This weekend, within a span of about 17 hours, Major League Baseball’s 400 home run club welcomed two new members. On Friday night, Texas Rangers 3rd baseman Adrian Beltre belted his 400th career long ball. Then on Saturday afternoon, in a fairly hefty drizzling rain, Detroit Tigers 1st baseman Miguel Cabrera slugged #400 of his brilliant career. Both blasts were to straightaway center field. With those home runs, Beltre and Cabrera became the 52nd and 53rd players in history to reach that milestone (and each player, incidentally, has exactly 1,399 RBI as of May 17th).
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So the question of the day is this: in the years ahead, will Beltre and Cabrera be honored with induction into baseball’s Hall of Fame? With the 32-year old Cabrera, the question seems like an obvious “yes.” Cabrera has won 2 MVP Awards, is a 9-time All-Star and has reached these milestones in over 2,000 plate appearances fewer than the 36-year old Beltre, for whom the answer to the Hall of Fame question is much more unclear.
Adrian Beltre, born in the Dominican Republic, was signed by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1994 at the age of 15 (technically an illegal signing for which the Dodgers were punished by MLB) and he debuted with the major league club in June of 1998, less than three months after celebrating his 19th birthday. 1998 was a tumultuous season in Dodger-land: Beltre was replacing the recently acquired Bobby Bonilla, who had been placed on the disabled list. Bonilla had been part of the mega-trade that sent favorite son Mike Piazza to the Florida Marlins (before Piazza ultimately landed with the New York Mets). Anyway, the Dodgers alternated between Beltre and Bonilla for the balance of the season but clearly liked what they say in the young Dominican, sending Bobby Bo packing in an off-season trade.
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For the next six seasons, Beltre was a fixture at the hot corner in Los Angeles. He was solid but certainly not spectacular. From 1998-2003, he averaged 16 home runs per season with an OPS of .748 (a figure which translates to an adjusted OPS+ of 97, which is slightly below the league average of 100). But 2004, his age 25 season, was a revelation. In just one year, Beltre went from an average player to a superstar: he hit .334 with 48 home runs, 200 hits and 121 RBI with an OPS+ of 163 (which means 63% better than average). Beltre finished 2nd to Barry Bonds in the NL MVP voting, timing his breakout year with his free agent walk year; the young superstar parlayed his spectacular campaign into a 5-year, $64 million free agent contract with the Seattle Mariners.
For years, it appeared that his 2004 season was a one-time fluke. Moving to spacious Safeco Field in Seattle, Beltre never even approached the 48-homer season of ’04, clubbing an average of 21 taters per each of the five years of that contract. It’s easy to blame Safeco for his middling numbers but his park and league adjusted OPS+ for those five seasons was just 101, barely above average and lower than other 3rd sacker luminaries such as Mike Lowell, Morgan Ensberg, Garret Atkins and Casey Blake. Take a look at his home run and OPS splits for those five seasons and you’ll see that Safeco hurt but doesn’t fully explain his mediocre offensive numbers during this period:
Adrian Beltre Home Road Years HR OPS HR OPS 2005-09 48 .717 53 .798
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During the Mariners years, although Beltre was seen as a disappointment with the bat, he was quickly gaining a well-deserved reputation as a spectacular defense player at the hot corner. He won the first of his four Gold Gloves in 2007 (although, ironically, when you look at the numbers, this was an off year with the leather, his worst in five years). 2007 was only eight years ago, but writers were still voting on anecdotes and reputations; advanced fielding metrics have only very recently permeated the Gold Gove voting process. Using the category “defensive WAR (Wins Above Replacement)” on Baseball Reference, Beltre was the fifth best defensive player in all of baseball during his years in Seattle. Still, his offensive WAR ranking was 67th during what should have been his peak years (ages 26-30), and if you look at his ranks in several traditional and advanced statistical categories, he sure didn’t look like a Cooperstown inductee in the making. The chart below shows Beltre’s ranks among all MLB players and among third basemen (with a minimum of 2,000 plate appearances for rate stats. Just to explain the WAR statistics, the oWAR is “offensive Wins Above Replacement”; dWAR is “defensive Wins Above Replacement.” There is a positional adjustment, so if a third baseman and first baseman have identical statistics, the oWAR and will be higher for the third baseman because it’s a more important position on the defensive spectrum. The “overall” WAR is NOT arrived at by adding oWAR and dWAR because it would mean counting the positional adjustment twice.
