Pick Four - Second Base

[Appling]

If the Hall of Fame were limited to just four players at each position, who would you choose for second base?

Please choose four players from the listed poll options.

[Myankee4life]

Hornsby, Collins, Morgan and Gehringer.

[soberdennis]

Hornsby, Lajoie, Frisch, Collins
I would also keep Robinson as a contributor.

[-Kyle-]

Why they pretty much got into the hof:

Rod Carew-High Batting average guy, bad defense with little power.Low Secondary average.
Eddie Collins-In top 3 of most people's rating in second basemen.
Bobby Doerr-Career guy, did good for 16 consecutive years
Johnny Evers-Only got in through a poem
Nellie Fox-Didn't strike out often and got a lot of hits. Good work ethic, holds the major league record for consecutive games played at second base.
Frankie Frisch-11 straight .300 seasons and a speedster which led to good D.
Charlie Gehringer-Hit .300 A lot, played great D.
Billy Herman-Famous for fielding.
Rogers Hornsby-See Collins, better hitter and worse of a fielder
Nap Lajoie-Hit .422 (In the expansion era of 1901) and won a triple crown.
Tony Lazzeri-Yankee 2bmen, part of murderers row and had a death causing seizure.
Bill Mazeroski-Famous for fielding.
Bid McPhee-Famous for fielding.
Joe Morgan-Highest secondary among second basemen, steller baserunner.
Jackie Robinson-Broke the color line.
Red Schoendienst -Did everything pretty well for a long time, peaked late career.

[leecemark]

--Got to vote for 4 this time anyway.

[Fuzzy Bear]

I did not vote for Robinson as one of my four because of the surprisingly few games at 2B he actually played. He's a HOFer, to be sure, and a great player, but he's really a multi-position star, if the truth be known. Check it out.

[leecemark]

--Lajoie was a greater player (Gehrigner too), but Robinson has to be in the Hall of fame. If I could only pick 25 players overall Jackie would be one of them.

[PhillyA_man]

Collins, Lajoie, Hornsby, Morgan

[Erik Bedard]

Lajoie, Hornsby, Collins, Morgan. Robinson is in as a contributor (and HM at 2B), Gehringer gets HM as well.

[KCGHOST]

Collins, Lajoie, Hornsby, and Morgan. We need a special category for the great Robinson.

[yankillaz]

Rajah, Cocky, Poli and Joe Morgan.

[ElHalo]

--Lajoie was a greater player (Gehrigner too), but Robinson has to be in the Hall of fame. If I could only pick 25 players overall Jackie would be one of them.

This is a good point. I picked Hornsby, Lajoie, Collins, and Gehringer, because they're head and shoulders better than anybody else who ever played second base, but Robinson really should be in the Hall regardless. Maybe I should have dropped one of them.

[538280]

I picked Hornsby, Lajoie, Collins, and Gehringer, because they're head and shoulders better than anybody else who ever played second base

I love how you say that. :rolleyes:

Anyway, Morgan, Hornsby, Collins, Lajoie. Robinson would be in my HOF perhaps before anyone, but I just chose the 4 best here.

[brett]

I love how you say that. :rolleyes:

Anyway, Morgan, Hornsby, Collins, Lajoie. Robinson would be in my HOF perhaps before anyone, but I just chose the 4 best here.

That's my list. I wavered between Lajoie and Robinson for the last spot, but Lajoie was the first greatest player of the 1900s.

[DoubleX]

This is a tough one because Robinson is not in my top 4 at 2B in terms of career, but in terms of significance, I can't justify leaving him out. So someone has to get the boot and it looks like its Lajoie for me. So here are my four:

Hornsby
Morgan
Collins
Robinson

[538280]

That's my list. I wavered between Lajoie and Robinson for the last spot, but Lajoie was the first greatest player of the 1900s.

Over Wagner?

[AG2004]

This is a good point. I picked Hornsby, Lajoie, Collins, and Gehringer, because they're head and shoulders better than anybody else who ever played second base, but Robinson really should be in the Hall regardless. Maybe I should have dropped one of them.

According to win shares, Robinson's peak was slightly higher than Gehringer's, and Morgan had the highest five-year peak of any 2B. I don't know if ElHalo accounted for historical changes; 2B was primarily an offensive position until about 1930, and then shifted to being a more defensive position as the live-ball era made double plays a more important part of the game.

I'm not so sold on Lajoie; much of his statistical reputation for defense seems to hinge on his taking nearly all of the discretionary plays at second base, with the shortstop having taken very few such plays. I'm not sure how much to discount for that.

With Robinson, one also has to consider that WWII postponed the start of his career; he had a magnificent season with the Monarchs in 1945 at the age of 26, but he was in the army the year before that.

If you were to use a line from the Golden Gate bridge to the East River to show the worth of second basemen, Morgan would be at the East River, Collins would be at the UN headquarters building, Hornsby would be at the Port Authority terminal, and the fourth-best second baseman would be somewhere in Ohio. That's how close the top three are.

My selections at second would be:

Joe Morgan
Eddie Collins
Rogers Hornsby
Jackie Robinson

[ElHalo]

I love how you say that. :rolleyes:


Sorry about that; I've tried and tried to get the case for Morgan, and I just can't do it. Other than walks, the only thing seperating Morgan from Robbie Alomar is that he had about two more productive years. You can go on and on about his peak all you want, and he did have two fantastic seasons in his MVP years, but not really appreciably better than, say, Nomar Garciaparra. Sorry, I'm just not buying it. In my book, Morgan wasn't even the best second baseman of the '70's (have to go with Carew on that one).

[brett]

For about a year.

Over Wagner?

[538280]

Sorry about that; I've tried and tried to get the case for Morgan, and I just can't do it. Other than walks, the only thing seperating Morgan from Robbie Alomar is that he had about two more productive years.

Well, I guess walks just don't mean anything to you then? The difference is walks, despite what you may think about them, made a HUGE difference in what they did for their teams. Alomar's relative OBP was 110, Morgan's was 120. That is a HUGE difference, you just summarily toss it aside. Morgan also had a lot more than just two more productive years than Alomar. You like OPS+, right? Well look at how they fared at their peak:

Alomar-149, 140, 140, 137, 134
Morgan-187, 169, 159, 154, 149

Morgan's career OPS+ was also twice better compared to the league than Alomar's (132 to 116) And the scary part about this is that OPS+ SIGNIFICANTLY underrates Joe Morgan's offensive value. It does not take into account his 689 stolen bases with a tremendous 81% success rate. It does not take into account that he has one of the absolute best GIDP rates in the history of the game. People summarily toss such things aside-they actually have a VERY large impact on a player's value, study why teams score runs and this will be completely obvious rather quickly.

This is also why the basic runs created formula, the one used on BBRef, horrifically underrates Joe Morgan. It doesn't include in it his tremendous basestealing, his propendency to stay out of double plays, nor how his numerous walks may have advanced runners. The basic formula (H+BB)*(TB)/(AB+BB) has him at 5.91 RC/27. Using the techinical and much more accurate formula (H+BB+HBP-CS-GIDP)*((TB)+(.26*(BB-IBB+HBP))+(.52*(SB+SH+SF)))/(PA), Morgan comes out with 6.79 RC/27-that is a difference of 54 points on his OWP.

Not to mention the spectrum jump of second base-prior to 1940 or so second base was a much more offensive position than it was in later years. With the DP becoming such an important part of baseball, the importance of second base improved dramatically. This made Joe Morgan's defensive worth much more, and offensive as well since the replacement level 2B offense was lower.

And this is NOT just a function of there happening to be more great offensive 2Bmen in the earlier part of baseball history. This was a long standing trend that went on in every decade, and it stopped right when the DP became really prevalent.

You can go on and on about his peak all you want, and he did have two fantastic seasons in his MVP years, but not really appreciably better than, say, Nomar Garciaparra. Sorry, I'm just not buying it. In my book, Morgan wasn't even the best second baseman of the '70's (have to go with Carew on that one).

Morgan vs. Carew is a perfect example of how those other offensive contributions need to be taken into account. At first glace, it may appear Carew is better, very similar OBP and SLG and a much higher BA. That is before you get into basestealing and the GIDPs. Including those things, Carew created 1596 runs in his career, 6.28 per 27 outs, Morgan 1804 and 6.79 per 27. Morgan was 64% better than the league average, which was 4.13, Carew was 45% better than the league average, 4.32.

This is not to mention the big gap in defensive value between them. Carew played second base, but not very well and moved to 1B midway through his career, dropping his defensive value even further. Morgan was not an all time great defensive 2Bmen, but was good, certainly better than Carew, and he of course stayed there.

I've also seen you try to bring down Morgan using league leads. I really, really don't understand why league leads are really a valid way to evaluate a player. The best way to evaluate a player is to give a careful statistical analysis of what he did for his teams. That has been done in numerous places, and the results all have Joe Morgan among the top 20 players of all time at least (and certainly not below Charlie Gehringer). League leads are nice, but they don't give a good summary of a player's value. Joe Morgan had no HUGE skills that jumped off the page, that's why he didn't lead his league much. But when you look at the total conribution, it's WAY up there.

[RuthMayBond]

In my book, Morgan wasn't even the best second baseman of the '70's (have to go with Carew on that one).You say Banks played more games at 1B than his other position, so did Carew

[ElHalo]

Well, I guess walks just don't mean anything to you then? The difference is walks, despite what you may think about them, made a HUGE difference in what they did for their teams. Alomar's relative OBP was 110, Morgan's was 120. That is a HUGE difference, you just summarily toss it aside.

I don't summarily toss it aside. It's the reason I rate Joe Morgan around 50th all time and Alomar not in my top 100. That's a pretty big value to be assigning to walks. But it's ludicrous to say that it would be enough to go from out of the top 100 to best second baseman ever. At least in my opinion.

And, just so you know, in my opinion at least, Alomar in context was just as good a base stealer as Morgan.

[ElHalo]

You say Banks played more games at 1B than his other position, so did Carew

That's absolutely right. If Carew had played his entire career at second, it's possible I'd have him ahead of Gehringer and in my top 25 all time.

[538280]

I don't summarily toss it aside. It's the reason I rate Joe Morgan around 50th all time and Alomar not in my top 100. That's a pretty big value to be assigning to walks. But it's ludicrous to say that it would be enough to go from out of the top 100 to best second baseman ever. At least in my opinion.

And, just so you know, in my opinion at least, Alomar in context was just as good a base stealer as Morgan.

Well I have Alomar quite a bit higher than you too then-I have him just outside the top 60. As far as Alomar being just as good a basestealer in context as Morgan, that's just not true. SBs were actually more common in the 90s than in the 70s:

http://home.istar.ca/~mbein/Baseball/slide_frame.html

That's a graph of SB/Game in the history of baseball. You can clearly see Alomar's era saw more SBs.

[JackAigner]

The top four all-time are Morgan, Hornsby, Collins, and Biggio.

[four tool]

Morgan, Hornsby, Collins were easy picks, Jackie R. was my fourth but I agree he is really a multiposition player. The ned to look at all stats, especially offensive ones like GIDP and SB % do show why Morgan is considered top 3 or better by so many, and deservedly so.

[JimAbbott]

Morgan, Hornsby, Collins, Lajoie. surprised that Lajoie did not get more votes

[four tool]

Lajoie's era hurts him. No foul strikes until 1903 gives anyone before that an unfair advantage when looking at offense. For me it isn't a bias as an inability to truly evaluate him.

[538280]

Lajoie's era hurts him. No foul strikes until 1903 gives anyone before that an unfair advantage when looking at offense. For me it isn't a bias as an inability to truly evaluate him.

He also played in some of the weakest leagues of the 20th century and one of his best years in 1901 (arguably his best-though I would take 1910) came in what was basically a minor league for that time. In addition he spread out his best years rather than put together a run of dominance, and had durability issues. In addition, when going against Morgan, positional importance is also an issue. Second base was a much less important position in Lajoie's time than it was in Morgan's. If you don't believe this-think about the double play in baseball. The DP was not a key part of the game until about the mid 30s. Take the DP out of baseball, and how hard a defensive position is second base? It is just not that hard. Think High School baseball, which probably has DP rates similar to the game in Lajoie's time. Is second base a position where great fielders are put there? No, oftentimes a team will even try to hide someone with an especially weak arm there.

While Lajoie's OPS+ is higher than Morgan's, 150 to 132, considering Joe's entire game, including his awesome steals and GIDP rate, his OWP comes out higher than Lajoie's, .710 to .701.

[four tool]

Pardon my ignorance, but what is OWP?

[538280]

Pardon my ignorance, but what is OWP?

Offensive Winning percentage. Takes the player's RC/27 (not the basic formula used at BBRef, the REAL formula that includes things like steals and GIDPs-Morgan's goes up almost a full run when those things are included) and makes it into a sort of winning percentage with the pythagorean formula.

[four tool]

Thank you, I was guessing overall winning percentage.