Colorado Rockies: The Hall of Fame case for Larry Walker

Thus far with about 16 percent of the ballots in, both of the Colorado Rockies candidates for the Baseball Hall of Fame (Todd Helton and Larry Walker) would fall short of election. Helton is trailing Walker by a wide margin but as Rockies fans know, both of them are more than deserving of election to the Hall of Fame (as long as you do your objective research). A few weeks ago, we made the case for Helton for the Hall of Fame but today, we will make the case for Larry Walker.

Larry Walker is in his penultimate season on the writer’s ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Whether he makes it with the writers or not, the induction of Lee Smith and Harold Baines (particularly, of Baines) helps the case for Walker if he makes the Veterans Committee. I won’t go into all the details of Baines but if you objectively look at his stats, he simply is not a Hall of Famer compared to his peers.

However, for Walker, as of Wednesday afternoon, with 66 ballots in the Baseball Hall of Fame Tracker by Ryan Thibodaux, which is about 16 percent, Walker is on 44 of those ballots, or 66.7 percent, which would still mean that Walker is 8 percent short of induction. But of the 44 ballots that Walker has been on, he wasn’t on 10 of those ballots last year so at least he is headed in the right direction.

Even though he’s headed in the right direction, he should already be in the Hall of Fame. So, without further ado, let’s look at his case.

The biggest knock against Walker is that he was injury prone…and it is a valid argument. In the 17 seasons he spent in the majors, he only played more than 150 games once (1997) and he only played between 140 and 150 games in a season three other times (1992, 2001, and 2003).

Be that as it may, offensively, he still posted five 25 home run, 100+ RBI seasons plus another season with 93 RBI and two more seasons with 23 home runs. He also posted an OPS+ of 141 for his career and six seasons with an OPS+ of 150 or above (minimum of 100 games played per season).

If you’re looking for “bold-faced type,” (aka league leading categories), he led the league in doubles once with 44 (1994), homers once with 49 (1997), he led the NL in batting average three times (1998-99, 2001), on-base percentage twice (1997, 1999), slugging percentage twice (’97 and ’99), OPS twice (’97, ’99), and total bases once (’97).

Looking at his accolades, he was a 7x winner of the NL Gold Glove Award, a 5x All-Star, 3x Silver Slugger Award winner, and a 3x winner of the NL batting title. He also won the NL MVP award in 1997. He also ranked in MVP voting 8 times.

Personally, I look for 8 Hall of Fame seasons for a player to be a Hall of Famer and it helps if they are altogether, because it shows a period of extended dominance. For Walker, with his injuries it is tough to find 8 seasons but I’m flexible, particularly if the seasons played were particularly dominant. I think a career slash of .313/.400/.565 is extremely dominant, especially when you see five seasons in which Walker hit at least .338/.421/.602 from 1997-99 and 2001-02.

He also has a career WAR of 72.7, which is 86th best in baseball history. The next seven players above him at Hall of Famers and three of the four players directly below him are or will be Hall of Famers. Derek Jeter is directly below Walker at 87 and he will be on the ballot for the first (and probably only time) next season. The only other player directly below him is Rafael Palmeiro, who famously pointed his finger at members of Congress saying he never took steroids then proceeded to fail a drug test a few months later so it’s obvious to see why he isn’t in the Hall.

Another excuse that voters use is that Walker played at Coors Field for half of his games for 10 seasons. So, let’s look at the differential between Coors Field and other stadiums.

He spent 10 of his 17 career with the Rockies so not all of his road games were out of Denver (as it is with the case of Todd Helton) so we will just compare Walker’s stats at Coors Field compared to everywhere else.

In 597 games at Coors Field, Walker hit .381/.462/.710 with 154 home runs and 521 RBI. The most important stat is his tOPS+, which compares his numbers compared to his career numbers. His tOPS+ at 141, which means he was 41 percent better at Coors Field than his career averages. Overall, on the road for his career, he was 20 percent worse than his career average by tOPS+.

But neither of them really means much because he put up other worldly numbers at Coors Field.

In looking at Walker’s career with the Rockies from 1995 through 2003 (I excluded 2004 because he only played 38 games with the Rockies before being traded to St. Louis), he still posted great road numbers. Between those seasons, his average road OPS was .8608 (compared to 1.185 at Coors Field).

If that number at Coors Field was his career average, that would be the best OPS in the history of baseball (Babe Ruth is #1 and his career is 1.164). The road split for OPS would still have him in decent company but nowhere near as high. That number would be 133rd all-time, between Norm Cash, Darryl Strawberry, and Jesse Burkett (who’s a Hall of Famer) above him and Kevin Youkilis, Nelson Cruz, and Roy Campanella (Hall of Famer) just below him.

It should be noted, though, that for his full career, his OPS was .9654, which is 15th best all-time. The five players directly above are Mark McGwire, Mickey Mantle (HOF), Joe DiMaggio (HOF), Stan Musial (HOF), and Frank Thomas (HOF). The five directly below are Johnny Mize (HOF), Joey Votto (still playing), Jim Thome (HOF), Todd Helton (on the ballot, as you well know), and Jeff Bagwell (HOF).

He also stole 230 bases in his career, which is an average of 19 per 162 games.