Adrian Beltre Min 2000 PA 2005-09 MLB rank 3B rank HR 103 T-45 6 RBI 396 44 7 Hits 751 47 5 AVG .266 128 13 OPS .759 T-113 14 OPS+ 101 T-103 12 WAR 21.2 18 4 dWAR 13.2 68 9 dWAR 9.3 5 1
After the 2009 season, Beltre, at the age of 30, had yet to make an All-Star team, had won two Gold Gloves and only had one season (the magical 2004) in which he had earned a single vote as his league’s Most Valuable Player. 2009 was the worst of those five years, an injury-plagued campaign in which he managed just 8 home runs, 44 RBI with a .683 OPS in 111 games.
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When you look at Beltre’s ranks in the categories listed above, the one bright spot is his Wins Above Replacement (WAR), which is based on the strength of his defense. Statistically-minded Boston Red Sox General Manager Theo Epstein, seeing at a minimum his defensive value, took a gamble, signing Beltre to a one-year, $9 million contract and thus began the emergence of Beltre as one of the top players in the game. In that 2010 season in Beantown, Beltre made his first All-Star team, hit .321, blasted 28 home runs and a league-leading 49 doubles, with 102 RBI. His 7.8 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) was the fourth best among all position players in baseball. After this terrific season, he was rewarded with a six-year, $96 million free agent contract with the Texas Rangers, the team with which he has now emerged as one of the superstars of the game.
Including the renaissance season in Boston, here are Beltre’s ranks in key statistical categories from 2010-2014 (again with a minimum of 2,000 plate appearances).
Adrian Beltre Min 2000 PA 2010-14 MLB rank 3B rank HR 145 9 1 RBI 478 5 1 Hits 904 4 1 AVG .316 3 1 OPS .899 10 1 OPS+ 140 T-13 1 WAR 33.3 3 1 oWAR 27.9 5 1 dWAR 6.4 23 2
The evidence is overwhelming. In the last five seasons, Beltre has been one of the best hitters in baseball and easily the best third baseman overall (even as his defensive prowess has started to slip). Those last five seasons have given Beltre the accolades of four All-Star appearances, two more Gold Gloves, and three Silver Slugger awards (for the best hitter at his position). The two years that he didn’t win the Silver Slugger were the two seasons that Miguel Cabrera was playing 3rd base. In all five seasons, Beltre’s been in the top 15 of the AL MVP voting (finishing 3rd in 2012).
Anyway, what does this all mean for a potential Hall of Fame candidacy? If you asked, after the 2009 season, any writer of the Baseball Writers Association of America, any broadcaster, or any knowledgeable fan whether they thought that Adrian Beltre would ever get into Cooperstown, you have gotten a nice big laugh. Today, a great many commentators and writers, particularly in the sabermetric community, are describing Beltre as a future Hall of Famer. If he does get into this exclusive club, he would be one of the rare members who gained entry on the basis of the performance of his 30’s and not his 20’s, ironic for a player who debuted in the bigs at the age of 19. This fact is especially true for position players, nearly all of whom were stars in their 20’s. With pitchers, there are a certain number who didn’t truly “figure it out” until their later years (think Randy Johnson, who won the first of his five Cy Youngs at the age of 31).
