I am apparently masochistic when it comes to listening to sports radio. Outside of Mike Ferin, very few sports commentators actually know what they are talking about. I usually listen to Chris "Mad Dog" Russo on my drive home from work because a) It's on and b) He's less annoying than other networks. He's a die hard Giants fan and states his opinion and doesn't care what other people think, which is nice and a nice diversion from ESPN Radio which toes the corporate line and never says anything negative about anything unless it's corporately approved. Last night though, his opinions were incredibly wrong throughout the whole show.
I got in my car after work and listened for a few minutes driving to the gym about how he thought Ron Santo was totally undeserving of the HOF. When I got in my car after a bball game an hour later, he was still ranting on the same subject. First, congratulations to Ronnie for the induction and it's a huge shame that it couldn't have happened while he was living. A great player, great fan and great spokesman for the game.
Russo's main arguments roughly
1. Not high enough career totals.
2. Only hit .277.
3. Never played in postseason.
4. Bad statistics down the stretch in 1969.
5. Bad season in 1968.
Number 1 is the only legitimate case against Santo's candidacy, but not for the reasons Russo lists. Let's tackle bullets one & two together.
In a 15 year (some partial seasons) career spent entirely in Chicago (14 with the Cubs, 1 Sox) Santo amassed a .277/.362/.464 slash line, won some gold gloves and was generally seen as a good defensive 3B. That's basically Jeff Cirillo (.296/.366/.430) with a bit more power and defense right? Wrong wrong wrong.
How is the concept of context so difficult for most broadcasters and journalists to understand? Let's add a bit more to Santo's bio. The years he played were 1960-1974. If you haven't studied your baseball history, that's the time where offense was at its absolute nadir in the live ball era. The three lowest run totals during the entire live ball era occured during this time frame. In fact, from 1963-1972 almost the entirety of Santo's career, the NL as a whole scored over 4.09 runs only once in a season. The last time that low of a level period has occured in the NL was 1989. So to sum up Santo hit only .277 for his career. He also played gold glove defense, had some power, drew a truckload of walks and played in an era where offense was the lowest it's ever been in the 90+ years since the live ball was introduced. Context.
One more thing. There is another player in the HOF who happened to play the same position as Santo . He hit only .267. What a disgrace. He should be thrown out of the HOF. Sorry, Mike Schmidt, but please give back your plaque. It's fun to make arguments using one useless cherry picked stat.
Once we properly apply context, Santo's line grades out to a 125+ OPS with plus defense giving him 66.4 WAR according to BaseballReference which places him 75th overall of all position players and 6th amongst 3B only below such lightweights as Schmidt, Eddie Mathews, George Brett, Wade Boggs and Brooks Robinson and slightly ahead of Home Run Baker. Oh wait, no those guys were all awesome too.
Schmidt is probably the best 3B of all time (.267 BAvg notwithstanding). Brett and Boggs were contemporaries with slightly different games, but still stars for years. Mathews was ahead of his time and similar to Santo in that he was never appreciated for his walks. Let's focus on that last name though as curiously enough he's both a contemporary to Santo and incredibly close on the WAR leaderboard.
Brooks Robinson was the best defensive 3B in the history of the game, maybe the best defender period relative to his peers. He was also just an ok hitter. He amassed 69.1 WAR for his career almost half of it based off his stellar defense. His slash line of .267/.322/.401 (what it is with all these crappy 3B hitting .267?) gives him a 104 OPS+. He played a little more than Santo debuting a few years earlier and lasting a few years longer, but for the most part their careers took place at the same time. Santo was obviously the better hitter, but Robinson's defense and longevity give him the edge, but just barely. Nobody thinks for a minute that Brooks Robinson is anything but a hall of famer.
The only ding against Santo is only playing 15 years and being out of baseball following his age 34 season mostly related to diabetes which tragically cut his life as well. Just playing with the illness at all before the time of insulin pumps is absolutely outstanding and putting up HOF worthy numbers to boot is even more incredible. If you give him 3-4 more seasons at even average production, there would most likely be no argument as to his merits. There shouldn't be anyway. He had an oustanding peak and just long enough of a career to be one of the all time top players at his position.
