Bernie Williams: Should this Great Yankee be in the Hall of Fame?

Today is the Hall of Fame induction day for Yankees great Derek Jeter. Sunday will be the 53rd birthday of New York Yankees’ great Bernie Williams. Williams was the center fielder during the height of the Yankees’ dynasty from 1996-2003; the Bronx Bombers won 4 World Championships and 6 pennants during those 8 seasons. Off the top of your head, do you know how many members of those Yankees’ squads currently have plaques in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York?

Third baseman Wade Boggs, best known for his years with the Boston Red Sox, was the first member of those Yankees teams to get a plaque in Cooperstown; he was a member of the 1996 World Championship squad and was inducted in 2005. Manager Joe Torre was inducted in 2014. He was followed by Tim Raines, a platoon left fielder on the ’96 through ’98 squads, who made the Hall in 2017 because of his exploits in Montreal in the 1980s.

Closer Mariano Rivera was the third Yankees’ player from this era to make the Hall; he was honored in the Hall’s Class of 2019. Williams, an accomplished jazz guitarist, played a key role in the ceremony by playing the national anthem and has the same honor today during Jeter’s induction ceremony.

Starting pitcher Andy Pettitte will be on the 2022 ballot for the fourth time; his Hall of Fame future is uncertain given that he debuted on the 2019 ballot with a lowly 9.9% of the vote and got just 13.7% in 2021. If he ever makes it, it will likely take many years. Then of course there is Roger Clemens, who joined the Yankees in 1999. The Rocket remains outside the Hall thanks to his PED use.

Is that all she wrote? With Jeter’s induction today, that will be just two full-time players and two supporting players from one of the greatest dynasties of all time? What about Bernie, arguably the best hitter on the Bronx Bombers from ’96 to ’03? What about catcher Jorge Posada or 20-game winner David Cone? There are legitimate cases to be made for all.

Hall of Famers on Past Yankees’ Dynasties

Let’s speculate for a moment and imagine a future when 6 or more Yankees from this era are in Cooperstown. That would follow the precedent of many great Yankee teams of the past.

• The 1927 Yankees (110-44) had 6 Hall of Famers: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, Earle Combs, Waite Hoyt, Herb Pennock
• The 1928 Yankees (101-53) had 7 Hall of Famers: Ruth, Gehrig, Lazzeri, Combs, Hoyt, Pennock, and Bill Dickey
• The 1932 Yankees (104-57) had 9 Hall of Famers: Ruth, Gehrig, Lazzeri, Combs, Dickey, Pennock, Joe Sewell, Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez
• The 1939 Yankees (106-45) had 6 Hall of Famers: Joe DiMaggio, Joe Gordon, Dickey, Ruffing, Gomez, Lou Gehrig (his final season, did not play in the World Series)

In addition, the World Champion Yankees of 1936, 1937, 1938, and 1941 also had 6 Hall of Fame members.

The dynasty teams of 1949-53 all had 4 to 5 Hall of Famers, with various combinations involving DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Phil Rizzuto, and Johnny Mize.

Will the ’96-’03 Yankees get more of its members enshrined in Cooperstown besides Boggs, Raines, Rivera, and Jeter? The upcoming years will tell us. Pettitte is eligible for another 9 years on the BBWAA ballot. Williams, Posada, and Cone have all been summarily drummed off the writers’ ballot and thus, will forever be in the “longshot” category via the “Today’s Game” Committee. The Today’s Game Committee is one of the modern incarnations of  Veterans Committee, the Hall of Fame’s “second chance” selection process.

Cone and Williams will be eligible for the 2023 ballot, while Posada will have to wait until 2028 unless the Hall of Fame changes the rules.

On this Hall of Fame induction day, please enjoy an update of this piece I originally wrote on April 22nd, 2018 about Bernie Williams, inspired by a spirited debate on the topic between two passionate hosts on MLB Network.

