A statistical revolution has swept through baseball in the past decade, and in its wake, we’ve discovered that Minnie Minoso is a shoo-in for the game’s Hall of Fame. Now if only someone would inform the Hall of Fame’s voters of the revolution.
Most fans learned to measure the ability of a baseball player by reading box scores and the backs of bubble gum cards. But a big change in the way baseball statistics are viewed — at least partly inspired by the success of the 2003 book, “Moneyball” — has dramatically changed the way the players are evaluated today in the major and minor leagues.
Once upon a time, home runs, batting average and runs batted in (RBIs) were viewed as benchmarks of a player’s talent. Today, a complex array of statistical formulas that would make a math teacher dizzy accomplish the same task, but in a much more efficient and accurate way.
For the sake of this article, though, I will use just one relatively easy-to-digest formula — “OPS.” My aim is to illustrate why Minoso was a much better player than most of us realize and why he should immediately (he’s in his mid-80s for Christ’s sake!) be enshrined in Cooperstown alongside baseball’s greatest heroes.
OPS is simply the sum of two very useful statistics, on-base average and slugging average. It gives relatively equal weight to two very important measurements of a player’s talent — his ability to get on base and his ability to hit with power.
George Sisler is in the Hall of Fame because he has a dazzling lifetime .340 batting average. But his on-base average is just 39 points higher at .379, a sure sign that he rarely saw a pitch he didn’t like. Minoso, on the other hand, has only a .298 career batting average. But he also boasts a .389 on-base average, evidence that he was a player with a keen batting eye who made the pitcher work for every out.
Just as on-base average is more useful than batting average, slugging average, because it places equal value on doubles, triples and home runs, is more useful for determining a player’s power than home runs, which often come at the expense of a player’s complete game.
Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski hit 452 home runs in his career, but his lifetime slugging average is just .462. Although Minnie hit just 186 home runs (Playing mostly in spacious Comiskey Park, no less), he finished with a slugging average of .459, just three points less than the Boston Red Sox icon.
A .459 slugging average is nothing special. But combine it with his sterling .389 on-base average and Minoso has an impressive OPS of .848.
Here’s a list of Hall of Famers who were inducted into Cooperstown based primarily on their hitting ability whose career OPS is less than Minoso’s — Sisler, Yastrzemski, Robert Clemente, Ernie Banks, Reggie Jackson, Tony Lazzeri, Enos Slaughter, Richie Ashburn, Dave Winfield, Edd Roush, Ernie Lombardi, Tony Perez, Joe Sewell, George “Highpockets” Kelly and Lloyd Waner. I left off the list all shortstops, third basemen, second basemen and catchers, with the exception of Lombardi, who would have been a designated hitter if such a thing existed when he played. And I also left off all players who played the majority of their careers before 1920, when today’s live ball was introduced. The complete list of Hall of Famers who hitting ability was less than Minoso’s is too lengthy to mention.
In conclusion, recent breakthroughs in the statistical analysis of baseball players prove that Minoso was just as good an offensive player (or defensive player, for that matter) as Yastrzemski, Clemente and Banks — three players whose worthiness in Cooperstown has never been called into question. This is why baseball stats guru Bill James calls Minoso baseball’s best eligible player who is not in the Hall of Fame.
Add the indisputable fact that Minoso was a pioneer (he was baseball’s first Latin American star and the first black major league player in Chicago) who lost several of his prime seasons to baseball’s color barrier and there is simply no argument justifying the Hall of Fame’s ongoing exclusion of a truly great player.
