Andre Dawson by the Numbers

Baseball is relatively an easy game to understand. Two opposing teams get three outs per inning to try to make something happen in order to manufacture runs. After nine innings the team with the most runs wins.

Baseball statistics and how those statistics were evaluated in order to determine if a player should be in the Hall of Fame used to be that simple.

It's crazy all of these new sabermetric statistic-formulas that people have came up with that are now being used to evaluate eligible players for the Hall with. I’ve been reading articles where writers, some of whom are HOF voters, that have been using these type of statistics on why they won’t vote for Andre, “Andre’s win shares are too low,” or “his OPS+ isn’t as high as I would like.”

Win shares? OPS+? Whatever happened to just saying, “This player has X home runs, X runs batted in, X hits, X Gold Gloves, etc.”? “Man, those are great numbers, of course player X is a Hall of Famer!”

Numbers, not formulas.

I understand that win shares and OPS+ and other complicated formula statistics like that have their place in modern baseball, but let’s look at statistics and numbers that everyone can understand when determining how to vote for Hall of Fame candidates.

Here are some numbers on Andre that I believe BBWAA voters should consider:

1 – NL MVP (1987) and NL ROY (1977)
2 – NL MVP Runner-Up (1981 and 1983)
3 – Only three players have at least 400 HRs and 300 SBs, Andre being one of them.
4 – Silver Slugger Awards (1980, 1981, 1983 and 1987)
8 – Gold Gloves and All-Star Selections
118 – Sacrifice Flies (10th all-time)
143 – Intentional Base on Balls (50th all-time)
314 – Stolen Bases
438 – Home Runs (36th all-time)
503 – Doubles (48th all-time)
1,039 – Extra Base Hits (24th all-time)
1,591 – Runs Batted In (34th all-time)
2,774 – Hits (45th all-time)
4787 – Total Bases (25th all-time)

I could keep throwing more numbers at you, but let’s keep this simple.

Leave the formulas to the BCS system in determining the National College Football Championship and vote for one of the best all-around players ever to play the game into the Hall in 2010!

Source - www.baseball-refernce.com

Don't Judge Andre on His OBP%, that Wasn't His Job

Whenever Andre is mention in an article on who should or shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame I receive a Google alert. Majority of the time I'm pleased with the outcome of the article, probably 75% of those writing these articles, I would estimate say The Hawk should be in. Of the remaining 25% it often comes down to Andre's career On-Base Percentage (OBP) of .323. They feel that is too low to be in the Hall of Fame.

OBP hasn't really been a statistic that has had Hall of Fame merit until recent years. Since it has, I think that OBP is a stat that should be weighed more heavily on lead-off or two-hole type hitters, not players batting in the clean-up position. A large part of the formula that makes up OBP is the number of times a player walked.

If you were managing a baseball club and you had a runner in scoring position and down two runs, would you want Andre to swing for the fences or take a walk?

Andre didn't bat clean-up for the Cubs to get on base, he batted in that position to knock Ryne Sandberg and Mark Grace in. (If the Cubs ever had a consistent lead-off hitter in the late 80s and early 90s, I would have mention him too!)

If Andre didn't knock them in more than likely no one would behind him. The Cubs didn't exactly support Andre with quality hitters in the 5 slot. Let's look at some of those players during his time with the Cubs: Dwight Smith, Luis Salazar, Lloyd McClellan, Hector Villanueva, etc. *

As a manager or a fan I want to see the big hitters trying to get a hit or sacrifice a fly to score runs. Yes, Andre didn't walk much in his career, but what the authors of these articles failed to mention is that Andre ranks 10th ALL-TIME in sacrifice flies with 118! **

So 2010 Baseball Hall of Fame voters, I ask you when considering Hall of Fame induction regarding OBP, leave it to Roberto Alomar and Barry Larkin. For Andre, look at how many runs he knocked in over the years (34th ALL-TIME by the way with 1591). **

* www.baseball-almanac.com
** www.baseball-reference.com