Each of us has had a moment or two in life that we’d like to do over. A mistake, a statement, a loss of temper, something regrettable.
The internet has exponentially increased our opportunities to have those moments.
“Maybe I should open this attachment.”
“I think I’ll just use ‘Reply All.’”
“No one will ever see my search history.”
You get the idea. And nowhere is this exponential increase in regrettable behavior more prevalent than social media platforms. Just ask Josh Hader what it was like when his tweets from his teenage years re-surfaced in 2018. Or the gaffs can be much less inflammatory but no less embarrassing, like the time Dean Norris, a.k.a. “Hank” from Breaking Bad, accidentally posted a tweet saying only “sex gifs” instead of googling it like he apparently intended.
Which brings me to a guy named Kamal. His Twitter handle is “jerkyboykamal,” and, as you’ll see later, it fits. But his recent Twitter mishap didn’t start out with him being a jerk. It began with him trying to make the case that Dale Murphy should be in the Hall of Fame.
Before getting into what I view as problems with his attempted defense of Murphy, let’s start with where we agree.
First of all, he’s right that players have been elected to the Hall of Fame primarily because they had a “dominant 5 year stretch.” I’ve made the argument in the past that players with short peaks have been overlooked a bit, in fact, so I’m sympathetic to that point of view.
Second, I’m a big Dale Murphy fan, and though I’ve gone back and forth on his Hall of Fame case, I could absolutely get behind it. He was, if not the single most dominant player of the 1980s, a dominant presence in baseball during those years. Joe Posnanski has made Murphy’s case along those lines so I won’t repeat that, but it’s fair to stress that Murphy being the best player on one of only two teams at the time whose games aired on a national cable channel brought him into our homes far more than most other players of that era.
I also agree with Kamal that if Murphy had been “arguably the best player 1982-1986/7” then it would have to “mean something” to voters for the Hall of Fame.
Now here is the “but” you all knew was coming…
But Murphy was NOT the best player of those years. And his peak wasn’t as dominant as the one that got Koufax elected. And citing George Kell doesn’t help his case. And citing Hank Greenberg REALLY doesn’t help his case. And stridently holding on to each of these elements, and more, even after actual facts and sources are presented to you, makes you kind of a jerk.
Let’s go through each of those in a bit more detail.
Murphy Was “Arguably The Best Player 1982-1986/7 In Baseball”
Nope, and not really even all that close. There are two, and only two, meaningful statistical categories in which Dale Murphy led all of baseball from 1982 to 1987.
Home Runs
Total Bases
That’s it. Murphy hit 218 home runs in those years, two more than Mike Schmidt. He did this in 49 more games that totaled 391 more plate appearances while playing in the best hitter’s park of that era. I strongly suspect that if Schmidt had played his home games in Atlanta’s “Launching Pad,” he’d have hit a lot more homers than Murphy, and likely would have had more total bases, too.
In all other categories, Murphy was much further down the list. He was 6th in hits, and 25th in doubles, and 46th in triples, and 40th in steals, and 31st in batting average, and 14th in on-base percentage, and 4th in slugging, and so on. He was 2nd in runs scored, games played, and plate appearances, and 3rd in RBI, which are impressive accomplishments, but he also had the most strikeouts, which is not as impressive.
Modern stats don’t help this picture. He was 8th in WAR in those years, and 9th in Wins Above Average, and tied for 8th in OPS+, and 45th in Base Running Runs, and (here’s the really bad one) tied for 184th in Fielding Runs.
Overall, I think it’s a stretch to argue that Murphy was the best player of that six-year timeframe. Personally, I’d say it was Rickey Henderson or Mike Schmidt, with Wade Boggs, Tim Raines, Cal Ripken, Jr., and Gary Carter all presenting better overall cases than Murphy.
Murphy’s Peak Is In The Same Category As Koufax
Uh, no. Sandy Koufax had 36.3 WAR in four years, compared to Murphy having 34.1 in six years. Koufax won three Triple Crowns in that peak; Murphy didn’t win any. Koufax had a 0.94 World Series ERA in those years as his team won two championships: Murphy played in one NLCS and had a .545 OPS in it. Those years for Koufax have resulted in people arguing that he might have been the best pitcher ever, at least in those years. No one has ever tried to claim best-ever status for Dale Murphy.
Just stop comparing him to Sandy Koufax.
Murphy Should Be Elected Because George Kell Was
Look, common sense should tell you that if you have to cite guys who likely shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame as comparisons to your preferred candidate, that won’t make your guy look very good. You’ve just put him in the same company as players most people think shouldn’t have been elected. If those guys are viewed mostly as mistakes, having your guy associated with them would make his election look like a mistake, too, wouldn’t it?
Take Kell for example. Yes, Dale Murphy had a better career than George Kell, and yes, Kell is in the Hall of Fame. But he shouldn’t be. Lots and lots and lots of players had better careers than George Kell and aren’t in the Hall of Fame. Carney Lansford, Bill Madlock, Carl Furillo, and Andy Pafko were all as good or better than George Kell, so should they be in the Hall of Fame, too?
The logical construct of “Player A is in the Hall of Fame, Player B is better than Player A, therefore Player B should be in the Hall of Fame” fails completely once you point out that Player A shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame in the first place. And that’s the case with George Kell. Putting Murphy’s name next to Kell’s isn’t doing Murphy any favors.
Murphy’s Peak Is In The Same Category As Hank Greenberg
This mistake is on the other end of the spectrum. Comparing your favorite guy to a significantly better player doesn’t do him any favors, either.
Hank Greenberg was a lot better than Dale Murphy.
