Is Bobby Abreu a Hall of Famer?

[Villain]

 

[ThomasTomasz]

Like Magglio Ordonez, a good player but he's not at the top of the charts when you're discussing outfielders over the past decade or so.

 

[MVPete]

Would you just look at that!

 

[manchild24]

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/375508-bobby-abreu-the-case-for-the-hall-of-fame

Abreu has always been able to give big-time production in multiple categories.

Here is his career line: .299 average, .403 OBP, 256 HR, 348 SB, 2,113 hits, and 1,255 walks.

Sounds like a Hall of Famer, doesn't it?

However, everything Bobby Abreu has done in his career has gone nearly unnoticed. He has just two All Star appearances to his name and has never finished in the top 10 in MVP voting.

The 250 HR - 350 sb - .850 ops club

Two members
Abreu
Barry Bonds


How can you say "a good player but he's not at the top of the charts when you're discussing outfielders over the past decade or so."

http://www.thefastertimes.com/baseballbythenumbers/2012/05/01/the-unusual-career-of-bobby-abreu/

Only 21 players in big league history have more than 250 home runs and 250 stolen bases. These include some of the best players ever such as Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, Joe Morgan and Rickey Henderson, some other merely great or very good players like Bobby Bonds, Robin Yount and Craig Biggio and a few players like Alfonso Soriano who were only briefly great.

A more select subset of these players are the eight who also had 1,000 or more career walks. These are the players who not only had impressive tools, but were genuinely great hitters as well. This group includes three Hall of Famers, Henderson, Morgan and Mays and four others who will either get in or be kept out due to steroids, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Biggio and Gary Sheffield. The last player in this group is unlikely to get much Hall of Fame consideration and appears to be rapidly winding down his career.

Bobby Abreu, with 284 career home runs, 393 stolen bases and 1,421 walks easily meets this standard. will probably receive little support from Hall of Fame voterrs, but who will also take his place among the most underrated players in baseball history. Abreu not only managed to leave the Phillies and Yankees shortly before they won the World Series, but despite playing in big media markets for most of his career never was really perceived as a big star. This is not uncommon for players who rely heavily on walks for their offensive value.

However, Abreu had a career 129 OPS+ in over 9,500 plate appearances, giving him a higher OPS+ than fifteen Hall of Fame corner outfielders including recent inductees Jim Rice and Andre Dawson. On the other hand, Abreu was usually very good, but was never among the best in the game. He never led the league in a major hitting category other than doubles in 2002 and triples in 1999, never finished in the top ten in MVP voting, and somewhat amazingly only played in two All-Star games.

Abreu’s development as a hitter is also unusual enough to influence how he was perceived as a player. He was one of the few players who evolved from a player best suited to the middle of the order to one best suited to leading off. From his first full season, 1998, to 2005, Abreu slugged .519 and averaged 23 home runs a year. From 2006-2011, he never reached either of those numbers, but became a player with a skill set that would have made him a great leadoff hitter had he been used that way.

Between 2006 and 2011, Abreu posted an OBP of .377 while stealing 152 bases, only one player, Hanley Ramirez, exceeded both those numbers during those years. Despite not showing much power and averaging only 16 home runs a year, Abreu almost never batted leadoff during this period, largely because the narrative of his career made it hard to see him as leadoff type hitter. Instead of being viewed as a player who changed, Abreu was seen as a player who lost his power.

Had Abreu’s power years come in the second, rather than first, half of his career, he would have been seen as a player who improved and expanded his skills, but the overall numbers would have been the same. Because of this, Abreu is hard to classify and spent the second half of his career as a punchless number three hitter rather than the top tier leadoff hitter he could have been. Abreu’s career arc was reinforced by the general trends in offense over the last fifteen years or so. As the power heavy period of the late 1990s and early 2000s faded, so did Abreu’s power, but unlike some others, Abreu was able to adapt and become a different, but still valuable player.

Abreu is the kind of player who will be easily forgotten by most fans. His post-season footprint was not large for a player in the wild card era who amassed well over 9,000 regular season plate appearances. He underperformed in black ink and awards voting; and had a personality that rarely drew a great deal of attention. However, he was also a player with both an unusual skill set and career path who managed to put up numbers that would not look out of place in Cooperstown.

 

[Villain]

That might be the best post in the history of VSN. Bravo.

 

[ThomasTomasz]

Abreu is the kind of player who will be easily forgotten by most fans. His post-season footprint was not large for a player in the wild card era who amassed well over 9,000 regular season plate appearances. He underperformed in black ink and awards voting; and had a personality that rarely drew a great deal of attention. However, he was also a player with both an unusual skill set and career path who managed to put up numbers that would not look out of place in Cooperstown.

