This offseason, leading right up to the 2021 Baseball Hall of Fame announcement, we’re counting down the 100 greatest eligible players not in the Hall of Fame and ranking them in the order in which I would vote them in. Each player will receive a Hall of Fame plaque based on the pithy ones that the Hall used to use back at the start. We continue our essay series with another pairing at No. 15, Andruw Jones and Jim Edmonds.
Andruw Rudolf Jones Atlanta—Los Angeles Dodgers—Texas—Chicago White Sox—New York Yankees, 1996-2012
Breathtaking defensive center fielder who some believe surpassed even Willie Mays with the glove. Won Gold Gloves 10 consecutive seasons. Powerful slugger who hit 50 homers in a season and 434 over his career. Announced his presence as a 20-year-old by hitting two home runs in his first World Series game.
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James Patrick (Jim) Edmonds California/Anaheim—St. Louis—San Diego—Chicago Cubs—Milwaukee—Cincinnati, 1993-2010
Slugging center fielder who overcame countless injuries to hit 393 home runs and make a couple of the signature catches of his day. Jimmy Baseball grew up a long home run away from Angels Stadium and became an Angels star before becoming an icon in St. Louis. Played with a chip on his shoulder.
I actually thought about putting Kenny Lofton, Andruw Jones and Jim Edmonds all in one entry since I think they were all center fielders with similarly compelling Hall of Fame cases. But it seemed to me that Lofton’s case is different from these two guys. He was a speed guy, a setup man, etc.
Jones and Edmonds, meanwhile, have precisely the same case. You can argue that one’s case is better than the other — we’ll get into that in a minute — but the cases themselves are almost identical. They were both great defensive center fielders who hit a lot of home runs in relatively short careers.
Jones is definitively winning the Hall of Fame battle of perception. He has been on the Hall ballot for three years now and, if last year was any indication, he is rapidly gaining support. He got just 7 or so percent of the vote his first two years, but last year jumped to almost 20 percent. Early signs from Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame tracker suggest he could make another big jump this year now that the Hall of Fame ballot has thinned significantly.
Edmonds, meanwhile, got just 11 votes in 2016 and promptly fell off the ballot.
Why is this happening? Was Jones a better player than Edmonds? It shouldn’t be that hard to make a determination; they played at the same time and played roughly the same number of games (Jones played in 185 more games, basically his two seasons with the Yankees but he was more or less done by then).
Edmonds: .284/.376/.527, 1,251 runs, 437 doubles, 25 triples, 393 homers, 1,199 RBIs, 998 walks, 1,729 Ks, 303 batting runs above average. Jones: .254/.337/.486, 1,204 runs, 383 doubles, 36 triples, 434 homers, 1,289 RBIs, 891 walks, 1,748 Ks, 119 batting runs above average.
There’s really only one way to look at these: Jim Edmonds was a much better hitter than Andruw Jones. This is not especially close — 30 points in batting average, 40 points in on-base percentage, 40 points in slugging percentage. Edmonds’s OPS+ is 132 to Jones’ 111.
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OK, but now let’s look at defense, best we can figure it. We know they were both wildly celebrated as defensive outfielders in their time. Edmonds won eight Gold Gloves; Jones won 10. Let’s try to differentiate them by using Baseball-Reference’s runs above average, FanGraphs’ runs above average, Bill James’ Fielding Win Shares and a Tom Tango invention called “plays made above average.”
First, by Baseball-Reference fielding, it isn’t close at all:
Edmonds: 68 runs above average Jones: 251 runs above average
FanGraphs gives Jones a similarly dominant edge:
Edmonds: 73.3 runs above average Jones: 278.8 runs above average
Yikes. What about Bill James’ Fielding Win Shares?
Edmonds: 62.5 Fielding Win Shares Jones: 90.5 Fielding Win Shares
That seems closer but Win Shares is figured differently and this is still an overwhelming win for Andruw Jones. Finally, there’s the Tom Tango method of simply figuring out — based on range factor per nine innings — which player made more plays as a center fielder.
Edmonds: 179 career plays above average Jones: 297 career plays above average
So, it’s clear that while they were both good fielders, Jones was the much better center fielder. Then again, by the numbers, you can make the compelling case that Jones was the best center fielder of all time. So it’s an open question: Does Jones’ fielding advantage make up for Edmonds’ hitting advantage? Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs WAR suggest it does. Bill James’ Win Shares system says it does not — he has Edmonds as the better player.
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And now we ask something: Is “who was better” the right question when it comes to the Hall of Fame?
For argument’s sake, let’s say the following two statements are true — I’m not saying they are true, I’m talking about this hypothetically:
- All-in-all, Jim Edmonds was a better player than Andruw Jones.
- Andruw Jones is the greatest defensive center fielder of all time.
Now, let’s ask the question: If you could vote only one of them for the Hall of Fame based on those factors, which one would you choose? I see two conflicting but powerful arguments, the first being the obvious one: You have to choose Edmonds because, come on, you’re saying right up front that he was the better player. You have to choose the better player.
But the other argument should be heard: Even if you believe that Edmonds was better in total, you could still vote for Jones in the belief that he is the one with the singular Hall of Fame credential. He is, in this scenario, the greatest center fielder ever. I mean, doesn’t that player have to be in the Hall of Fame?
In this argument, it doesn’t really matter that Edmonds was a better enough hitter to win the individual match-up because Jones isn’t going in for his overall value. He’s going in because in addition to being a fearsome power hitter he is the greatest defensive center fielder ever. If you believe that, nobody can take that away from him. He is going in for his place in baseball history and lore. This is the same argument for why Bill Mazeroski goes into the Hall of Fame when his doppelgänger Frank White does not.
I am not sure which way I go on this. On the one hand, I do think the Hall of Fame should be about more than a player’s raw value. On the other, I think you could make a case that while Jones was the greater outfielder, Edmonds made the more compelling plays — he made a couple of the greatest catches I’ve ever seen, and I can’t really remember Jones’ greatest catches because he had the knack for making it look easy.
Plus Edmonds really was a much better hitter.
I did put this puzzle up in a Twitter poll and Jones won decisively, though I’m not sure how many people really followed the instructions.
Who knows? I think if you put one in, you put the other in. It’s too close to call. Does that mean I’m going to cop out here and not tell you which player I would vote for? I probably should leave it here with two things I think we can all agree on: Jones is likely to keep gaining support and Edmonds got a raw deal falling off the ballot in his first try.
But I’ll tell you: If I absolutely had to choose one, I’d pick Edmonds. It’s the tiniest of differences but I believe he was the better player.
(Photos: Getty Images)
Source: https://t-tees.com
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