There are a lot of people on Twitter who are just mad. Mad at the world, mad at their team, mad at their life, mad at everything. And Twitter gives them a place to go be mad anonymously. They can create a profile with a phony name (often with a lot of numbers tacked onto the end), and a phony profile photo, and just start typing little 280-character rants. Or longer ones if they pay for the privilege each month.
This is a great piece. To be fair to the Chips of the world, deservedness aside, Perez’ journey to the HOF stands pretty clearly in my mind as a classic “okay, whatever,” where the committee just after the committee that would’ve been totally legitimate just kind of caved.
A couple of thoughts: I also very much recall that, pre-90s power boost, a guy with sub-400 HRs was just in this muddy world where you’d have a meandering path to the HOF at best. It probably wasn’t right (Rice/Dwight Evans), but it was real.
I was glad to see this because we need some BRM backlash. There are still piles of Boomers out there who comment on Concepcion for HOF in every (any) tangentially related FB post.
Those HOF ballots in the 90s were strange. It took a couple of 300 game winners (Nikkei and Sutton) five ballots to get elected. You had guys like Rice and Garvey and Santo getting quite a few votes. Gary Carter couldn’t get in, as you know.
The 1998 ballot had Ryan, Brett, Yount and Fisk. That set Tony back.
I do think it’s a bit disingenuous to suggest Perez got no boost from being on the BRM, but I also think it’s okay to consider rings. But I think he’s in simply for longevity. The talk used to be about how he had “the most RBI of anyone not in the hall.” His WAR/162 is tied with Boog Powell and Cecil Cooper. His WAR7 is in line with Mark Teixeira and Will Clark. None of those guys are in hall, because they didn’t play nearly as long.
(To be fair, Perez is in line with Fred McGriff, but still played 300+ more games.)
I also think that we hate seeing a guy on a leaderboard surrounded by Hall of Famers and him not being in the Hall himself. With 1652 RBI, that put him below Reggie Jackson and above Ernie Banks (at the time of his election). This theory bodes well for Beltran and Kent, the next two players with the highest RBI totals and not connected to PEDs.
Thanks for this work, Paul. It’s as entertaining as it is educational.
It seems to me that if the Big Dog got a slight BRM-specific voting boost because he was universally admired and respected in a championship clubhouse with some big egos and eccentric personalities that’s a legitimate consideration for HOF worthiness. I do wonder if his very high RBI total relative to home runs, batting average and slugging percentage are largely a reflection of hitting behind Rose and Morgan, who were always on base and frequently in scoring position, and were smart, aggressive baserunners to boot. If that’s the case, he might be the beneficiary of a BRM boost in the form of an inflated individual statistic that could be somewhat misleading in determining how his individual contributions figure into slotting him into an appropriate peer group, which looks more to me like a mix of some HOFers — e.g., Cepeda and Hodges — and some non-HOFers like Norm Cash and Darrell Evans, (might throw Graig Nettles in too), than to a group that includes Gehrig, Foxx, Bagwell and Pujols.
Still, even if my RBI discount theory has some merit, even if that puts him squarely in a group where based on statistical measures some members get in and some don’t, his actual contributions to one of the greatest teams ever assembled ought to be given weight. We can make some assumptions about how things might have gone with Cepeda or Will Clark or Norm Cash hitting behind Rose and Morgan, but we know with certainty how very well things went with Tony Perez hitting there. If he didn’t need a BRM boost to put him over the top, fine. If that did put him over the top also fine: it makes him no less deserving of the honor in my opinion.
Great article as always. Is there ever any way to give points for non statistical traits? The HOF website has some great points on Tony:
“With men in scoring position and the game on the line,” said longtime opponent Willie Stargell, “Tony’s the last guy an opponent wanted to see.”
A native of Cuba, Pérez left a job in a Havana sugarcane factory when he signed a minor league contract with the Reds in 1960. “I ate chicken for a week one time,” Pérez said. “It was the only word I knew – chicken, chicken, chicken.”
