Hall of Fame Case: Steve Garvey

*This is a "retro" article, one that I would have published had I not been on an extended leave of abscence.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“…you don't make 10 All-Star Games without being one of the premier (and most famous) players of your generation. “

-Ken Gurnick, MLB.com writer, on Steve Garvey

Well, good point, Mr. Gurnick—but, without context, that’s really just a bunch of fluff.

Hold on, what’s that? You were expecting me to further elaborate on Mr. Gurnick’s comment?

Fat chance.

You see, while Steve Garvey was one of the most popular—and premier—players of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, basing something like Hall candidacy on something as subjective as All-Star selections really has little to no value.

Don’t think All-Star selections are subjective? Well, in about June of ’06 I checked the state of the All-Star voting and discovered—to my surprise—that Red Sox centerfielder Coco Crisp was actually in the Top 15 in the outfield voting, despite the fact that he was hitting about .270/2/9 (Batting Average/Home runs/RBI) at the time.

Sheesh, if I were to take All-Star selections so liberally, I would have at least given the underrated Frank Catalonotto a sympathy vote to honor his great ability to hit for percentage. Thankfully, though, I have yet to crack in that regard.

Don’t take that incident as a one-time fluke. In 2005, Carlos Beltran managed an All-Star start despite average performance; in 2004, Ken Griffey, Jr. and Sammy Sosa received All-Star starts (And helped form a 500-home run outfield) despite performance well below the implied level.

So, in short, it’s really not worth my time and effort to expound on Garvey’s 10 All-Star appearances. My analysis, instead, will focus on three aspects which should help explain why I view Garvey as a Hall-of-Famer:

6 200-hit seasons

4 Gold Gloves

5 100-RBI seasons

My analysis, instead, will focus on the question of whether anyone has ever matched Garvey in these three categories.

Multiple 200-hit seasons and multiple Gold Glove winners

I decided to start here, as the list of multiple Gold Glove winners is far too long to post. As such, I decided to narrow the list to something more manageable, all the while furthering the aforementioned purpose.

Todd Helton

Hank Aaron

Curt Flood

Pete Rose

Tony Gwynn

Roberto Clemente

Don Mattingly

Cecil Cooper

Wade Boggs

Derek Jeter

Cal Ripken, Jr.

Alex Rodriguez

Kirby Puckett

Ichiro Suzuki

Bernie Williams

Steve Garvey

The names above shouldn’t be glossed over, as we’re just getting started. You may, however, note that most of the guys listed are either current or future Hall-of-Famers.

I then decided to further narrow the list by adding the final category.

Multiple 200-hit seasons, multiple Gold Gloves, and 5 100-RBI seasons

Todd Helton

Hank Aaron

Don Mattingly

Alex Rodriguez

Bernie Williams

Steve Garvey

Wow, that sure trimmed the field.

You see, when I first selected ‘5 100-RBI seasons’ to further narrow the list, my thoughts were that we’d see less names as I removed the singles hitters. Then again, not all the names removed were singles hitters, and I wasn’t expecting nearly so many names to leave.

Then again, it’s generally the singles hitters that rack up 200-hit seasons, and it’s generally the power hitters that rack up 100-RBI seasons. Doing both is a rare achievement.

I’m starting to see where this is going (I’m technically doing this analysis as I type), and it’s nowhere near what I was expecting. It’s probably for the best, in any case.

Trying to trim the list further, I narrowed one of the categories.

6 200-hit seasons, multiple Gold Gloves, and 5 100-RBI seasons

Steve Garvey

Whoa.

Whoa.

This was not what I expected when I started. I had thought that Aaron, Mays, Clemente, or one of many highly regarded players would step up to the plate and match Steve Garvey. In the end, all fall short.

For emphasis:

Steve Garvey is the only player in Major League history to have 6 200-hit seasons, 5 100-RBI seasons, and win 4 Gold Gloves. For that matter, he’s also the only player to match those standards of hitting and still win multiple Gold Gloves.

So when anyone ever asks you who was the most complete player you ever saw…

Whoa, what’s that? We were talking about the Hall of Fame?

I don’t think, after reading this analysis, that there should be any question that Steve Garvey belongs in the Hall of Fame. Beyond the aforementioned statistical goodness, Garvey was an exceptional hitter in the postseason and the former record-holder of the highest career fielding percentage by a first baseman who played 1,600 games (I don’t know who holds it now—Todd Helton?).

So, no, Crawly, Garvey wasn’t “a piece of garbage.”

It’s unfortunate that Garvey has been underrated over the years, as people have often taken his relative lack of power (At least to a first baseman) as a sign that was actually overrated. The truth is, however, that power is one the most overrated—if not the most overrated—aspects of baseball. It allows a player that has no actual clue with what he’s doing at the plate to simply swing away and let his physique turn him into something of a national icon. I mean, how else can you explain the popularity of Dave Kingman?

Speaking of national icons, we have the cases of Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire. In all fairness, they really owe nothing else to their popularity than their power, and while it wouldn’t be fair to say they know nothing about hitting, it would hardly be a stretch to call them one-tool players (i.e. only exhibiting the tool of power).

Garvey, however, had none of those issues. Having 6 200-hit seasons is an achievement matched by only a handful of Hall-of-Famers, Ichiro, and Pete Rose—and having 5 100-RBI seasons is no easy feat, either. As I  mentioned before, having the two statistics juxtaposed together is very rare, indeed. In fact, my limited research has only come up with one name, and that’s of Lou Gehrig.

Speaking of which, it’s probably not entirely fair to have included the official-looking Gold Glove into the mix. A number of Gold Glove choices can only be explained by subjectivity, and they’ve only been around since 1957, leaving a lot of good players in the dust. Then again, Garvey’s career fielding percentage of .9959 is indicative that the awards were quite deserved, so there should be no doubt he was fairly awarded. Then again, Gehrig was one of those pre-1957 players that likely would have been rewarded had the Gold Glove existed at the time, or at least that’s the indication of my sources. Given his power (Combined, yes, with equal hitting ability), however, odds are that Gehrig was actually the better player (But everyone already knew that).

But if we’re talking of the Hall of Fame, being compared solely with Gehrig is pretty lofty.

It’s unfortunate that Garvey was shafted in the recent Hall of Fame election, as it’s quite clear that he was quite deserving. He’s now going to have to face the unforgiving and thus far incorrigible Veteran’s Committee, leaving his eventual Hall of Fame chances in serious doubt.

Hopefully, they’ll come around, as support for guys like Ron Santo has slowly grown, though if Santo has actually encountered resistance, Garvey’s fate is far more uncertain.

It really shouldn’t have come to this. Unlike in some other cases, voters knew what they were doing when they gave Garvey 10 All-Star appearances. Hopefully, another, bronzed appearance lies in Garvey’s ultimate future.