Debating the Hall of Fame of Bernie Williams

If you’re a baseball fan who enjoys rigorous debates, there’s no better duo to watch than MLB Network’s Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo and Brian Kenny. As the hosts of High Heat (Russo) and MLB Now (Kenny), the two don’t often appear together but, when they do, fireworks fly. A few years ago the two debated whether longtime New York Yankees center fielder Bernie Williams was worthy of the Hall of Fame.

Williams was a key member of the New York Yankees dynasty in the late 1990’s/early 2000s. He was unquestionably their best hitter between 1996-2003, the eight years that spanned four World Series wins and six pennants. Yes, he was their best hitter, better than Jeter, and better than everyone else (we’ll show this definitively shortly).

The question is whether Williams, the Yankees long-time center fielder, who had a good (but not great) regular-season career, can or should be elevated into the Hall of Fame because of his role in leading his team to four titles. Please enjoy the link below in which Kenny and Russo debate the topic on High Heat:

Is Bernie Williams a Hall of Famer? Was he the best offensive player on the '90s Yankees?@MadDogUnleashed & @MrBrianKenny make their cases on #HighHeat! pic.twitter.com/7d1iAA3Cw6

— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) April 20, 2018

High Heat and MLB Now are two of the most entertaining and enlightening shows on MLB Network. What you’ll always see is that each host is passionate about the game of baseball. Russo is an old-school fan who loves the history of the game and has an encyclopedic knowledge of that history. He believes in a “small Hall,” a Hall of Fame that is reserved for the elite of the elite.

Kenny is the most prominent on-air leader of the sabermetric movement; his show is, in his words, a show for the “thinking fan.” He’s a believer in a “big Hall,” a Hall of Fame that casts a wider net for its members (more about this at the end of the piece).

Both men, it should be noted, are hard-liners against users of Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) when it comes to the Hall of Fame.

Cooperstown Cred: Bernie Williams (OF)

• New York Yankees (1991-2006)
• Career: 287 HR, 1,257 RBI, 2,336 Hits, .297 BA, .381 OBP, .477 SLG
• Career: 125 OPS+, 49.6 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• 5-time All-Star, 4-time Gold Glove Award Winner
• Career post-season: 22 HR, 80 RBI, .850 OPS (in 121 games)
• Won 4 World Championships and 6 Pennants with the New York Yankees

(cover photo: Matt Campbell, AP)

Bernie Williams played for 16 years in Major League Baseball, his career-ending after the 2006 season, shortly after his 38th birthday. He made his debut on the Hall of Fame ballot in 2012 and received 9.6% of the vote. A year later, on a stacked ballot joined by first-timers Clemens, Bonds, Sosa, Biggio, Piazza, and Schilling, Williams’ vote share sank to 3.3% and he was drummed off subsequent Hall of Fame ballots.

Kenny, as one of the leading anchors on MLB Network, has for years bemoaned the Hall of Fame voting rules that purge players off the ballot when they receive less than 5% of the vote. Bernie is one of the players whom Kenny has mentioned for years deserved a “longer look” than just two years on the ballot.

The Fifth Member of the Core Four

In the High Heat segment, Russo referred to Williams as a “nice little player” who was part of an ensemble of excellent players. It’s true that the Yankees dynasty of the late ’90s/early ’00s had a plethora of very good players. Offensively, there was one major star (Derek Jeter) and a bunch of very good but not all-time great players such as Bernie, Tino Martinez, Paul O’Neill, Jorge Posada, and Scott Brosius.

On the pitching side, the Yankees of this era had more star power, led by Andy Pettitte, David Cone, Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina, Orlando Hernandez, and, of course, the greatest closer of all-time, Mariano Rivera.

Because Rivera, Jeter, Pettitte, and Posada stuck around until the 2009 Championship year, they’re known as the “Core Four.” I’ve always felt that the term “Core Four” has diminished the contributions of Bernie Williams to the Yankees’ dynasty. In many ways, because his career ended before the ’09 title run, Bernie was the Yankee dynasty’s “Fifth Beatle.”

