Colorado Rockies: Larry Walker belongs in the Hall of Fame
Colorado Rockies great Larry Walker exemplifies everything a Hall of Fame player should be. Despite posting career numbers that are easily worthy of induction, the outfielder is stuck in an unfortunate position in his final year of candidacy.
A 1997 MVP winner and five-time All-Star and Colorado Rockies great, Larry Walker has been on the Hall of Fame ballot for long enough. Unfortunately, the chances are rather slim for Walker, and now in his tenth and final year on the ballot, there’s just not enough time to gain the ground needed. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be in.
Colorado Rockies, OF, Larry Walker
2,160 hits / 383 HR / .313 AVG / 140 wRC+
Career WAR: 72.7
AVG HoF RF WAR: 72.7
2019 finish: 54.6%
BACKGROUND
Born in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Walker was signed in 1984 by the Montreal Expos with a whopping $1,500 signing bonus. Despite receiving such a poor bonus, Walker hit the ground running once in the Expos’ organization, immediately playing like a superstar.
In his first pro season, with the Expos’ Single-A team, Walker slashed .288/.397/.602 with 33 home runs, 90 RBI and 18 stolen bases, in 133 games. Pretty good for a 19-year-old.
Year 2 was almost just as impressive. In 128 games with the Double-A squad, Walker slashed .287/.383/.534 with 26 homers, 83 RBI and 24 stolen bases. At 20-years-old, Walker was a freak athlete with speed and power, plus he possessed an elite ability to seemingly always make contact with the bat, thanks to elite hand-eye coordination.
However, a cartridge tear in his right knee while playing winter ball in Mexico ruined his 1988 season, forcing him to sit out the entire year.
His return in 1989 was far from spectacular. Then 22-years-old and up to Triple-A ball within the Expos’ minor league system, Walker couldn’t quite match the power he showed in his first two seasons.
In 114 games, the outfielder hit just 12 home runs and slugged .421, though he maintained a strong .270 average while also proving his knee was fully repaired, swiping 36 bags. His performance proved to be good enough, as Walker was promoted at the tail end of that 1989 season, where he’d play 20 games in the majors for Montreal.
The 1990 season was Larry Walker’s first full season in the majors, and though his numbers weren’t great, he managed to put up a rookie season that earned him a 7th-place finish in the National League Rookie of the Year vote.
Walker’s 1990 rookie season
133 games, .241 AVG, 19 HR, 21 SB, 3.0 fWAR
With his first season out of the way, Larry Walker settled in and became a solid all-around player; one with speed, great defense and the ability to hit home runs. From 1990-95, Walker hit .288 and averaged 22 home runs per season, as well as 30 doubles. During that stretch, he made the All-Star team, won two Gold Gloves, a Silver Slugger award and finished within the top-10 of the NL MVP vote twice.
His best WAR season during that run came in 1992, when he tallied 5.3 fWAR, thanks to a .301 AVG and 23 home runs, not to mention 93 RBI (a career-high for him at that point).
The final season of that 6-year run, 1995, was Walker’s first year with the Colorado Rockies when he finished 5th in the MVP vote. Prior to that season, the Expos cut payroll and didn’t even offer Walker a contract. So Walker signed a four-year, $22.5 million deal with the Colorado Rockies, and went on to hit 36 home runs (a career-high at that point) and put up 4.6 fWAR.
His second season in the high altitude (1996) wound up a dud, as Larry Walker broke his collarbone and missed over 2 months. He only played 83 games, but still managed 18 home runs.
His MVP season and beyond
Then there was the infamous 1997 season, the year Larry Walker won the NL MVP award and posted a remarkable 9.1 fWAR (easily the most WAR of his career); in 153 games that season, Walker led all of baseball with 49 home runs and knocked in 130 runs. Even better, the right fielder slashed .366/.452/.720 for the Colorado Rockies. His on-base percentage led the majors and his slugging-percentage was tops in the NL, as well as his 1.172 OPS and 409 total bases.
Along with the MVP in ’97, Walker also made the All-Star team and won a Gold Glove and Silver Slugger award. If it wasn’t for Tony Gwynn‘s .372 batting average that year, Walker would’ve also had a Triple Crown to go with his collection.
From 1998-2005 — his age-31 to 38 seasons — Walker capped of his career with three more down ballot MVP finishes, including one top-10 in 1999. The slugger added 181 more home runs in those 8 seasons (an average of 22.6 per season), still displaying power even into his late 30s.
