My Case for Why Big Mac Doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame

The exclusive purpose of this blog is to write about industry issues as it relates to my job as a digital media venture capitalist; however, Mark McGwire’s Hall of Fame status has always bothered me (even before the steroids allegations) so I figured I would use this forum to discuss it in public given all of the news about him in lately.

Without getting into the debate as to whether players who used steroids should get into the Hall at all, I’ve always believed that McGwire wasn’t Hall of Fame material simply based of his stats. Sure, he hit a ton of home runs, but he never had more than 161 hits in any season and only had seven 100+ RBI plus seasons. Furthermore, of the 25+ players in the Hall with with over 400 HR’s, none has fewer hits or runs than McGwire and only 1 (Duke Snider) has fewer RBI’s. Even more telling, of all the players in the Hall, I couldn’t find one inductee other than Phil Rizzuto who had both fewer than 1650 hits and 1450 RBI’s in a career as is the case with McGwire. And, if you recall, in the case of Rizzuto it took nearly 40 years and the Veteran’s Committee to get him in. Even the controversial choice of Kirby Puckett, despite playing in nearly 100 fewer games than McGwire, had 700 more career hits than Big Mac.

If I had to compare the stats of McGwire to any other non-steroid era player, it would be Dave Kingman. Below is a comparison of their careers:

While the HR disparity jumps of the page, I think it is safe to say that steroids most certainly inflated Big Mac’s totals. If you assume that without steroids, McGwire would have hit just 6 or 7 fewer long balls each year, that would reduce his career HR total by approximately 100. If 80% of those balls were instead long outs, that would reduce McGwire’s hit, RBI and batting average to the point where it would be even closer to Kingman’s.

I know I said at the beginning of this post that I wouldn’t get into he debate as to whether those who used roids should be in the Hall at all; however, I do think it is more than fair to look at a player who we know has used steroids and extrapolate what his stats would look like had he not used performance enhancing drugs. As is the case with McGwire, HR’s is the only stat of his that is close to “Hall worthy” and one can make an argument that part of the reason for the big homer number was his dependence on roids. Take that benefit away and make a few adjustments to his stats, and you get nothing more than Dave Kingman’s career. Given that Kingman hasn’t come close to getting elected, why should it be any different for McGwire?

Here’s one other fun comparison before I wrap this up. Below is a comparison of McGwire to Jose Canseco’s career stats. These are even more similar to the McGwire/Kingman analysis and how often do you hear the argument that Canseco deserves to be in the HOF?