I ask the question because I was just reading an article by Joe Posnanski, who is great, of course in which he asks if batting average still matters at all. It’s a great piece that rambles along in a fun way to show that no, it doesn’t matter, but yes it does. Kind of. In it, he references an equally great post by Tom Tango that is equally marvelous. The point here, is that when I was finished with those two pieces I suddenly found myself asking myself in Dusty Rhodes is, indeed, overrated.
The BBA world is abuzz talking about Dusty Rhodes right now because he’s on another flirtation with that .400 mark, and, well, even today after most people in the know have come to the basic understanding that a single is only a shade better than a walk, people love that number. There are polls, and conversations on the radio waves. There are people going gaga in the streets.
And, yet, sometimes I scratch my head.
Sometimes I ask, is Dusty Rhodes really that good?
Rhodes has a career batting average of .334, which has been created while dropping consecutive .375 and .360 seasons back in 2034 and 2035, and generally blooping a ton of singles into the outfield. He’s won four batting titles so far and stands a solid chance of picking up his fifth this year. He’ll likely cross 3,000 hits this September, and to round it out, he’s hit 221 homers, too. At 35, he’s in his fifteenth season, and looks like he could be one of those guys who manages a 20-year career. Sounds like a Hall of Fame kind of resume, right?
I mean, 3,000 hits.
How many guys have 3.000 hits and not made the Hall of Fame, you ask?
Zero. That’s how many.
[Editor – with the caveat that Mariano Soriano has that many and is still active]
Some time ago, Chris Wilson asked everyone what the magic numbers were for “automatic” Hall of Fame inclusion, and 3,000 hits won by a huge margin. It won by more votes than 500 homers. More than 250 pitcher wins. 3,000 hits, and you’re in.
So, the fact is that the skids for Dusty Rhodes as a Hall of Fame induction are greased with the power of those 3,000 hits.
Yet …
Hmmm …
Let’s see.
I mean, despite all those hits, the guy’s career OBP is “only” .379. Career OPS+ “only 117. He’s created only 31.7 WAR—which is just not even in the zip code of greatness. When I mentioned his batting average vs. WAR stats this year on the AFBI podcast (compared to Loserville’s splendid rookie Semei Kwakou, someone said “well, he’s a first baseman.” But a scan of Randy’s great review of first baseman in the Hall of Fame says that a minimum career WAR to be HoF worthy at the position is 58—essentially double Rhodes’. If 58 WAR is the litmus line for 1B/DH inclusion, Rhodes needs to put up seven more 4-WAR years just to get within hailing distance of it—and to put that in context, his next 4-WAR year will be his first in a dozen years and his second ever. He posted 4.9 WAR at age 23, after that, his current 3.6 would be better than any other season other than that 2027 outlier.
What gives, right?
Redact that 3,000 hits from the final report, and Rhodes suddenly looks like just a solid enough kind of every day player—but, really, kind of mediocre if you’re trying to field a real first baseman.
In context of the Posnanski/Tango articles that sent me down this path, I have to ask myself: Rhodes is a fair enough baseball player, I suppose, but is the only reason we care much about him that number: .400? As OOTP GMs, are we basically just made to feel whole by opening his player profile and admiring the beautiful blue bars in the contact and avoid K categories?
At the end of the day, I figure it’s that second blue bar that Rhodes has earned his living on, right?
I mean, he does not strike out, like ever. Call him the Bill Buckner of the BBA, though in reality Billy-Buck struck out less.
If you remove that skill, he begins to look pretty pedestrian.
While 212 HRs sounds almost good, in reality its REALLY far off what you need in the 1B slot, and he’s got even fewer doubles (only 207 on his career—which is, again, very far off your average HoF candidate). So, bottom line, he’s got mediocre power and just does not hit doubles lik you’d think he would. Yes, he doesn’t strike out, but he also doesn’t really walk. That .379 career OBP is only 45 points above the career batting average.
For fun, I did a similarity study on MLB players vs. Rhodes; current stats. Though the similarity scores are not particularly high (not surprising, given the run environment difference), the top 10 most similar MLB players were (* Edited from original post for a slight number transposition):
Steve Garvey
Al Oliver
Roberto Clemente
Mark Grace
George Sisler
Bill Buckner
Mickey Vernon
Zack Wheat
Rod Carew
Jim Bottomley
Right. Solid players, some borderline HoF kinds of guys. Mostly not. (It made me chuckle to see Billy Buckner show up in the next ten).