Alright what's your next argument Mad Dog? He never made the postseason? Oh boy, I don't even want to go there. Anyone who still uses this argument should be stoned for witchcraft. John Holland isn't in the HOF. This is a decision I agree with. Who is John Holland you ask? He's the GM who couldn't put enough talent around the core of Banks, Santo, Jenkins and Williams to make the playoffs. Turns out there are 24 other guys who have influence over how well a team does. But yeah I like your argument better. If he was a true HOF, he would have travelled to the future, stolen steroids from Barry Bonds, broken Maris's HR record, hit .400 and willed at least 2 of his pitchers to throw perfect games every time out.
He performed poorly down the stretch in 1969. As has been proven time and time again, better players step up their game and single handedly lead their team to the post season by performing at their best during September and two months of a 15 year career is an adequate sample size to judge a players HOF merits. Oh wait that's not even remotely true.
The Cubs collapsed in 1969. Even that claim is dubious as the Mets went on an absolute tear and ending up running away with the division. Santo had his worst two months in Aug/Sep. The correlation between these two events is very very low. Again using his favorite statistic, Russo points out that Santo hit just .245 in Aug and .244 in Sep. Using the calculator in my mom's basement to tether to the internet and look stuff up, I also found that in Aug he hit .245/.322/.415 and Sep .244/.369/.341. Yeah he wasn't great, but was still an above average hitter in August and even though he was pretty powerless in September, he drew enough walks to be valuable. He didn't carry the team on his back, but he didn't hurt them either. Ferguson Jenkins went 3-4 with a 4.68 ERA in September and Billy Williams hit .246/.313/.386 in August. Good players sometimes have good months, sometimes have bad months and sometimes have ok months.
I wonder how the Cubs got the big lead heading into August to blow anyway. Could it possibly be influenced by Santo's .289/.413/.522 May? Perhaps his .308/.370/.529 July? Hmmm .400/.447/.635 June? Apparently those don't count. For the year he hit .289/.384/.485 for a 131 OPS+. There are many reasons the Cubs didn't win the NL East in 1969. Ron Santo is about 13,478th on that list.
The next year in 1970 the Cubs had a pretty good team again as happens occasionally when you have 4 HOF guys on the roster. They finished in 2nd 5 GB, but were as close as 1.5 GB on September 19th. That September Ron Santo hit a robust .310/.421/.563. He probably didn't inspire his teammates enough though.
As they were running through all Santo's seasons to prove he didn't have enough good ones* he quickly jumped over his poor 1968 seasons where he hit only .246 with 26 HR and 98 RBI's.
*-Which was hilarious in itself because Russo discovered Santo had many more good seasons that he thought. Turns out you should check stats before making outrageously false statements.
Yes, .246 isn't great. There is a nickname for the 1968 season though. I believe it's something like "Year of the Pitcher" The Cubs rival Bob Gibson put up a 1.12 ERA. The NL as a whole hit .243/.300/.341. When you include stats that actually matter, Santo hit .246/.354/.421. It was his worst season in a long time, still well above league average and sitting at a 126 OPS+. Context. Hank Aaron hit .287/.354/.498 and was amongst the best hitters in the league. You know the standards are low when a rule change is made to makes sure at least some runs score. The average NL team in 1968 scored 3.43 runs per game. That's low. In fact, it's the third lowest season in the history of the league including the dead ball era. Only 1907 & 1908 had a lower run scoring environment. Hmm come to think of it as a Cubs fan maybe we should bring back the dead ball era. The last time the NL average has even been within a run of that total before this past season was 1992. Offense in 1968 was unfathomably low.
Also during this discussion, Mad Dog brought up how he thought Jim Rice was a no doubt hall of famer while Santo and Blyleven lowered the standards. I'm too tired to even touch that.
No matter how you stack it up Ron Santo had a HOF career even accounting for his retirement at the fairly young baseball age of 34. He is somewhere around the 5th-8th best 3B in the history of MLB in the most pessimistic of objective observations based off his playing career. Since the HOF includes character clause, I'll also point out that he was a great fan of the game, by all accounts was one of the nicest men you'd ever meet, and holds a special place in the hearts of most Cubs fans for his radio work. I haven't listened to this few games on radio in years. It's just not quite the same without Ronnie. He was a horrible technical radio broadcaster. Unabashed homerism and often just made remarks instead of telling people who couldn't see what was happening on the field, but he bled Cubbie Blue, and I loved every minute of it. Baseball would attract a much bigger fan base if there were more Ron Santos than Joe Bucks broadcasting the games. Congratulations Ron Santo, Cubs icon, great player, great human being and now finally, 30 years too late and posthumously, a hall of famer.
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