Take a look at the list of Hall of Fame players that you’re old enough to have seen play and look at their statistical resumes. What you’ll see almost all the time are multiple All-Star appearances and MVP or near-MVP caliber seasons early in that player’s career. The majority of players in the Hall are those who looked and felt like Hall of Fame players during the years we enjoyed watching their exploits on the diamond. If you look at the position players elected by the BBWAA in the last 50 years, every single one of them had at least one All-Star appearance in their 20’s (Beltre didn’t make his first Mid-Summer Classic roster until he was 31). Now, Beltre certainly deserved to make the 2004 team (during his monster season in L.A.) but every Hall of Fame position player elected since 1962 appeared in at least two All-Star games in their 20’s. The exception was Lou Brock (who made one team at the age of 28 and then five more in the rest of his career). Beltre’s lack of All-Star game appearances in his 20’s is the same as Jeff Kent’s. Kent didn’t make his first All-Star team until he was 31 years old and was a vastly better player in his 30’s than in his 20’s. His 377 career home run total is greater than any 2nd baseman in history but he has gotten no more than 15% of the needed 75% votes in his first two tries on the Hall of Fame ballot. The point here is that, as Jeff Kent did, Adrian Beltre has snuck up on us as a Hall of Fame caliber player. Beltre is still only 36 years old, so he still has time to get to 500 home runs and, with 2,644 career hits currently, could reach the 3,000-hit milestone by the year 2017. Although the 500-home run club is now tainted by several PED users, the 3,000-hit club still to this day provides an almost automatic ticket to Cooperstown (the exceptions being the gambling tainted Pete Rose and the PED-tainted Rafael Palmeiro).
But let’s ask this question: what if Beltre’s career ended today, at the age of 36? Has he already accomplished enough on the diamond to be a legitimate Hall of Fame candidate? With 400 career home runs, he has the fifth most of any third baseman in the history of the sport, behind only Mike Schmidt (548), Eddie Mathews (512), Chipper Jones (468) and Darrell Evans (414). Schmidt and Mathews are in the Hall and Chipper is widely viewed as a lock in the upcoming years.
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Darrell Evans is an interesting case. In his Historical Abstract, sabermetric pioneer Bill James calls Evans “the most underrated player in baseball history” whose overall excellence was overshadowed by a mediocre .248 batting average. Evans was also a late-bloomer, the “sneak up on you” kind of player; although he actually had two monster years in his 20’s (1973 and 1974), several of his most productive seasons came later in his career. Benefitting in part by hitting in Tiger Stadium for most of his twilight years, Evans hit 182 of his 414 career home runs from the age of 36 and beyond, which is the 3rd most of any player in baseball history for that age range; he’s behind some scrubs named Barry Bonds and Hank Aaron. Anyway, the baseball writers weren’t impressed: Evans, with the unfortunate timing of joining the Hall of Fame ballot in the same year as Schmidt, received just 8 out of a possible 460 votes (1.7%) and never appeared on the ballot again.
Still, at the time of his retirement after the 1989 season, Darrell Evans’ 414 career home runs were the 21st most in the history of the sport. Of the twenty players ahead of him on the list, only Dave Kingman (with 442) wasn’t a current or future Hall of Famer at that time. As recently as 1997, Evans was still #24 on the list and there were only 25 total members of the 400-home run club overall. Today, 18 years later, with explosion of long balls during the PED era, there are 53 members (with Beltre and Cabrera joining that list). So 400 home runs doesn’t mean what it used to. Evans has dropped from 24th to 49th on the home run list in just 18 years.
It’s clear by examining his record that Beltre’s primary qualification for a possible Hall of Fame vote is not his 400 home runs, it’s not his 2,644 hits; it is his excellence as a defensive third baseman. Again, let’s remember that he has time to get to 500 home runs (certainly no guarantee) and 3,000 hits (not guaranteed but very likely if he remains healthy and reasonably productive); for the purpose of this article, it is a question about whether the first 18 years of his major league career have been good enough already.
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When I think about a power-hitting third sacker who was also an elite defensive player my mind immediately goes to Graig Nettles. If you recall Game 3 of the 1978 World Series, with the Yankees down to the Dodgers two games to none, Nettles single-handedly bailed out Ron Guidry with multiple web gems, turning the momentum of that series into the Bombers’ favor. Nettles only won two Gold Gloves (he was stuck behind Brooks Robinson in his 20’s when he was at his best) but still had the reputation as one of the best in the game. Let’s look at a comparison of Nettles’ and Beltre’s numbers (for Beltre, through May 17th) and, just for yucks, add in Bill James favorite Darrell Evans.
