Jeff Bagwell: Hall Bound?

In what I hope becomes a regular feature for this site, I want to break down the stats of certain players who are right on the border of the Hall of Fame and see if their numbers stack up: do they belong in the Hall of Fame? For this post, the player I'll be looking at is Jeff Bagwell.

Bagwell is a player only sabermetric guys seem to like as Hall of Famer. As a first baseman who played in the Steroid Era, the bar is indeed set high for him, and the fact that he didn't reach 500 home runs seems to set many against him.

Before I begin, I think it's worth noting that Eddie Murray is the only HOF first baseman who played in the 90's, and he was at the end of his career; we're going to have to elect SOME of the mashers who played in the Steroid Era (unless of course they used steroids, i.e. McGwire).

If elected, Bagwell's stats would rank, amongst Hall of Fame 1B:

Home runs: 5th
RBI: 6th
OBP: 4th
Slugging: 5th
Total bases: 6th
OPS+: 5th

When you consider that there are fourteen Hall of Fame first basemen, it's clear that Bagwell stacks up with the historically great. But what about his contemporaries? How does Bagwell rank among the best of the 90's? After all, the 90's offensive explosion means that a lot of players who are "historically" great are actually only very good, only above average.

Bagwell played his first full season in 1991. Between 1991 and 1999, amongst only first basemen, Bagwell ranks, in the following categories:

Home runs: 5th (it is worth noting that two of the players ahead of him, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmiero, are steroid users, and another, Frank Thomas, is almost certainly a HOFer)
RBI: 3rd (again, Palmiero and Thomas are ahead of him)
OBP: 3rd (McGwire and Thomas)
Slugging: 3rd (McGwire and Thomas)
Total Bases: 3rd (Palmiero and Thomas)
OPS+: 3rd (McGwire and Thomas)

So, excluding two steroid users, Jeff Bagwell was the second-best first baseman in baseball during the 90's, and the best in the NL.

But what about players at all positions? After all, first basemen are not played for their defense: You get a 1B for his hitting. How does Bagwell compare to all players during the steroid era ('93-'04)?

Home runs: 6th
RBI: 3rd
OBP: 7th
Slugging: 14th
Total bases: 4th
OPS+: 6th

The numbers aren't as good for Bagwell.

So far, I have been sticking to mostly traditional stats. What about sabermetric stats?

The first thing I noticed about Bagwell's sabermetric stats is his incredible .323 career EqA; that's a jaw-droppingly good number, and far higher than I was expecting. His 90's EqA was .335, while his Steroid Era EqA is .326. He also has an exceptionally high career WARP3 of 135.5, with a 90's total of 93.8 and a Steroid Era total of 116.7. How do these numbers compare with his contemporaries?

For the following comparisons, I tried to include players of many different calibers, such as sure-fire Hall of Famers (Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Thomas), players right on the border (Gary Sheffield, Jim Thome), players that clearly are not going to make the Hall (Fred McGriff, Luis Gonzalez), as well as, for good measure, steroid users (Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmiero) and a few others (Mike Piazza, Sammy Sosa) in order to find out where Bagwell falls in.

(Since not everyone on the list had begun playing in 1991, and a few retired before 2004, I balanced the statistics so that they favored each player; for instance, when calculating the EqA for Fred McGriff, who retired before the 2002 season, I left the entries for those final years blank instead of putting a 0, so as not to drag down his numbers. A few players played games in the early 90's, but played sparsely and in few games, so their EqA numbers aren't very good; I excluded those years. For WARP3, since it is a counting statistic, I included all the numbers I could. Statistics used were taken from Baseball Prospectus. I used the "adjusted for season" numbers for EqA.)

The Data Charts

Bagwell's numbers stack up much more favorably than his "normal" stats might indicate. Instead of ranking sixth, seventh, or eighth, Bagwell consistently ranks second, third, or fourth.

Final Prediction: Bagwell is obviously a great hitter, and ranks as a historically great first baseman. While the more regular stats seem to indicate that he is not Hall material, his EqA and WARP3 are borderline Hall caliber: for instance, he ranks second in both '91-'99 and Steroid Era WARP3, meaning he was the second most valuable player during his career span (after Barry Bonds). On the other hand, his EqA is fourth in every category, and his Career WARP3 is fourth as well; other than 1994, the strike-shortened year, Jeff Bagwell was never THE best hitter in baseball, and his lower Career WARP3 indicates that he didn't endure the way many of the greats did: he only played 14 full seasons, which is rather shorter than most superstars. The fact that Frank Thomas played the same position over the same span and was clearly better hurts his cause as well. Because he never reached a major career milestone (no 3000 hits, no 500 home runs, no 50 home run season), and because his "traditional" stats are good-but-not-great, Bagwell's sabermetric stats would have to overwhelm me in order to consider him Hall of Fame caliber, and they do not. I do not think Jeff Bagwell will get elected to the Hall, nor does he deserve it.