Is There A Hall Of Fame Case To Be Made For Larry Walker?

(This video quality sucks but it was the only video on YouTube with actual career highlights of his so whatever.)

If you’ve missed it to this point, we’ve either made or debunked Hall of Fame cases for Fred McGriff, Scott Rolen, Billy Wagner, Johan Santana, Andruw Jones, and Johnny Damon. Larry Walker, you’re up.

Out of everyone that we’ve discussed thus far besides the Crime Dog, Walker has appeared on the ballot the most years by a significantly large margin. In his eighth stab at baseball immortality, Walker has 38.8% of the vote on 42% of the ballots that have been made public. It’s a far cry from the 75% that he’d need to get in, but he’s also not anywhere near being in danger of falling off the ballot with 5% or less.

Last year, Walker received 21.9% of the vote, which was up from the 15.5% that he got in 2016. He seems to be gaining momentum in recent years, but it appears as though it’ll be too little too late, as he’s only got two more tries after this. Unfortunately, that’s far too much ground to make up in that small window of time. But we’re leaving this decision up to baseball writers, who often get things wrong. Like, all the time.

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So, let’s take a look at this ourselves. Right up front, we should acknowledge that Walker likely gets dismissed in the eyes of some voters because he played 10 of his 17 major league seasons in Colorado where the ballpark there is known to inflate offensive numbers. That’s fair. What’s not fair is to outright dismiss Walker just because he played ten seasons in Colorado. Not to generalize the whole group of voters, but I guaran-damn-tee you that there are a NUMBER of men and women with a Hall of Fame vote who would look at you like you have five heads if you started to talk to them about ballpark adjusted statistics.

Let’s keep it simple here — Walker retired after the 2005 season as a career .313 hitter with a .965 OPS. Here’s a list of all the Hall of Famers who have a career OPS that’s higher than Larry Walker’s — Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg, Rogers Hornsby, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, and Frank Thomas. That’s it. If Walker got in, he’d have a higher career OPS than every other Hall of Famer in Cooperstown.

Now, if you’re a Coors Field skeptic, then the fact that Walker had a career OPS of 1.172 in Colorado might lead you to believe that his all-time great OPS for his entire career is inflated by his home ballpark for a decade. Well, that’s where ballpark adjusted statistics such as OPS+ come into play. Walker’s OPS+ for his career was 141. Mike Piazza’s was 142 and he was a first-ballot Hall of Famer in 2016.

That, and Piazza was also considered to be Cooperstown-worthy based solely on his offensive numbers. Piazza was a zero-time Gold Glove award winner in his career. Walker, while being one of the greatest hitters of his era, winning three batting titles and three Silver Slugger awards, was also a seven-time Gold Glove winner on top of being named league MVP in 1997, while racking up five All Star selections.

Guess who else has an OPS+ of 141? That’d be Chipper Jones, who has appeared on 98.3% of the public ballots in his first year of eligibility. Injuries are also sure to hurt Walker’s case, as he played six seasons of 100 games or less throughout his career. That’s not counting 1989 when he had been called up as a 22-year-old to play 20 games, because he still had rookie eligibility the following year, playing in 133 games for the Montreal Expos. Shout out Montreal Expos.

You wanna talk WAR? Let’s talk WAR. WAR, as you know, is a cumulative stat. If you want to deduct points from Walker because of the time that he missed due to injuries, then he should gain points for still accumulating a WAR of 72.6, which is incredibly impressive to have amassed that number over his career given the number of games that he missed. We’ve been over this a few times, but the average WAR of a Hall of Famer is 69.0. Walker is above that. By the way, everyone who said that Carlos Beltran was a slam dunk first-ballot Hall of Famer after he retired this past October following the Astros winning the World Series, Beltran’s career WAR is 69.8. Walker’s better.

Walker’s WAR7 (his seven best seasons by WAR added up to measure the peak of his career) is 44.6. Jim Thome’s WAR7 is 41.5, and he’s appeared on 93.3% of the public ballots in his first year of eligibility. Am I missing something here? Larry Walker is a Hall of Famer. The fact that he’s been sitting on the ballot for now eight years without getting a call from the Hall is beyond me, man. If the writers continue to get it wrong through his ten years of eligibility on the BBWAA ballot, then there’s no doubt in my mind that Walker will get in via the Veterans Committee. But it shouldn’t even have to come to that.