How can someone, after having been retired for 5 years already, become more or less HOF material? When you step away from the game, that's it...no more...nothing else really counts.
I understand the ruling that there must be a five year retirement, and that's fine and dandy because writers tend to become a bit emotional sometimes. I honestly think that Darryl Kyle would have received a good chunk of votes if he was on the ballot right after his death. No offense to Darryl, he was a great All-star level pitcher, but not a HOFer.
This brings me to my distinct call of "Snub". Sure I'm a bit biased with him because he's one of my all-time favorite players, but Ryne Sandberg MUST be elected to the HOF. He was THE best second baseman in the major leagues for an entire decade, and even after giving up that title he was still productive at the plate for a player who played a 'good glove needed' position. He was the best position player in the major leagues in 1984 when he won the NL MVP (the AL MVP went to Tiger's pitcher Willie Hernandez).
Offense
Let's start of by listing some of Ryno's achievements with the stick:
- Finished in the Top 5 in MVP voting 3 times (including his MVP season in '84)
- Most career HRs by a second baseman
- Drove in 100 RBI twice in his career
- 5 different +30 SB seasons (including 54 in 1985)
- Led the NL in HRs in 1990 with 40
- Hit over .300 in five seasons
- Led the league in runs scored three times ('84, '89, '90)
Now let's look at Ryno's career numbers matched up against some 2B HOFers (the leader in each category is in italics; also these are career numbers for players at all positions, not just second base):
Player G AB R H RBI HR SO/BB SB/ATT BA OPS
R.Sandberg 2164 8385 1318 2386 1061 282 1260/761 344/451 .285 .896
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J.Morgan 2649 9277 1650 2517 1133 268 1015/1865 689/851 .271 .819
E.Collins 2826 9949 1821 3315 1300 47 286/1499 744/917 .333 .853
B.Doerr 1865 7093 1094 2042 1247 223 608/809 54/118 .288 .823
N.Lajoie 2480 9589 1504 3242 1599 83 85/516 380/401 .338 .847
R.Carew 2469 9315 1424 3053 1015 92 1028/1018 353/540 .328 .822
R.Hornsby 2259 8173 1579 2930 1584 301 679/1038 135/199 .358 1.011
C.Gehringer 2323 8860 1774 2839 1427 184 372/1186 181/270 .320 .884
J.Robinson 1382 4877 947 1518 734 137 291/740 197/227 .311 .883
B.Herman 1922 7707 1163 2345 839 47 428/737 67/? .304 .784
B.Mazeroski 2163 7755 769 2016 853 138 706/447 27/50 .260 .666
J.Evers 1784 6137 919 1659 538 12 142/778 324/332 .270 .690
N.Fox 2367 9232 1279 2663 790 35 216/719 76/156 .288 .711
He isn't necessarily the best player of that group, but he certainly isn't the worst either. In fact I'd put him at #6 behind Morgan, Collins, Hornsby, Gehringer, & Lojoie. And that's not bad company because I would put a couple of those guys in my list of 'Greatest Hitters Of All-Time'. The one-and-only, Bill James, has Ryno ranked #7 in his book, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. Fielding
For those of you who roll with the Bill Mazeroski crowd and enjoy some defense, let's now move on to Ryno's forte. We can start with the Gold Glove collection he has sitting in his trophy room....1983 thru 1991....9 consecutive seasons.
Next we can move onto his errorless streak which, at the time, was the longest by an infielder (non-1bman) and still is the longest by a second baseman...123 games.
He had a career fielding %age of .989 and a season high of .995 in 1991. I know that there are many flaws with fielding %age, but it is a stat that I wanted to show you.
Playoffs
I know that he never won the World Series, but neither has any other Cub and there are a few Cubs who are enshrined in Cooperstown (infact, several of the second basemen listed above fit that bill). He did lead his team to the division title twice during his career, once in 1984 and once in 1989. During those two postseason events he hit extremely well. In '84 against the Padres, Ryno had 19 ABs and hit .368 with 3 R, 2 2bls, 2 Rbi and had 3 SBs. In '89 against the Giants, he had 20 ABs, 6 R, 3 2bls, 1 triple, a Hr, and 4 RBI. Those made his career postseason stats look as follows:
G AB R H 2b 3b HR RBI BB SO SB/Att BA OPS
10 39 9 15 5 1 1 6 6 6 3/4 .385 1.098
I don't think you can fault the guy for no ring.
