Is Palmiero Greatest Lefty Hitter?

[imgreat95]

Is Palmeiro greatest left-handed hitter?
Sunday, July 17, 2005

By David Ginsburg, The Associated Press


BALTIMORE -- No left-handed batter in the history of baseball has showed the consistency and power of Baltimore Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro, whose entry into the elite 3,000-500 club is a testament to a stellar career that should gain him first-ballot entry into the Hall of Fame.

When Palmeiro got his 3,000th hit off Seattle's Joel Pineiro Friday night, he joined Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray as the only players in baseball history with at least 3,000 hits and 500 home runs.

"With numbers like that, maybe I belong in their group," Palmeiro said recently, "but not their class. I know I'm not there."

Perhaps. But unlike the others, Palmeiro isn't done yet. He also is the only one in the quartet to swing exclusively from the left side of the plate.

There's no way to accurately determine the greatest left-handed hitter in baseball history, but an argument can be made for Palmeiro, who has 347 more hits than Ted Williams, nearly 450 more home runs than Ty Cobb and 128 more hits than Babe Ruth.

Some may scoff at the notion of placing Palmeiro among the game's premier hitters, mainly because he has attained those lofty numbers with very little fanfare. But his peers have the utmost respect for his work ethic -- and his prowess at the plate.

"Consistency. That's the only way you accomplish numbers like that," New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter said. "You have to be very consistent for a long time, and that's what he's done."

As he neared the 3,000 mark, Palmeiro squirmed when doing interviews about the significance of the event. He doesn't like to talk much, especially when the subject is himself.

"I haven't really thought about it," he said. "The day will come, and then we'll move on."

Murray couldn't have put it any better.

"Eddie and Raffy were similar in that they were very quiet and extremely productive," former Orioles star Cal Ripken said. "They are two of the best hitters of all time, and I was honored to call them both teammates."

By the time he's done, Palmeiro, 40, will rank in the top 10 in many key offensive categories, including homers, extra-base hits and total bases. He is ninth on the career home run list, and he past Pirates great Roberto Clemente for 24th on the hits list with a singles later in the game Friday.

Palmeiro isn't merely staggering to the finish of a great career. He has been hitting cleanup in a formidable Baltimore lineup and ranks among the team leaders in home runs and RBIs.

"When you look at his numbers, maybe they're not eye-popping like they were at one time," Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "But he's far from hanging on. He's got such a simple stroke; there's not a lot of moving parts.

About the only thing Palmeiro hasn't done is participate in a World Series, but he hasn't given up hope.

A week ago, someone asked him if he would trade his membership in the 3,000-500 club for a World Series ring.

"I don't have either one of them, so I don't know which feels better," Palmeiro replied. "Maybe I'll have both after this year."

One down, one to go.

[Nanner]

A week ago, someone asked him if he would trade his membership in the 3,000-500 club for a World Series ring.

"I don't have either one of them, so I don't know which feels better," Palmeiro replied. "Maybe I'll have both after this year."

One down, one to go.

:D

I know. A whole, wonderful article about Raffy, and this is what I choose to quote. :D I just liked the sound of it.

Anyhoo............... GREAT article! :thumbsup: Everyone seems to be talking about his consistency. I think that's key.

And that beautiful swing. Smooth as butter.

I keep remembering last year when they decided, toward the end of the season, that sitting him, and letting him rest was a good idea. He seemed to pick up then, with the supposedly needed rest, and his numbers were better the second half of the season.

This year, he's just been solid from the beginning!! :eek: The guy just goes out and hits.

He had a couple more last night, which gave him 3,003 and left him four behind Al Kaline for 24th place on the all-time list.

And he's so humble!

"With numbers like that, maybe I belong in their group," Palmeiro said recently, "but not their class. I know I'm not there."

And this surprised me!

...........who has 347 more hits than Ted Williams, nearly 450 more home runs than Ty Cobb and 128 more hits than Babe Ruth.

:eek:

:rock:

[rockin500]

nanner, not surprising about how he ranks ahead of williams due to the 5 1/2 lost years of service time. and babe was a pitcher for a few years as well.

and ty was in the deadball era.

[Teddy Ballgame]

rockin500 ... nanner, not surprising about how he ranks ahead of williams due to the 5 1/2 lost years of service time. and babe was a pitcher for a few years as well.

and ty was in the deadball era.

- R - Right on, Rockin. The writer who wrote the drivel comparing Palmeiro to the two unquestionably greatest left handed hitters and probably the greatest hitters PERIOD of all time, Ted Williams and babe Ruth, was clearly both a "homer" and a moron.

