This will be the last of the series on Jose Altuve and the Hall of Fame index. Congratulations to everyone that went through the journey with me. I know parts have been tedious, but I firmly believe that performing every test is the only way to make a complete and informed judgment on a player. In this edition we will taje a look at the counting numbers. This is what casual fans do when they try to decide whether someone should be in the Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, some Hall of Fame voters that should know better use the same test.
Doing so enters us into what I would lovingly call the Harold Baines problem. Baines may be among the bottom five in terms of qualified Hall of Fame players. He certainly might be the least qualified right fielder. Veterans Committe voters put him in because he had a lot of hits and RBI. All that is true, but when you play regularly for more than 20 years, you are going to compile some numbers. The question is how often he was actually good.
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That is what totals don't tell us. They don't tell us the era that the player played in. They don't tell us the home ballpark he played in. They don't tell us the number of years it took him to compile those numbers. So, the other tests are so much more valuable in telling us whether someone should be in. We can assume that certain numbers like 3000 hits and 500 home runs automatically get you in, but we have players with 500 home runs that are not in and maybe shouldn't be.
However, it would be irresponsible not to include these numbers in our analysis. At the end of the day, it is just another test. The more tests you pass the more likely you should be in the Hall of Fame. We will look at the middle group of eleven Hall of Famers first and then look at Altuve and the other currently active second basemen in terms of career numbers.
Hall of Fame Counting Numbers
Outs are the blood currency of the sport. It is the one thing that stays constant throughout baseball history, so a player's ability to get on base is a huge part of their value. It should be noted that Biggio's combined hits and walks are far and above everyone here and put him in the top five all time at the position. Throw in the obscene about of hit by pitches and he is elevated even higher. Eddie Collins is the only second base in history to get on base more often than Biggio.
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Of course, critics would point out that this doesn't make him a top five overall second baseman and it fails the first portion of my supposition above. Biggio played a long time and was able to accrue a ton of numbers. Being a compiler and being great are not necessarily one in the same thing. Furthermore, players like Robinson, Gordon, and Doerr saw their careers cut short by World War II and racism. However, we can consider them to be outliers in this regard and we can begin to see some some commonalities across the board.
For instance, it looks like most Hall of Famers have at least 2000 hits. As we move forward, that will become tied to their walks as well as a player with more walks may have fewer hits. Six of the eleven players had 200 or more home runs. They also tended to have more than 1300 runs and 1000 RBIs and that is particularly true when we remove those players that saw missed seasons mentioned above. Most also had more than 100 steals.
Current Counting numbers
Obviously, we can point out some obvious problems with counting numbers. Runs and RBI are opportunity stats. By sheer definition, someone has to drive you in and someone has to be on base to drive in. The biggest factor are where these guys hit in the order. Altuve spent most of his career hitting first or second, so he will get plenty of opportunities to score runs, but won't get as many RBI opportunities. So, it is hard to ding him for having relatively few RBI opportunities.
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However, if we suspend disbelief for a second we can project him out over the next three seasons. That assumes he finishes his contract and it assumes we will not have a labor stoppage this winter. If he averages 150 hits a season he will end up at 2969 hits. If we assume he averages 15 home runs a season he will end up with 316 which would put him second to Jeff Kent. If we assume 70 runs a season that would end up being 1516 and would put him fourth in the list above. If he averages 50 RBI a season he will get close to mythical Hall of Fame mean.
In other words, Altuve is either there or within reasonable distance of getting there in every single metric. Obviously, the next three seasons will almost certainly lower his career averages in the offensive and defensive value categories. That is the trade off of continuing his career from this point forward. Everything we have seen from Semien and Marte indicate they need three to five more solid seasons to get into the conversation. They may or may not get there.