Anyway, in this piece we’ll cover a couple of topics:

1. Was in fact Bernie Williams the Yankees’ best hitter in their 1996-2003 run of 6 pennants?
2. How did Williams rank in all of baseball as a hitter during his peak years (1995-2002)?
3. How does Williams rank among all center fielders in MLB history, and in the last 50 years?
4. The Hall of Fame case for and against Williams, including a comparison to 2001 inductee Kirby Puckett.

1. The Yankees Best Hitter from 1996-2003

In the High Heat debate, Kenny stated often that it was indisputable that Bernie Williams was the Yankees’ best hitter (both in the regular season and post-season) during the team’s 8-year run of 4 championships and 6 pennants. So, let’s prove the point by going to the numbers.

We’ll make Kenny’s point without referencing any “dopey stats,” the term Russo has coined for many of the advanced metrics used today.

Here are the numbers for the five members of the Bronx Bombers who accumulated at least 2,500 plate appearances from 1996-2003:

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It’s true that Jeter scored more runs and got more hits but Bernie had a higher on-base% and vastly superior power stats (home runs, RBI, and slugging%). You can’t look at these numbers without the obvious conclusion that Williams was the best hitter during this eight-year Yankees dynasty. It’s not really close.

If you look at this on a year-by-year basis, for the six years in which the Yankees won the A.L. pennant, Bernie Williams…

• 1996: led team with 29 HR, 108 Runs, .926 OPS, 2nd to Martinez with 102 RBI
• 1998: led team with .997 OPS, .339 BA, 2nd to Martinez with 26 HR, 3rd with 97 RBI (to Martinez, O’Neill)
• 1999: led team with 115 RBI, 2nd to Jeter with .971 OPS and .342 BA, 2nd to Martinez with 25 HR
• 2000: led team with 30 HR, 121 RBI, .957 OPS, 2nd to Jeter with .307 BA, 108 Runs
• 2001: led team with .917 OPS, 2nd to Martinez with 26 HR, 94 RBI, 2nd to Jeter with .307 BA, 102 Runs

By 2003, Williams was in the decline phase of his career and was no longer one of the top offensive players on the team.

Bernie’s October Record

What about the record in October? Is it possible that Bernie Williams was the Yankees’ best post-season hitter from 1996-2003, better even than Mr. November, Derek Jeter?

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Here, the answer isn’t quite as clear-cut. Jeter has the edge in all elements of the slash line but the margin is very small in both OBP and SLG. Bernie had vastly more RBI and just two fewer runs scored.

I’ve included one “dopey” statistic here, Win Probability Added (WPA, see Glossary), which measures the impact of each at bat or base-running play in terms of the increased or decreased odds of a team winning the game.

For Yankees fans, a classic example of how WPA works can be found on October 31, 2001, Game 4 of the World Series. With the score tied at 3 and two outs in the bottom of the 10th inning, the Yankees had a 54% chance of winning the game.

Shortly after the clock struck midnight, Jeter hit a solo home run off Arizona’s Byung-Hyun Kim to win the game 4-3. His WPA was 0.46 because he took the Yanks’ odds of winning from 54% to 100%. Yankees’ announcer Michael Key thus dubbed the Yankees’ shortstop “Mr. November.”

Anyway, what WPA shows is that pound-for-pound, Bernie’s at bats provided slightly more value than Jeter’s in terms of helping the Yankees win games.

2. Bernie’s Peak (1995-2002)

Let’s forget about the four rings for a moment and took a look at how good a hitter Bernie Williams was during his peak years, from 1995-2002. When evaluating the resume of a Hall of Fame candidate whose career totals fall a little shy of what you would normally see, it’s key to evaluate how good they were during their peak years. Williams has a clearly defined peak, starting in 1995, ending in 2002.

For those eight great seasons (each of which involved a post-season appearance), Bernie never failed to hit .300, batting .321 during those seasons. In addition, he sported a .406 OBP and a .531 SLG, driving in over 100 runs five times and over 90 runs seven times. He scored over 100 runs for seven years in a row (1996-’02), doing it again in 2004.

