Sometimes, baseball players transcend simple statistical analysis. And Jackie Robinson is clearly one of those few men who do.
You don't seem to appreciate just how much pressure he was under. Death threats. Opposing players going out of their way to injure him during games. Fans, opposing players, coaches and managers calling him every vile name in the book. Of course, other team owners didn't want him to play, either. It was their "gentleman's agreement" that kept African Americans out of Major League Baseball. If the Jackie Robinson "experiment" didn't succeed, we might have never seen Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente and a slew of other black or dark skinned Latin players in the Majors. They would have become other footnotes in history, joining the likes of Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, and Satchel Paige (he only made it to the Majors at the very end of his career; we never saw how truly great he was in his prime). Robinson was not just playing for himself, his team, and the people of Brooklyn. He was playing for a people. Most people would wilt under that pressure. Jackie Robinson thrived, and he did it while being forced to turn the other cheek for the first two years of his career.
And to go back to the statistics, not every player needs to achieve some benchmark statistic to get into the Hall of Fame. And not every player who gets close to a benchmark deserves to get in, either. There are a good number of players who came close to 3,000 hits, or 500 home runs, that won't ever make Cooperstown. Robinson, of course, never approached those career benchmarks. But he is quite clearly one of the best, most exciting players the game has ever seen. He was incredibly disruptive as a base stealing threat. He was a phenomenal hitter (one who didn't strike out), had good power, and was sensational defensively.
To simplify it, look at WAR. A single season WAR of 8.0 or higher is considered an MVP caliber season. Of the ten seasons he played, three were clearly at an MVP level, and a fourth was very close to it. He was the Rookie of the Year in 1947 (the first to ever win the award). He had only a 3.3 WAR that season, however. The next five seasons, 1948 to 1952, he put up a combined 40.6 WAR. That's an average of 8.1 WAR per season. He averaged an MVP season for five years.
Compare his play to other second basemen of the live ball era (starting in 1920). Robinson played six of his ten seasons primarily at second base. In the 96 years of the Live Ball Era, Major League second baseman have reached a 7.0 WAR or higher a total of 66 times.
Robinson has four of them. And his best two seasons? He had a 9.7 WAR in 1951 (and was 6th in the MVP vote!). Among all Major League baseball players of the last century, only Rogers Hornsby (six times) and Joe Morgan (once) have had a better season. And in 1949, he had a 9.6 WAR, winning the MVP. Joe Morgan's 9.6 is the only other season to get into the same elite level.
One last thing to consider. Of all Major League second basemen in the Live Ball Era who played at least 700 games at the keystone corner, Rogers Hornsby is the only one with a higher OPS + than Robinson. Hornsby had a 182 OPS +. Robinson and Joe Morgan each have career 132 OPS + marks. But in the seasons where Robinson was a second basemen, excluding his later seasons, he had a 137 OPS +. Higher than Rod Carew. Higher than Ryne Sandberg, Joe Morgan, Eddie Collins, Tony Lazzeri, Dustin Pedroia, Robinson Cano and Jeff Kent.
Robinson was awesome on the field, and his courage changed the game for the better.
04-18-2016, 08:19 AM
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