Examining Hall of Fame case for Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers legend Reggie Smith
When you look at players who have had a very good career but are not in the Baseball Hall of Fame, most of them have some reason for why they aren’t in the Hall of Fame. However, the top three reasons are that they’re a suspected PED user, they have other “character clause” issues, or they were someone that was undervalued at the time that they played but modern statistics show that they were better than people thought.
Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers legend Reggie Smith falls into the latter category the most but, in reality, he wasn’t underrated as much as Hall of Fame voters just didn’t look at what they had available to them back in the late 1980s. That coupled with the modern stats show that Reggie Smith is perhaps, the most underrated outfielder in recent MLB history.
Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers legend Reggie Smith should have been in the Baseball Hall of Fame long ago
Reggie Smith spent 17 seasons in the majors from 1966 through 1982, spending eight seasons with the Boston Red Sox and six with the Los Angeles Dodgers and he had a career that should have put him in the Hall of Fame more than 30 years ago.
Smith is a career .287/.366/.489 hitter with 314 homers, 1092 RBI, a career OPS+ of 137, and an rWAR of 64.6. In his career, he was a seven-time All-Star, a Gold Glove winner, and he received MVP votes in seven seasons, including back-to-back fourth-place finishes for the Dodgers in 1977 and 1978, when the Dodgers went to the World Series.
He started his career off with the Red Sox but after the 1973 season, he was traded to St. Louis.
Reggie Smith had to deal with a lot of racial vitriol while with the Boston Red Sox in the late 1960s and early 1970s
Boston has a long history of racist tendencies that lasted well into the 1980s and frankly, it is still known to be one of the most racist areas in the United States today. African-American MLB players today still deal with racial slurs (there were seven known incidents of players being called the n-word in Fenway Park in 2019 alone).
So especially at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s with an owner who was a known racist, Reggie Smith was known to fight back. The Red Sox were the last MLB team to integrate racially and Smith was the first African American player for the Red Sox that was a star player.
In 2003, Smith said that he thought he was “never felt welcome in Boston,” and that he “believed it was a racist city.”
Smith fighting back against it is part of the reason why he was traded to St. Louis. He spent two years there before he went on to play with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
After his 1978 season, Smith struggled with injuries a lot, which cost him a lot of playing time. He only averaged 77 games per season in his final four seasons in the majors.
Smith later became the MLB hitting coach for the Dodgers in the mid-1990s. He was also a coach in the Pan-American Games and for Team USA in the Olympics in 2000 and he has been a minor league coach and in player development for the Dodgers since then as well. He is still in their organization as he is close to Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. For the 2021 All-Star Game, Roberts brought Smith with him on his coaching staff as “honorary manager.”
When Reggie Smith Smith spoke with Call To The Pen’s Kevin Henry in an exclusive conversation at the All-Star Game back in July, Smith said that since he joined the Los Angeles Dodgers and even through numerous ownerships, the Dodgers have always been “family” to him. He and Roberts first met when they were both with the Pan-American team and on Team USA (Roberts as a player and Smith as a coach).
In addition, they spend time together in the offseason in Jackson Hole, Wyoming as he, Roberts, and a few other current and MLB coaches and managers, including Rockies manager Bud Black, meet up there in the winter every year. Roberts was a coach under Black when he managed the Padres.
But for Smith’s playing career, when you compare his numbers to other right fielders and other Hall of Famers, it’s absolutely mind-boggling that he’s not in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Of all-time primary right fielders, here are the players before and after Reggie Smith in rWAR. Bold indicates that the player is a Hall of Famer.
10. Reggie Jackson, 73.9 WAR, 21 seasons
11. Larry Walker, 72.7 WAR, 17
12. Harry Heilmann, 72.5 WAR, 17
13. Tony Gwynn, 69.2 WAR, 20
14. Dwight Evans, 67.1 WAR, 20 (we looked at his Hall of Fame case earlier this week)
15. Reggie Smith, 64.6 WAR, 17
16. Dave Winfield, 64.2 WAR, 20
17. “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, 62.2 WAR, 13
18. Gary Sheffield, 60.5 WAR, 22
19. Bobby Abreu, 60.2 WAR, 18
20. Ichiro, 60.0 WAR, 19
21. Vladimir Guerrero, Sr., 59.5 WAR, 16
Sheffield and Abreu are both still on the ballot (Sheffield has PEDs holding his case back, though) and Ichiro will be a first-ballot Hall of Famer when he is eligible.
When you look at JAWS (which averages WAR with WAR7, or the WAR of a player in their seven best seasons), Smith is 17th all-time at 51.6. Ichiro is 16th at 51.9 and behind directly behind Smith in order is Sammy Sosa, HOFer Dave Winfield, Abreu, and Guerrero.
Smith’s career 137 OPS+ also put him in some very elite company as well among right fielders. Here is a sample of some of the primary right fielders above and below Smith. Bold indicates a Hall of Famer and italics indicates an active player.
- Larry Walker, 141 OPS+
- Vladimir Guerrero, Sr., 140
- Gary Sheffield, 140
- Reggie Jackson, 139
- Ronald Acuña, Jr., 138
- Reggie Smith, 137
- Shohei Ohtani, 137
- Al Kaline, 134
- Mookie Betts, 134
- Tony Gwynn, 132
- Tony Oliva, 131
- Roberto Clemente, 130
- Dave Winfield, 130
- Enos Slaughter, 124
- Harold Baines, 121
Smith was also a great fielder. When you look at Total Zone Runs (TZ or Rtot) which is the predecessor to Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), he had 78 TZ in his career, for an average of 4.5 per season in the majors.
For comparison, one of the best defensive outfielders of the last quarter-century (Jim Edmonds) has 80 TZ in his career, which was 17 seasons, just like Smith. Edmonds won eight Gold Gloves but Smith just won one of them.
Despite all of this, Smith got three votes on the BBWAA ballot in 1988. Since he got 0.7 percent of the vote, Smith was on the ballot once and fell off.
Next. The HOF case for Red Sox legend Dwight Evans. dark
Hopefully, the Modern Baseball Era Committee for the Hall of Fame will consider Smith on their next ballot, which will be for the Class of 2024. However, he has not been on their ballot so it will be very difficult for him to get in.