Williams made five straight All-Star squads from 1997-2001 while winning four straight Gold Gloves from 1997-2000. In an era filled with steroid-fueled offensive statistics, Bernie never made a run at the league’s MVP but still earned votes in six campaigns.

First, let’s look at how Williams ranked among all position players who played at least 50% of their games in center field and had at least 3,000 plate appearances between 1995-2002:

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For a solid 8-year period, Bernie was clearly the best center fielder in baseball, better even than Ken Griffey Jr., who is actually a year younger. Griffey was one of the game’s best players in his early 20’s and finished his career with 630 career home runs and thus was a first-ballot Hall of Famer in 2016. Still, for 8 years, Bernie Williams was better.

Throughout his career, despite his 4 Gold Gloves, the defensive metrics rate Williams as a below-average fielder. Those metrics severely depress his WAR (Wins Above Replacement). However, in spite of that handicap, his WAR was still the best at the position for those 8 years.

At the bat and on the base paths, Bernie’s offensive WAR (oWAR) was far above all others from 1995-2002. Bernie wasn’t just the best hitter on the Yankees for these pennant/championship-filled seasons, he was the best hitter among every center fielder in the game.

Comparing Williams to MLB’s Best Hitters (1995-2002)

Now, here is how Bernie’s offensive profile ranked among all of the other position players in MLB from 1995-2002, using the same minimum standard of 3,000 PA. That standard includes 151 qualifying players:

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OPS+ is one of the easiest and advanced metrics (Russo’s “dopey” stats) to understand. It’s OPS (on-base% + slugging%) adjusted for ballparks and seasonal batting trends. It’s based on a scale where 100 is average. This means that Bernie’s 142 OPS+ from 1995-2002 was 42% above the average player. He’s “only” 17th in OPS+ among all players during his best years.

For context, 7 of the players ahead of Williams on this list are linked to PEDs (Bonds, McGwire, Ramirez, Sheffield, Giambi, Sosa, and A-Rod). 6 players ahead of him are already in the Hall of Fame (Thome, Piazza, Bagwell, Thomas, Guerrero, Martinez, and Larry Walker). Albert Belle has advocates for his dominant peak performance (Russo, incidentally, is one of those advocates). Brian Giles is the only player ahead of Bernie on his list who never received any Cooperstown buzz.

Notably, virtually all of the players ahead of Bernie Williams in the key categories of OPS+ and RBI were either corner outfielders, first basemen, or designated hitters, less important positions on the defensive spectrum.

It’s also notable that, in the category of Offensive WAR (oWAR), which accounts for the relative importance of each defensive position, Bernie ranked fourth in all of baseball for an eight-year period.

3. Ranking Bernie Williams with the top Center Fielders in History

This is really the ultimate question, whether Bernie had the kind of career that ranks favorably to other great center fielders in history.

First of all, let’s agree that a center fielder does not need to be at the level of Mays, Mantle, Cobb, DiMaggio, Speaker, or Griffey to be a Hall of Famer. Brian Kenny often makes this point, that center fielders are sometimes held to impossibly high standards because of the legends who roamed the outfield in years past.

There’s one “system” that’s widely available that actually ranks players by position. It’s on Baseball-Reference, Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system. Jaffe, previously with Sports Illustrated, now with Fan Graphs, devised a system based on combining WAR and “peak WAR,” a player’s 7 best years.

On this list (you can see it here), Williams does not fare well. Bernie ranks as the 28th best center fielder in MLB history, behind 14 Hall of Famers but also 13 non-Hall of Famers. The non-enshrined who are ahead of Bernie on the list are Carlos Beltran (not eligible yet), Mike Trout (still active), Kenny Lofton, Andruw Jones, Jim Edmonds, Willie Davis, Jim Wynn, Vada Pinson, Cesar Cedeno, Chet Lemon, Johnny Damon, Fred Lynn, and Dale Murphy.

The good news is that JAWS ranks Bernie ahead of 7 Hall of Famers (Max Carey, Earl Averill, Earle Combs, Edd Roush, Hack Wilson, Hugh Duffy, and Lloyd Waner). The bad news is that the aforementioned septet were all Veterans Committee selections who played between 1888 and 1941.

