Jim Thome was never a mass-market superstar, and wasn’t one to attract controversy — he had a reputation as one of the nice guys in baseball. Neither was his COG support controversial, as the voters embraced him strongly in his first round of eligibility, quickly making him the 82nd inductee into the High Heat Stats Circle of Greats. More on Jim and the voting after the jump.
Most Career Regular Season Walks, All-Time, Major League Baseball
1. Barry Bonds 2,558
2. Rickey Henderson 2,190
3. Babe Ruth 2,062
4. Ted Williams 2,021
5. Joe Morgan 1,865
6. Carl Yastrzemski 1,845
7. Jim Thome 1,747
8. Mickey Mantle 1,733
9. Mel Ott 1,708
10. Frank Thomas 1,667
Most Career Regular Season Home Runs, All-Time, Major League Baseball
1. Barry Bonds 762
2. Hank Aaron 755
3. Babe Ruth 714
4. Willie Mays 660
5. Alex Rodriguez 654
6. Ken Griffey 630
7. Jim Thome 612
8. Sammy Sosa 609
9. Frank Robinson 586
10. Mark McGwire 583
Jim Thome is currently 7th on both of the lists above. The only other players besides Thome on both of these top 10 lists are Barry Bonds and Babe Ruth. Among the others on the Top 10 Walks list, Rickey Henderson is 139th on the home runs list, Ted Williams and Frank Thomas are tied for 18th, Joe Morgan is 179th, Yaz is 37th, Mantle is 16th and Ott is 24th. From the Top 10 Homers list, Aaron is 27th on the walks list, Mays is 22nd, A-Rod is 53rd, Griffey is 42nd, Sosa is 156th, Frank Robinson is 25th and Mark McGwire is 40th. The only player besides Bonds, Ruth and Thome who is in the top 15 on both the all-time homer and all-time walks lists is Harmon Killebrew, who is on neither top 10 list but is 11th in homers and 15th in walks.
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Most Post-Season Home Runs For a Single Franchise, Other than the Yankees
18, Albert Pujols for the Cardinals
17, Jim Thome for the Indians and David Ortiz for the Red Sox
14, Nelson Cruz for the Rangers
13, Jim Edmonds for the Cardinals, Chipper Jones for the Braves and Manny Ramirez for the Red Sox
The only guys with more post-season homers for the Yankees than Thome had for the Indians have been Bernie Williams with 22, Derek Jeter with 20 and Mickey Mantle with 18.
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Highest OPS Against Right-Handed Pitching, Expansion Era (1961-2014) (min. 500 PAs)
1. Barry Bonds 1.084
2. Jim Thome 1.034
3. Todd Helton 1.001
4. Lance Berkman .995
5. Larry Walker .993
Highest SLG Against Right-Handed Pitching, Expansion Era (1961-2014) (min. 500 PAs)
1. Barry Bonds .626
2. Jim Thome .608
3. Larry Walker .586
4. Carlos Delgado .582
5. Mark McGwire .581
Highest OBP Against Right-Handed Pitching, Expansion Era (1961-2014) (min. 500 PAs)
1. Barry Bonds .458
2. Wade Boggs .433
3. Joey Votto .430
4. Jim Thome .426
5. Todd Helton .425
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Most Rbat in a Season, American League, since 2002 (OPS+ in parens)
1. Jim Thome (2002) 70.1 Rbat (197 OPS+)
2. Mike Trout (2013) 67.6 Rbat (179 OPS+)
3. Alex Rodriguez (2005) 65.9 Rbat (173 OPS+)
4. Alex Rodriguez (2007) 64.8 Rbat (176 OPS+)
5. Miguel Cabrera (2013) 64.7 Rbat (188 OPS+)
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Most Rbat in an Age 39 Season
1. Barry Bonds (2004) 106.4
2. Ted Willams (1958) 47.2
3. Hank Aaron (1973) 37.6
4. Babe Ruth (1934) 36.9
5. Jim Thome (2010) 31.7
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Notes on this round’s voting:
–This round had 18 holdovers eligible for your votes, and it seemed likely that the number would be reduced for the next round.