Per StatsPlus, his most similar BBA players are:
Benjamin Caldwell
Fraser Dodson
Bombo Vadabonceour
Miles Dalrymple
=https://statsplus.net/brewster/player/ ... on Wortman
Brian Whitten
Mike Clarke
Jon McNecirty
Monty Lynch
Newman Watson
This is a more interesting list. The top four are Hall of Famers. The kicker, though, is that again, the similarity scores themselves are not very good—Caldwell’s 840 being the closest.
What I get from that exercise is that Rhodes is a tweener. A guy who isn’t like other guys. And what that leaves us with, again, is a quandary.
So, I looked at wOBA—which is a nice measure of overall offensive value (which is helpful over WAR since it removes defensive questions).
Rhodes’ career wOBA sits at .345. Not bad, but not something you’re going to get all misty-eyed over. Caldwell’s career wOBA—Rhodes’ closest similarity comp—is 18 points higher, at .363). Dodson, his second best comp, posted a wOBA 21 points higher than Rhodes (.376). Vadabonceour 38 points better (.383). Dalrymple 21 points (.369). McNedirty is close at .349, but he's a 3B and is still four points higher than Rhodes. So, of the five guys who are in both Rhodes' most similar list and the Hallof Fame, they all either beat or (mostly) blow his doors off as a run producing hitter.
Taking it out of HoF context, my own Yellow Springs Nine’s Rob Thomas has a career wOBA of .339, six points away from Rhodes, and I don’t see anyone getting all soft in the knees over the idea of acquiring him. Likewise Andy McKinney, who I’ve blocked at one point and gotten crickets, sits at .366—higher than even Caldwell. But, again, no one is salivating over voting him into the hall (except, maybe, the Yellow Springs Press). Those are young guys, though. At least youngish.
How about closer comps, like, say, Brooklyn’s 37-yo Mario Balderas (whose career average is only .293, yet his wOBA is..363). Seattle’s 35-yo Sean MaGuire’s career numbers are .287/.342. So, if you assume wOBA is a decent assessor of offensive value, with the bat Rhodes is essentially Sean MaGuire. MaGuire has been a very good player, but mostly because he combines a solid bat with a glove capable of playing a real defensive position. And I'm guessing his case for the Hall of Fame will be tepid.
Here’s an interesting comparison. Call it the anti-Rhodes.
Twin Cities’ Mark Wareham’s career wOBA is .350, five points higher than Rhodes’, but his batting average is an anemic .244. Like MaGuire, Wareham’s adding value with a Ziimmer quality glove (though, at 31, he’s slowing down). We’ll see where that wOBA ends. On the other hand, Wareham’s offensive value is highly tied to the walk—which, as we should know is nearly as good as Rhodes’s specialty, the single.
Mark Wareham’s offense at shortstop was a huge deal. But would he cut it as a 1st baseman? Given his recent slip, he can still provide value at shortstop or second base, but would he even still be playing if he had to sit at first base?
I dunno.
I took a quick look at salaries Rhodes has been paid, and here, too, I fail to see the pattern of a Hall of Famer. Rhodes signed a pretty sweet $10M/year deal to extend in Madison, but he’s been sliding since, as BBA GM’s voted “good enough, but not great” with their pocket books.
So, there you have it.
Will Dusty Rhodes make it into the Hall of Fame based on the power of the single? Again, I don’t know. By the end of the year, he’ll be #7 on the all-time singles list, surrounded by a sea of Hall of Famers. So, there’s that. And, yes, he could play another few years, and wind up as the #1 guy on the singles list. If his aging works out and he plays six or seven productive years, perhaps he’d be the all-time leader in BBA hits.
And, still, you’d look at the guy and wonder.
This is the quandary you get when you look at Dusty Rhodes, I guess.
So, we arrive back at the question. Is Dusty Rhodes really a Hall of Famer?
Or are we just blinded by the light of his blue bars?
Is he a Hall of Famer, or is he overrated?
You tell me.