- Certainly, RP will deserve a spot in the HOF and possibly even on the first ballot. Certainly, too, he is the greatest (and so far only) ML player to make viagra commercials. But comparing him with Teddy Ballgame is to laugh.
HERE ARE THE RELEVANT HITTING STATS:

BA - WILLIAMS .344 AND PALMEIRO .289 (as at end of 2004)

OBA - WILLIAMS .483 AND PALMEIRO .372

HR - WILLIAMS 521 IN 7706 ABs AND PALMEIRO 517 IN 10103 ABs

IF BOTH PLAYERS HAD 10103 ABs, WILLIAMS WOULD HAVE 683 HRs TO PALMEIRO'S 517.

ALTERNATIVELY, IF PALMEIRO, LIKE WILLIAMS, HAD TAKEN "TIME OFF" TO SPEND ALMOST SIX YEARS FIGHTING IN TWO WARS AND ANOTHER YEAR WITH A BROKEN ALBOW, BROKEN COLLAR BONE, ETC. AND THEREBY HAD JUST 7706 ABs LIKE WILLIAMS, HE'D HAVE JUST 394 HRs TO WILLIAMS' 521.

IF RP had to spend his entire career like TW hitting in the worst ballpark in his league for a dead pull left hander to hit home runs, he'd have a hellava lot fewer than he has now.

I don't deny RP his greatness and longevity as a player but to compare him to Ted Williams as a hitter is worse than comparing Britney Speirs to Sarah Vaughan as a singer. The moronic sports writer who did this piece deserves to be fired.

[Baseball Guru]

While I like Raffy and consider him one of the better lefties of all-time, I certainly would not consider him better or on the same level as Ruth, Gehrig, Musial and Williams...

[Nanner]

Well, Raffy wouldn't put himself in those leagues either, actually....... and he's the first to say that.

But, I do believe he belongs on the first ballot for the HOF.

Sports writers.......... you know......... they like to stir things up.

:D

[rockin500]

agreed pameilero won bithc where he is.

still, i ?GOTAA give him credict

[imgreat95]

when I read and posted this article, it was my belief that the writer does not believe that he is on par with those others, either, but rather was his way of pointing out that maybe he did belong in the same class as those guys, which I am inclined to think that maybe he is closer than what some may think. If given the chance, of course I would take any one of those 3 guys mentioned over Raffy... However, we also can not overlook the fact that Raffy HAS put up the numbers mentioned whereas, for whatever the reason, the other guys did not. I realize that Ted WIlliams missed parts of 5+ seasons and i know the reasons. The fact is, however that during those 5 years Williams was not helping his baseball team (as he shouldnt have been.. so dont read that wrong.) whereas Raffy actualy DID put up those numbers. They are not a product of the law of averages.

[I Are Baboon]

agreed pameilero won bithc where he is.

still, i ?GOTAA give him credict

Dude, were you drunk when you posted that?

[Nanner]

Dude, were you drunk when you posted that?

:lmao:


I was wondering the same thing, Babs. :D

[rockin500]

Dude, were you drunk when you posted that?
not really. ;)

well, 4 jager bombs and a bunch of jack daniels at any rate.

[Baseball Guru]

I was wondering the same thing... I read it and thought "wtf is he trying to say":notme:

:laff:

I agree he is a sure 1st ballot HOF'er...

[I Are Baboon]

I agree he is a sure 1st ballot HOF'er...

Word. Anyone who thinks Palmeiro is not a HOF'er deserves a kick to the neck. I can't even believe it is being debated among some moron sportswriters.

[Baseball Guru]

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/raffy-and-the-hall/


Raffy and the Hall
by Aaron Gleeman
July 18, 2005

He didn't quite make the picture-perfect swing that produced most of his first 2,999 hits, but Rafael Palmeiro went the other way with a Joel Pineiro pitch Friday night, lining it down the left-field line and into the corner at Safeco Field. The double drove in a run to give the Orioles a 4-1 lead over the Mariners and also made Palmeiro just the 26th player in baseball history to reach 3,000 career hits. "I was just trying to drive the runner in," Palmeiro said afterward.

Palmeiro was already a member of the 500-homer club, and in becoming the first player to reach 3,000 hits since Rickey Henderson in late 2001, Palmeiro has all but sealed his Hall of Fame fate. His candidacy, wrapped up in just one sentence, would probably be that he is just the fourth player in baseball history to reach both 500 homers and 3,000 hits, joining Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Eddie Murray.

While Palmeiro has slowed down considerably in recent years, he is still piling up numbers at the age of 40. After a slow start, he has turned things around and enters play today at .276/.347/.475 with a 25-homer, 90-RBI pace. Since the end of April, Palmeiro is hitting .286/.372/.527 with 15 homers and 45 RBIs in 67 games. If he can stay healthy for the rest of this season and come back next year, at 41, and put up similar numbers again, Palmeiro has a chance to top 600 home runs by the end of the 2006 season. By that time he will also have likely moved into the top 15 all time in hits with around 3,200.

And yet despite all of that, there are still some doubters when it comes to Palmeiro's Hall of Fame case. For instance, in discussing Palmeiro's impending 3,000th hit last week, Newsweek's Mark Starr wrote:


Judging a Hall of Famer should be far more akin to assessing obscenity, at least in the fashion of the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who famously put it: "I know it when I see it." Well I know a Hall of Famer when I see one. And Rafael Palmeiro isn't one.

Or as ESPN.com's Skip Bayless put it:


Most baseball writers will also tell you he's a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

But is he? If you had to stop and think about it for even a moment, he isn't.

[...]

Retire his number.

And go ahead, put him in the Hall of Never Was On the Disabled List.

Or in the Hall of Sweetest Swings.

Or in the Hall of Very, Very Good.

But not the Hall.

There are a few knocks against Palmeiro that are often cited in making the case against his being a Hall of Famer. His career was more longevity than peak. He posted his numbers in a high-offense era. He benefited from playing his home games in good ballparks for hitting. He was selected to just four All-Star teams. He never finished higher than fifth place in an MVP vote.

Some of those things can likely be dismissed off hand. For instance, does it strike anyone else that the same people complaining loudly about Derek Jeter being left off the American League All-Star team this year are also the ones who bring up things like Palmeiro making just four All-Star teams when discussing his Hall of Fame resume? As if the fact that Danys Baez was an All-Star in 2005 and Jeter wasn't should somehow be used against Jeter when judging his career.

With that said, for the most part those are certainly the types of issues that need to be considered when thinking about someone's Hall of Fame candidacy, and in Palmeiro's case each of the above statements are more or less true. However, those things are merely factors in evaluating a player's career, they do not preclude him from being a Hall of Famer. The beauty of baseball is that such factors can be quantified with varying degrees of confidence.

If you think Palmeiro benefited from playing in hitter's ballparks during an era in which offense was plentiful, you don't have to simply write off his career numbers. Instead, you can examine them more closely, with an towards comparing his home numbers to his road numbers:
G AVG OBP SLG OPS HR RBI
Home 1412 .287 .377 .531 .909 310 930
Road 1399 .291 .366 .502 .868 257 897
As you can see, there is little question that Palmeiro has benefited from friendly home ballparks. His on-base percentage and slugging percentage are each higher at home, and he has 53 more homers at home in just 13 more games. Of course, performing better at home than on the road is true of many players throughout big-league history, and Palmeiro's home advantage essentially boils down to an extra 2-3 homers over the course of a season. Take a look at the home/road splits for the other members of the 500-homer club:
HR HOME ROAD DIFF
Mel Ott 511 323 188 +135
Ernie Banks 512 290 222 +68
Jimmie Foxx 534 299 235 +64
Frank Robinson 586 321 265 +56
RAFAEL PALMEIRO 567 310 257 +53
Sammy Sosa 583 309 274 +35
Ken Griffey Jr. 519 275 244 +31
Hank Aaron 755 385 370 +15
Willie Mays 660 335 325 +10
Harmon Killebrew 573 291 282 +9
Willie McCovey 521 264 257 +7
Reggie Jackson 563 280 283 -3
Mickey Mantle 536 266 270 -4
Barry Bonds 703 346 357 -9
Mark McGwire 583 284 299 -15
Mike Schmidt 548 265 283 -18
Eddie Murray 504 243 261 -18
Babe Ruth 714 347 367 -20
Ted Williams 521 248 273 -25
Eddie Mathews 512 238 274 -36
Palmeiro's 53-homer home advantage ranks fifth among the 20 members of the 500-homer club, behind Mel Ott (+135), Ernie Banks (+68), Jimmie Foxx (+64), and Frank Robinson (+56). And right on Palmeiro's tail in sixth and seventh place are Sammy Sosa (+35) and Ken Griffey Jr. (+31). In other words, Palmeiro benefited from his home ballparks no more than a half dozen other great home run hitters did and not even close to as much as an extreme case like Ott. Oh, and if you simply ignore his home numbers and just double his road stats instead, Palmeiro would have 514 homers.

