WALKER DESERVING IN HIS FINAL SHOT AT HALL OF FAME
Voters should factor in Canadian star’s baserunning savvy and defensive skill
This is the last shot for Larry Walker — maybe his best chance at rightfully being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Under today’s rules, you get 10 years on the Hall of Fame ballot. This is the final year for Walker, the superb Canadian outfielder. He needs to be named on 75 per cent of ballots to gain entry to baseball’s shrine. He was named on 54.6 per cent of the ballots a year ago, his best showing in nine years.
He needs an additional 100 votes — which won’t come easy — after being named on 232 ballots last year.
But this year is indeed different, and maybe that — and the fact he’s a worthy candidate — will get him elected. The real difference this year is the ballot itself. It’s thinner than it has been in years.
Derek Jeter is the only sure thing this year.
The other 17 newcomers? Well, there are few players of Walker’s calibre on the ballot this year.
There are, of course, the steroid kids, and every year Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds get some recognition. Both got more votes than Walker last year: Clemens received 21 more votes; Bonds 19.
Manny Ramirez garnered only 97 votes. Gary Sheffield, named in the Mitchell Report, got 58 votes. Sammy Sosa has little support at 36 votes.
Hall of Fame voters — and I’m privileged to be one of them — can choose as many as 10 players on their ballot. Some years I’ve used all 10 of the spots. Some years I’ve wanted more than 10. As someone who won’t vote for Clemens or Bonds, I’m having trouble coming up with five candidates I believe in this year.
But to me, Walker is a no-brainer. And maybe the only reason he hasn’t been elected yet is that he played too much of his career at Coors Field with the Colorado Rockies, and his numbers, some believe, are inflated because of the altitude.
If there’s an annual flaw in the Hall of Fame voting, and often the analysis that goes around it, it’s that so much of the focus is on offensive numbers — home runs, to a lesser extent RBIS, hits, OPS (On-base plus slugging). What the hall doesn’t seem to pay enough attention to is defence.
If you play a nine-inning game
and get to the plate four of five times, that’s where you track your offence.
But for those who played nine innings in the outfield, determining the quality of that player’s fielding skills is, well, partly statistical but mainly subjective (which is why I vote for Omar Vizquel).
Edgar Martinez, primarily a designated hitter, was voted into the hall last year. Walker, an alltime great outfielder, was not.
Pat Gillick, the brilliant former general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, told me recently that he didn’t think there were any analytics he was familiar with that properly tracked the ability of a defensive player. In our conversation, he used Roberto Alomar as the best example he could come up with. He said the defensive numbers on Alomar are not representative of the way Alomar played in the field: Gillick considers him one of the greatest players he’s ever seen.
Walker won seven Gold Gloves during his big-league career.
That meant the managers of his time thought of him as an elite outfielder.
That somehow seems to get lost when looking at his 383 home runs, his 17-year batting average of .313, and his career OPS of .965, which included three seasons over 1.100.
The four players ahead of Walker, who sits No. 15 on the career OPS list: Frank Thomas, Joe Dimaggio, Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle. They’re not just hall-of-famers here. They’re alltime giants of the game.
What also seems lost somehow in Hall of Fame interpretation is a player’s ability to run the bases. Walker was a terrific baserunner. He wasn’t necessarily a speedster, but he stole 230 bases over the duration of his career. He stole 33 bases in his MVP season, when he hit 49 homers and knocked in 130 runs while maintaining an on-base percentage of .452.
He ran the bases with a purpose and an aggression that made him even more difficult to defend against.
There is only one Canadian in the Baseball Hall of Fame and that’s the remarkable Ferguson Jenkins. There is only one Canadian in the media wing of the Baseball Hall and that’s our friend Bob Elliott. That’s it for Canadian content.
Maybe Joey Votto gets there in the future, but this should be Walker’s time in the spotlight. He has all the credentials. There is an opening. It’s up to the voters now. He’ll get my vote.
Will he get the other 320 he needs for election? That’s the hope here — and the challenge.
Derek Jeter is the only sure thing this year. The other 17 newcomers? Well, there are few players of Walker’s calibre on the ballot this year.