A. LOT.
From 1934 to 1940, a span of games closely matching Murphy’s 1982-87 seasons, Greenberg was better than Murphy in these categories:
WAR (40.5 to Murphy’s 34.1)
Hits (1,146 to 1,037)
Runs (768 to 660)
Doubles (279 to 167)
Triples (58 to 24)
Homers (235 to 218)
RBI (916 to 629)
Walks (564 to 542)
Strikeouts (553 to 796)
Batting average (.329 to .289)
On-base percentage (.424 to .382)
Slugging percentage (.645 to .531)
OPS+ (166 to 145)
Double plays (23 to 73)
This skips Greenberg’s 1933 rookie season when he hit .301/.367/.468 with a 119 OPS+. It also skips his 1945 season when he hit .311/.404/.544 with a 166 OPS+, and his 1946 season when he led the league with 44 homers and 127 RBI and had a 162 OPS+, and his final season in 1947 when he led the league in walks and had a 132 OPS+. And it utterly ignores the fact that his peak years only stopped because he volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army beginning early in the 1941 season, months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and didn’t return until 1945.
Let’s use Fangraphs’ WAR Graph function to put their careers next to each other:
In short, don’t compare Dale Murphy’s career to Hank Greenberg’s if you want Murphy to look good.
Now, many people tried to point out these things to Kamal. The attempts to do so were, for the most part, not terribly rude or confrontational. They were based in the sort of facts I just pointed out. But Kamal was having none of it, and this is where I’d like to think he will later have some regrets about where he steered the conversation.
He began making inane arguments about how Murphy had a harder time than Schmidt, for instance, because Atlanta is hotter than Philadelphia. Which, yeah, they call it Hotlanta for a reason, but that ignores the fact that Murphy got to play on grass while Schmidt had to spend every home game standing on the artificial turf of Veterans Stadium, The same artificial turf that reached temperatures over 140 degrees in the summer. The same turf that is suspected of giving off chemical fumes that may have led to the brain cancer deaths of six members of the Phillies.
He also defended Murphy’s outfield defense, citing his Gold Gloves, and didn’t want to hear anything about the fact that Gold Gloves in those days weren’t limited to one per outfield position. They were given to any three outfielders, and it was pretty common for three center fielders to be awarded in one season, with left fielders and right fielders ignored.
Take 1982, when Murphy won his first Gold Glove. Had the awards been limited to just the best center fielder, which of these three center fielders who won the award that year would have received it?
Dale Murphy: 2 Fielding Runs, 0.0 dWAR, 2.58 range factor
Andre Dawson: 18 Fielding Runs, 2.1 dWAR, 2.93 range factor
Garry Maddox: 2 Fielding Runs, 0.3 dWAR, 2.60 range factor
Dawson in a landslide, right? Well, not according to Kamal.
You’re reading that right. Kamal thinks that Dawson had less ground to cover because he had better outfielders on either side of him and that led to him having better range. Which, um, huh?
I mean, am I nuts, or wouldn’t those better outfielders cut into Dawson’s range? Wouldn’t they field some of the balls in the gaps, thereby reducing Dawson’s chances?Kamal even got the infielders involved at one point.
Kamal, if you think that’s how range works, I don’t know what to tell you, either. Especially when you’re disinterested in looking up the actual facts about the amount of ground they each covered.
From there he got more and more agitated and devolved into being mean-spirited, and that got him blocked. I won’t post any of that, but let’s just sat it wasn’t Kamal’s best day.
Will Kamal re-read any of this in the future and cringe at some of the positions he defended? Will he regret his strident illogic, or his easily-debunked arguments?
I don’t know. I’m guessing a guy who describes himself as a “jerky boy” isn’t big on reflection.
But at least he knows who he is.
Damn, Greenberg only played in 97 games out of five full seasons, 1941-1945. I think only Ted Williams missed more time to war, and that was TWO wars and he only missed a couple dozen more games than Hank.
Sorry in advance for length of this reply. It started as a short one — really — but just kept growing!
If on-line HOF arguments tend to be of the “let’s throw stuff out and see what sticks” variety, I would submit that the Hall’s selection process owns the lion’s share of the blame.
Bill James wrote a whole book about how the Hall fouled things up. And if things have changed for the better since then it’s hard to tell.
With respect to Murphy, for example, look at how his experience compares to Harold Baines.
Baines and Murphy were on the BBWAA ballot at the same time for a few years until Baines dropped off for lack of support. Murphy had twice the BBWAA support during the years they were on the ballot together, and Murphy had enough support to stay on for the full 15 years, peaking at four times the support that Baines ever reached in his five years on the ballot. But thanks to a second committee seeing in him in 2019 what virtually none of the BBWAA voters saw in the 2007-2011 votes, Baines is in and Murphy with considerably more BBWAA support is out (for now).
Just so I am not misunderstood, I am not arguing that just because Baines is in that means Murphy should be too. I am, rather, suggesting that the flaws and opacity built into the process have led to arguments about where to draw the line between in and out that are so far off the rails of logic that it’s hard to see how we can ever hope to get them back on track.
Maybe (I think this may be a Bill James idea too) a Circle of Honor within the Hall would help. Give the Koufaxes and Greenbergs extra recognition so their accomplishments aren’t somehow given false equivalence with those of the Lindstroms and lesser Waners. Maybe the outer Hall could make room for Stan Hack and Harlond Clift to join George Kell as the best third basemen between Pie Traynor and Eddie Mathews. You’d be honoring their real achievements without conflating them with the Schmidts, B Robinsons, and Bretts.
I suspect Murphy will get in sooner or later. Until then it seems like his advocates will have plenty of stuff to throw and plenty of wall to throw it on.