Jim
Albright /
the
japanese insider
Comparing Oh to Top Outfield and First Base HOF CandidatesIn my analysis of Sadaharu Oh’s qualifications for the Hall of Fame, I referred to Bill James’ Keltner list and noted it asked if the player under consideration was the very best player not in the Hall or was the very best at his position not in the Hall. I looked at the 3000 hit guys at all positions to answer the first question, and consulted Win Shares, Total Baseball, and James’ last two Historical Abstracts to determine who the best candidates among the first basemen were. I did not in either case formally compare the records of these players to Oh, though anyone reading the analysis could have easily done so. I’ve thought about that, and have come up with another way to determine the best candidates, and will formally compare those candidates to the projected totals I have arrived at for Oh. The method I will use to determine the strongest candidates for the HOF is to take all those outfielders and first basemen who have finished in the top 10 of the writers votes for the Hall but are not yet enshrined. I am limiting the field to outfielders and first basemen because that’s the group which faces the same offensive expectations as Oh does, since he played first. The other positions have significantly different offensive expectations because of the greater defensive demands of those positions, and are misleading to compare to outfielders and first basemen without incorporating defense into the discussion. Since I lack the defensive data to do so for Oh, I can’t do that with any reasonable degree of accuracy. The list of the top ten finishers among outfielders and first basemen yields most if not all of the “hot” candidates under consideration by the writers and the Veteran’s Committee who are not in their first time on the writer’s ballots at those positions. There are eleven such players, and listed alphabetically, they are: Dick Allen, Phil Cavaretta, Andre Dawson, Steve Garvey, Gil Hodges, Roger Maris, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, Tony Oliva, Dave Parker, and Jim Rice. Phil Cavaretta is the only one I’d call a surprise, and frankly, I’d be very surprised if none of these eleven players ever makes the Hall.
When we compare the Oh projection found
here
to these players, Oh beats all eleven of them in games,
at bats, hits, homers,
walks, on base percentage, runs created, runs created per game, and secondary
average. He’s second in
OPS to only Dick Allen, second by a mere 8 total bases to Andre Dawson and is a
solid 4th in slugging percentage. One of the remaining categories is triples and that category is not of
any real significance in evaluating
any of these
players. Other than that, he’s
6th in doubles and tied for 8th in
average. None of the other “hot candidates” come close
to being as dominant in this group of quality
players. There can be no reasonable
argument that Oh is anything but the very best among this
group.
The spreadsheet detailing the above analysis appears
below:
RC= ((BB + TB) *
0.32) + ( 0.26 * H) + (0.16 * SB) – (0.10 * AB)
RC/g is based on
25.5 outs |