–But the ballots cast this round successfully spread the votes so widely that there will again be 18 holdovers in the next round. Dizzy Dean fell short of the 10% support level he needed to remain eligible and will drop off, but Dizzy is replaced by Jim Edmonds, who was nudged over the 10% level with some late support and will join the holdover list. The number of holdovers “on the bubble” will also remain where it was at nine, with Dean also replaced by Edmonds in that subcategory of the holdovers.
–Although the votes were widely spread among the large group of holdovers, voters were still able to give Jim Thome a strong victory, appearing on an impressive 44% of the ballots cast, while also giving Luke Appling more than enough support (appearing on a third of the ballots cast) to earn another extra round of guaranteed ballot eligibility. That gives Appling a larger stash of guaranteed eligibility than anyone except Killebrew and Alomar.
–With Dean under 10% and Appling over 25%, that left 16 other holdovers — each of those appeared on more than 10% but fewer than 20% of the ballots cast this round.
–After a few lower-turnout rounds over the winter holiday season, a more normal 66 ballots were cast this round. 66.4 ballots has been the average number of ballots cast per round through the 82 rounds of Circle of Greats voting thus far, so the 66 votes cast this round was quite normal indeed.
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The full spreadsheet showing this round’s vote tally is here: COG 1970 Vote Tally.
The vote summary for recent Circle of Greats voting rounds is here: COG Vote Summary 2 . An archive w ith details of the 1968 through 1939 rounds is here: COG 1968-1939 Vote Summary . In both cases, raw vote totals for each past round appear on Sheet 1 and the percentage totals for each past round appear on Sheet 2.
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A spreadsheet listing the full membership to date of the Circle of Greats, along with some of their stats, is here: Circle of Greats Membership . You can also find that same link any time by clicking on “Circle of Greats” at the top of the High Heats Stats home page.
Another COG data spreadsheet showing each season a COG member played in the majors, along with the team he played for that season and his baseball-reference WAR (overall WAR for everyday players, pitching WAR for pitchers) for the season, is here:
Circle of Greats Seasons
All-Time Vote update!
Craig Biggio – 763
*Roberto Alomar – 694
*Eddie Murray – 659
John Smoltz – 658
Kenny Lofton – 608
Ryne Sandberg – 607
Edgar Martinez – 507
Lou Whitaker – 493
*Harmon Killebrew – 417
Whitey Ford – 382
Bobby Grich – 376
Sandy Koufax – 375
Tony Gwynn – 346
Willie McCovey – 336
*Kevin Brown – 293
Juan Marichal – 268
Tom Glavine – 262
Alan Trammell – 239
Mike Mussina – 233
Curt Schilling – 224
*Minnie Minoso – 223
Nolan Ryan – 220
Ron Santo – 217
Lou Boudreau – 216
*Roy Campanella – 215
Tim Raines – 213
*Dennis Eckersley – 208
Larry Walker – 197
Barry Larkin – 188
*Dave Winfield – 186
Frank Thomas – 181
Paul Molitor – 152
Bob Gibson – 147
Gaylord Perry – 142
*Rick Reuschel – 139
Jim Palmer – 133
Al Kaline – 132
Duke Snider – 130
*Luis Tiant – 129
Joe Gordon – 126
Ernie Banks – 119
Eddie Mathews – 115
1. The other holdovers: Richie Ashburn (76), Luke Appling (70), Wes Ferrell (34), Dwight Evans (33), David Cone (16), Don Drysdale (14), Graig Nettles (12), Jim Edmonds (7).
2. Eddie Murray moves into the #3 spot all-time in cumulative votes, passing John Smoltz by 1. I remember back, oh… two years ago, maybe?… when John Smoltz’s vote total seemed like it would NEVER be caught. Since then, we’ve seen three guys top it. Crazy.
3. I’ve long held a suspicion that Harmon Killebrew is our borderline. I think he’ll probably either be the last guy in, or the most popular guy who doesn’t make it. No evidence here; just a sneaking suspicion I’ve been harboring for many, many rounds.
