How Good Was Ken Singleton?
PaulMaul
Posts: 4,875 ✭✭✭✭✭
On a scale of 1-100? (100 being the best, 50 being average). Other players of a very similar skill level?
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PaulMaul
Posts: 4,875 ✭✭✭✭✭
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He was pretty good, but not as good as Ken Tripleton.
Yes I did cry when I decided to post that comment, I'm pathetic.
Without looking up his stats, I remember him being a very good player.
Pretty good all around, could run, think he played centerfield, good hitter. This is just from memory,
Dallas may come along and say he sucked because he didn't draw enough walks or something.
On a scale of 1-100? Like maybe a 70 or so. Very good player, hit for a good average along with good power. He walked a ton and limited the strikeouts. Good OPS+ numbers throughout his career, 132 for his career. I’d say an underrated player for sure.
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He's one of the reasons the Orioles were so good in the 70's-early 80's.
Terry Bradshaw was AMAZING!!
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By the Win Shares method, for the period 1972-1981, Singleton's prime, he was the 4th best player in baseball, behind Morgan, Schmidt, and Rose, and ahead of Jackson, Carew, Bench, etc. From 1975-1979, Singleton's peak, he was the best player in baseball, nosing out Schmidt.
I'm not sure how to rank him on a scale of 1-100 since I don't have a reference point. If we define HOFers as 90+ then I'd rank Singleton at 85 or so. If his peak had been even two years longer I'd rate him 90+ and lobby for him to be in the HOF. Bill James ranks him 18th in right field, right behind Murcer and ahead of Dawson, Reggie Smith, Oliva, and Dwight Evans. And that's his peer group; very good players, great for a short time, and just missing the HOF (except for the silliness of putting Dawson in the HOF).
80 if you held a gun to my head
m
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
i estimate that i have pulled 800 ken singletons from 1980 wax packs in my lifetime
you'll never be able to outrun a bad diet
I just looked at this stats on the baseball reference website and said to myself, "A good player, but I'd be surprised if he got any votes for the HOF." Sure enough when I scrolled down to his HOF vote in 1990, he received none.
Erik
and please don't get me started on jerry garvin. i honestly think that's when i learned how to cuss
8-yr-old me: "how many times am i going to pull this ******* guy!!!"
you'll never be able to outrun a bad diet
I don't understand this at all. I don't value Singleton nearly as highly as you do, but am willing to stipulate what you say above about his worth for the purpose of this post. My question is "How many other people who were the best in baseball for five years don't belong in the HoF?" We'll disagree about Bonds, but at least agree he was a special case. And you can't say that the rest of his career wasn't that good. Koufax was an awful pitcher except for six years, and could really only contend for the best pitcher in baseball from '63 to '66. I haven't done extensive analysis, but it seems reasonable. No one says that Koufax shouldn't be enshrined.
By the way, there is no "near peer" that I consider slightly worse than Singleton. I'd say that he's somewhere between Dave Parker and Kirk Gibson, but Gibson was too young, or between Parker and Ken Griffey, but Singleton was enough better than Griffey that the group is too large to have a real sense of Singleton.
There are three others who aren't in the HOF.
Bill Nicholson for 1941-1945 against very depleted competition. He does not belong in the HOF.
Dick Allen for 1964-1968, with HOFers in the next 7 spots and 11 of the next 12. Allen should be in the HOF.
Will Clark for 1987-1991 and 1988-1992. I think Clark belongs in the HOF.
All of these guys, including Singleton, had relatively short careers and didn't hit any of the big milestones that HOF voters love. They also could all tell the difference between a strike and a ball, a very important skill but one which HOF voters, and half the posters here, consider a negative.
Singleton did have a very nice peak, but it was not in the same category as Allen or Clark and I think that leaves him, with Nicholson, on the outside of HOF-worthiness despite having a five-year period as the best. That he was roughly twice as good as Jim Rice and three times as good as Harold Baines has to sting, but he's got a lot of company in that regard.
Will Clark was the best player in baseball from 1987-91? Ahead of Barry Bonds and Wade Boggs?
^Yes^
Maybe not better than Puckett though.
I've always said Will Clark was a Hall of Famer. Just because he didn't hang on until he was 40
shouldn't have been reason to keep him out. Think he retired at 37 and had a fantastic final year.
Will Clark is a hall of famer just because of the way he stared down pitchers.
Ken Singleton is not hall of fame because he was never sensational. Just good to very good.
His last 50 games were probably better than anyone's (not named Ted Williams) in the HOF!
Yes, and comfortably. From 1988-1992 he just beats Bonds by a nose.
What criteria are you using? WAR puts those two comfortably ahead of Clark, for example. Barry was winning Gold Gloves while leading in OPS+.
As I said in my OP, I'm using Win Shares. For the period 1987-1991, Bonds' OPS+ was 143 and Clark's was 153, so that's where it begins and, since we're talking about players who did not play skill positions, ends. Bonds did win a couple of Gold Gloves, but he certainly didn't deserve either one (nor did Clark deserve the one he won that you didn't mention). In any event, nobody playing the position where teams have tried to hide Dave Kingman, Greg Luzinski, Rico Carty, etc. has ever come close to making up 10 points of OPS+ no matter how well they played. Bonds was an adequate left fielder and Clark was an adequate first baseman; we might as well be comparing how many strikeouts vs. groundouts they had since that distinction is equally meaningless.
Beyond that, the one key thing Win Shares captures that WAR does not is situational hitting, and Bonds in his early years was like Aaron Judge - a monster with the bases empty or the game already decided, and a bum when it mattered most. Bonds WPA for 1987-1991 was 18.9 and Clark's was 25.3.
For the period 1987-1991, Will Clark was the best player in baseball, comfortably. WAR reaches a different conclusion because WAR is CRAP.
An excellent player just a few notches of Hall of Fame caliber. I will say that he is better than a few players in the Hall.
Gil Hodges, Jackie Jensen, Lou Whitaker, Harvey Kuenn would fall in that catagory.