by John McGuinness - January 8, 2008
Note: This article began life as a blog post last year.
Now that Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn have been elected, this year's Hall of Fame nomination offers us a clear opportunity to evaluate the Hall of Fame candidacy of Mark McGwire. To recap, McGwire was a power-hitting first baseman who split his time between the Oakland A's and the St. Louis Cardinals. He set the rookie home run record with 49 in 1987, then continued to put up solid but unspectacular numbers until 1997, when he hit 56 home runs, splitting time between the A's and the Cardinals. In 1998, he broke Roger Maris's single season home run record of 61 home runs by hitting 70 (since broken by Barry Bonds). He hit 66 home runs in 1999, then started to fade to injuries.
Once retired, McGwire seemed to fall off the face of the earth until he appeared before a Congressional committee investigating performance enhancing drugs in baseball, on the heels of Jose Canseco's book. McGwire's performance was unimpressive, to say the least, answering questions about his career with, "I'm not here to talk about the past." This disappointed many of his supporters, notably his former manager Tony LaRussa, who had gone out on a limb to defend McGwire.
To lay my cards on the table, I was here in St. Louis during McGwire’s time. I enjoyed watching him. I remember visiting my parents when the Cardinals were in Philadelphia, and arriving early at a game and watching the show in batting practice — I was practically giddy watching him spray balls into the upper deck of left field at the Vet.
At the same time, I don’t think I quite got caught up in it as much as other folks did. I have enjoyed the Cardinals’ recent run of success much more than the home run chase. I won’t pretend that I always suspected something was amiss — I didn’t; it’s just that McGwire didn’t impress me as possessing a singular talent — he was just a bit bigger and stronger than those who came before him, which I figured was due to improved conditioning techniques. He was the next evolutionary step, rather than a virtuoso. Impressive, yes, but not fascinating as someone like Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods is. So, I can’t say I was devastated when he dissembled his way through his congressional hearing, as many seemed to be.
I am one of those who think that steroids are a big deal. Not so much because I don’t want sacred records to be tainted, nor because I think someone like McGwire can’t make his own decisions, but because if steroids become tolerated, they will in essence become required, and I think that will have all sorts of bad effects. But that’s a whole ‘nother post.
I also do not buy the arguments that because Ty Cobb is a racist and is in the Hall of Fame, and Babe Ruth is in the Hall of Fame as a womanizer, etc., then to deny McGwire entrance in to the Hall of Fame is to say that using performance enhancing drugs (PED's) is worse than racism, which is an absurd moral standard. The Baseball Hall of Fame has to do first and foremost with baseball. On an objective moral scale, the Black Sox throwing the World Series may not be that horrible an act. But it did terrible damage to the game, and thus their banishment was appropriate. PED's impact the on-field performance of the players, so it is relevant.
But Gaylord Perry is in the Hall of Fame and wrote a book about how he cheated. How can the Hall open its doors to Perry but close its doors to others who cheated to get an edge? Well it's one thing to cheat at a car race by jumping the gun. It's another thing to slash the tires of your competitor's cars, putting them at risk. Using a spitball or a corked bat is pretty much harmless. Using performance enhancing drugs can impact the user's health, and influence others to also use them. So, yeah, I'm not as quick to chuckle over someone getting away with using PED's as I would Perry getting away with a spitball.
I am fine with McGwire not being elected on the first ballot last time around. No-brainers, and fan and press favorites Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken debuted on the ballot, and I’m quite certain the writers were loathe to mar their election with steroid controversy if they could help it. Having them share the stage with McGwire would have detracted from the moment.
But this year there is not obvious candidate, so we can focus on him.
McGwire has two things going for him:
- Massive power numbers
- Looking impressive racking them up.
He’s got almost nothing else going for him. He won a Gold Glove at first base (as did Rafael Palmeiro in a year in which he was primarily a DH), but was at best an average defensive first baseman. He won one World Series, but that was for a team that probably should have won more than one championship, and (though this is not McGwire’s or his teammates’ fault) there was a damper on that World Seriese win because it came in the aftermath of the earthquake. Other than the record-setting HRs, he never really had a signature team-related moment. The Cardinals were playoff contenders before McGwire arrived, and made the playoffs again once he was in decline. He was never identified as a particularly good teammate or leader. His relationship with Sosa during the chase was endearing, but is counter-balanced by how he seemed to regard the attention he received that year as a terrible burden.
McGwire did have some other impressive non-power numbers, notably on base percentage, but that is somewhat a secondary effect of his power. He got a lot of walks in part because pitchers were afraid that if they put it over the plate, McGwire would put it in the cheap seats. McGwire deserves credit for not chasing bad pitches, but his walks were influenced by his intimidating presence. From 1998-2000, there were walks where McGwire didn't see a pitch within a foot of home plate. It doesn't take a Ted Williams-level batting eye to lay off a pitch that lands in the opposing batter's box.
The power numbers, in a vacuum, would put him in the Hall of Fame, easily. Single-season HR record, 10th all time, easily over the 500 mark. But it wasn’t just that. Hank Aaron and Roger Maris broke home run records, too, and they did so before I was born, but I don’t think there was the buzz about their home runs that there was about McGwire’s. There weren’t thousands of people in the ballpark early to watch them take batting practice. His home runs, at least during his Cardinals days were events. They had, as my wife said, a “flow” to them.
Unfortunately for McGwire, these skills are the ones most easily associated with the use of performance-enhancing drugs, because they are associated with brute strength, and there was a noticeable uptick in them during the period of heavily suspected use of those drugs. Which is why I don’t buy Buster Olney’s argument that it is unfair to penalize McGwire because he was given a subpoena and other stars weren’t. He was subpoenaed because he, more than anyone else, rose to prominence using skills that are linked to steroid use.
This may be unfair, and is kind of junk science. You still have to recognize strikes and hit them in order to hit home runs. It’s not like someone with absolutely no skill could shoot himself up to become a major league caliber hitter. Besides, we don’t know exactly what performance enhancing drugs do. Maybe they don’t really help a batter hit baseballs further. Maybe they’re more helpful in allowing a pitcher to throw the ball 95 MPH or make a ball curve. Maybe they allow a fielder to cover more ground. Maybe they help a catcher make accurate throws to second base, or a base stealer to get a better jump. Maybe they help a batter to take an outside pitch the opposite way for a base hit.
But we know what we know, and that is hitters in the late 90’s seemed to be a lot bigger than they were before, and that home run totals went way up. Mark McGwire was bigger and stronger than anyone else, and put up the biggest numbers. So it seems reasonable that he would be a representative for the era, and receive the subpoena.
Thus, it seems reasonable to discount McGwire’s accomplishments relative to those who played in different eras. This is not to judge that McGwire cheated; rather it is to not assume that other players benefited from the homer-friendly environment (which may or may not have included steroids), and McGwire didn’t. If all the offensive accomplishments of the last 10 years are under suspicion, McGwire’s are no exception. And since McGwire’s accomplishments were pretty much exclusively confined to those areas that were generally booming in that era, it seems especially prudent. In other words, to not apply a discount would be to in essence assume that everyone except McGwire was using steroids, which strains credulity.
In a post last year (now unlinkable), St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer Jeff Gordon recommended discounting McGwire’s home run total by 100, to 483, and then evaluating his career in those terms (I suspect this would include discounting McGwire’s individual history-making seasons, since peak performance is a part of almost any Hall of Famer’s case – there’s a reason Sandy Koufax is in the Hall of Fame in spite of unimpressive win and strikeout totals). That strikes me as a bit crude and arbitrary.
Another method is to look at McGwire’s performance relative to his peers, and compare that to other recent power hitters at corner positions who have or have not made (or are likely to or not likely to) make the Hall of Fame, and ignore the absolute numbers. Mark McGwire led his league in home runs 4 times, and hit 58 dingers in 1997 split between the A’s and Cardinals, which would have led either league, so let’s call it 5. He led the league in RBI only once, in 1999. He also led the league in slugging percentage 4 times, and in on base percentage once. This is comparable to some sluggers who have been coming up short in Hall of Fame voting, like Jim Rice, Dale Murphy, and Andre Dawson.
But this doesn't seem quite right, either. Dale Murphy led the league in home runs with 36, while McGwire hit 66. Regardless of the context, 66 home runs have a lot more impact than 36. People weren't scalping tickets to see if Murphy would crack the 35-homer plateau, and he was not being routinely walked or pitched around. You could write a history of baseball in the 1980's, leave Dale Murphy out, and people might not notice. You cannot write a history of baseball in the 1990's without Mark McGwire.
It seems more likely than not that Mark McGwire was aided by performance enhancing drugs. But it is not clear that McGwire was an outlier in that regard, but it is clear that he was an outlier in his performance on the field. Nobody else was putting up the numbers or creating the buzz that he was. To me, that's a Hall of Famer.
Statistics come from Baseball Almanac.
John McGuinness is a father and software engineer living in St. Louis, MO. He blogs at Man Bites Blog.