Talk about sneaking up on the history books, Captain Caveman hit his 499th double last night, which prompted me to check in on his stats.
2600+ hits? I had no idea. 223 HRs? Yeah, I think I could have guessed that. Almost 400 SBs? Surprising. 75% success rate? Wouldn’t have guess that one. .287/.354/.436 career? That’s impressive.
He’s always been a plus on defense as well - nothing spectacular though. There have always been CFs who have been more impressive in the field, but he’s not a liability (or at least wasn’t for most of his career).
I’m not saying he should be elected to the Hall of Fame (his lifetime OPS+ is 105, career WAR of 50.2). But he’s only 37 - he could make it to 3000 hits. What then? 3000 isn’t an automatic ticket punch - but he would have a fair amount of comparables already bronzed.
Is there an eligible player, not suspected of using performance enhancing drugs, with 3000 hits that is not in the HOF? Damon is 37, still playing full time. He will probably eclipse 2700 hits this season. He could conceivably reach 3000 in 2 more years. I had no idea he was that close. If he gets it, boy it would be hard to keep him out.
His best comparison right now is Tim Raines, who finished with just over 2600 hits and is in the HOF mix and picking up steam each year (at 37.5% in 2011). Johnny Damon doesn’t come to mind when I think Hall of Famer, but he may have an excellent case by the time he’s finished.
The problems for Damon are going to be that he never led the league in any significant category (runs once, triples once and steals once.) He also never finished in the top 10 in an MVP vote. While his career numbers are very good, he never had the impressive single seasons that make you a Hall of Famer in the fans and media’s eyes.
Right now I put him in the Tommy John longevity category, but with a few more impressive years he could move up. I think 3000 hits is absolutely key for him. If Tommy John had gotten 12 more wins, I think he’d be in.
I think he does have the bonus of being a well liked guy, by fans, players and media alike. When he was here in Detroit he was beloved beyond his actual contributions on the field
I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate articles like this, especially the “the only nine guys with X nouns, Y other nouns and Z these nouns over here are all Hall of Famers” - but these aren’t truly unreasonable categories (link). At the very least, they show a brief glimpse at a guy that produced a little bit of everything for a long time (and still is). I’m surprised they didn’t include Runs in the factor as well (he’s ahead of several of those guys, and two years from now could be in the Top 25). My mind is a little blown right now. Someone talk me down.
He’s been around awhile, and he’s always been pretty good, but I don’t share the rest of the room’s positivity. I don’t consider him Hall of Fame material; just another guy who stayed surprisingly effective for surprisingly long.
Defensively, I think he’s always been bad to not-good as a centerfielder, especially in terms of his arm. That’s just my anecdotal impression, but I don’t see anything in the numbers to indicate that he’s been a plus for his career. He’s actually a career -35 total zone at center, and in Boston, where he was definitely full-time in center, he racked up negative four and change fielding wins. Career UZR/150 at center is -8.5, which is bad bad. Fangraph’s arm rating has him bettered only by Juan Pierre in terms of being terrible.
An OPS+ of 105 over all those at-bats, and while contributing a lot on the bases, is very, very, good. But I think Damon’s been outperformed by several contemporaries who I don’t consider Hall of Famers themselves, and don’t think others do. For the era he played in, Damon’s been very useful, but not great, in my opinion. I wonder whether this is going to start being a common phenomenon, where guys who played in the 2000s who stick around awhile end up with fairly outlandish numbers considering their relative stature in the game.
His carer OPS+ is 105, which is quite good over a long career but not sensational. The split lines look more impressive than they are; the bulk of his career was in an incredibly high offensive time. To give some sense of how it warps his numbers, last year he batted .271/.355/.401 - and that OPS+ was 107, better than his career norm, but it just looks worse because 2009 was so much lower in terms of offense. If you think about it that .436 SLG is not especially impressive for an American League outfielder in Damon’s career window.
I’m not saying he hasn’t been a good player and all, I’m just pointing out that his numbers are boosted a lot by context. An OPS+ of 105 puts about **seven hundred **batters in major league history ahead of him.
In terms of value he’s still a season or two from matching, say, John Olerud or Robin Ventura, two players I don’t think many people think are Hall of Famers.
I wonder what that list looks like without the triples. I could make a pretty awesome comp list for Craig Biggio by picking a bunch of standard categories and hbp.
I was going to say that Biggio might end up being the best comp for Damon. Biggio’s numbers will probably be slightly better, even. His OPS+ is 111, led the league in doubles a few times and even finished in the top 10 for MVP three times. It will be interesting to see how HOF voters handle Biggio.
Incidentally, the Craig Biggio hit-by-pitch list is not SO awesome; the best I can do is a 2-person list with Frank Robinson (2900 hits and 180 HBP I think does it; throw some other categories (doubles and runs scored are good) to disguise the obvious cherry-picking).
Damon led the leage in fielding percentage for a CF a couple times, but that’s pretty meaningless. I thought I remembered a long errorless streak for him, too, but I could be wrong. He’s always had a notoriously weak arm, though. Heck, he needed Manny Ramirez to be a double cut-off man once.
Won’t 3,000 hits be more or less a guaranteed ticket? Not that it should be, mind you, but you know HoF voters.
I’m interested to see what the voters do if he does reach it - would it be the bellwether for a kind of low WAR player with a big milestone under his belt? Unfortunately, we could have seen earlier, but Harold Baines fell just short…
Here’s your complete list of eligible players with more hits than Damon who are not in the HOF, not counting people left out due to scandals (Rose and Palmeiro, basically):
Harold Baines 2866
Vada Pinson 2757
Al Oliver 2743
Rusty Staub 2716
Bill Buckner 2715
Dave Parker 2712
Doc Cramer 2705
Lave Cross 2651
Lave Cross was a third baseman who played from 1887 to 1907. Doc Cramer was a center fielder with a career 87 OPS+ who padded his stats a bit by playing during World War II in his late 30s.
Vada Pinson is actually a very good comp for Damon; main difference between them is that (1) Damon walked more - good for a nearly 30 point edge in OBP but (2) Pinson played in a much tougher offensive era and thus has a 110 OPS+ to Damon’s 105. Pinson misses that list-of-hall-of-famers Munch pointed to by 15 doubles (out of 500). I wonder if he would have gotten more love for the HOF if he hadn’t played directly opposite Mays and Mantle.
The rest are all corner outfielders or first basemen.
But that’s just me I suppose.