Craig Biggio: Hall of Famer?

Lion in Oil had a good post yesterday about Craig Biggio and his long, slow climb toward the 3,000 hit milestone. The 41-year-old veteran of twenty major league seasons has not enjoyed one of his best years thus far in 2007 (.237/.279/.402) and it shows little sign of getting better: his on base percentage for the month of June is an anemic .241 through fifteen games. Still, Biggio has piled up 59 hits on the season to pull within eleven of joining the 3,000 Hit Club.

In the first paragraph of his post, Fun Sheriff made an interesting assumption, referring to Biggio as “a future Hall of Famer.” It’s not that I strongly agree or disagree with this assessment; the point caught my eye because after realizing over the weekend just how close Biggio was to 3,000, I had decided to write a post of my own discussing his chances at reaching Cooperstown.

The thing about Biggio is that while 3,000 hits has long been considered a threshold that guarantees Hall of Fame induction, he has played much of his career under the radar as a member of the Houston Astros and seemingly snuck up on most baseball fans as a viable candidate within the past few years (I seem to remember greeting the news that Bill James had judged him history’s fifth best second-baseman in 2001’s New Historical Abstract with something in the neighborhood of total disbelief. That ranking was, for the record, ahead of Ryne Sandberg, Charlie Gehringer, and Rod Carew, among others). But there’s the point: how good is Biggio, really, and just how viable IS his Hall of Fame candidacy?

To help answer these questions and determine Biggio’s place in history, I turned to James and his Keltner List, a series of fifteen questions he created several years ago as a means of subjectively judging a player’s chances of reaching Cooperstown. Described in his book, “Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame? Baseball, Cooperstown, and the Politics of Glory”, James acknowledges that the method is imperfect because there is no statistical foundation for the questions and answers. He also notes, however, that it is his favorite way of ranking a player, one that “is more to help you clarify your own thinking on an issue, by breaking the great question down into smaller questions which have easier answers.”

We’ll see how it works.

Was he ever regarded as the best player in baseball? Did anybody, while he was active, ever suggest that he was the best player in baseball?

It’s crazy to suggest that Craig Biggio was ever one of the best players alive, right? Maybe not. A glance at his career stats shows that Biggio’s prime seasons were 1989-2001, years that almost directly coincide with the rise and continued dominance of all-time greats such as Ken Griffey, Jr., Barry Bonds, Frank Thomas and others, which would lead us to believe that he couldn’t possibly have been the best player in baseball at any given point.

Cracking open another James work, however, made me reconsider this point. “Win Shares” is a system that takes a player’s statistical contributions and attempts to gauge how many wins he “creates” over the course of a season. I’m not sure win shares are the be all and end all that we would like them to be (some people use it as an absolute indicator of a given player’s value; I don’t like relying on it to that extent), but it is more than adequate in this case.

Anyway, if we understand win shares to be an indicator of value, guess who was the second most valuable player of the 1990s? That’s right: Craig Biggio, whose 287 win shares trailed only Bonds (351) for the decade. What’s more, his 38 win shares in 1997 were the third most in baseball, behind only Thomas and Tony Gwynn (both with 39).

We might not think of him in these terms, but by at least one measure, Biggio was one of the best players in baseball during the 1990s. (And another fun fact: according to The Hardball Times, he currently has the third most win shares of any active player, after Bonds and former teammate Roger Clemens.)

Was he the best player on his team?

Most baseball fans will probably answer this question instinctively and go with Jeff Bagwell as the unequivocal best player on the Houston Astros teams of the 1990s. That’s not far from the truth, and the question is certainly up for debate, but Biggio makes it far closer than anyone might have realized without looking at the numbers.

With one extra year in the 1990s (Bagwell was a rookie in 1991), Biggio tallied 24 additional win shares, 287-263. In head-to-head matchups during the decade, Biggio was once again the dominant player, leading the team five times to Bagwell’s four. As the century turned over, Bagwell separated himself somewhat, but the fact remains that for an entire decade, Craig Biggio was no worse than Option 1b for the Astros.

Was he the best player in baseball at his position? Was he the best player in the league at his position?

The only second basemen of his era who could hold a candle to Biggio were Roberto Alomar and Chuck Knoblauch (and later, Jeff Kent). The three run the gauntlet of Hall of Fame viability: Alomar is regarded as almost a sure thing, Kent is in the “I have to think about it” group, and Knoblauch’s lasting legacy was the bout of Steve Blass Disease that ended his career as a middle infielder.

Did he have an impact on a number of pennant races?