Everything else
I just can't imagine that a man who was named to 10 straight All-Star games isn't worthy of the Hall of Fame. You have to think of him relative to the time he played and not compare him to a player like Jeff Kent or Brett Boone. The game has changed, and just as they are in their primes, Ryno was equally dominant in his prime and beyond. He was the best second baseman in the game from 1984 until 1993 when Roberto Alomar and Craig Biggio took over the reigns. This man should be a Hall of Famer and shouldn't have to wait until he's waited 'his turn' to be enshrined. He paid his due with the required 5 year wait and I don't think that one single writer who has a vote in the HOF has any right to say whether he's a "first ballot" player or a "third ballot" player. You either are a HOFer or you're not.
Most people remember Derek Bell from his infamous "Operation Shut Down" with the Pirates a couple of years ago, but some of us remember him from well before then.
Derek Bell was drafted in the 2nd round of the 1987 draft by the Toronto Blue Jays out of Tampa, Florida. He is one of the many players raised in that area who have gone on to play in the big leagues (Luis Gonzalez, Tino Martinez, Gary Sheffield, & Doc Gooden all come to the tip of my tongue).
Over the next few years, Derek progressed through the Jay's minor league system a bit slower than a non-pitching second round draft pick would now-a-days, but he was an 18-year old straight out of high school.
In 1991, four years after being drafted, Derek made his big league debut with the Jay Birds. He was called up after hitting .346 with 13 HRs in 457 ABs for AAA Syracuse, and he hit .143 in 28 ABs with the Jays in his short stay.
In 1992, Derek was in the big leagues to stay. He played in 61 games and hit .242 with the Birds who went on to win the World Series that year. I remember as a little 5th grader seeing Derek leaning on the dugout steps during that series. "Why?" you may ask...because I remember seeing a bald guy with clear Oakley sunglasses and at the time I was completely obsessed with Oakleys.
After getting his ring with the Jays, he moved on to San Diego in 1993 (as part of a trade for Darrin Jackson) where he became one of their starting outfielders. He hit .262 with the 'Dres, and started to show some power hitting 21 HRs.
In 1994, Bell started to blossom into a much better player. His average jumped up to .311 due to an incredible change in hitting philosophy. He started to become much more patient. In 1993, Derek had a K/BB ratio of 5.30 and an AB/BB ratio of 23.57....in 1994 those numbers dropped to 3.03 & 14.97, respectively. Those changes resulted in an increase in his on-base % jumping from .303 to .354 which in turn increased his OPS from .720 to .808 (and increased his GPA from .241 to .273).
The next off-season, Derek was part of a blockbuster 10 player trade between the Padres and the Astros, which brought future MVP, Ken Caminiti and star, Steve Finely to the Padres. This next year was when I got to know Derek Bell a bit more....'cause I'm from Houston.
Bell had a great year, and in my young opinion (as a 7th/8th grader) was snubbed from the All-Star game. He finished the year with a career-high .334 average and a .284 GPA. His power numbers declined a bit, hitting only 8 HRs and a total of 31 XBHs, but I enjoyed watching him play.
Something else I remember him for was his generosity with the fans.
1995 & 1996 were probably my two peak seasons for going to Astros games with my dad and brother. It was right after the strike, so we could get into the ballpark any night we wanted and since none of the other fans came back as quickly as we did, we sat wherever we wanted every night.
We also spent COUNTLESS hours after ball games waiting by the player's parking lot for them to come out of the Dome and drive home. Some would sign for a handful of people (Biggio), some would sign for no people, and a couple would sign every item that every single kid out there had. Derek was part of that last category. Between my brother and me, we probably have 30-40 different cards and balls with his signature across them. He signed so often that he would bring his own Sharpies and use them. He was a pretty cool guy and he would always talk to us and answer our questions.
In 1996 and 1997, Derek's average started dipping as he tried to increase his power numbers (17 & 15 HRs). Hitting in the Astrodome, this was not an easy task to achieve and I think he put too much stock in those power numbers and the rest of his game started to suffer as well.
Derek could not, for the life of him, settle on a batting stance. Every trip to the plate and every different count he faced he'd try something new. Sometimes he would stand up tall and relaxed, others he would spread his feet apart as far as possible. I remember seeing Cal Ripken Jr. doing this, but not quite as drastically as Bell did. We're talking every at-bat.
It was also around this time that Derek became a bit more...uhm...stylish. He started wearing his pants high one night and really longs the next. I know that baseball is quite possibly the most superstitious sport ever (and I'm just as guilty as any), but I don't know what was causing the drastic changes in his attire.
