Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
February 11, 2004
Fred Not Dead?

I saw reading the transactions column today that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays signed Fred McGriff to a minor league contract. However, the Rays don't think McGriff has much of a chance to make the team. According to Marc Topkin of the St. Petersburg Times, this was a courtesy signing:


With McGriff nine home runs shy of the 500 mark and unable to land a job elsewhere, the Rays extended the Tampa native an unusual courtesy, and essentially did him a favor, by inviting him to spring training even though he has little chance to make their team.

"It is unusual," general manager Chuck LaMar said. "I felt obligated. We are the local team, Fred was born and raised here, he's had a tremendous major-league career and he has struggled to get a job this offseason.

"I felt it was our organization's responsibility, and mine, to give Fred an opportunity to come in. Stranger things have happened. If we have a rash of injuries, it's possible he'd make our club and get his home runs here. There's a better chance he'll come in and show other teams he's still capable of playing this game and hopefully go on and set this mark. ... It's a very important one for him and we'll be proud to be able to say we helped him achieve that goal."


Is nine HR really going to make a difference in this player's Hall of Fame credentials? As John Romano writes in the same paper:

The shame is his numbers may not yet add up. Oh, you could point out that of the 20 players with more career home runs, all who are eligible are in the Hall of Fame. And of the 33 players with more RBIs, all but one who are eligible are in the Hall of Fame.

But times are changing and standards are expanding. Numbers that once seemed automatic for Cooperstown may soon be subject to debate.

If McGriff is borderline today, another nine home runs could help to change perceptions.


I don't think McGriff is a Hall of Famer, 500 HR or not. The problem, as I look at his career, is that McGriff petered out after age 30, just as offense was taking off. While players like Tony Gwynn and Paul O'Neill took advantage of offensive surge to play better in their 30's than their 20's, McGriff's slugging numbers went down in this time period. From 1987 to 1994, McGriff slugged over .500 seven times. From 1995 on, when it was easier to slug .500, he only reached the mark three times. He had laid the foundation for a Hall of Fame career in his 20's, but didn't complete the job in his 30's.


Posted by David Pinto at 09:08 AM | Free Agents | TrackBack (1)
Comments

McGriff's career OPS+ of 134 is pretty healthy for a guy who had just over 10,000 plate appearances; that puts him just off the top 100 of all time, although I wonder how many guys with an OPS+ of 130 or higher and 10,000 plate appearances aren't in the Hall. I should take a closer look at his credentials, which I've been hesitant to do until I know he's done.

What's more surprising to me is that a guy who failed to drive in 100 runs last year for the first time in 5 years, and who has always kept himself in good shape, would be totally unable to get a job. Sure he's 40 and coming off a bad year, but you'd think that someone out there could at least take a look at him as a part-timer or a veteran bat off the bench. Even last year, he was a league-average hitter.

Posted by: Crank at February 11, 2004 09:52 AM

You would think at the least he could DH somewhere, especially being a left-handed hitter.

Posted by: Dean at February 11, 2004 11:24 AM

I think that some teams look at his numbers last year and are scared off, but they forget to take into account the fact that he player in Dodger Statium. His OPS+ was an average 100 last year - better, I'm sure, then any number of backups in the league. Look at Tony Clark. Sure he's a switch hitter, but he's kinda sucked over the past couple years. Why not sign McGriff instead of Clark? (On an unrelated topic, it looks like the Yankees are going to sign Travis Lee - hopefully he'll make the team over Clark).

Posted by: sabernar at February 11, 2004 12:32 PM