Colorado Rockies: 3 players who prove Larry Walker's HOF worthiness

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17 Jun 2001: Larry Walker #33 of the Colorado Rockies at bat during the game against the Cincinnati Reds at Wrigley Field in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Rockies defeated the Reds 4-2.Mandatory Credit: Mark Lyons /Allsport /

I’m just going to cut to the chase: Larry Walker was a better player than Tony Gwynn, Sr., Vladimir Guerrero, Sr. and Ichiro Suzuki and deserves to be in the Hall of Fame solely off those merits.

I’m not necessarily one for hot takes so a majority of you who haven’t looked at the numbers between these players are probably shouting, “Woah woah woah woah! Pump the brakes, man.” It may seem off base from the jump but I’m here to tell you how on base it actually is (and that’s not just a bad pun.

It’s an allusion to the fact that Larry Walker leads this pack of four with a career On Base Percentage of .400. But I digress).

The reason for comparing these four is simple: They’ve all put up Hall of Fame type numbers, all played right field and all played during relatively the same era. I’d love to tell you that Larry Walker is a Hall of Famer because he put up the same bWAR as Paul Waner … but a guy who played from 1926-1945 is an extremely different talent in an extremely different era. So to be more apples to apples, these three are the best comparisons to Walker.

DENVER – APRIL 5: Right fielder Larry Walker #33 of the Colorado Rockies runs to first base during the game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Coors Field on April 5, 2003 in Denver, Colorado. The Rockies defeated the Diamondbacks 4-3. (Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images) /

Let’s start with WAR. Below is each player and their respective fWAR/bWAR/WARP splits:

Walker: 68.7/72.7/63.2 – Average of 68.2
Gwynn: 65.0/69.2/49.5 – Average of 61.2
Guerrero: 54.5/59.4/66.1 – Average of 60.0
Ichiro: 57.8/59.4/39.0 – Average of 52.1

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So Walker leads the pack with a high Average WAR of 68.2. The only type of WAR he doesn’t lead in is WARP (63.2 vs Guerrero’s 66.1). And to be fair, Baseball Prospectus has a strikingly different POV on Gwynn and Ichiro. So if we exclude WARP, here’s how the Average WAR looks for each player:

Walker: 70.7
Gwynn: 67.1
Guerrero: 57.0
Ichiro: 58.6

So even then, Walker’s still clearly in the lead with a 3.6 WAR lead over Gwynn.

Now let’s evaluate how good of a hitter each was. Gwynn and Ichiro made names for themselves by being guys who just got on base in any way possible. Vlad and Walker were more power hitters but still got on base at a pretty high clip. You already know that Walker leads the pack in OBP at .400, but let’s see how their wRC+/OPS+/DRC+ splits look:

Walker: 140/141/134
Gwynn: 132/132/122
Guerrero: 136/140/139
Ichiro: 104/107/100

The most glaring stat here is that even after accumulating 3,089 hits in his career, Ichiro is rated as a slightly better than average hitter. Yet, because he hit the major milestone of 3,000 hits, he’s going to be a certified lock for the Hall of Fame and will go in on his first ballot. Walker, Gwynn and Guerrero were each about 25-30% more productive than Ichiro on average.

19 Apr 2001: Larry Walker #33 of the Colorado Rockies looks on during the game against the San Diego Padres at Qualcomm Park in San Diego, California. The Rockies defeated the Padres 4-0.Mandatory Credit: Donald Miralle /Allsport /

Thanks to Baseball Reference, we can split up a player’s oWAR (Offensive WAR) and dWAR (Defensive WAR). They don’t add up exactly to a player’s total bWAR, but they can give us a good idea of how each player got to their total bWAR number. Here’s how each player’s oWAR/dWAR looks:

Walker: 62.8/2.0
Gwynn: 67.2/-7.6
Guerrero: 59.1/-10.0
Ichiro: 47.8/4.9

So based off these, Walker is the second-best hitter and fielder of the group. Gwynn is ranked higher as a hitter (which is interesting given that his OPS+ is 9 points worse than Walker’s) and Ichiro is the best fielder.

This should also shed some light on how the gap between Walker and Guerrero is so large when in comes to bWAR and fWAR. Both have a similar wRC+/OPS+ number (right around 140) so they were very similar hitters. The difference of 14.2 fWAR and 13.3 bWAR (both in Walker’s favor) are simply because Walker was a decent fielder while Vlad, well, just wasn’t.

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“But Kevin, I could swear that each of those players had a larger impact for their team than Walker. Even if WAR says Walker was better, they each certainly meant more to their teams in the long run.”

OK, that’s a fair point that WAR can miss out on some things that players provide to their teams. It’s a good thing we have stats like WPA (Win Percentage Added) that can help show an additional layer of a player’s worth that isn’t captured in things that are factored into WAR. Here’s how each lines up by WPA:

Walker: 49.19
Gwynn: 57.85
Guerrero: 45.93
Ichiro: 14.33

Again, Walker ranks second among this group. Gwynn certainly had a large impact for the Padres and was extremely valuable and that can help close the WAR gap a bit between him and Walker. Vlad held his own as well. And Ichiro, well, he’s on this list.

15 Apr 1999: Larry Walker #33 of the Colorado Rockies swings at the ball during the game against the San Diego Padres at Coors Field in Denver, Colorado. The Rockies defeated the Padres 6-4. /

In terms of other awards that will be considered by the BBWAA (for better or worse), Walker ranks second in the group for Gold Gloves at seven (Ichiro leads with 10) and only Tony Gwynn did not win an MVP (no one in the group received more than one MVP award in their career).

The final thing to point out is longevity. This is the largest reason, outside of Coors, that Hall of Fame voters like to dock Walker on as he only accumulated 8,030 plate appearances in his career (the average HOFer is around 10,000). The longevity piece, in Larry Walker’s case, can easily be disputed based off of the fact that the voters enshrined Vladimir Guerrero in the 2019 class.

For reference, Guerrero ended his career with 9,059 total PAs. That’s just over 1,000 more PAs than Walker and he accumulated 14.2 and 13.3 less WAR according to FanGraphs and Baseball Reference, respectively (his average gap including WARP still puts him 8.2 WAR behind Walker). So Walker was still, at the very least, one full, very good MVP season better than Guerrero in 1,000 less PAs.

With that, let’s do an experiment. I’m going to take Walker’s bWAR per PA, take that result and then multiply it by each other player’s Total PAs just to show you how much better Walker would have been, in terms of bWAR, had he gotten the same amount of many PAs. Here we go:

Gwynn (10,232 PAs, 69.2 bWAR): 92.6 Walker bWAR
Guerrero (9,059 PAs, 59.4 bWAR): 82.0 Walker bWAR
Ichiro (10,734 PAs, 59.4 bWAR): 97.2 Walker bWAR

Now Walker probably would have tapered off a bit at the end of his career if he’d gotten the same amount of PAs so those numbers might be high, but they still show that Walker was significantly more efficient with the opportunities he had than the other three players here. And even with less opportunities he was still more productive than each of Gwynn, Guerrero and Ichiro.

14 Jun 1998: Larry Walker #33 of the Colorado Rockies in action during a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at the Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California. The Rockies defeated the Dodgers 3-2. Mandatory Credit: Vincent Laforet /Allsport /

Let’s end with a couple other quick points to make:

Tony Gwynn was elected on his first Ballot with 97.6% of the vote
Vladimir Guerrero Sr was elected on his second Ballot with 92.9% of the vote
Ichiro Suzuki is an absolute lock to be in the Hall of Fame due to reaching 3,000 hits

Larry Walker, as the park adjusted numbers show, was a better player than all three and is in his 10th and final year on the ballot. He’s got a higher bWAR than your average Right Field HOFer according to Baseball Reference (and you can check out how he compares to other current HOFers here). And he ranks 4th* among all eligible players on the 2020 ballot in terms of bWAR as you can see here (the asterisk is to signify that he’s got the highest bWAR of any player who hasn’t been accused of using steroids).

Next. A podcast with the man who is pushing #WalkerHOF so hard. dark

To not elect him into the Hall of Fame in his final year of eligibility, when he’s so clearly worthy of the honor, would be both blatantly ignorant and egregiously moronic. Do the right thing BBWAA:

Vote Walker 2020

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Colorado Rockies: 3 players who prove Larry Walker’s HOF worthiness

I’m just going to cut to the chase: Larry Walker was a better player than Tony Gwynn, Sr., Vladimir Guerrero, Sr. and Ichiro Suzuki and deserves to be in the Hall of Fame solely off those merits.

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