In '98, at the beginning of his "prime" (ages 28-31...he was 29), he had his career year. Bell hit .314 with 22 HRs and 108 RBI as the Astros held off the Cubs to win their second straight NL Central Title. He also became even more "stylish" and started to wear VERY baggy pants (approaching MC Hammer-style).
Unfortunately for the Astros, and Derek, something happened to his "prime"....it stopped. In 1999, Derek hit .236 with 12 HRs and 66 RBI. When a player has a drop off that dramatically from one season to the next it has to be frustrating. The media starts coming to you for answers and the fans aren't quite as happy to see you come to the plate. I know this can be rough, but there are certain ways to handle situations like this and Derek picked the wrong ways.
He started complaining to the newspapers that he needed to hit in the #2 spot in the lineup and he was furious that he had been moved to the #5 hole. I thought the exact same thing just about everyone else thought...."Quit making excuses and just say the "right" thing, like 'I've been taking extra cuts in the cages and I'm starting to see the ball better. Hopefully I'll be able to bust out of this pretty soon'." I don't think anyone would hit too poorly with Bagwell and Alou in their primes hitting behind them. Really though, whining to the media for public sympathy isn't necessarily the best thing for a professional athlete making $4.5M. Long story short....Fans lost patience with Bell and Bell decided to be outraged with the lack of fan support.
This all came to a giant point and popped one night at the Astrodome with me in attendance. There was a line drive hit over Biggio's head at second base and Bell, playing RF, charged the ball and missed it. The ball rolled to the wall and Derek decided to take out his frustrations with the fans and the media and his lack of production at the plate and he did not chase after the misplayed ball. Biggio was the first player to the ball at the right field wall. Keep in mind this was amidst the playoff hunt, and I think the Astros' brass saw this and decided that Derek was no longer a good thing for them. He was traded in the off-season to the New York Mets along with Mike Hampton for Octavio Dotel and Roger Cedeno. My dad liked to say that every year the gold chain around his neck got a bit bigger and on that ground ball, it must have gotten in his line of sight and blocked his view of the ball.
The change in scenery helped Bell a little bit because he hit .266 with 18 HRs his lone year with the Mets and found himself in the World Series once again.
This improvement (I'm not sure that is the right word) caught the attention of the Pittsburgh Pirates. They signed him, at the age of 32, to a ridiculous 2-year/$9.75M contract to come play for them in their gorgeous new PNC Park. If I'm Derek Bell and someone offers me $9M to come play a sport that I am only decent at compared to my colleagues, I'm jumping on it like a like a hyper kid on a trampoline. Derek hit .173...with 5 HRs...and only played in 46 games...and in 22 games in AAA he hit .162.
And here comes the infamous "Operation Shut Down" story. During spring training in 2002, coming off his .173 season, Derek decided that he was a bit better than the rest of the world thought. I'll just quote ESPN.com for this part:
Manager Lloyd McClendon and general manager Dave Littlefield said Bell, Armando Rios and Craig Wilson are competing and the starter hasn't been decided. But Littlefield said Bell has done little to win the job."Nobody told me I was in competition," Bell told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "If there is competition, somebody better let me know. If there is competition, they better eliminate me out of the race and go ahead and do what they're going to do with me. I ain't never hit in spring training and I never will.
"If it ain't settled with me out there, then they can trade me. I ain't going out there to hurt myself in spring training battling for a job. If it is (a competition), then I'm going into 'Operation Shutdown.' Tell them exactly what I said. I haven't competed for a job since 1991."
Littlefield told the Post-Gazette that Bell is "certainly" competing for a job.
"At this point, he hasn't done a lot to show he deserves a lot of playing time. He just hasn't performed," Littlefield said. "Last year, he was injured. He looks healthy. We just have to see more production."
Bell was one of the majors' worst-performing players last season, hitting five homers with 13 RBIs in 46 games in the first year of a $9 million, two-year contract. He missed most of the second half of the season with a strained knee and a hamstring injury.
This spring, Bell is 4-for-27 (.148) with three RBIs.
Bell's big contract, which he landed despite hitting below .200 in the second half of the 2000 season with the Mets, is believed to have contributed to former Pirates general manager Cam Bonifay's firing in June.
Two weeks later, Derek packed his things up and left camp, never to be seen around major league baseball again....and the entire baseball world sighed collectively, "Thank God."