4. I, for one, am REALLY glad to see that Edmonds made it safely. It took some shenanigans by late voters to make it happen, but I think he deserves a few looks. Those same late voters ensured that Dwight Evans, and Rick Reuschel, and Minnie Minoso, and a host of others would be safe, too.
5. The one they DIDN’T save, though was Dizzy Dean. I, for one, am not sad to see him go.
6. Roberto Alomar and Kevin Brown are closing in on major milestones. Expect them this round.
7. I’m not going to look it up (if someone else does, be my guest!), but I’m guessing that, of all the first-ballot entrants into the COG, Thome’s 29 votes is the lowest total. I know some other guys have gotten in with fewer, but those were (as I recall) guys who had hung around for round after round. When they get in, the first-ballot guys usually SAIL in. So it’s interesting to have a sub-50% and sub-30-vote guy take it in his first round of eligibility.
You’re right Doc, Thome has comfortably the lowest vote total and percentage of any first ballot entrant. Bottom five percentages (total votes in brackets):
Jim Thome: 43.94% (29)
Brooks Robinson: 56.25% (36)
Fergie Jenkins: 57.89% (33)
Reggie Jackson: 58.33% (35)
Bert Blyleven: 58.46% (38)
Thanks for looking that up, RJ. I figured as much, obviously, but it helps to have it confirmed! I think it’s also fair to say that, if we ranked these five entrants by their COG worthiness, Thome would also be in fifth place by a comfortable margin, so it stands to reason that his total would be lowest.
I don’t see a great deal of difference between Thome and Jackson.
Jackson had some value in the outfield and as a baserunner in his younger days but even adjusting for the time Jackson spent in Oakland and the lower run scoring environment of the 70’s Thome makes up for much of that with the bat in his hands.
I think ☛REGGIE!☚™ is better but certainly nowhere near 33% better (based on his getting about 1/3rd more votes than Thome).
Yes the year Reggie was on the ballot he was up against a number of future COGer’s but all of them took a decade on longer-and in a few cases, MUCH longer- to finally get in plus a) it was a divided-year ballot so he didn’t have to face Pudge Fisk and b) finally and most importantly in my opinion there were only 10 holdovers on the ballot by my count. Thome was up against 18.
Again, I’m not trying to claim that Thome was better than Jackson. He wasn’t, at least in my opinion. But I do think that he is better than a few guys already in the COG that not only got more votes than he did but more than Jackson did as well.
I just think that there are way too many variable factors that influence voting to use the number of votes the winner gets in a particular year as a measure of his worthiness.
I thought that Dwight Evans and Jim Edmonds had no chance to stay on the COG ballot; I am glad to be proven wrong.
@1/ Dr Doom – what ‘shenanigans by late voters’ are you referring to? – I simply waited till near the deadline to vote, which is perfectly within the rules.
I did not mean shenanigans in a derogatory way. I meant it like “hijinks” “tomfoolery” – perhaps even “careful planning.” It was, frankly, impressive. I didn’t mean anything untoward went on – just that it was unexpected.
@1/ Dr Doom – Any implications of possible negative connotations, deprecations, or any other ‘…tions’ in your statement above of:
“… It took some shenanigans by late voters to make it happen…”
are heretofore withdrawn.
Left unsaid in Thome’s stats against RHP is how poorly he fared against southpaws. Thome’s platoon differential is easily the worst among left-handed batters with 2000 PA against lefties. Here’s that top 10 list.
Generated 1/19/2015.
While no other lefty hitters come close to his differential, only Carlos Delgado among these ten had a better OPS against LHP. Thus, the reason Thome’s differential is so large is likely less to do with his struggles against lefties and more because of how well he did against RHP.
That is really well-explained Doug. I started to do this research and then decided it was not really the role of my “results announcement post” to include the “down” side of the picture. But you recognized that there isn’t that much that it is “down” about Thome’s huge platoon differential: he was simply human enough against lefties that combined with his virtual invincibility against righties it ends up reading paradoxically as a platoon differential “flaw”.