All but the 19th-century player Duffy were inducted between 1961 and 1979, a period of time in which the Veterans Committee members were electing players like bouncers letting their beer-drinking buddies into an exclusive nightclub.

History Lesson: the Careers of Duffy, Carey, Roush, Waner, Combs, Averill, and Wilson

I’ll get back to the non-Hall of Fame players above Bernie Williams on the JAWS list in the “case for and against” segment towards the end of this piece. First, though, let’s take a fun little diversion here, to put some historical context behind the seven Hall of Fame center fielders who rank behind Williams on the JAWS list.

If you’re getting to your “get to the point” mode, I won’t be offended if you skip the history lesson and scroll down to the last section, “Hall of Fame, Yes or No?”

Here’s a one-sentence “elevator” pitch for each of these seven Hall of Famers, using only “old school statistics” that were known at the time the players were voted into Cooperstown:

• Hugh Duffy (inducted 1945): hit .440 in 1894, with 18 HR, 145 RBI
• Max Carey (inducted 1961): great defensive player, 2,665 hits 738 SB
• Edd Roush (inducted 1962): career .323 BA, two-time batting champion
• Lloyd Waner (inducted 1967): career .316 BA, 2,459 hits, 200+ hits 4 times
• Earle Combs (inducted 1970): career .325 BA, won 3 rings w/ Yankees
• Earl Averill (inducted 1975): career .318 BA, 100+ runs 9 times, 90+ RBI 9 times
• Hack Wilson (inducted 1979): MLB record 191 RBI (along with 56 HR) in 1930

Of these players, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Waner (nicknamed “Little Poison”) in particular was a ridiculous selection. His older brother Paul (“Big Poison”) was an excellent player and legitimate Hall of Famer, elected by the BBWAA in 1952.  Lloyd’s selection by the Veterans Committee 15 years later just makes no sense.

Lloyd did look like a true star in his first three seasons (1927-29), averaging .348 with 226 hits and 129 runs scored per season. However, he hit only .306 for the rest of his career in an era where dozens of batters hit .300 or better. Lloyd was a singles hitter who drafted into the Hall on the coattails of his older brother.

Anyway, here is how Bernie Williams stacks up statistically to these seven Hall of Famers.

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On this list, “Scoops” Carey rates above Bernie in WAR because of vastly superior defensive metrics and 738 career steals. He is one slot below Bernie on Jaffe’s JAWS list because of a lower peak score.

Averill was a legitimate Cooperstown-caliber center fielder for the Cleveland Indians for 10 years, averaging 22 HR, 108 RBI to go with a 137 OPS+. He only played 183 games in the final three years of his career.

Wilson, of Chicago Cubs fame, had a very short peak (5 years, from 1926-30). In the year after his historic 1930 campaign, he managed only 13 HR and 61 RBI. Wilson only played in 1,348 games, the fewest on this list and over 700 fewer than Bernie.

Williams numbers look Hall of Fame worthy when stacked up against these already enshrined center fielders but, in fairness, you could put the numbers of Lofton, Edmonds, Wynn, Pinson, Damon, Murphy, or many others against these seven and they would look equally as good (if not better).

The Kentucky Colonel

The most germane comp to Williams in this group is Earle Combs, another member of a New York Yankees dynasty. Combs, the “Kentucky Colonel,” was the Yankees center fielder and leadoff hitter from 1925-35.

The left-handed-hitting Combs didn’t have power (he left the home run game to teammates named Ruth and Gehrig) but he hit for a high average and drew a lot of walks, leading to a career .397 OBP.

As the table-setter for Murderers’ Row, Combs averaged 124 runs scored per season from 1925-32. He was also adept at putting himself in scoring position; he had 10 or more triples for 9 seasons in a row and three times had 21 or more three-baggers.

Combs won four pennants and three World Series titles with the Bronx Bombers, in 1927, 1928, and 1932, although he only had one plate appearance in ’28 due to injury. In 16 Fall Classic games, the Kentucky Colonel hit .350 with a .901 OPS and 17 runs scored.