You may wonder why I'm so critical of Mr. Bell after he was as good to me as a youngster with the autographs and stuff. Well, let me explain. See, I think that Derek liked to flatter himself. I think that he liked the attention that he brought upon himself when he signed. He liked to have the parking attendants bring his dropped, custom painted Suburban up to him with the sound system thumping so everyone could see it. Also, I didn't like the fact that he complained to the media about the fans getting mad at him. It was a 'pity me situation' and, to be quite frank, I can't stand the 'pity me situation'...especially when the pity is to thrown towards someone making well over 6 figures to "work" from late February 'til early October.
In other words, he let his success go straight to his head and felt he was bigger than the team, in a team game. His attempts at increasing his power numbers in '96 and '97 are examples of his "me first" approach at the expense of the Astros', who were trying to win the division. He wanted to get paid like a big boy, and the Pirates decided to pay him and he cashed out. As he told the Pirate's publicist on his way out the door, when asked if he had any message to pass on, "I got onto my yacht and rode off into the sunset."
If you say so Derek....
Year Age Team G AB R H RBI HR SO/BB BA OPS GPA
1991 22 Tor 18 28 5 4 1 0 5/6 .143 .457 .177
1992 23 Tor 61 161 23 39 15 2 34/15 .242 .678 .234
1993 24 SD 150 542 73 142 72 21 122/23 .262 .720 .241
1994 25 SD 108 434 54 135 54 14 88/29 .311 .808 .273
1995 26 Hou 112 452 63 151 86 8 71/33 .334 .827 .284
1996 27 Hou 158 627 84 165 113 17 123/40 .263 .729 .244
1997 28 Hou 129 493 67 136 71 15 94/40 .276 .782 .264
1998 29 Hou 156 630 111 198 108 22 126/51 .314 .855 .286
1999 30 Hou 128 509 61 120 66 12 129/50 .236 .656 .225
2000 31 NYM 144 546 87 145 69 18 125/65 .266 .773 .263
2001 32 Pit 46 156 14 27 13 5 38/25 .173 .576 .201
Late last week 41-y.o. David Wells signed with the San Diego Padres, his 7th team in his 17 year career. Even if D-Wells doesn't produce the great win-loss records that he had with the Yankees he will be a very big boost for the 'Dres.
David is a work horse and one of the true masters of the strike zone. His BB/9IP of .845 last year is insane. He finished #1 in the AL in Pitches/Batter (3.38), & in % Pitches in Strike Zone (68.1%). He also finished in the Top 10 in IP (213.0) and T4 in Complete Games (4). He's also topped 200.0 IP each year from '95-'03 except during his injury plagued 2001 season with the White Sox.
I've always thought that David "The Yankee" Wells was much better than David "On Any Other Team" Wells, although his 4 years with the Yankees don't even coincide with his "peak age" (28-31), which would have been '92-'94.
One thing to keep an eye on is that he has only pitched in 11 games as a National Leaguer before (mid-season trade to Cinci in '95)....
Here are his stats from over the last 5 seasons:
Year Age Team G W-L IP H R ER HR SO/BB ERA
1999 36 Tor 34 17-10 231.2 246 132 124 32 169/62 4.82
2000 37 Tor 35 20-8 229.2 266 115 105 23 166/31 4.11
2001 38 Chi-A 16 5-7 100.2 120 55 50 12 59/21 4.47
2002 39 NY-A 31 19-7 206.1 210 100 86 21 137/45 3.75
2003 40 NY-A 31 15-7 213.0 242 101 98 24 101/20 4.14
He will join a Padres staff that would benefit by picking up anyone who didn't wear an Old English "D" on their hat last year. The Padres staff finished with the 4th highest ERA in the NL, and a .395 winning percentage. His control will be welcomed with open arms because the Padres finished behind only my Cubs & the Devil Rays in walks.
Offensively, the Padres will get much better in the next few years. They've already added Ramon Hernandez behind the plate in addition to last season's quietest super-star trade of the year getting Brian Giles. Also, I keep hearing that Greg Maddux wants to finish up his career with the Padres. Combine that with incredible prospects like SS Khalil Greene and 2B Josh Barfield (21 y.o.) looking to make an impact in the big leagues in a couple of years they have a lot of their lineup filled out for the future.
My Prediction for 2004 Starters
C-Ramon Hernandez (age: 28)
1B-Ryan Klesko (32)
2B-Mark Loretta (32)
3B-Sean Burroughs (23)
SS-Khalil Green (24)
LF-Brian Giles/Xavier Nady (32/25)
CF-Terrence Long/Giles
RF-Phil Nevin (32)
P-Jake Peavy (22)
P-David Wells (41)
P-Adam Eaton (26)
P-Brian Lawrence (27)