Eventually, Pérez would become a positive influence on those who came after him. “(Pérez) was a fatherly type in the clubhouse, especially to the Spanish ballplayers,” said longtime Reds teammate Pete Rose. “They looked up to him as well as relating to him through his background and language.” https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/perez-tony
Paul, thanks for these occasional reminders of why I am not, never have been & most probably never will be on Twi(x)tter
This is a great piece. To be fair to the Chips of the world, deservedness aside, Perez’ journey to the HOF stands pretty clearly in my mind as a classic “okay, whatever,” where the committee just after the committee that would’ve been totally legitimate just kind of caved.
A couple of thoughts: I also very much recall that, pre-90s power boost, a guy with sub-400 HRs was just in this muddy world where you’d have a meandering path to the HOF at best. It probably wasn’t right (Rice/Dwight Evans), but it was real.
I was glad to see this because we need some BRM backlash. There are still piles of Boomers out there who comment on Concepcion for HOF in every (any) tangentially related FB post.
Those HOF ballots in the 90s were strange. It took a couple of 300 game winners (Nikkei and Sutton) five ballots to get elected. You had guys like Rice and Garvey and Santo getting quite a few votes. Gary Carter couldn’t get in, as you know.
The 1998 ballot had Ryan, Brett, Yount and Fisk. That set Tony back.
I do think it’s a bit disingenuous to suggest Perez got no boost from being on the BRM, but I also think it’s okay to consider rings. But I think he’s in simply for longevity. The talk used to be about how he had “the most RBI of anyone not in the hall.” His WAR/162 is tied with Boog Powell and Cecil Cooper. His WAR7 is in line with Mark Teixeira and Will Clark. None of those guys are in hall, because they didn’t play nearly as long.
(To be fair, Perez is in line with Fred McGriff, but still played 300+ more games.)
I also think that we hate seeing a guy on a leaderboard surrounded by Hall of Famers and him not being in the Hall himself. With 1652 RBI, that put him below Reggie Jackson and above Ernie Banks (at the time of his election). This theory bodes well for Beltran and Kent, the next two players with the highest RBI totals and not connected to PEDs.
Thanks for this work, Paul. It’s as entertaining as it is educational.
It seems to me that if the Big Dog got a slight BRM-specific voting boost because he was universally admired and respected in a championship clubhouse with some big egos and eccentric personalities that’s a legitimate consideration for HOF worthiness. I do wonder if his very high RBI total relative to home runs, batting average and slugging percentage are largely a reflection of hitting behind Rose and Morgan, who were always on base and frequently in scoring position, and were smart, aggressive baserunners to boot. If that’s the case, he might be the beneficiary of a BRM boost in the form of an inflated individual statistic that could be somewhat misleading in determining how his individual contributions figure into slotting him into an appropriate peer group, which looks more to me like a mix of some HOFers — e.g., Cepeda and Hodges — and some non-HOFers like Norm Cash and Darrell Evans, (might throw Graig Nettles in too), than to a group that includes Gehrig, Foxx, Bagwell and Pujols.
Still, even if my RBI discount theory has some merit, even if that puts him squarely in a group where based on statistical measures some members get in and some don’t, his actual contributions to one of the greatest teams ever assembled ought to be given weight. We can make some assumptions about how things might have gone with Cepeda or Will Clark or Norm Cash hitting behind Rose and Morgan, but we know with certainty how very well things went with Tony Perez hitting there. If he didn’t need a BRM boost to put him over the top, fine. If that did put him over the top also fine: it makes him no less deserving of the honor in my opinion.
Great article as always. Is there ever any way to give points for non statistical traits? The HOF website has some great points on Tony:
“With men in scoring position and the game on the line,” said longtime opponent Willie Stargell, “Tony’s the last guy an opponent wanted to see.”
A native of Cuba, Pérez left a job in a Havana sugarcane factory when he signed a minor league contract with the Reds in 1960. “I ate chicken for a week one time,” Pérez said. “It was the only word I knew – chicken, chicken, chicken.”
Eventually, Pérez would become a positive influence on those who came after him. “(Pérez) was a fatherly type in the clubhouse, especially to the Spanish ballplayers,” said longtime Reds teammate Pete Rose. “They looked up to him as well as relating to him through his background and language.” https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/perez-tony
Oh wow… this series could be renamed to “why I don’t do twitter/x”