than Babe Ruth at 207. This means he is more than twice the average player. He is the only player over 200, with Ted Williams at 190, Barry Bonds at 184, and Lou Gehrig at 179. Whenever you see an OPS+ over 150, you know you have a genuinely good player on your hands – Piazza, Bagwell, Lajoie, Thome, Delahanty, Aaron, Ott, DiMaggio, Frank Robinson are all in the 150-ish range – and a player over 160 is pretty fabulous.

 

Coming into the 2005 season Rafael Palmeiro had an OPS+ of 132. While this is certainly solid, it is nothing to write home about. He's at the table with Aaron and Ruth, but he just used to his entrιe fork to eat his salad, he ordered White Zinfandel while Ruth and Aaron sipped single malt, and the tablecloth is tucked into his pants. OPS+ 132 does not place in the Top 100 of all time. Players with higher OPS+ include Pedro Guerrero, Larry Doby, Bill Terry, and Denny Lyons. Nice guys, good ballplayers, but not elite by any stretch.

 

To be more pedestrian for a moment, we can look at career batting average. Palmeiro was once a solid hitter, hitting over .300 five times from 1988 to 1995. But as his career progressed, Palmeiro became less of a hitter for average and more of just an average hitter. From 1996 to 2004, Palmeiro hit over .300 exactly once, going for .324 in 1999 in probably his best season. In that same period, he hit .260 or lower three times, hit .273 exactly twice, .288 once and .296 once. As it stands, his career average of .289 is solid, but doesn't get him through the door of any of the cool clubs.

 

One stat that I like to look at is BB/K. It’s a relatively arbitrary stat, as many very productive players have had terrible BB/K ratios, and many mediocre players have had very good BB/K ratios. Nevertheless, it is always interesting to see where a player ranks in BB/K, and a ratio over 1.0 is pretty much the only thing I look for.

 

Palmeiro currently has a BB/K ratio over 1.0, but only barely (1343/1337). Of the twenty players in the 500 home run club, plus Lou Gehrig and Fred McGriff, the only players to have a BB/K ratio over 1.0 are Aaron, Ruth, Bonds, Mantle, Foxx, Williams, Ott, Gehrig and Palmeiro (8 out of 22 players). Obviously, this distinction puts him in select company, though it does not really impact how we look at his career if he should strike out 6 more times than he walks from here on out. Still noteworthy.

 

Once career averages are more or less explored, the next logical step is to look at single season dominance. One of the things that Barry Bonds fans like to point at is his seven MVPs (which, by the way, that IS amazing, and it really does feel like he went from 3 to 7 overnight), and the fact that he spent a significant portion of his career as the game's best player. Whenever we judge a player, we look at how many MVPs he owns, and how many times he was one of the league's best players.[v]

 

Well, Palmeiro's best season was probably 1999, when he went 47-148-.324 with 96 runs, 1050 OPS (160), and a 97/69 BB/K. It was his second time as a 100-pluser[vi], and his career high for HR, RBI, AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS, and OPS+. However, that season Palmeiro did not lead the league in any single offensive category. Not that you have to, but it says a lot that he did not. He finished second in several categories, but could hardly be considered the league's best player that year.

 

1999 was actually an infamous year in terms of post awards for two reason, only one of which was directly related to Rafie. That was the year that Ivan Rodriguez edged out Pedro Martinez for the MVP become some dude who thought pitchers shouldn't be eligible but still somehow managed to be allowed to write about baseball didn't put Pedro anywhere on his ballot. Pedro ended up losing by 13 points despite taking 8 first place votes to IRod's 7.

 

That was the same season that Rafie managed the dubious distinction of winning the Gold Glove at first base AND the Silver Slugger at Designated Hitter. I know what you are thinking – maybe he spent enough time at both to qualify for both (which, by the way, means you are stupid, because even if he split it evenly, he shouldn't qualify for either). But, unfortunately for the voters, it wasn't close – Rafie played exactly 28 games at first base, the only season of his career to that point in which he played more games at DH. This really cast a pall on the Gold Glove voting process, because it showed that apparently voters don't even look, they just vote on instinct, and calls into question all the players that have won many gold gloves, and whether they earned it or whether dinner was getting cold at the voter's houses, and they didn't have time to look in the "games played" columns of the various candidates.[vii] But I digress . . .

 

Fact is, Rafie has really never been the league's best at anything. In 1993, he led the league in runs. In 1990, he led the league in hits and singles. In 1991, he led the league in doubles. He narrowly missed leading the 90s in hits, a distinction that went to Mark Grace.

 

When doing my Top 100 the last few years, I have generally considered Rafael Palmeiro to be the 1990s version of Eddie Murray, and I think this is still true. Bill James points out that it is difficult to pinpoint Murray's best season, but they were all good, and very consistent. The same can be said of Palmeiro. A brief look at their career stats:

 

Player

R

H

2B

HR

RBI

BB

SO

AVG

OBP

SLG

OPS

OPS+

BB/K

Murray

1627

3255

560

504

1917

1333

1516

0.287

0.363

0.476

839

130

0.88

Palmeiro

1656

3001

583

566

1826

1343

1337

0.289

0.371

0.516

887

132

1.00

 

Now, Palmeiro is slightly better than Murray in several categories, there differences are very much explained by era. For example, Palmeiro currently has 62 more home runs than Murray. But over the course of his career, Murray led the league in home runs once, and finished in the top five 5 times. Palmeiro has never led the league in home runs, and has finished in the top five 6 times. Not much of a difference.