The Astros have made the playoffs six times in Biggio’s twenty-year career, falling in the NLDS four times before advancing to the NLCS in 2004 and the World Series in 2005. Ironically, he hit better in the latter two years, when he was presumably on the downside of his career.

Was he a good enough player that he could continue to play regularly after passing his prime?

He is and he has. Biggio is no longer the stolen base threat he used to be, but he has become a greater power threat in his old age: the 26 homeruns he hit in 2005 were a career high. The issue now, as seen in that Lion in Oil post, is that he has extended himself so far past his prime that he is reaching the point where he probably should be spending more time on the bench than on the field.

Is he the very best player in baseball history who is not in the Hall of Fame?

Tough call, since Biggio is still active, but a case could be made that Tim Raines deserves consideration ahead of many other candidates.

Are most players who have comparable career statistics in the Hall of Fame?

Of the ten players listed as most similar to Biggio on Baseball-Reference.com, seven are in the Hall of Fame (Robin Yount, Joe Morgan, Paul Molitor, Ryne Sandberg, Cal Ripken, Brooks Robinson, and Charlie Gehringer). That’s some mighty fine company. Alomar, the second most similar on the list, should join that group in Cooperstown shortly after he becomes eligible in 2010.

Do the player’s numbers meet Hall of Fame standards?

In addition to the upcoming 3,000 hit milestone, Biggio boasts career totals of 1,813 runs scored (16th all-time, although two good years gets him into the top ten), 657 doubles (6th all-time, eight behind George Brett for fifth), 412 stolen bases, 286 homeruns, and 283 hit by pitch (2nd all-time, four behind Hughie Jennings). He has a Black Ink score of 17 (T-130th all-time) and a Gray Ink score of 106 (T-199th all-time). His HOF Standards score, with the average Hall of Fame score a fifty, is 54.9, good for 48th all-time. His HOF Monitor stands at 145.0 – anything above 100 is considered a likely Hall of Famer. So yeah, he meets Hall of Fame standards.

Is there any evidence to suggest that the player was significantly better or worse than is suggested by his statistics?

None that I know of, although it’s scary to consider what his power numbers might have been had he played his best years at Minute Maid Park instead of the Astrodome.

Is he the best player at his position who is eligible for the Hall of Fame but not in?

The only other second baseman in Biggio’s league that will be eligible anytime soon is Alomar, who should be off the ballot well before Biggio is added (assuming he retires after this season, the earliest Craig could be listed is 2013. If Alomar hasn’t given his induction speech by that point, something’s wrong).

How many MVP-type seasons did he have? Did he ever win an MVP award? If not, how many times was he close?

The closest Biggio came to an MVP award was 1997, when he finished fourth, and 1998, when he finished fifth.

How many All-Star-type seasons did he have? How many All-Star games did he play in? Did most of the other players who played in this many go to the Hall of Fame?

Biggio played in seven All-Star games between 1991 and 1998, missing only in 1993, but has not appeared in the Mid-Summer Classic since. He also turned in All-Star worthy seasons from 2004 to 2006.

If this man were the best player on his team, would it be likely that the team could win the pennant?

Put it this way: you can’t blame Craig Biggio for the fact that the Astros didn’t make the World Series until 2005 (just like you can’t blame Jeff Bagwell).

What impact did the player have on baseball history? Was he responsible for any rule changes? Did he introduce any new equipment? Did he change the game in any way?

None that I know of offhand.

Did the player uphold the standards of sportsmanship and character that the Hall of Fame, in its written guidelines, instructs us to consider?

Another excellent point made by Lion in Oil: Biggio and the Astros have redefined the word “loyalty” over the past few seasons. An All-Star as a catcher in 1991, Biggio moved to second base the following season and became an All-Star and Gold Glove winner at THAT position. Then, with the signing of Jeff Kent in 2005, Biggio willingly changed positions again, moving to centerfield for two seasons until Kent moved on to Los Angeles. In an era in which professional athletes are often singled out for their selfishness and unwillingness to place team above self, Biggio is a positive example of what it means to be a team player.

In exchange, the Astros have stuck with Biggio longer than most teams would have, giving him the chance to reach 3,000 hits and finish his career in a Houston uniform.

Bill James was right about the Keltner List: it didn’t provide a clear cut statistical answer for whether or not Craig Biggio is a Hall of Fame player. After going through all the questions, however, and addressing each one individually, it appears that the answer is yes. Fun Sheriff was absolutely correct: Craig Biggio might as well start writing his induction speech.