What’s more impressive, is that during the last six years of his career (2001-05) Walker slashed .316/.423/.571 and never finished a season with a wRC+ below 121.
After returning from a groin injury during the 2004 season, Walker played just 38 games with the Colorado Rockies before being traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. With the Cards in ’04, Walker hit 11 home runs (two grand slams) during the final 44 games of the season, then nearly hit .300 with six homers during the playoffs — the Cardinals lost to the Boston Red Sox in that ’04 World Series.
Larry Walker would go on to play just one more season (2005), managing to labor through 100 games while battling a herniated disk in his neck. His final numbers that season were still that of a productive player (.289/.384/.502, 15 HR), as he finished with 2.2 fWAR.
Why Larry Walker should but won’t get it
Larry Walker’s 17-year career is absolutely Hall of Fame worthy, at least going by the numbers. As you saw at the start of the first slide, his career WAR is exactly that of an average HoF right fielder.
Sure, about 60% of his at-bats were taken as a Rockie and roughly 30% at Coors Field, the place where baseballs tend to travel much more favorable for home run hitting sluggers. But even without his numbers at Coors Field, Walker is still a .282 hitter who gets on base at a 37% clip.
The problem is, Walker currently owns the third-largest home/road OPS gap… ever. Around this time last year, FanGraphs’ Jay Jaffe wrote up a piece on Walker and illustrated just how large his splits are: throughout Walker’s entire career, he owns a .203 differential in OPS, or a 1.068 OPS at home and a .865 OPS on the road. Only Chuck Klein (1928-44) and Bobby Doer (1937-51) have larger differentials, though both players are in the HoF.
Although, Jaffe goes on to look at Walker’s OPS+ (a park-adjusted version of OPS), and the former MVP’s 141 OPS+ is tied for 43rd all-time with David Ortiz and Hall of Famer Chipper Jones. The Coors Effect is there, but it’s not as if Walker ONLY benefited from the Rocky Mountains.
Currently, Walker’s 72.7 WAR is the 11th-most WAR by any right fielder ever, and he’s ahead of 15 HoF right fielders right now. If that’s not enough to illustrate that he belongs than nothing can.
But to continue with this good-then-bad analysis, the truth is Walker has struggled with the voters. After starting on the ballot in 2011 at 20.3%, he fell into the teens for several years (even as low as 10.2% in 2014). However, thanks to a growing appreciation of advanced stats and more education regarding the Coors Effect, Walker has benefited from a bit of a surge — he experienced an increase of 20.5%, putting him much closer to the threshold, at 54.6%.
The bad news… this is, of course, is Walker’s final year on the ballot, meaning he needs to almost exactly repeat his gains from this past year, an almost impossible feat to accomplish. According to Jaffe’s recently released piece on Walker’s HoF bid, if Walker were to cross the 75% threshold in 2020, it would be the second-largest two-year gain since 1966 (by Luis Aparicio, who gained 42.7% from 1982-84). The chances are certainly slim.
Although when going by The Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor — a metric that scores players’ career, with 100 resulting in a score favorable for HoF induction — Larry Walker seems like a lock, scoring a solid 148. Although, the metric wasn’t designed to account for the effects of Coors Field.
The final verdict
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As much as Larry Walker deserves a 2020 induction into the Hall of Fame, it’s rather doubtful he’ll make it the traditional way. The Coors Effect coupled with the sport’s run environment during his prime years has unfortunately put Walker too far behind. There’s simply too much ground for him to cover, and not enough time.
The good news is that there’s an excellent chance of him getting in by way of the Today’s Game Era Committee, which will be coming back around in 2022. On that ballot, Walker will be listed with far less superior players, and by then the momentum he has picked up over the past few years should perhaps pay off.
Hopefully, this is the case, as it would be a huge disappointment for a player who owns the Colorado Rockies’ best slash-line of all-time (.334/.426/.618) to be left out. Walker was one of the greatest hitters to ever play for one of the league’s youngest teams. Sure, he played in a hitter-friendly environment and benefited from a more offensive era, but Walker shouldn’t be discredited for his accomplishments.
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As one of the most used stats today, WAR was created to quantify a player’s performance; a way to objectively determine just how great a player really was, no matter the ballpark or the era. If that’s what we’re supposed to count on as true way to value players, then Larry Walker’s HoF case should be simple. Let’s hope the voters do the right thing.