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The most wonderful thing about the wonderful Johnny Damon was that he did nothing wonderfully. He swung the bat one-handed; all baseball fans know that good left-handed hitters have gorgeous swings, the kind of swings you want to bottle and drink with friends on weekends in the mountains. Chateau de Griffey. Hill of Billy Williams. Lafite Will Clark. Not Damon. His awkward, jumpy, one-handed, swing looked like an old six-pack he picked up at a rummage sale near Daytona Beach. His left-handed throws from the outfield were so weak and ugly that you would have sworn he was actually right-handed; I once saw Damon throw a baseball directly into the ground, like he was spiking it after scoring a touchdown. He was very fast, yes, especially...
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I grew up as a baseball fan with those mid-90s Royals. I remember the hype Damon got, with his appearance on the cover of the Athlon preview for the 1996 season, and the commercial he appeared in with George Brett before that season. It was fun to watch him come to prominence with the Red Sox and Yankees but I’ll never forget his early days defined by his unlimited potential.
What was the stat you (or someone) wrote about when Damon was still playing? It was something like Damon could be the only player in history with 3000 hits, 500 doubles, 100 triples, 250 HR and 400 SB, or some such thing. Maybe there was more to it, like 1000 RBI and 1000 walks.
Whatever it was, it was pretty remarkable.
He had over 1100 RBIs, 500 doubles, 400 SBs and 1000 Walks. He ended up with 235 HRs and 2,769 Hits. If he had a full 38 year old season and one more, with over 600 ABs, he probably could have gotten to 3,000 Hits and for sure to 250 HRs. But he didn’t really fall of a cliff. His decline was steady.
One other thing I noticed on BBR is that he played in at least 141 games every season except his first and last. So, even though he wasn’t a guy to play 155+ games, he avoided any serious injuries & put in a lot of full seasons, which I”m sure helped him compile his numbers.
I got to briefly meet Damon when the Wilmington Blue Rocks retired his minor league number. George Brett and Mike Sweeney were also there, and it remains a highlight of my life as a baseball fan. All three were extremely nice guys who talked to us schlubs in the VIP section like we belonged there, and talked baseball, and were generally great. Damon, in particular, stood at a fence and signed autographs for kids who WEREN’T in the VIP section, probably for ten minutes, while the Blue Rocks PR people kept telling him he had to leave. But he just stood there signing. I wasn’t necessarily a Johnny Damon before then (I’m an Orioles fan). But I have been since that night.
Joe, I think if Damon had gotten to 3,000 hits, he’d be in (or would get in) to the HOF. I know you think you won those arguments, but I don’t think you could win enough of them if he had reached that milestone. That said, Pete Rose? A great player? Batting average? That’s meaningless, given the goofy way batting average is computed Hits? Really, he was just a compiler, everyone knows that… Before people lose their minds, the Pete Rose stuff is all said tongue in cheek.
So of course every player with 3000 hits is either in the HoF, or has been roided out or is active. That’s pretty powerful evidence for saying that Damon would’ve gotten in with 3000 hits. So has any player gotten more hits than Damon and not gotten in (excluding roid ragers)? There’s two of them: Baines isn’t in and won’t be, and Vizquel rather famously got that big 37% last December.
…
Damon added lots of WAR from baserunning and avoiding DP’s. His Rdp is 49, which I’m sure is one of the all-time highest, perhaps even the #1 highest. I don’t know how to check. I looked at several superstars and none of them is anywhere close to 49. So I’d say that Damon *was* truly wonderful at at least one thing. 🙂
you could check it with the baseball reference war database which is made available here https://www.baseball-reference.com/data/war_daily_bat.txt
top 3 are
Ichiro 56.2
Damon 49.5
Larry Bowa 36.5
what about the rdp for Ty Cobb and Rickey Henderson, whom one would expect to avoid hitting into double plays?
well, I checked. The rdp for Ty Cobb is zero; that presumably means that the data was not available for Cobb. But Rickey is at 3. I am not sure I understand what this is about. In his first season (1979) Rickey’s rdp was 1. In most seasons, it was zero. And it was never higher than 2 for any season by Rickey, nor lower than -1.
Neat! Thanks for looking it up and giving the source, I had forgotten about that .csv file. I never would’ve even thought about Larry Bowa. Now I’m wondering just what Damon and Bowa did to minimize their GIDP’s… they must’ve had a conscious desire to avoid them, right? (Ichiro does make sense being on that list.)
I think if Damon got 3000 hits and stayed on the ballot long enough, he could theoretically have picked up enough support, based on his counting stats and some advanced stats, to be considered by a future Veterans Committee. But he’d suffer on a stacked ballot. There’s no guarantee that he’d stay on the ballot. And the new 10 year limit would hurt him in that respect. If it was a 15 year ballot, then maybe he’d be one of those guys that gets a second look later on in the process. If I had to guess, I think the writers wouldn’t get all the way there either way. And I don’t think he’d be at the top of the list for a Veterans Committee, which has been notorious (up until the last one) for not actually voting many players in. He’s would have been the longest of long shots even with the 3000 hits.