Snubbed: The Hall of Fame case for Buddy Bell

The Hall of Fame election process is one of the highest honors we members of the BBWAA can claim. You don’t even get to vote until you’ve been a member for 10 years, so while I’m already studying up on the careers of Zack Grienke, Justin Verlander and other potential class-of-2028 names for my first official vote, I recognize that I’m still the new kid on the block. As such, I want to measure my words carefully. “My fellow writers got this wrong” is too blunt and presumes too much. Hmm.

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“My fellow writers, with all due respect, got this wrong.”

There. That’s how I’ll broach the matter of Buddy Bell’s undeserved snub from Cooperstown.

Let’s start with a quick overview of Bell’s career, beginning where most Hall of Fame discussions do: his traditional offensive numbers.

Batting Average: .279
On-Base Percentage: .341
Slugging: .406
OPS: .747
Hits: 2,514
Home runs: 205

Here’s where the problem starts, actually. Most Hall of Fame discussions start here, and in Bell’s case (he received just eight votes in his one year on the ballot in 1995), it appears they also ended here. In an era that just preceded the popularity of advanced statistics and analytics, you can see where voters might have seen quite enough after a first glance. By the standards of the day, those were not quite Hall of Fame numbers.

Before we attempt to knock down the wall, let’s go ahead and build it to its full height: Bell’s career overlapped with a lot of great third basemen — Mike Schmidt, Wade Boggs, George Brett, Paul Molitor and (oh yeah) Brooks Robinson come to mind — so those comparisons couldn’t help his case. Then there was the fact that his best years were spent with the 1979-84 Texas Rangers, a squad that never really even sniffed the postseason. It’s not impossible for legends to be forged in April through September, but the process happens faster in October and Bell never played a single postseason game in his 18-year career.

Alright, we’ve established why he’s not in the Hall.

Now let me tell you why he should be.

There’s a cheap way to make the Hall of Fame case for just about anyone: point to a single Hall of Famer and then suggest that someone else should be in because they earned more WAR over their career. That’s silly, of course; you can’t go putting Scott Fletcher (32.0 bWAR) in the Hall of Fame just because Freddie Lindstrom (27.5 bWAR) somehow made it in. But what about someone who ranks ahead of more Hall of Famers than he trails? Okay, that’s worth a conversation.

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The number 131 is of note here. That’s not only the number of players in MLB history with more career bWAR than Buddy Bell, but it’s also the number of Hall of Famers with less bWAR than Bell. Of the 131 ahead of him, 104 are in the Hall, leaving 27 who aren’t (yet) in. Seven of those (Albert Pujols, Mike Trout, Justin Verlander, Zack Greinke, Miguel Cabrera, Robinson Canó and Clayton Kershaw) are still active. Another three (Álex Rodríguez, Adrián Beltré and Carlos Beltrán) are not yet eligible and one (Pete Rose) is banned. That leaves just 16 players ahead of Bell in the “could have been elected but haven’t been elected” boat. Here they are:

WAR leaders, not in HOF

I separate these 16 into three categories:

The first is full of controversy. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro, Manny Ramirez (PED allegations), Curt Schilling (hate speech) and Bill Dahlen (per his bio at SABR.org, it sounds like he was just a real jerk as a manager, earning the nickname “Bad Bill”) have been denied not because of a lack of statistics, but because off-the-field behavior led voters to decide that these players did not meet the standards of “integrity, sportsmanship, character” outlined in the voting rules.

Jim McCormick and Tony Mullane constitute a category unto themselves, having earned their statistics in a sport that didn’t really look like the one played in modern times since the mound wasn’t moved back from 50 feet to 60 feet, six inches, until after their careers had ended. And, again leaning on SABR.org, we learn that McCormick “…was prohibited from throwing overhand for half his career.” Perhaps that shouldn’t be enough to keep those two out — they played the game that was available to them — but that’s where they are for now.

That leaves us with just eight remaining non-Hall-of-Famers in the history of the game with more Wins Above Replacement than Buddy Bell: Lou Whitaker, Bobby Grich, Rick Reuschel, Kenny Lofton, Graig Nettles, Kevin Brown and Dwight Evans. According to Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system, only one of them (Grich) finished with a higher JAWS rating than the average of every Hall of Famer at his position. But so what? So did guys like Tony Gwynn, Dave Winfield and Vladimir Guerrero.

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Those three examples weren’t given as an accident — Gwynn, Winfield and Guerrero are three of the 27 right fielders currently in the Hall of Fame, compared to just 15 third basemen. The only position less represented in the Hall? Relief pitchers, with eight. To compare apples to under-represented apples, I compared Bell to the average career numbers of those 15 third basemen, with one slight change: I inserted Adrián Beltré (who will undoubtedly be a first-ballot shoo-in at the Winter Meetings in 2023) in place of John McGraw, who played third base but was elected to the Hall as a manager.

Then, just for kicks, I took the average numbers of the 16 non-Hall-of-Fame third basemen who ranked just below Bell in WAR. Here’s what his numbers look like squished in the middle of those two averages.

As expected, Bell doesn’t make an inarguable case with his bat, though his 2,514 hits are more than the average Hall of Fame third baseman. But one category, in particular, stands out. Look at dWAR (Defensive Wins Above Replacement), where his 23.8 mark trails only Brooks Robinson and Adrián Beltre. Should defense be enough to get you into the Hall of Fame? Not if you hit .199, but at .279/.341/.406 with 2,500 hits? It should count for something. It should count for a lot, actually.

Jay Jaffe is the inventor of the JAWS system, and in his book “The Cooperstown Casebook: Who’s in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Who Should Be In, and Who Should Pack Their Plaques” he describes Bell thusly:

“He’s very close to the standards on all three fronts, but the foundation of his case rests on defense, and the line for third basemen to get into Cooperstown starts in Oneonta, so don’t wait up.”

He makes a good point that I alluded to a bit earlier: There should be more third basemen in the Hall of Fame. You can’t, in good faith, measure the offensive numbers of a guy playing the hot corner every day relative to the guy whose position mostly just asks him to catch a fly ball once in a while and throw the ball hard (catchers already get this sort of consideration, as do — to a lesser extent — shortstops and center fielders). In fact, voters have rewarded big offensive numbers by third basemen who didn’t man their position well: Edgar Martinez aside, Chipper Jones and Paul Molitor were actually below-average defenders, by this metric.

Again, you shouldn’t make the Hall on defense alone, but if you’re a solid hitter for the better part of two decades, and also won, ohh, say, six Gold Gloves in a row, there’s a value in that which shouldn’t be ignored.

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Of note: if we’re making the case for Buddy Bell, we first have to make the case for Scott Rolen, who outpaces Bell in… well, let me just expand that spreadsheet by one column…

Perhaps the line doesn’t extend all the way to Oneonta, but Bell definitely has a good view of Rolen’s No. 27 jersey in the queue. Still, I had to know if I was — pun unintentional, but acknowledged — way off base in suggesting that Bell should be in. I sent Jaffe a DM on Twitter and asked his thoughts.

“When you consider that third basemen are underrepresented in the Hall, I think without apology that there’s room for Rolen, (Graig) Nettles, (Ken) Boyer, Bell and Dick Allen,” he replied.

If the inventor of the JAWS system says he should be in, that’s good enough for me. Now I just have to wait until I’m on a veteran’s committee someday.

Photo by Owen Shaw/Getty Images

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