Career AVG HR RBI Hits OPS+ WAR oWAR dWAR Adrian Beltre .284 400 1399 2644 116 78.7 58.6 23.7 Graig Nettles .248 390 1314 2225 110 68.0 52.3 20.9 Darrell Evans .248 414 1354 2223 119 58.5 53.5 -0.5
Anyway, you can see here that Evans was not in the league defensively as the others. Regarding Nettles, Beltre clearly has the better numbers in almost every category but not dramatically better. Considering that Nettles never earned more than 8% of the Hall of Fame vote in four tries, it’s a bit of a stretch to say that Beltre’s numbers are so much better that he would earn 75% of the vote.
Of course, Nettles’ last bite at the Hall of Fame apple was in 1997 and advanced metrics such as OPS+ and WAR had not been invented yet. On the other hand, Nettles played on multiple New York Yankees World Series champions and the reputation for superior defense even if there weren’t the same metrics that we have today to measure it. Thus, if the writers felt so clearly that Nettles was not Cooperstown worthy, it would seem that Beltre’s path would be perilous if his career were to end today. But remember, with each year that passes, there are more and more writers who value advanced statistics and will be influenced by arguments like this: Adrian Beltre has the 2nd best defensive WAR among all third basemen in the history of the game.
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Career Best dWAR Brooks Robinson 38.8 Adrian Beltre 23.2 Buddy Bell 23.0 Clete Boyer 21.5 Graig Nettles 20.9
So Beltre is 2nd to the legendary Brooks Robinson, who won 16 Gold Gloves. But he is 2nd best by a mile. His dWAR is barely better than that of 3rd best Buddy Bell, who didn’t get any Cooperstown love despite six Gold Gloves. Boyer and Nettles were also on the outside looking in.
It’s an open question going forward about what weight to put on advanced defensive statistics. There’s a book, The Fielding Bible (by John Dewan and Ben Jedlovec) that does a terrific job of unlocking the secrets to defensive excellence but the year-to-year fluctuations sometimes appear random and are perhaps more subject to luck than batting statistics. Anyway, Beltre is the cover boy on Volume III of the Fielding Bible. During the years 2003-2011, which this edition covers, the writers make the case that he should have won five Gold Gloves (instead of the three that he actually won during those years). Yet in their rankings the authors list him as the 2nd best in the game (to the Rays’ Evan Longoria).
Using the Fielding Bible’s “Defensive Runs Saved” statistic, found on www.fangraphgs.com, Beltre has saved his teams a total of 178 runs from 2003-2015. That’s a great total but, to keep things in perspective, he also drove in 1,090 runs as a batter during that same period of time. Is this apples to oranges? A sabermetric devotee might say yes but for me, what actually happens, what we see on the diamond with our eyes matters more. We see runs batted in, we watch the runners cross home plate and the runs go on the scoreboard. Yes, we also see spectacular plays but much of what goes into defensive metrics are the volume of plays that a defensive player makes even if many of them look routine.
Combining his offense, defense and base running (with a bump for playing at third base), Beltre’s overall career WAR (78.7 according to Baseball Reference) is the 8th most among all position players who are not already in Cooperstown. Here’s the list:
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Player Career WAR Barry Bonds 162.2 Alex Rodriguez 117.0 Albert Pujols 97.0 Chipper Jones 85.0 Ken Griffey Jr. 83.6 Jeff Bagwell 79.6 Pete Rose 79.1 Adrian Beltre 78.7
Nice company, eh? That total is higher than recent inductees Frank Thomas and Craig Biggio and it’s higher than future inductee Derek Jeter. As for the eight on this list, we know why Bonds and Rose aren’t in the Hall and four of the others (A-Rod, Pujols, Chipper and Griffey) aren’t eligible yet. There are two key names on this list: one is Jeff Bagwell (79.6) whose lack of milestone accomplishments (he finished with 449 home runs and 2,314 hits) is one of the drags on his candidacy. With a big segment of the Hall of Fame voters, milestones matter. In Bagwell’s case (as with Piazza), there are also unfounded suspicions of PED use which are holding him back.
The other is Chipper Jones, also a 3rd baseman, who recently retired and will be eligible for the first time with the class of 2018. Let’s put Beltre and Chipper up against each other.
| Player | WAR | Hits | HR | RBI | BB | OPS | OPS+ | oWAR | dWAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chipper Jones | 85.0 | 2726 | 468 | 1623 | 1512 | .930 | 141 | 87.4 | -1.6 |
| Adrian Beltre | 78.7 | 2644 | 400 | 1399 | 693 | .814 | 116 | 58.6 | 23.7 |
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Baseball Reference gives basically no value at all to Chipper Jones for his defensive work (the writers, over the years, have agreed, according him no Gold Gloves). Offensively, however, there is no comparison. The difference in OPS is significant and dramatic. Beltre may already have as many hits, but Chipper got on base via the walk 819 more times. Jones was also an eight-time All-Star, the 1999 MVP and the offensive leader of a team that made the playoffs in the first of his eleven Major League seasons. With former teammates Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz earning first-ballot entry in the last two years, I have no doubt they will be joined by Chipper Jones.
So clearly Beltre’s resume would be greatly enhanced by topping those milestones of 500 home runs and/or 3,000 hits. As indicated earlier, he’s much closer to 3,000 hits (with 2,644 as of May 17). Since leaving Seattle, he’s averaged 181 hits per year which would get him to 3,000 sometime in 2017. Beltre’s contract is guaranteed through next season so he would have to experience a fairly dramatic decrease in productivity or a severe injury to not get a contract from either Texas or another team for the 2017 season. But that kind of quick productivity decline in a player’s late 30’s is not especially unusual for players, even of Beltre’s caliber. Remember, he needs 337 hits. Here’s a list of some notable players who did not achieve that many hits in the seasons starting with their age 36 seasons: Billy Williams, Lou Whitaker, Robin Yount, Bernie Williams, Sammy Sosa, Alan Trammell, Jeff Bagwell, Vladimir Guerrero, Mel Ott, and Roberto Alomar.
So it’s very possible for a great player’s career to go downhill quickly when they’re 36 or above but Beltre doesn’t need to play into his 40’s to get to 3,000 hits; he just needs to last until the middle of his age 38 season.
But I need to finish by throwing a little bit of water on this: the 3,000 hit milestone is an excellent accomplishment, but there are many, MANY players who fell short of that plateau who were better hitters than those who achieved it.
It’s something that I haven’t seen pointed out a lot, but sometimes the 3,000-hit accomplishment occurs in the absence of the ability to reach base by the walk. Barry Bonds finished his career 65 hits shy of 3,000 and is 29th on the all-time hit list. But Bonds was so feared and had such amazing plate discipline that he walked 2,558 times, the most ever by hundreds. So if you add Bonds’ hits, walks and time reaching by hit batsman, Bonds is #2, not #29, in the history of the game, behind Pete Rose but ahead of Ty Cobb and his 4,189 hits.
Adrian Beltre (through May 17) has reached base 3,417 times (2,644 hits, 693 walks, 80 HBP). That total is behind many solid players who are not Cooperstown stock: Brian Downing, Bernie Williams, Dave Parker, Julio Franco, Brett Butler, Mark Grace and Chili Davis and over a hundred other players, including dozens who aren’t and never will have a bust in Cooperstown. Beltre has always been somewhat of a free swinger, with a patented home run stroke where his knee actually scrapes the dirt on his uppercut swing.
I’m not suggesting that any of the 25 members of the 3,000 Hit Club are unworthy of the Hall (we are talking about the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of on-base percentage). What I am suggesting is that I really think that Adrian Beltre really needs this milestone to get over the hump. No matter how good his defensive metrics are, his current resume will get overwhelmed by many other deserving candidates.
Having said that, I’d say it’s at least an 80% probability that he will achieve that milestone and that, combined with his supreme defensive resume, will earn him a plaque in Cooperstown.
Thanks for reading!
Chris Bodig