Mile High air may deflate Walker’s Hall of Fame shot
USA TODAY is counting down the top 10 candidates on the 2019 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot in advance of the Jan. 22 election results. The countdown is based on voting by our power rankings panel, which includes five Hall voters. At No. 7 is Larry Walker.
An all-time great for two different franchises, Walker spent 17 seasons in the majors and is one of 19 players in the exclusive 300/400/500 club – with a .313 career batting average, .400 onbase percentage and .565 slugging percentage in at least 1,000 games.
He combined power hitting with speed and superb defense, winning three National League batting titles, one home run crown, seven Gold Gloves, three Silver Sluggers and an MVP award.
The British Columbia native broke into the majors with the Montreal Expos and made the first of his five AllStar appearances in his third full season.
However, his career blossomed after he signed as a free agent with the Rockies in 1995 as the third-year franchise was moving into its new home, Coors Field. The case for: Walker was one of the game’s best all-around players for over a decade. He slugged 383 home runs, including a league-leading 49 in his MVP-winning season of 1997, when he hit .366 with 143 runs, 130 RBI and 33 steals.
In 1998, he won the first of three batting titles in a four-season span.
He was a good baserunner with 10 consecutive seasons of double-digit steals and a total of 230 in his career.
Walker was also one of the game’s best defensive outfielders, winning five Gold Glove awards in six seasons from 1997 to 2002.
With a strong and accurate throwing arm, he led the NL in outfield as- sists in 2002 and topped all right fielders in assists two other times.
The case against: Walker battled injuries throughout his career, only once playing more than 145 games in a season. He ranks 66th in homers, but his totals in hits (2,160), RBI (1,311) and runs
(1,355) are all outside the top 100. Although he had several outstanding individual seasons, they came during a time when offensive numbers were up across the board in MLB.
And his postseason resume is poor. Walker made only one playoff appearance with the Rockies, hitting .214 in a
1995 NL division series loss to the Braves. (Although the 1994 strike cost him a chance to make it with an Expos team that had the game’s best record.)
He reached the playoffs twice more at the end of his career with the Cardinals but lost to the Red Sox in 2004 in his only World Series. In 100 postseason atbats, he hit .230 with seven home runs.
X factors: The thin air in Denver certainly helped Walker hit new heights on offense. Over 10 seasons in baseball’s best hitter-friendly park, he posted a
.334 batting average and 1.044 OPS. Even when adjusting for the Coors Field factor, he finished his career with an
OPS+ of 141 (73rd all time). Despite his many injuries, Walker’s
72.7 career WAR compares favorably with the 25 right fielders in the Hall (average: 72.6), with his seven-year peak slightly above average. Those numbers are also better than his contemporary, Vladimir Guerrero (59.4 WAR), who was elected to the Hall last year.
Consensus: Walker could do it all: hit, run and field on par with the best in the game. The one thing he couldn’t do consistently over his 17 seasons was stay healthy, which cost him the ability to pad his career totals. His percentage of votes has more than tripled over the past four years, from 10.2 percent to
34.1, but with only two more years on the ballot it’s going to be an uphill battle to get to the magic 75 percent.