While I didn’t feel Thome was the best candidate on the ballot I do feel he is COG worthy so I’m fine with the outcome. It also sets up a nice head-to-head battle between Appling and Cronin (and perhaps others).
In one sense I’m happy that so many of the bubble candidates made it thru since there are 5 & maybe 6 of them that I think are possibly worthy but on another I’m a little worried since that also makes it fairly unlikely that many if any at all will see enough support to get off the bubble prior to the upcoming 1903 bloodletting. I guess that I’ll just have to hope that the guy that I feel might be deserving are the ones to get enough support to make it thru.
It’s amazing how much I learn from birtelcom’s headline puns. I had always said his name “TOE-mee.”
Also amazing is how unsung Thome was. He only made 5 All-Star teams — didn’t make it in 2001-02, when he totaled 101 HRs and a 183 OPS+.
Giambi and Sweeney were both legitimate All-Star selections ahead of Thome, based on first-half stats in 01-02, and the All-Star team can only carry so many of that type of guy. Especially in 2002, it was the second half of the season that Thome dominated. Also, it’s not like the Indians were desperate for All-Star representation in those years.
Actually the Indians only had two representatives in 2001 (Goonzalez and Alomar) and one in 2002 (Vizquel).
2001 seems pretty easy to figure out. Nearly half (15 of 32) of the All-star slots were filled by Mariners (8) and Yankees (7) which means that lots of teams only got one representative. And that one representative was often a 1b/DH type (Clark for Detroit, Giambi for Oakland, Sweeney for KC, Vaughn for TB). Olerud was voted to start at 1st, likely due to Ichiro-mania.
2002 was the year the Indians fell apart, going 74-88 (39-47 at the All-Star break). So they probably only deserved one representative. And Vizquel was hitting .285 with 10 HRs and 47 RBIs at the break. And again, many teams sole rep was a guy who could play 1st/DH (Fick for Detroit, Konerko for Chicago and Sweeney for KC).
I’ve been wondering how long we’ll continue with the every-3rd-year 2-part elections. To summarize the situation:
The 83rd round of voting is underway. We’re currently aiming for 119 players in the CoG, so after this round we’ll have 36 more slots to fill.
If we were to have no 2-part elections, from 1905-1875 would comprise 31 elections.
Here are the significant CoG-eligible players born prior to 1875:
1874 Lajoie, Wagner
1873 Wallace
1872 F Clarke
1870 Dahlen, G Davis
1867 C Young
I suppose you could throw Joe McGinnity (b. 1871) in there if you wanted to, maybe a couple of others (J Collins?).
Anyway, Lajoie, Wagner, and Young are all no-doubters. I think the other eligible candidates born between 1867-1874 deserve at least one shot at election on a ballot that doesn’t feature a no-doubter.
So by that reckoning it’ll take 4 elections to deal with that lot. That would bring us up to 35 elections, which means we have room for only one more 2-part election before beginning to go exclusively year-by-year.
There is of course at least one way to extend the 2-parters a little longer: by combining 2 or more birth-years into a single election. The talent really thins out in the 1880s, so it would seem reasonable to have, for example, an “1883-1885” election, or something along those lines.
I guess we’ll have to do some sort of combining, as 1905-1867 covers 39 birth years, so even if there were no more 2-parters, we still have more birth years remaining than available slots in the CoG (at least until the next HoF election).
I’ve always planned on combining birth years as we go deeper into the 19th century. I think there is plenty of talent to continue to do two-part elections till the end of the 20th century as I’ve planned. Then we’ll see how things go. There is nothing necessarily wrong with having a number of 19th century rounds where the heavy emphasis is on electing holdovers if the birth year talent is thin. Redemption rounds can also be used to bring in additional competition where appropriate.
I feel that we ought to arrange it so that there are a few open elections after we’re done with all the birth years to give the borderline guys from the last set of birth years a fair chance. Otherwise we’re artificially limiting the number of them that can possibly get in by however many elections exist after them. For instance, suppose we decided to hold elections in exactly those birth years: 1874, 1873, 1872, 1870-71 and 1867-1869, and those were the last ones we held.