Combs was either the third or fourth-best offensive player on the Yankees of this era. Obviously, Ruth and Gehrig were the top two by a country mile. Second baseman Tony Lazzeri, also a Hall of Famer, hit for a lower average but had more power. Catcher Bill Dickey, also Cooperstown-enshrined, was a rookie in 1929 and quickly emerged as another offensive force.

The ’32 World Series champions, a 107-win team who swept the Chicago Cubs in the World Series, actually featured 9 Hall of Fame players: Ruth, Gehrig, Combs, Lazzeri, Dickey, shortstop Joe Sewell, and pitchers Red Ruffing, Herb Pennock, and Lefty Gomez. That’s the most Hall of Famers for one team in baseball history.

Manager Joe McCarthy is also in the Hall giving the ’32 Yanks 10 uniform-wearing Hall of Famers.

Combs’ 1934 season ended on July 24th when he ran into a wall while chasing a fly ball. There was fear for his life; he spent two months in the hospital with a fractured skull. The Kentucky Colonel was able to return in 1935 but broke his collarbone on August 25th, nearly ending his season but effectively ending his career.

He was only 36 year years old but Combs career as a player was over. Combs became the Yankees’ first-base coach, getting six more rings over ten years. He was replaced in center field by a young player named Joe DiMaggio.

Bernie Williams vs Earle Combs

Let me start with the caveat that you could put hundreds of players into the Hall of Fame by playing the “if player X is in the Hall, then player Y should be too.” It’s especially easy to play this game with players from the first half of the 20th century, who are represented at levels vastly greater than the players in the years since.

So, with that disclaimer put aside, if Yankees center fielder Earle Combs is in the Hall of Fame then Yankees center fielder Bernie Williams definitely should be as well. Bernie, because he played much longer, put up bigger numbers while displaying legitimate home run power. He won four rings to Combs’ three.

Most importantly, as we’ve seen, Williams was the best hitter on his Yankees’ dynasty teams. Combs was the third, fourth or fifth-best offensive player on his squads. Would the Yankees have won the three World Series during Combs career if he hadn’t been there? I think the answer is obviously “yes.” The Yankees swept the ’27, ’28, and ’32 series in 4 games apiece, with Gehrig and/or Ruth the hitting star in each.

When you consider that teams since 1995 have had to navigate three rounds of playoffs to win the Fall Classic, I think it’s safe to say that Williams’ contributions were crucial to the existence of the four rings that he owns (see “Bernie’s Greatest Post-Season Hits” at the end of this piece).

The two players are similar in this sense, however: Williams was clearly the third, fourth or fifth banana in the eyes of the fans and the media, overshadowed by the emerging legends Jeter, Rivera as well as top-flight starting pitchers like Clemens, Cone, and Pettitte. Combs, obviously, played in the enormous shadows of Ruth and Gehrig.

4. Hall of Fame? Yes or No?

When making a case for Bernie Williams for the Hall of Fame, you must start with the premise that post-season baseball matters and it matters a lot. I’ve heard many BBWAA writers argue that post-season performance should be viewed as extra credit, the cherry on top of a Cooperstown sundae. Brian Kenny’s point is that, with three rounds of playoffs and one-third of all teams making it to the post-season party every year, October stats matter. A lot.

Any Hall of Fame case for Williams must start with his post-season performance and four rings as the building block. If it can be shown that Bernie was also one of the best (if not the best) players at his position in the recent history of the game, that’s what would determine whether he has the credentials for a Cooperstown plaque.

The Hall of Fame Case Against Bernie Williams

The case against Bernie’s Hall of Fame candidacy is pretty easy to make from both the “old school” and sabermetric perspective. Christopher Russo made it quite plainly in the High Heat segment with Kenny. His career was very good but not spectacular. He never contended for a MVP trophy; his highest finish was 7th in 1998.

1998 was also the only year in which Bernie’s Baseball-Reference profile (or the back of his baseball card) features any black type. Williams led the A.L. in hitting with a .339 average in 1998. It’s the only significant category that he ever led in his career.