 

Taken one step further, in 1984 Eddie Murray finished ninth in the league with 29 home runs. In 1996, Rafael Palmeiro finished ninth with 39 home runs. Sure, Palmeiro hit ten more home runs than Murray did, but they were both the ninth best home run hitter in their league. In this one specific example, the 1996 version of the same player in 1984 has ten more home runs.

 

This is, of course, simply an anecdotal example, but they are very similar players. You can see Murray's career stats above – they are very good. But Murray, like Palmeiro, also had a little trouble leading the league in things (to the extent that such a thing is indicative of anything at all). He led the league in OBP, BB, and games in 1984, HR and RBI in 1981, and intentional walks three times. And, again a possibly insignificant stat, Murray was the highest paid player in the league in 1990. Palmeiro was never the league's highest paid player.[viii]

 

The biggest deal that people generally tend to make over Rafie is his eight straight seasons with 38 or more home runs, a feat he accomplished from 1995 to 2003. This is, to say the least, a very impressive feat. But it lends itself to a little experiment. What if we take Rafie's season totals for those years, and push them back ten years to 1985 to 1993. We can look at where he ranked each season in home runs from 1995 to 2003, and then see how many home runs he would have hit if he had ranked in that place from 1985-1993:

 

 

Season

HR

Rank

 

Season

HR

Rank

1995

39

4

 

1985

35

4

1996

39

9

 

1986

31

9

1997

38

6

 

1987

34

6

1998

43

6

 

1988

27

6

1999

47

2

 

1989

35

2

2000

39

8

 

1990

27

8

2001

47

3

 

1991

34

3

2002

43

3

 

1992

35

3

2003

38

5

 

1993

37[ix]

5

 

373

 

 

 

295

 

So, the transposition results, first of all, in 78 fewer home runs, but more importantly, Rafie's feat of hitting 38 or more home runs in eight straight years becomes the feat of hitting 27 or more home runs for eight straight years.[x]

 

Now, this is actually still impressive. 27 home runs over eight straight years in nothing to sneeze your nose at. But again, it does not exactly get him into all the cool clubs.

 

In the end, whatever his stats ultimately finish out at, and whatever milestones he ultimately reaches, Rafael Palmeiro will be remembered by many as a pretty good player. And someday, just like Eddie Murray, he will become some team's hitting instructor, and someday, the Fox Game of the Week will be in the city where Rafie is working, and the camera will show him looking studiously from the dugout, and some sportscaster will refer to him as one of the All Time Greats. And, as it was with Murray, this will be an exaggeration.

 



[i] [i] I was originally only going to do a Top 20, but I did a Top 22 instead to draw out an important point – Sammy Sosa is the only player on this list without 400 doubles. In fact, by the time Griffey gets done, Sammy and Mike Schmidt will be the only ones not over 441 doubles. And, the way he is going right now, I am not sure that Sammy has 49 doubles left in his bat. This will be an interesting point to make when "where does Sammy fit in" in baseball history starts coming around.

[ii] Importantly, the current RBI are overrated poster child is Juan Gonzalez, a two time MVP and one time RBI machine for the Texas Rangers, and, a former teammate of Palmeiro's.

[iii] A quick word about Aaron – he IS a career milestone horse, someone who's career milestones are more impressive than his playing abilities – but he was also a very good player. I hesitated to include him here, but I do because of the common practice of naming Hank Aaron the greatest player of all time because he has more home runs than anyone else. I don't think he was better than Mays, Ruth, Cobb, or Hornsby, to name a few, and for that matter, he is not currently better than Bonds.

[iv] Of course, if you ARE just joining the party, you don't realize that this is a joke, a reference to the fact that baseball guys have been talking OPS since the 1980's, but it didn't really take off until the mid-to-late 1990s, at which point ESPN people began crediting Peter Gammons the invention.

[v] Don't get me started on the league's best player NOT winning the MVP. Ted Williams was robbed repeatedly; JuanGone took two from ARod; Ichiro over Giambi in 2001 . . .

[vi] 100 Plus Club – see http://asher.baseballevolution.com/100plusclub.html

[vii] Actually, the problem is that the voters vote once, and the person that takes the most votes wins, without a majority. So, the problem was not that the majority of voters are dumbasses, just that a significant number of them are.

[viii] Fascinatingly, Eddie Murray is also the career leader in sacrifice flies. Additionally, eight of the top ten guys on the all time sac fly list played in the 1980s, in whole or in part. Maybe there is something there – less home runs, more sac flies. Interesting.

[ix] Humorously, the fifth ranked player in 1993 was Palmeiro.

[x] By the way, just for shoots and googles, I did the same analysis only in reverse for Fred McGriff. From 1988 to 1994, he hit 31 or more home runs every year, so I transposed those numbers over onto 1998 to 2004. The results were staggering – the 1998-2004 Fred McGriff hit 41 or more home runs each season, hit 49 home runs three times, and added 82 home runs to his career total (which would bring him up to 575. Now, McGriff's career ended a bit nastily, and I don't think I think he is better than Palmeiro, but I think it is closer than it would appear. And in the "oh by the way" department, Fred McGriff's career OPS+ is two points higher than Palmeiro's.