He's not at the top of the charts when you're discussing outfielders over the past decade or so.

I rest my case. You definitely have some good points, but with voting the way he is, and the fact that Abreu did not reel in the accolades is going to hurt his chances to get into the HOF.

 

[Goober]

http://www.thefastertimes.com/baseballbythenumbers/2012/05/01/the-unusual-career-of-bobby-abreu/
Post links please.

To answer the question, no. Not close.

 

[jms493]

only if he played more years with and stayed on the yankees....

 

[Villain]

To answer the question, no. Not close.

Why not? Does this help his case?

 

[Senser81]

This is why I love the baseball HOF. A guy plays his whole career and is never really elite or does anything to distinguish himself from other good players...but then after the fact someone finds some quirky stat and the HOF informs us that Bobby Abreu was a HOFer this whole time, only we were too stupid to realize it!

The whole 250HR/250SB argument is incredibly weak. It used to be difficult to attain the vastly greater of the two achievements (250 HRs), so not many players could be 250/250 members. When Abreu played it was easy to hit 250 HRs, but offenses didn't really steal bases so not that many players could hit the 250 SB milestone. So while the article laments Abreu for his "bad timing", in this stat Abreu's timing was perfect. It would be much more impressive if Abreu hit his 250 HRs in the 60's or 70's, and the 250 SBs is nice but not really a HOF milestone. Its like when Ronde Barber and Carnell Lake became the first DBs to have 30 career sacks and INTs...does that make them the best DBs ever?

I remembered hearing that Eddie Murray is one of the only players in history to have 3000 hits and 500+ HRs (or something like that). To me, THATS impressive and makes me appreciate Murray even more. The Abreu 250HR/250SB is more of a statistical oddity than any type of career validation.

Sidenote: like Stuart Scott before him, Mike Greenberg proved to me that the idiots at ESPN don't actually watch the sports they talk about, because Greenberg would constantly pronounce Bobby Abreu as "Bobby A-brew". Retarded.

 

[shag773]

No, he's not a HOF. I don't really know or care to know anything about sabremetrics or what it means for HOF consideration. I can just tell you that he only lead the league in two statistical categories in his career (triples in '99 and doubles in '02) and was never a major consideration in MVP voting. Meaning, he was never once even in the discussion as one of the best players in baseball at anytime in his career, which to me is a prerequisite for HOF consideration.

If there was a hall of fame for players who were good for long periods of time, than he's a first ballot selection.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

Abreu was a much better player than he ever got credit for. Probably not a hall of famer, but similar to the guys in the other thread we discussed lik Magglio and Vada Pinson and Tony Oliva etc etc who come up a little short.

There are worse players in the hall than Abreu. I still wouldnt vote for him, but I wouldnt be offended if he got in (Jim Rice).

 

[FedEx227]

From the legacy standpoint he's not a Hall of Famer. If it was raw numbers, he'd probably have somewhat of an argument but I wouldn't put him in. Guy like Magglio that was consistently good for a long time, has some of the merits of a Hall of Famer, but simply not enough to be enshrined.

 

[Senser81]

"A-brew's" career numbers are very similar to Al Oliver's, with the difference being that Oliver spent the majority of his career in CF, and Oliver played in a pitcher's era (1970's) while Abreu played in a hitter's era.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/oliveal01.shtml

 

[Villain]

Meaning, he was never once even in the discussion as one of the best players in baseball at anytime in his career, which to me is a prerequisite for HOF consideration.

I like this logic.

 

[FedEx227]

That logic is good, but it also let's writers and mainstream media (see awful organizations like ESPN) dictate the HOF discussion which shouldn't exactly be the case. Not to say they were overly ignore great players, but there's a definite bias involved with their baseball coverage that would really make it difficult to judge off that perception.

 

[Villain]

I agree with that as well, but even the guys who get fucked over in MVP voting will still get noticed and get some votes over time. If a guy is consistently up in the top 3 or 5 in MVP voting, leads a few stat categories here and there... Shouldn't be too hard to make a solid case.

 

[Senser81]

That logic is good, but it also let's writers and mainstream media (see awful organizations like ESPN) dictate the HOF discussion which shouldn't exactly be the case.

But its also the writers and the mainstream media who decide which players are HOFers. Thats the "revisionist history" part that I don't quite understand.

 

[FedEx227]

Agreed. The whole system is kind of weird, it's amazing we as fans care as much about it as we do.

 

[Villain]

We like to crown our heroes. :kanye: