Hall of Fame

The Modern Era Ballot: Then and Now- Lou Whitaker, Don Mattingly, and Steve Garvey

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I grew up watching baseball as a kid in the 1980s. I remember the upright, very proper batting stance and perfect hair of Steve Garvey, the mustache and eye black of Don Mattingly, the powerful right arm of Dwight Evans, and the tall, gangly body of Dale Murphy. Tommy John was the soft-tossing veteran lefty whose career seemed to last forever. Lou Whitaker was the other half of the Trammell-Whitaker middle infield for the Detroit Tigers.

Sometime in the early 1980s, I saw an ad in Baseball Digest for one of the Bill James Baseball Abstracts. After reading the first one, I was hooked. I read every one thereafter, then the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract book in 1985, Win Shares in 2002, and The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract in 2003. I found BaseballProspectus.com in the late 1990s and Baseball-Reference.com in the early 2000s and FanGraphs in 2009.

This exposure to Bill James and BP and FanGraphs changed how I looked at baseball and how I felt about the players I was watching. I realized the statistics I thought were important when I was watching baseball as a kid weren’t as important as I’d been led to believe. Pitcher wins and hitters’ RBI and batting average were sent to the back of the line while FIP, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and wRC+ moved to the front. WAR, what is it good for? Valuing baseball players. 

The players on the Modern Era Ballot exist in a weird space for me. I grew up watching these players before I embraced advanced statistics, so in some cases there’s a significant difference between how I remember them as a kid versus how I consider them now. With that in mind, this week, I’ll go over each player on the ballot with assessments from Me as a Fan in the 1980s versus Me as a Fanalyst (combination fan/analyst) today. Today, it’s the infielders—Lou Whitaker, Don Mattingly, and Steve Garvey.

Second Baseman Lou Whitaker

Me as a Fan: Trammell and Whitaker, Whitaker and Trammell. As a baseball fan in the 1980s, it was always Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker. You couldn’t think of one without the other. They were the peanut butter-and-jelly of baseball teammates. They came up together in 1977, with Trammell at shortstop and Whitaker at second, and played together until 1995.

Whitaker was a left-handed hitting second baseman who regularly batted leadoff, but didn’t steal many bases. He was the AL Rookie of the Year in 1978, which didn’t register with me at the time because I wasn’t yet a die-hard baseball fan. Like other American League players on the Modern Baseball Era Ballot, I didn’t really start watching them until my family moved to Seattle in 1981. It just so happens that Lou Whitaker hit his stride in 1982 when he had his first double-digit homer season. He continued to hit double-digit homers every year for the next 11 years. He also made five straight all-star teams from 1983 to 1987.

I knew that Whitaker had good power for a second baseman, but he hit .260 to .280 every year, which didn’t impress the 1980s version of me. He also didn’t have any big RBI seasons or steal bases, which it seemed like a second baseman batting leadoff should do.

One thing I vividly remember about Whitaker was the all-star game debacle in 1985. He was the starting second baseman for the AL in the 1985 All-Star Game, which was held in Minnesota. During his trip from Detroit, he forgot his uniform and glove in his car at the airport. When he realized his mistake, he had someone send his uniform and glove, but they were lost in transit on the way to Minnesota.

On the day of the game, Whitaker purchased a replica Tigers jersey and Tigers cap from a vendor, but had to draw the number “1” on the back with a magic marker. He borrowed a glove from Cal Ripken, Jr. and went to bat with a Cleveland Indians helmet on his dome. In the game, he was 0-for-2 at the plate.

Me as a Fanalyst: Oh, about that 1985 All-Star Game in which Whitaker wore a replica uniform. This was the AL starting lineup that day:

CF Rickey Henderson (Hall of Famer)

2B Lou Whitaker

3B George Brett (Hall of Famer)

1B Eddie Murray (Hall of Famer)

SS Cal Ripken, Jr. (Hall of Famer)

RF Dave Winfield (Hall of Famer)

LF Jim Rice (Hall of Famer)

C Carlton Fisk (Hall of Famer)

SP Jack Morris (Hall of Famer)

And a few notable players who also appeared in the game for the AL:

3B Paul Molitor (Hall of Famer)

SS Alan Trammell (Hall of Famer)

3B Wade Boggs (Hall of Famer)

OF Harold Baines (Hall of Famer)

SP Bert Blyleven (Hall of Famer)

In a just world, Lou Whitaker would join the rest of that 1985 starting lineup in the Hall of Fame. Actually, in a truly just world, fellow second baseman Bobby Grich would be in the Hall of Fame, but he didn’t even make the ballot. Whitaker did and he deserves induction. According to Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system, Whitaker is the #13 second baseman, which places him just below Jackie Robinson and right above Roberto Alomar, Craig Biggio, and Joe Gordon, all of whom are Hall of Famers (Grich is #8).

Whitaker played 19 years in the big leagues and 16 were above average. Ten of those 16 were all-star seasons or better (>4 bWAR). He was good when he was young (4.5 bWAR at age 22), good in the middle of his career (4.4 bWAR at age 29), and good when he was old (4.1 bWAR at age 36). He was also fairly reliable. From 1978 to 1992, he played 130 or more games 12 times in 15 seasons, and he would have added a 13th if not for the 1981 strike.

Based on FanGraphs WAR, Whitaker is ninth among second baseman (Grich is #8 again). Both are right above Craig Biggio and Roberto Alomar. One way to consider Whitaker’s career is to split the top second basemen into tiers using FanGraphs WAR:

Whitaker (and Grich) are right there in the Biggio, Alomar, Sandberg, Gordon tier. They belong in the Hall of Fame.

First Baseman Don Mattingly

Me as a Fan: Unlike a few of the guys on this list, Don Mattingly played his entire career after I had already become a huge baseball fan. In the mid-80s, I remember him being one of the best players in the game. He had that sweet left-handed swing and was a master with the glove at first base who could hit for average and power. He led the league in batting average in 1984, then led the league in RBI in 1985. He hit 30 homers three straight years back when 30 homers was impressive.  

I remember playing a baseball tournament in Fresno and someone said I looked like Don Mattingly, which I thought was awesome, even though it was likely because we both had sweet mullets and not because I could hit anything like Mattingly. He’s also one of the rare Yankees over the years who I liked.

Mattingly made the all-star team six straight years in the middle of the 80s. He also hit .300 or better all six years and had more than 100 RBI in five of them. Then, suddenly, his career took a downturn. A back injury in 1990 limited him to 102 games and a .256/.308/.335 batting line. He played 152 games the following season, but only hit .288/.339/.394. He rebounded a bit in the early part of the 1990s, but hung up his spikes after the 1995 season, when he was just 34 years old. That was the only season of his career that the Yankees made the playoffs. It was also the year they lost an epic five game series to the Mariners in the AL Division Series. They would go on to win the World Series four times in the next six years but, sadly, the retired Mattingly wouldn’t be a part of those title-winning teams.

Me as a Fanalyst: OTBB has been through this case before, and didn’t love it.

Mattingly only played 14 seasons. Nine of those seasons were above average, with four being in the “solid-to-good” range and five being in the “all-star or better” range. He doesn’t have a bulk case for the Hall of Fame, as he ranks below Carlos Delgado and Mark Grace in bWAR and no one thinks either of those guys are Hall of Famers.

That means his case has to rely on his peak. Don Mattingly was at his very best for six seasons from 1984 to 1989. During this stretch, he averaged 153 G, 684 PA, 97 R, 203 H, 27 HR, 114 RBI, and a .327/.372/.530 batting line. That’s good, sure, but how good? How did he compare to his peers?

