Outside the Box

ESPN.com - Major League Baseball - Users soundoff on Mattingly

ESPN.com polled their readers for their views on the HOF-worthiness of Don Mattingly. If he wasn't a Yankee, would we even be discussing this?

I ran a few numbers on Mattingly's peak years. The years his backers cite as a Hall of Fame worthy resume. My preconceptions are that he was a pretty good player in those years, but he doesn't strike me as the dominant player of the era. Here are his rankings during his peak years, 1984-1989.

HR - 160 (6th) - Dale Murphy 190
RBI - 684 (1st) - George Bell 625
Hits - 1219 (3rd) - Wade Boggs 1269
TB - 1978 (1st) - George Bell 1858
2B - 257 (1st) - Wade Boggs 256
BB - not in top 50
BA - .327 (3rd) - Boggs .351 (> 3000)
OBP - .376 (12th) - Boggs .447
SLG - .530 (1st) - Strawberry .521
OPS - .906 (2nd) - Boggs .929

Others in the OPS list Brett (.891), Dwight Evans! (.886), Mike Schmidt, Darryl Strawberry, Kent Hrbek, Alvin Davis, Tim Raines and Dave Winfield (.852).

Mattingly comes out a bit better here than I thought he would, but he is not head and shoulders above the field. The dominant player of the era was Wade Boggs, no question about it.

Some folks might compare Mattingly and his 1984-1989 to Koufax and his run from 1961-1966. However, Koufax led the majors in Wins, Strikeouts, ERA, Winning Percentage, and ERA+ (156 to Marichal's 135) for those years. I included the ERA+ just so you can't trot out the park effects argument. Koufax's peak was clearly much, much higher than Mattingly's.

Mattingly had some great seasons, but

1) His peak wasn't among the all-time great peaks (Did he have one of the 100 best six-season stretches of all-time? When I get PRO+ implemented we might be able to answer this.)

2) Played a defensively unimportant position (albeit very, very well)

3) Has the career totals of Hal McRae (albeit in five fewer seasons)

I could forgive one of the shortcomings and maybe even two, but the trifecta puts him on the outside of my Hall of Fame.