How the Hall (and everyone else) Failed, Willie Stargell

A great player? Okay. An inspiration? No doubt? A Hall of Famer? We don’t think so. Read on to find out why.

It’s pretty harsh to just come right out and say someone failed. But that’s what we do around here in the “How the Hall Failed” series. And we’ll admit that Miller writes these pieces with a sense of arrogance. Yes, he’s trying to say that we know more than the average Hall voter has over the years, which, to be accurate, isn’t such a grandiose claim. After all, for decades Hall voters operated without even a baseball encyclopedia. And then for most of the rest of baseball history, they operated without the access to advanced statistics that we can tap into in mere moments.

This is a different “How the Hall Failed” post. We’re not just saying that the Hall failed. They’ve failed so many times that it hardly seems like a big deal anymore. But because we’re also parting company with everyone else too we thought we’d better let you know why. And when we say everybody we mean it. We are a little trepidatious about veering away from writers for whom we have a tremendous amount of respect, from those at the Hall of Merit* to Adam Darowski’s outstanding work at the Hall of Stats. And there are plenty of other guys too, others who do spectacular work analyzing the game. And all of them, every last one of them, puts Willie Stargell in their Hall of Fame. But we don’t.

This post is going to examine why we’ve split from the pack. We’ll examine the career of Willie Stargell, based both on what he could do and what he couldn’t. With that said, if entry into the HoME were based only on what a player could do, without considering what he couldn’t, Stargell would be in quite easily.

Light Tower Power

Yee-haw! Pops could hit!

Willie Stargell’s game revolved around one and only one thing: vast, scary power. Dodger righty Don Sutton once said of Stargell, “He doesn’t just hit pitchers, he takes away their dignity.” For those unfamiliar with the legend, let’s share a couple of stories.

• Only eighteen balls were hit over Forbes Field’s 86-foot right field roof from 1909-1970. Stargell hit seven of them.
• Just six homers were ever hit into the right field upper deck at Three Rivers Stadium. Four of those were Willie’s.
• Four balls have ever been hit completely out of Dodger Stadium. Stargell hit the first two.
• In 1971 Pops became the first of only three players to hit a home run into the 600 level at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. For his tremendous shot, a seat at the Vet was marked with a gold star.
• Stargell also owned the longest shot ever hit in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. His 1978 blast up north again garnered gold seating.
• Olympic’s predecessor, Jarry Park, was home to another Pops blast, a shot that found its way into a pool beyond the right field fence.
  

He Could Also…

It turns out that hitting homers wasn’t the only thing at which Stargell was above average. He could also hit for average and draw walks better than the average player of his time. And he was about average at avoiding double plays too. All of that is well and good, but it turns out that Stargell wasn’t specifically good at these things. Rather, they were a function of his vicious power.

Based on his career plate appearances, Pops hit 294 more homers than the league average. If we turn those into balls in play instead, based on his .313 career BABIP, he loses 202 of those hits. And that means his batting average wouldn’t be better than the average player anymore. It drops to .256, below the .262 BA of his leagues.

Yes, he was better than average at drawing walks, about two percentage points better than the other NLers as a group. Pops walked 937 times in 9027 trips to the plate. That’s about 10.4% of the time, compared to 8.4% of the time for the rest of the league. However, not all walks are created equal. If we strip out Stargell’s intentional walks, of which he had a whopping 227, or almost a quarter of his entire walk total, Stargell was able to work the count for a walk just under 7.9% of the time. That’s essentially the same as the league’s unintentional walk rate of a shade over 7.5%. And if we factor out the unintentional intentional walks, we don’t think it’s unfair to say that Pops’ plate discipline and strike zone command were probably worse than the average player. It’s the power driving the walks, not necessarily Stargell’s own selectivity.

As for double play avoidance, it wouldn’t be shocking for a huge home run hitter to be an extreme fly ball guy. And as such, he’s a guy who avoided double plays decently.

As far as things Stargell could do well, it’s all about the power.

Stuff He Couldn’t Do

If Willie Stargell didn’t have tremendous power, he wouldn’t have lasted long in the bigs. He really had little else in his game to fall back on.

He struck out a lot. A super lot. More than 21% of the time. In fact, he was the career leader for a time. And he would have retired that way had Reggie Jackson not been so whiffingly prolific in 1982. Even as the strikeout has become more accepted, Stargell hasn’t fallen far down the list, currently sitting at #8 and without a threat for a number of seasons. To be fair, the strikeouts were a tradeoff for the homers, but they were still ugly.

Willie was a poor to hideous fielder. According to the leaderboard over at Fangraphs, Stargell is the 22^nd least valuable (most costly?) defender of all-time. When he retired in 1982, he may have trailed only Rusty Staub, Willie McCovey, and Greg Luzinski for awfulness on defense. In his SABR biography, James Forr said of him, “He was a graceless, plodding left fielder who hurt his team defensively. He had a strong, accurate arm and he did the best he could, but with his rickety knees he just couldn’t cover enough ground, especially in a park as spacious as Forbes Field.”

He wasn’t a terrible baserunner, but he was below average thanks to creaky knees and a tendency toward gaining weight. As evidence that we hasn’t very speedy, in his 21 seasons, he stole 17 bases and was caught 16 times, including this one. About his weight, Forr tells us that that he was a player who, at least early in his career, regularly came to spring training overweight.

Perhaps his weight and certainly his knees had something to do with his inability to stay in the lineup. Only four times did he top 140 games, never over 150, and he topped 128 just nine times. From 1964-1979, the years during which he was a Pirate regular, he played in fewer than 80% of Pittsburgh’s games. Much of that is certainly health.

And part of the reason he didn’t always play, particularly in early seasons, is that he struggled against lefties. Pops tattooed righties to the tune of .294/.376/.559. However, he hit a meager .250/.318/.447 against southpaws. He was 10% better than normal against righties, yet 27% worse than normal against lefties. Lefties knew it too. Even though he stepped to the plate 28% of the times against lefties, he drew only 9% of his intentional walks against them. Lefties pitched to Stargell.

Maybe he was just born too early and into the wrong league. Would being a DH have helped him? Sure, it would have helped him some. But we suspect it’s hard to be a leader when you’re not out on the field with your teammates. Plus, a benefit of playing when he did was that he didn’t need to face situational lefties like Javier Lopez or Mike Myers, guys the likes of whom would have made his numbers look even worse.

Adding It All Up

Once you get your head around it, WAR is a pretty easy concept to understand, at least for hitters. Basically you figure out how many runs a guy was worth for his batting, base running, and fielding and compare it to a AAAA player. BBREF provides more detail with runs for

• Batting (Rbat)
• Baserunning (Rbaser)
• Avoiding GIDPs (Rdp)
• Fielding (Rfield)
• Positional Adjustment (Rpos) that acknowledges that some positions hit more than others.

That’s it. Basically, those measures will add up to RAA (runs above average), which is then converted into RAR (runs above replacement), and WAR (wins above replacement).

Our issue with Stargell is simple. He just doesn’t measure up.

Let’s look at a few left fielders from the last half-century or so, just to get a comparison.

Better than Pops?

                Rbat  Rbaser  Rdp  Rfield  Rpos   RAA   RAR   WAR
Jose Cruz       201     3      22    77    - 78   225   523   54.2
Minnie Minoso   305    13       1    26    - 77   269   502   50.1
Albert Belle    343   - 5     -26   -63    - 76   173   419   40.0
Willie Stargell 433   -13     - 2   -70    -109   239   546   57.5
George Foster   230   -11     -16    37    - 71   170   429   43.9
Luis Gonzalez   229   -18       9    91    - 99   212   540   51.5
Brian Downing   279     4     -14   -15    - 64   190   512   51.4

If you’re looking closely at the chart above, you might wonder why it’s in that order. It seems kind of random, particularly because Stargell still has the highest WAR. Well, that’s because there’s another crucial adjustment that we make. And it’s not exactly kind to Stargell. We both substitute out a percentage of Rfield in favor of Michael Humphreys DRA (Defensive Regression Analysis). In fact, this extra step is probably the reason we diverge so much from other Halls.

Let’s take a look at just those two stats. If DRA is higher, that means the player will look better than his straight WAR. If it’s lower, he’ll look worse.

Not so similar defender to Pops after all.

                Rfield    DRA
Jose Cruz         77     147.1
Minnie Minoso     26      32.2
Albert Belle     -63    -  0.3
Willie Stargell  -70    -113.0
George Foster     37      58.7
Luis Gonzalez     91      85.6
Brian Downing    -15    - 31.4

Belle and Cruz get a lot better, and Stargell gets worse. So let’s check out where they sit now in terms of WAR. And also in terms of top-5, top-7, and top-10 seasons. Those peak and prime numbers help to give some depth to the career WAR number and help to offer some insight into why we have killed off Pops.

A better peak than Pops?

                 WAR   Top-5  Top-7   Top-10
Jose Cruz        60.4   28.9   37.8    49.1
Minnie Minoso    52.2   31.7   41.5    52.0
Albert Belle     46.5   36.3   42.3    46.8
Willie Stargell  54.7   29.4   36.6    44.3
George Foster    48.7   31.5   39.9    45.6
Luis Gonzalez    53.3   27.4   34.3    43.7
Brian Downing    56.7   25.0   31.2    39.9

Perhaps now you see why they’re in the order they’re in. For a more specific answer, let’s look at how we see these seven players overall, both in terms of our calculation and our rank in left field. Eric’s calculation is called CHEWS. Miller’s is MAPES. Both are at least a little bit in response and homage to Jay Jaffe’s JAWS score.

And the winner isn’t…

                CHEWS (rank)   MAPES (rank)
Jose Cruz        48.4 (21)      46.2 (22)
Minnie Minoso    45.7 (25)      44.3 (25)
Albert Belle     43.9 (28)      43.0 (28)
Willie Stargell  44.4 (27)      42.6 (29)
George Foster    43.3 (29)      42.3 (30)
Luis Gonzalez    42.4 (32)      41.0 (32)
Brian Downing    39.6 (37)      39.9 (34)

Our ranks aren’t identical, but they’re pretty darned close. And we rank Stargell an average of #28 among left fielders. For comparison, others who rank at or very close to #28 at other positions include Matt Williams, Rabbit Maranville, Kirby Puckett, and Brian Giles. Two are in the Hall, though neither is at all close to a slam dunk choice. And the other two aren’t anyone’s idea of a Hall of Famer.

Conclusion

In all, Willie Stargell was just about as good as a player could get with his skill set. He was also a franchise icon and a man of high character, the player who Bill James called the most admirable superstar of the 1970s. The Hall of Fame can perhaps account for those latter traits, and those traits could push him over its line. For us, where we focus on performance only, those intangibles don’t factor into the decision. The 475 homers do, and so does everything else he did and didn’t do on the field. They aren’t enough for us. We’re parting company with all of our colleagues on this one. Willie Stargell will not be a member of the Hall of Miller and Eric.

—Miller and Eric