Don Mattingly's peak value and the Hall of Fame

I think the case for him to make it in rests on his peak value. That would cover the years from 1984 to 1986 or 1987. How well did he hit in those years?

First, 1986 was the year he had his highest OPS+, 161. That is not especially high. He did lead the league. But I searched Stathead (of Baseball Reference), calling up all the guys who had 400+ PAs since 1900 in the AL/NL. Mattingly's season ranks 558th. That does not seem high enough for a guy who had a relatively short career (he's not to blame that he had injuries). It might be as high as tied for 546th. I can't tell if he is tied with many other guys who had 161. My guess is not since those guys are not alphabetically sorted.

Click here to see those search results.  

One year is not enough for peak value. From 1984 his OPS+ stats were 156-156-161. Over the 3 year period it was 158. Where does that rank?

I called up all the 3 year periods since 1900 when a guy had 1,200+ PAs and at least a 157 OPS+ (I used 157 instead of 158 in case there are some kind of rounding issues). To do this, I searched every three year age group starting with 18-20, 19-21, etc, all the way up to 40-42.

Mattingly's 158 OPS+ from 1984-86 ranks 414th (I removed 17 results ahead of him that only covered 2 years-some guys can get 1,200 PAs in just 2 years and I wanted this to be truly for 3 years). Again, this seems pretty low.

There were also 111 guys who had at least one 3 year period when their OPS+ was 157 or higher. So Mattingly's peak is not unusual. There were some guys who had multiple 3 year periods, some of which overlapped.

From 1987-89 his OPS+ stats were 146-128-133 (and 136 for the entire period). So his numbers were declining quickly. Then his OPS+ for the rest of his career (1990-95) was just 105, with a high of 120.

Here are some players whose best 3 year OPS+ is higher than Mattingly's

 

Bobby Murcer  160

Brian Giles  161

Frank Howard  173 

Jim Edmonds  163

Pedro Guerrero  165 

Will Clark  163

 

None of them are even being considered for the Hall. 

Maybe his strongest stat was total bases. Here are his best years:

1984) 324

1985) 370

1986) 388

1987) 318

 

Since 1984 and 1987 are so close, I decided to look at a 4 year period here instead of 3. His 388 in 1986 is tied for 52nd highest ever and his 370 in 1985 is tied for 106th. Good ranks. But I don't think they are high enough given that his overall career numbers are not great. And 2 years is not enough for a peak.

 

He had 1,400 TBs in those 4 years. That ranks 80th all-time (again, I searched by all 3 year age groups starting at age 18). Pretty good, but I don't think that is enough for the Hall. 

 

One thing in his favor is that only 30 guys ever had at least one 3 year period with 1,400+ TBs. So that puts him in fairly select company. But this is biased towards Mattingly since the cutoff of 1,400 just barely lets him in. I also used a 1,350 TB cutoff and in that case there are 47 guys who ever had at least one 3 year period with that threshold. So that would make Mattingly's peak less impressive. And we have to remember he played a 162 game schedule while before 1961 the schedule was 154 at the most.

 

One final thing. He did rank high in SLG in the AL from 1984-1986: 2nd-2nd-1st. But OBP was much less impressive. His only years in the league leaders during his career were 1984 (10th) and 1986 (5th).