Using FanGraphs WAR for position players from 1984 to 1989, we find Mattingly essentially tied for sixth on the list with Alan Trammel, at 31.7 fWAR. If we narrow our search down to just Mattingly’s four best seasons, which were 1984 to 1987, we find him fifth on the list. How about his three best seasons, from 1984 to 1986? Fifth, again. At his very best, Mattingly was around the fifth-best player in baseball for a half-dozen years.

Again, that’s great, but Don Mattingly didn’t add much beyond that. Of course, injuries were a big factor, but we can’t include what might have happened had he stayed healthy. We have to look at what he did when he was on the field and, to me, he comes up short.

First Baseman Steve Garvey

Me as a Fan: I couldn’t stand Steve Garvey. I’m sure a big part of it was because he was my older brother’s favorite player, but it was also just something about his impeccable look—that face, that hair, that smile, and that supermodel wife. He was perfect, too perfect. I always thought he’d become a politician after he retired from baseball.

As for his play on the field, yeah, I thought he was really good. He was an all-star every year when I first started watching baseball. I didn’t have any memory of his MVP year in 1974 because I was only three years old at the time, but I knew he played every game every year, banged out 200 hits, 25-30 homers, and 100 RBI and usually hit .300. I knew he was part of the Dodgers infield that had played together seemingly my whole life and he was one of the four Dodgers who hit 30 home runs in a season (1977), which was a big deal when I was a kid.

It was weird when Garvey left the Dodgers and joined the Padres as a free agent, discarding the classic Dodgers blue-and-whites for the ugly Padres brown-and-yellows. I remember when he broke his thumb in a collision at home plate, which ended his consecutive games played streak at 1207. That’s still the National League record. As his career wound down in San Diego, Garvey kind of faded away as Tony Gwynn became the face of the franchise and I stopped thinking about him altogether.

Me as a Fanalyst: More than any other player on the Modern Era Ballot, there’s a Grand Canyon-sized gap between how good I thought Garvey was when I was a kid versus how good I think he is now. That’s not to say I think he’s a bad player, just that I’ve come to realize he wasn’t as good as I thought he was. It’s almost not fair to Garvey because he did things that everyone valued when he played, like the aforementioned 200 hits, 100 RBI, and .300 batting average. He accomplished all three of those marks in five different seasons. He also made the all-star team 10 times, won the aforementioned NL MVP Award, and four Gold Gloves.

On the other hand, Garvey’s career .329 OBP is the lowest of the eight position players on the Modern Era Ballot and his .446 slugging percentage is not that impressive. His 116 wRC+ is the same as Thurman Munson and Ted Simmons, both of whom played a position (catcher) that is much more demanding than Garvey’s first base spot. He’s also the low man in WAR and second-lowest in WAA. According to Jay Jaffe’s JAWS metric, Garvey is the 51st-best first baseman, in the general area of Boog Powell, Kent Hrbek, and Cecil Cooper.

Garvey played 19 years in the big leagues, but just eight were average or better. He had four solid-to-good seasons, three all-star level seasons, and one superstar season, but never reached the 6-WAR level of an MVP season.

In 1974, when he actually won the NL MVP, there were 16 players who received MVP votes who had more WAR than Garvey (4.4 bWAR). The winner that year should have been Mike Schmidt (9.7 bWAR) or Joe Morgan (8.6 bWAR) or Johnny Bench (7.9 bWAR) if you want to bump him up for playing catcher. Instead, Schmidt finished sixth in the voting, Morgan was eighth, and Bench was fourth.

That was a strange year. The top three finishers were Garvey, Lou Brock (3.5 bWAR), and relief pitcher Mike Marshall (3.2 bWAR). Garvey won the award even though his Dodgers finished behind the Reds in their division. You would think Bench or Morgan would have been tabbed as the league MVP by virtue of getting the division-winner bonus that so many voters would add. Brock finished second in the voting based on his record-breaking 118 steals. Marshall finished third after pitching in 106 games in relief (208.3 innings by a reliever, which is unimaginable these days). In hindsight, that was a really bad year for the voters.

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