Well what if the electorate thought that both Dahlen and Davis should go in, and they were both superior to Wallace, Clarke and whoever was left on the holdover list at that point but not Cy Young? Well too bad, because we wouldn’t get a chance to vote for them until the second to last election.
Here’s my modest proposal: Combine enough years to leave some spots open after we’ve been through all birth years. Hold a huge final redemption round (or multiple split rounds like the last set) where we can redeem a bunch of candidates, then have 3-4 open elections with no birth year for the last few spots.
Some number of elections at the end of the process, to assure that the last birth-year guys have a fair shot, definitely needs to be part of the plan. And I’m sure there will be some late redemption opportunity to bring back the most favored fallen-off-the-ballot guys for a last chance.
I’ll also point out that as long as this community remains intact, I would hope that, even after we finish filling up the COG to its current limit, we would reconvene the COG every year shortly after the HOF BBWAA voting to conduct additional rounds to reflect the number of new BBWAA inductees. Such reconvened votes would bring back the old holdovers for another shot, bring in the latest group of 44-year-olds, and also have a redemption ballot now and then. So in theory, no one would ever really be permanently excluded from a chance at the COG.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We’ve still got nearly forty elections to go to fill the initial COG.
I think the year to year flow of this thing is inherent to the process and I would hate to see it end in a “random round number 3” featuring the third round after adding in basically every player eligible and having a mosh out of it. I’d sooner see a 1866 and 1865 round and just not introduce any new players, though I’m not sure how much better that is.
While I enjoy the civil discourse provided on HHS, I’m not a regular contributor to these conversations. I do have to express my displeasure about Thome being selected before Roberto Alomar, though. I liked Thome when he played; he was always considered one of the good guys in baseball, but I don’t think he compares with Alomar as a player.
Thome was able to continue playing as a DH, accumulating WAR, which ultimately puts him ahead of Alomar in that category. But is you compare their age 20-36 seasons (which is Alomar’s career), Alomar actually has more WAR (66.8 to 63.9). Thome played a grand total of five games in the field after his age 36 season.
Also, in the three years they were teammates with the Indians (in both their primes, with very good teams), Alomar out-WARs Thome 20.3 to 14.8 and Thome averaged nearly 40 HRs, 113 RBI and 119 walks for those three years. I fear that Alomar is going to eventually get left out of the COG due to some of the 1920’s stars hitting the ballot in a few years. I don’t pretend to understand everything about advanced metrics, but as good as Thome was, in my opinion, he was no Robbie Alomar.
I hope Alomar makes it, too – I’ve voted for him more often than any other player (41 times and counting).
When he fell off the ballot I feared he was going to be passed over, but I think he’s actually in pretty good shape now – he has enough eligibility stored up to ride out the heavy wave coming up in 1903, and he seems to have a fair base of support (which is how he built up the eligibility in the first place).
Gary – while I’ve been a big supporter of Alomar (I may have voted for him more than David has – I would guess I’ve only voted for Eddie Murray more often than I have Alomar), I think you are shortchanging Thome a bit with that analysis.
Alomar was a regular at age 20; Thome was not a regular until age 23-24 (he played 98 games at age 23 in the strike year so I’ll count him as a regular then). Using Thome’s age 23-39 seasons to match up with Alomar’s 20-36 seasons, Thome has 69.9 WAR to Alomar’s 66.8 – and Thome did it in about 1000 less PAs. Going back to the age 20-36 comparison, Alomar has more WAR, but he also has almost 2000 more PAs, and it’s not because Thome was injured, but because Alomar got an early start because there was a job for him.
As for Thome not playing in the field after age 36 – Alomar didn’t play at all after age 36 because his bat wasn’t worth carrying in the DH spot, or even worth carrying as an infielder. Heck his bat hadn’t been worth carrying since he left the Indians in 2001 (ask Mets fans how they feel about him). Thome had value after age 36 – he might have been the AL MVP/$ in 2010, at least for players who weren’t under team control. 3.6 WAR for $1.5 million seems like a good deal, and the Twins won the AL Central – they won by 6 games so perhaps they didn’t need him, but he did help (he did lead the Twins in HRs that year – and was only 5 walks behind Mauer, who led the team).