Now, none of the home/road stuff accounts for the fact that Palmeiro has also benefited from playing in a high-offense era. Over the course of Palmeiro's career the average hitter, adjusted to Palmeiro's playing environment, has hit .270/.339/.421. Over the course of, say, Willie McCovey's career, the average hitter batted .261/.326/.388, for a difference in slugging percentage of nearly 10%. That is significant and without question should be accounted for when comparing Palmeiro's credentials to other great hitters. Luckily, we have plenty of metrics that do that (and look beyond his raw numbers).

One such metric is Runs Created Above Average (RCAA), which calculates each player's Runs Created and then compares it to the league average. Doing so more or less wipes out whatever advantage Palmeiro has had by playing in the 1990s and 2000s instead of the 1950s and 1960s. And here is the all-time RCAA leader board among first basemen:
Lou Gehrig 1247
Jimmie Foxx 985
Dan Brouthers 967
Roger Connor 807
Frank Thomas 803
Cap Anson 730
Jeff Bagwell 681
Johnny Mize 667
Mark McGwire 665
Willie McCovey 606
RAFAEL PALMEIRO 574
Jim Thome 561
Hank Greenberg 549
Harmon Killebrew 516
Dick Allen 511
Over the course of his 20-year career, Palmeiro has been worth 574 runs more than an average hitter. That number is good enough to rank him 11th all time, within shouting distance of a Hall of Famer like McCovey and ahead of Hall of Famers Harmon Killebrew and Hank Greenberg.

Another metric that attempts to even the playing field for players across different eras is Win Shares, which has the added benefit of also accounting for a player's defense (which was a strong point of Palmeiro's game for many years). Here is how Palmeiro ranks among first basemen in Win Shares:
Lou Gehrig 489
Eddie Murray 437
Jimmie Foxx 435
Willie McCovey 408
RAFAEL PALMEIRO 392
Jeff Bagwell 388
Cap Anson 381
Harmon Killebrew 371
Roger Connor 366
Frank Thomas 363
Dan Brouthers 355
Tony Perez 349
Mark McGwire 343
Dick Allen 342
Fred McGriff 341
This time Palmeiro ranks fifth, once again right behind McCovey and ahead of Killebrew. Ah, but what about the issue of peak versus longevity? There's no easy way to determine how good a player's peak was (does it have to be consecutive seasons, and what qualifies as a great year?), but I'll make a quick-and-dirty attempt. Below is a list of two dozen of the best first basemen in baseball history and how many times they reached a) 30 or more Win Shares in a season (what Bill James calls an MVP-caliber year), and b) 50 or more RCAA in a season (which just seemed like a nice round number):
WS RCAA TOT
Lou Gehrig 12 12 24
Jimmie Foxx 8 9 17
Dan Brouthers 2 11 13
Frank Thomas 5 8 13
Johnny Mize 6 7 13
Hank Greenberg 6 6 12
Roger Connor 3 8 11
Jeff Bagwell 5 6 11
Mark McGwire 3 8 11
Jim Thome 3 6 9
Dick Allen 5 4 9
Willie McCovey 4 4 8
RAFAEL PALMEIRO 3 4 7
Harmon Killebrew 4 3 7
Cap Anson 1 5 6
Eddie Murray 3 3 6
Tony Perez 3 2 5
Bill Terry 2 3 5
Will Clark 3 2 5
Don Mattingly 2 3 5
Orlando Cepeda 2 2 4
Fred McGriff 1 2 3
George Sisler 1 2 3
Palmeiro clearly can't compare to guys like Lou Gehrig or Jimmie Foxx when it comes to peak seasons, but not many players in baseball history can. Instead, Palmeiro ranks tied for 13th with seven total 30-Win Share/50-RCAA seasons, amazingly sandwiched between McCovey and Killebrew once again. He also compares favorably to Hall of Famers Cap Anson, Eddie Murray, Bill Terry, Orlando Cepeda, and George Sisler, not to mention contemporaries Will Clark, Don Mattingly, and Fred McGriff.

I think it is clear, from his raw career numbers, statistical milestones, and rankings in more advanced metrics like RCAA and Win Shares that Palmeiro is already one of the dozen greatest first basemen in baseball history. The fact that he is still going strong makes it likely that he will end up as one of the top 10 of all time, if he isn't there already. Regardless of what your criteria for a Hall of Famer is, being among the top 10 players at a position should meet it.

Aaron Gleeman is a freelance writer whose work can also be found regularly at AaronGleeman.com, Rotoworld, and Insider Baseball. He welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions via e-mail.

[imgreat95]

jaymez.. any chance you could post that so you can read the right side of the column??

[Baseball Guru]

I just scroll the bottom so you can see the whole article.. Had to set it up this way so that the stats and #'s would lineup properly...