I don’t think anyone would have thought of Kenny Lofton as being as good as his WAR says he was. It shocked me. He suffers from all the disadvantages you can imagine of a HOF candidate:
He didn’t hit any really huge milestone, like 3000 hits,
He wasn’t a homers and RBI man,
He played for many different teams,
He didn’t lead the league in anything noteworthy except steals, and
His value is dependent on being just generally good at a lot of things, which is terrible for your HOF chances.
Lofton was drafted out of the U of Arizona, and didn’t make it to the bigs to stay until he was 25 at which point he was immediately an excellent player. (He lost the ROY vote to Pat Listach, which does not, in retrospect, appear to be one of the smarter award decisions in baseball history.) Had he gotten up earlier maybe that adds hundreds of hits. Then later in his career he bounced around and I really don’t know why, because by all accounts he’s a good guy and he played well everywhere he went. Just bad luck, I suppose, but then again he got to play 2103 games in the big leagues and was paid tens of millions of dollars to do it.
Like I said, lead off with a fast guy, hit Joe second, and put you basic lefty-righty power duo behind him, and I’ll be in the playoffs for 10 straight years.
I think the projections for his SLG and OPS are drastically low. This is someone who puts the ball in play every single time he steps into the box. That’s 700 plate appearances per season, with 230 - 260 hits every year. And Ichiro isn’t his comp - Ichiro was a slap hitter, who ran out infield singles. The OP says Joe is driving the ball. He’s going to lead the league in doubles and likely triples for 12 straight seasons, and push for setting the league record in doubles (67). Delgado hit 57 doubles in 2000, 10% of his at-bats, 29% of his hits. Helton hit 59 in 2000 (over 10% of ABs, 27.3% of hits). Nomar hit 56 in 2002 (8.8%, 28.4%). Joe could be hitting anywhere from 62 (8.8% of ABs) to 73 (28% of hits).
That might be aggressive. But that’s a peak year. So let’s say he ranges from 7% of ABs to 25% of hits (I have no idea what league average is, and would actually be interested in them, as well as 2B/BIP). Throw in a reasonable 10 triples, that’s anywhere from a .429 to a .492 SLG, and .757 to a .863 OPS. For a second basemen, that’s a perennial All Star. He’s going to create a million runs with men on base - the ball’s in play every time!
Joe has a variable range from .330 to .370 - that’s significant, and doesn’t suggest that he doesn’t care who’s pitching. I think it’s fair to assume he hits closer to .370 against the shitty pitchers, and .330 against the better ones. (Or more likely, probably .400 against the shitty ones, and .280 against the better ones.)
Especially if he’s keeping the ball on the ground so much that he never hits it out.
Thanks for the explanation on Lofton, guys. So, a speedier, less power version of Adrian Beltre, who was I similarly surprised by with his BB Reference WAR accumulation. ("He was that good?!), and who you all also helped me with understanding why he had the advanced stats he had. Though Beltre’s getting into the Hall rather easily, I should think.
A guy like Outcome Joe, shouldn’t he have been moved to the outfield to take more advantage of that speed?
I don’t see the problem here. Let’s say your splits are right, I’ll still take .280 from my 2B against the best pitching in MLB. The best hitting second baseman in the playoffs last year was Travis Shaw, who only hit .260.
The OP stated that Joe would bat between .330 to .370 over the course of every season. That is an incredibly, inhumanly tight band of batting average. I doubt any regular position player in the history of baseball has been that consistent in batting average over a 12-year span.
That doesn’t mean he can’t have a wide spread depending on the situation, but it would certainly be odd for a switch hitter who always hit about .350 to be unusually situationally dependent.
Yes - I would too. I was just suggesting that the opposing team isn’t going to throw their worst pitcher against his lineup just because he isn’t significantly better against them.
Excepting Ty Cobb, the closest I can find is Ted Williams from 1946-1958. But even Williams broke his arm, which put him off his game for two seasons; lost most of two others to military service; and broke his collarbone in another.
I was thinking about Charlie Gehringer (second baseman for the Tigers in the 1920s and 1930s, and Hall of Famer). Gehringer’s nickname was “The Mechanical Man,” due to his consistency, of which a teammate once said, “You wind him up Opening Day and forget him.”
Looking at his stats, while he was consistently a very good hitter, even he didn’t have the tight BA range that “Joe” would have over that long of a time period. That said, he was still pretty darned consistent: from 1927 through 1940, he only had one season (1932) in which he didn’t hit at least .306, and in nine of those thirteen seasons, he hit between .320 and .371.
Wade Boggs - 9 of his first 10 years hit between .325 - .368. But Boggs actually walked a lot, so he’s not a great comp for Joe. I still think Tony Gwynn is the best comp. High BA, not a ton of walks, very few Ks, almost no home runs.
I agree that he’s probably about the best fit we’ll find. However (and it may be a matter of semantics), I’d disagree with “almost no home runs.” Gwynn hit 135 career HRs, and hit double-digit homers in four seasons. He wasn’t Babe Ruth, but he wasn’t Ozzie Smith, either.
And, while he didn’t walk a ton, he still added 50 points to his OBP via walks (career BA .338, career OBP .388).
Depending on who else you have, I might be tempted to put Joe in the #4 or #5 slot. He’s a guy you can count on to drive the runners home with a steady frequency. Place some top OBP guys with a bit of speed in the #1 and 2 slots and your big power at #3 and let Joe hit singles to the outfield and doubles down the line to drive them in at least once or twice in each game. Remember, if he averages .350 that means he’s hitting something on average once or twice per game. At a minimum he’s coming up about 4 times per game and with luck someone will be on. If that someone’s on second that’s a run. If Joe hits a double that’s a run. It’s not the worst outcome.
I just ran ten simulations using OOTP and put Joe in a lineup at #4 with replacement level players - so they’re not that good - against average pitching (using a 2018 stat set) and the team scored a lot of runs. Enough to be more than competitive.
The average run set was 4.46 runs per game. That’s right around where the Angels were in 2018 and they sat at #15 in the league. But put him with a decent, non-replacement lineup and it should - I haven’t done the sim - launch Joe into the top five in terms of runs-per-game. The #5 team last year was the Astros at 4.94 runs-per-game. That’s a swing of 0.48 RPG. Good teammates can make that up.
So Houston scored 797 runs that year. I’d take that 10 years out of 10 if I could get it.
I haven’t run a sim of 8 or 9 Joes and I’m not going to as it’s late. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they came out at 900-1000 runs per season. So that would be 5.55 - 6.17 RPG. You’d win a lot of games that way.
If our hypothetical lineup only has one fearsome power hitter, it might make sense to bat Joe fourth, to protect the slugger from being pitched around. But my hypothetical lineup has two power hitters (preferably one who bats left, the other batting right.) That’s a fearsome set of weapons in the top half of the lineup.
With a BA of .330-.370 and never striking out, Joe will help anywhere you put him in the lineup. But if you bat him second, he’s more likely to come up five times per game. Plus, no pitcher will ever walk Joe intentionally when he’s in the 2 spot, because that would mean they’d have to pitch to the 3 and 4 hitters. And while Joe has only average speed, batting him behind a fast runner at least reduces the chance of a 3-6-3 double play if Joe fails to punch the ball through the right side on a failed hit and run.
Actually, Joe is almost undoubtedly an above-average runner, based on the information in the OP:
That’s a 80% success rate, and is pretty darned good. Whit Merrifield’s name comes up again, as he led MLB in stolen bases last year with 45, in 55 attempts (82%). So, given the current use of the stolen base in MLB, Joe would be among the best base thieves in the game.