The “teammate years” 1999-2001 analysis also just happens to pick up Alomar’s best 3 year span. Thome’s best is 1995-1997, at 18.9 WAR, which is not quite the 20.3 Alomar had in his best 3 year span, but Thome might edge a little closer if 1995 was a full schedule of games (we can ignore the 1994-1995 seasons when thinking about Alomar’s best 3 year span because he didn’t play as well as he usually did in 1994-1995).
I think a few things happened on that 1970 ballot. One is that Thome was the new guy, which helped. Another is that there was no real competition from any other first-timer on the ballot – Edmonds became a holdover, but he wasn’t a real threat to Thome. And the last is that the holdover who had been near the top of winning COG election was Killebrew – and I think when some people compared Killebrew to Thome, well, Thome came out on top.
Now, I can see the argument for Alomar, as Thome’s value is essentially entirely with his bat, while Alomar was more well rounded: better baserunner, better defensive player, played a more important defensive position. But Thome had a tremendous bat, 24th in career batting runs, more than Nap Lajoie or Chipper or Sheffield, a shade behind Bagwell.
So while I’m all for Alomar joining the COG, I think Thome has a case to make as being at least as valuable as Alomar, though through vastly different means.
That drop-off by Alomar after his age 33 season has got to be one of spectacularly sudden collapses ever. At ages 31 through 33, Robby’s WAR numbers were 7.4, 5.6 and 7.3. At age 34 suddenly he is a replacement level player (being paid $8M a year). Only 24 everyday players topped 20 WAR over their age 31 through 33 seasons; among those 24 only Alomar produced negative WAR the rest of his career. The only other of those 24 guys to produce less than 10 WAR after age 33 were Sosa (3.1 WAR), Hornsby (7.3 WAR) and Biggio (9.2 WAR).
Birtelcom @21, that drop-off was almost inexplicable, especially since there were no specific injuries the first two years. It’s almost as if he forgot how to play at a high level. I don’t recall there being any allegations of PED use. Random musing–Bill James once noted that, after Wade Bogg’s 1992 season (where he hit .259 at the age of 34) that when a player is used to performing at a very high level, a sudden and unexplained failure can be hard for them to process. Boggs left as a free agent, and got back on track with the Yankees. But Alomar just faded away.
Alomar’s drop off is strange. Except maybe it’s not.
Just looking at OPS+, if you eliminate his 2001 season then the drop off doesn’t seem that strange. Without 2001, then the dropoff is a bit more gradual, from 140 OPS+, to 114, to 90. And less extreme what Ryne Sandberg did from ages 32-34 (145 to 109 to 83).
So maybe the question isn`t why he dropped off so suddenly but how was he able to put together such a huge 2001 season?
As for him not being in the COG, I think he suffers from the same problem that Winfield does. A disconnect between his defensive reputation and his Rfield. If Rfield agreed with his defensive reputation, he would have been elected a long time ago.
Could have had a milder form of the dreaded Carlos Baerga Syndrome. 19.8 BWAR through his age-26 season in 1995. Out of baseball for the 2000 and 2001 seasons, then returned for 2002-2005. In the eight seasons he played in after 1995, he amassed -.3WAR. Wow
Jimmie Foxx was washed up after age 33.
birtelcom,
the heroes of our youth often, and more often than not, faded severely at age 33 or 34. Bobby Bonds Dick Allen, Ron Santo are afew off the top of my head. Probably a general lack of off-season conditioning had a lot to do with it. Maybe Alomar slept late and ate poorly while waiting for spring training? Or just failed to make adjustments at the plate as his bat slowed.
Mike Schmidt once claimed if he really wanted to hang on, he could DH, stand on top of the plate like Don Baylor, and hit 30 homers and .250 till he was 42 y o
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