Why are these two on the outside looking in?
The Hall of Fame index was designed to measure fitness for the Hall of Fame. That seems fairly straightforward and obvious, but some might be tempted to read too much into the numbers. While it does provide the opportunity to rank order players, it wasn’t designed for that. I suppose one could use it as evidence for their own rankings, but it is not meant to be a definitive word on the subject.
What we are looking to do is compare similar players in terms of value. All players arrive at their value in different ways, but there will always be similarities. Comparing like players helps us to avoid emotional attachments. Those attachments (positive and negative) can cloud our judgment and ultimately lead to bad analysis.
Often when we compare two players we will have a stronger emotional connection to one over the other. Part of that is grounded in rooting interests, but the other is simply the era the player played in. We grow attached to guys we are familiar with. This is true of the two players we are looking at today. They have a ton of similarities, so comparing one player we care more about with another we don’t could hopefully ground us and help lead to better analysis overall.
Randolph and Utley have two different offensive profiles. So, they are not twins separated at birth, but they have a ton of similarities that we will get to momentarily. Randolph looks like he is closer to the median across the board until you get to home runs and RBI. Randolph was more of a table setter while Utley was probably similar offensively to Bobby Grich who we profiled last time.
Utley is currently on the ballot and has had only one year there. If current percentages hold he will not get there. He received 28.8 percent in his first year which makes getting to 75 percent highly unlikely. I imagine the low hits total is hurting him in addition to some other factors that we will explore in this piece.
Sure enough, Utley ends up being a little better than the median Hall of Fame second baseman. Keep in mind that median was arrived at by eliminating the outliers above and below the 80 and 120 percent mark. These were the ten second basemen in the middle. Utley seems to be very similar to them if not a little bit better.
Randolph’s total is right at the median, but he doesn’t profile exactly the same. He had a slightly higher career value than the median, but lagged behind in peak value. That becomes important for those folks that want their Hall of Famers to demonstrate greatness in their career. Randolph falls into the “pretty good player for a long time” category.
This is where I remind the audience that being a median level performer doesn’t mean you are automatically in. It is simply a strong indication that maybe you should be. We have other tests that we need to perform and those tests will probably help decide this for us.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it is probably a duck. Utley meets the Hall of Fame median virtually across the board. If your numbers consistently look like those that are Hall of Famers then you probably should be one. Randolph on the other hand has some issues.
You could probably call him average offensively. That means he has considerable ground to make up. We have seen others in the Hall of Fame with similar profiles, but most of those guys were in the negative outlier column. That means that while Randolph can easily say he is more qualified than them, they are players that really shouldn’t be in the conversation when we are looking to compare Randolph to players that are the Hall of Fame standard.
When a player is that close to the median overall, I am not willing to toss him out based on just one test, but the beginning is problematic. I certainly would forgive anyone that says no and uses the offensive numbers as part of their justification. However, we need to move onto the other three tests before we make a final determination.
Would anyone care to guess how many Gold Glove awards Randolph won? Zero. That’s right, one of the best fielding second baseman in the game’s history was shut out. Hell, he even won a Silver Slugger award. I’m not saying he is exhibit A of how worthless Gold Gloves are, but he one of the main pieces of evidence we can use.
He had seven seasons with ten or more Rfield at the position. Are you honestly telling me he wasn’t the best defender in the American League in any of those seasons? Of course, we know Frank White won most of those and he probably also deserved most of them. That gets us to the second part of the problem with fielding analysis.
You can be good and still not be the best. However, you are still valuable while you are good. I know that seems elementary and obvious, but in a world where we focus on Gold Gloves it often gets lost. Utley had seven consecutive seasons with ten or more fielding runs. He also won zero Gold Gloves. So, we are talking fourteen combined seasons of ten or more runs with zero Gold Glove awards. I would call that a fail.
Utley played some first base at the end of his career, so his DWAR and FG took a hit. However, the UZR also did not like him much. I would point out that he had 123 defensive runs saved according to the Fielding Bible, so I would guess that he was pretty damn good defensively.
Utley’s place within the second base universe seems pretty secure. He was at or above the median offensively, defensively, and now with the awards voting as well. Of course, the actual MVP vote did not go his way. This is largely because it is still an offensive award and his value comes through the offense and fielding combination.
Randolph has the same issue on steroids. He just wasn’t a gifted offensive player. Still, when you are average offensively that can be worth two to three wins. When you are stellar defensively that can be worth another two wins. The BWAR points do not count top 25 finishes and I imagine Randolph had plenty of those.
However, you’d be forgiven if you think Randolph just comes up short. A lot of it just comes down to the fact that he did not have many stellar seasons. He had a lot of pretty good seasons and we will see a number of questionable guys that are in the Hall of Fame with similar resumes.
There are any number of ways to look at playoff performance. Randolph was a part of the Yankees 1977 title team and any time a guy gets a ring it has to change the calculus some. Similarly, Utley won one title in Philadelphia. Both players had plenty of playoff experience, so they certainly are memorable.
However, we lean heavily into the percentage numbers (OPS) because not everyone gets those opportunities. It would be fair to say Utley helps himself out here, but I’m not sure that Randolph really hurts himself that much. Playoff baseball usually means better pitching. So, it would make perfect sense that overall playoff numbers should be lower than regular season numbers and we see this with the median.
Given all the evidence, I am not sure why Utley did not get more consideration last season other than some low counting numbers. Still, the current crop of voters are more sophisticated than past groups, so hopefully he will gain some momentum in the next few seasons. Randolph will have to wait on the Veterans Committee and I imagine he won’t be high on their priority list.
With less than 100 readers, I don’t imagine I will have much sway, but I would probably be inclined to support Utley immediately, but I would want to wait until Bobby Grich and Lou Whitaker are in before turning my attention to Randolph. It’s only fair.
Author’s Note: I am happy to announce that I have signed on with a literary agent in the hopes of getting “The Hall of Fame Index Part II” a traditional publisher. If you would like to check out that book or my other books you can go to http://www.scottbarzilla.com to see those selections or my other sites.