noseeum wrote:He was fourth overall in the 80s in OPS, so you definitely have to take the era into account. Who was he behind? Only Mike Schmidt, Wade Boggs, and George Brett. Interesting thing about those three guys? They all happen to be first ballot HOFers.
Don't discount how great Mattingly was by comparing him to the guys in the 90s. The 80s were a much different era.
Interesting how those guys are in but not Donnie baseball.... is this contributed to him playing in NY?
No, those three clearly had way better careers than Mattingly. He shouldn't make it, but I don't think someone should go comparing his OPS to Frank Thomas as the criteria for him NOT getting in.
The point of bringing up Thomas, of course, is to point out that Mattningly was nowhere near elite from 90-95, which is half his career. He's giving away 170 points of OPS to a guy with whom his career overlapped substantially.
His OPS for those last six seasons was: 643-733-743-809-808-754. Thomas blew him away during the course of the second half of Donnie's career. As did Bagwell, McGwire, Palmeiro and McGriff. Those are simply not the numbers of a HoF first baseman.
He was average or perhaps even below for the same length of time as he was good, and two years longer than he was elite. He's not even close.
BritSox
Hall of Fame Hero
Posts: 5223
Joined: 5 Mar 2005
Bases this season: 0
Home Cafe: Baseball
Location: You don't care, do you? No... because you're unconscious.
Look, everyone is saying that Mattingly's numbers are comparable to Puckett's. In many respects they are. However, everyone is forgetting one thing. While Puckett is a HOFer, he flatly DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE! Puckett is one of the least impressive HOFers there is. He is probably the LEAST deserving HOFer voted in by the writers. If we say Mattingly was nearly as good as Puckett therefore he should get in, at some point we're going to say well so and so was almost as good as Mattingly so he should get in. It's a very slippery slope to the Hall of Good Enough.
I hate the Yankees. I'm not going to lie. However, I really did like Mattingly. If he didn't have the injury I'd say he'd be a shoo in. Like someone said earlier, you can't compare Mattingly to guys like Thomas. Mattingly was awesome for a short spurt. Mattingly, did not have brilliant enough career, for how short it was, to get him into the Hall.
He led the league in adjusted OPS twice. However, despite the gold gloves, he really was only an above average defender a handful of seasons in his career.
For the sabermetricians: Almost every voted in HOF has a WARP of at least 100 and the average HOF Warp is somewhere in the 130 range. I think WARP is a good tool to measure a HOFer because it takes into account hitting/pitching/defense along with counting stats. If you had a short 7 year brilliant career and produced a WARP of 100+ then maybe you get consideration. If you had a 20 year career and produced a WARP of 100+ then maybe you get consideration. Mattingly's WARP was only 75.2. He's not really that close. For the sake of comparison, Puckett's WARP was 82.8. That's actually a rather large difference. It essentially means that Puckett was a little bit more than 10% more productive over his career. Knowing that Puckett was a sub-par HOFer there is ABSOLUTELY NO justification for Mattingly being a HOFer.
joshheines wrote:Look, everyone is saying that Mattingly's numbers are comparable to Puckett's. In many respects they are. However, everyone is forgetting one thing. While Puckett is a HOFer, he flatly DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE! Puckett is one of the least impressive HOFers there is. He is probably the LEAST deserving HOFer voted in by the writers. If we say Mattingly was nearly as good as Puckett therefore he should get in, at some point we're going to say well so and so was almost as good as Mattingly so he should get in. It's a very slippery slope to the Hall of Good Enough.
Don't hold back. Tell us what you think.
I completely, totally, and wholeheartedly disagree with you about Puckett. He deserves to be in the Hall and he is. But let's hope a thread about Puckett gets put up separately and we can go at it there one of these days.
As to Mattingly - it's all been said. Nice guy, but...
joshheines wrote:Look, everyone is saying that Mattingly's numbers are comparable to Puckett's. In many respects they are. However, everyone is forgetting one thing. While Puckett is a HOFer, he flatly DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE! Puckett is one of the least impressive HOFers there is. He is probably the LEAST deserving HOFer voted in by the writers. If we say Mattingly was nearly as good as Puckett therefore he should get in, at some point we're going to say well so and so was almost as good as Mattingly so he should get in. It's a very slippery slope to the Hall of Good Enough.
I hate the Yankees. I'm not going to lie. However, I really did like Mattingly. If he didn't have the injury I'd say he'd be a shoo in. Like someone said earlier, you can't compare Mattingly to guys like Thomas. Mattingly was awesome for a short spurt. Mattingly, did not have brilliant enough career, for how short it was, to get him into the Hall.
He led the league in adjusted OPS twice. However, despite the gold gloves, he really was only an above average defender a handful of seasons in his career.
For the sabermetricians: Almost every voted in HOF has a WARP of at least 100 and the average HOF Warp is somewhere in the 130 range. I think WARP is a good tool to measure a HOFer because it takes into account hitting/pitching/defense along with counting stats. If you had a short 7 year brilliant career and produced a WARP of 100+ then maybe you get consideration. If you had a 20 year career and produced a WARP of 100+ then maybe you get consideration. Mattingly's WARP was only 75.2. He's not really that close. For the sake of comparison, Puckett's WARP was 82.8. That's actually a rather large difference. It essentially means that Puckett was a little bit more than 10% more productive over his career. Knowing that Puckett was a sub-par HOFer there is ABSOLUTELY NO justification for Mattingly being a HOFer.
I agree with everything you said except the fielding part. As far as I can remember, Mattingly was one of the best defensive first basemen his entire career. That was never a problem. He won 9 consecutive gold gloves. What else can you ask for?
Having watched him pretty much every day of his career even in '94 he was awesome.
Anyone want to make a comparison between Gale Sayers and Don Mattingly? Both retired early due to injury, both were amazing when they played, one's in the Hall.
Over the course of his career Mattingly saved the Yankees 58 runs over the average 1B. Adjusted over the course of his career that's less than 5 runs per year. In 1983, 1988, 1989 and 1991 he was basically playing replacement level defense (i.e. AAA defense). He actually gave up more runs than the average 1B. Mattingly had 4 or 5 years where he potentially should have won the gold glove. In 1985-87, 1992 and 1995 he saved almost or more than 10 runs per year over the average 1B and nearly 25 runs over a replacement level 1B. For example, John Olerud was a much better 1B than Mattingly. Olerud put up 9 seasons where he saved his team at least 10 runs per season.
Here's the controversial statement of the Cafe Year. John Olerud is HOF worthy!
Dr. Duran Duran wrote:Anyone want to make a comparison between Gale Sayers and Don Mattingly? Both retired early due to injury, both were amazing when they played, one's in the Hall.
I think Sayers is a little overrated, but career length in NFL is way different. If a running back has 6 dominant years, he's pretty much a shoe-in. Sayers, though. Only 2 1,000 yard seasons? I know it was a 14 game season, but still. To be elite now, you should be getting over 1,400 yards.
Same story, I guess, in that they say he had the talent, but injuries cost him. But still, people mention him as one of the best running backs ever. Gimme a break.
Cafe Home
Fantasy Football
Fantasy Basketball
Fantasy Hockey
by The Big Stick » Thu Jul 20, 2006 1:32 pm 
