The Futility Infielder

I'm hard at work on my Hall stuff and having Internet connection problems today (my girlfriend made me a sign to post on my monitor that reads: "DANGER X WARNING! DO NOT WRITE IN BLOGGER," with the X a skull and crossbones), but I decided to take a moment to respond to a Rose-related comment to my previous piece left by a reader named Joe. He writes:

I understand the concept behind WARP/RCAP/Win Shares/random advanced metric.

However, if you ignore the fact that Pete has 4000+ hits, is he really a Hall of Famer?

I mean, all of his rate stats are pretty ordinary:
1. The guy spent most of his career as a corner outfielder/firstbaseman (2266 games compared to 1262 @ 2B or 3B), yet managed a SLG only 10 points higher than the adjusted league average.
2. His SLG is the lowest among all players with 3000 hits by 20 full points.
3. Rose and Brock are the only members of the 3000 Hit Club that have an OBP under .400 and a SLG under .425, and we all know Lou's claim to fame.
4. Of all members in the 3000-Hit-Club, Pete ranks only #15 in OBP. The seven men with worse OBPs? They have averaged 336 HR, compared to Rose's 160. Hank Aaron is tied with Rose's OBP, and has 755 HR (those 755 were not included in that 336 average).
5. Pete has fewer SB than every man in that group, other than Ripken. Those seven men have averaged 326 SB with a 74% success rate, compared to Pete's 198 and 57%.
6. We're all aware that his AVG is "only" .303 -- in the bottom half of the 3K Hit Club.
7. Despite routinely being among league leaders in games played, AB, and plate appearances, Pete had more than 100 walks in a season only once, and more than 90 walks in a season only once more.

Pete holds the career records of hits, games, and at bats. Those are records that he will likely hold for years to come. He deserves those records: anyone who plays for 24 seasons should get appropriate credit.

I've run him through the Keltner List, and I think you'd be surprised at how poorly he fared. You can run him yourself, or I can e-mail you my results.

Simply, Pete Rose is NOT one of the greatest players to ever play the game. And isn't that what the Hall of Fame is for?

Nitpicking Rose's qualifications within the 3,000 hit club won't convince me of anything. Nobody achieves that level without being very, very good. Who cares about stolen bases in that company? He beat the pants off of Eddie Murray there, but so what?

I think the larger issue is your underestimation of Pete's ability to get on base. He was 44 points above the adjusted league average for his epic career. In a 17-season span, he led the league in the number of times on base nine times, was second five other times, and the three other years finished fourth, sixth, and ninth. Put together, that has a HUGE amount of value. And despite the low slugging percentage, he was 19 points above adjusted league average for his career. To expand a bit more...

(By the way, I'm not sure what your source on league-adjusted figures is; mine's Baseball-Reference, which I prefer because I can't use the SBE and because it's freely available.)

Pete was not a power hitter, but he was a FANTASTIC leadoff hitter. In the Retrosheet era, which covers his career from '69 and thus leaves out four great seasons of his (which would only enhance those numbers if he were leading off then, but I don't know for sure that he was) but includes all of his decline phase, he posted a .386 OBP/.424 SG. He did this despite playing many years in a time period which included some of the lowest levels of offense in modern baseball history. Who led the league in OBP in the Year of the Pitcher? Pete. Who was the leadoff hitter for the Big Red Machine, when they were scoring 25% more runs than the league average? It wasn't Joe Morgan.

Despite the period, his rate stats are NOT ordinary. To turn our attention away from the BP suite of numbers, check his OPS+. For his career he has an OPS+ of 118, and he had a 12-year prime ('65-'76) which was even higher: 116 or better every single year in that span, better than 125 in nine of those 12, better than 130 in six of those. There is no doubt he was a big benefit to his offenses during that run; they led the league in scoring five times and were second in three of those years. What's the object of baseball? Scoring runs. Check his place on the all-time runs scored list: fifth all time, behind Rickey, Ty, Hank and the Babe, and ahead of Willie, Cap, the Man, Barry, and the Iron Horse. That is select company, my friend, and you don't get there without being great.

And that's a hell of a long prime; I'd have to study it more deeply, but I'll bet you there aren't more than a dozen people in baseball history who maintained such a high level for so long. Nine wins above replacement a year for 12 years is a hell of a building block to have for a team. Is it any wonder the man was part of so many winning teams? Add to this a defensive versatility which allowed his managers to shift him around the diamond in order to accomodate the needs of his teams, and you've got a great asset to any ballclub.

Rose's career overlapped with a number of fantastic ballplayers whose careers may have overshadowed his; Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Joe Morgan, and Mike Schmidt come to mind among NL players. And those guys were probably better than him. But I think if you examine Rose's standing using methods that incorporate a player's value including defense (WARP, Win Shares, any others?), you'll find he still comes out among the all-time greats, unequivocally good enough for the Hall of Fame. Smelling like a Rose, so to speak.