Williams was a good hitter but not great. He only managed 200 hits in a season twice. He finished his career with a relatively low hit total (2,336) for a Hall of Famer. In addition, Bernie had good power but not great power. In an era where balls were flying out of the park at a record rate, 287 career HR is not a lot.

The final argument against Williams as a Hall of Famer is the sabermetric one, that his career WAR (49.6) is sub-standard for a Hall of Fame center fielder. Specifically, the metrics driving the WAR calculation rate Williams as an exceedingly poor defensive center fielder.

In fact, of the 158 center fielders in history with at least 4,000 plate appearances, Williams rates dead last in the WAR calculation of “runs better or worse than average from fielding.”

A Complementary Player in an Ensemble Cast?

As for Bernie Williams’ role as the best hitter on the Yankees championship squads, that’s merely a reflection of the depth of above-average talent assembled in the Bronx on those teams.

Besides the 22-year old emerging star in Jeter, the ’96 champions had future Hall of Famers Wade Boggs and Tim Raines. They had solid contributors at first base (Tino Martinez) and right field (Paul O’Neill). They had two fearsome sluggers (Darryl Strawberry and Cecil Fielder) to share DH duties. The ’96 Yanks also had a young ace starter (Andy Pettitte), an effective veteran (David Cone), a top-flight closer (John Wetteland), and an emerging stud as a set-up man (Rivera).

The ’98 championship team (a super team that won 114 games) added Chuck Knoblauch and Scott Brosius to their already prolific offense, with David Wells and Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez acquired as well to form a top-level four-man staff with Pettitte and Cone. In addition, “Core Four” member Jorge Posada was establishing himself as an elite MLB catcher. The ’99 and ’00 Yankees no longer had Wells but they replaced him with some guy you might have heard of named Roger Clemens.

The point here is essentially Russo’s, that the Yankees dynasty was an ensemble of excellent but not Cooperstown-worthy players with two young stars who would later become legends (Jeter and Rivera).

The Hall of Fame Case For Bernie Williams

Two out of the points in favor of Williams have been made already. The first is that he was the best hitter on the Yankees squads that won 6 pennants and 4 World Championships in 8 seasons. The second argument in favor, as already chronicled, is that he was demonstrably the best center fielder in the game from 1995-2002, a period spanning 8 years. He was even better for these years than Ken Griffey Jr.

But what about that pesky JAWS ranking that puts Bernie just 26th among all center fielders in MLB history. Clearly, it’s not enough to argue that he was better than the seven pre-1950 Hall of Famers we chronicled earlier because the same arguments could be made for the dozen center fielders above Williams on the JAWS list.

As we’ve seen, all of those seven were Veterans Committee selections (some of them highly questionable). Of course, if Bernie were ever to make the Hall he too would have to gain entry via a future Eras Committee, today’s version of the Veterans Committee.

As we’ve seen, Williams’ WAR (and JAWS) rankings are severely depressed by his shockingly poor defensive metrics. His numbers are so bad that it makes you question whether there’s a flaw in the system. The measurement of defensive play today, in 2019, is vastly more sophisticated than it was while Bernie was roaming center field. During the same four seasons that he won the A.L. Gold Glove, the retroactively applied metrics label him as less than mediocre as a center fielder.

Although I would concede that Williams had a subpar throwing arm, I think a high degree of skepticism is warranted that he was a terrible (or even merely bad) defensive center fielder. If the argument that Williams doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame rests on his low WAR (thanks to those metrics), I can’t go there.

Where Williams Ranks as an Offensive Player among CF

So, let’s forget about the defensive numbers for a minute and take a look at how Bernie Williams ranks as an offensive player who occupies the important defensive position of center field. This chart will show just offensive WAR (oWAR) and park-and-season-adjusted OPS+.

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Well, hello there! If you take into account all of the elements that go into the offensive component of WAR (using batting and base-running metrics that are much more understandable than the defensive component), Bernie Williams is a top 10 offensive player in the history of the game among center fielders.

On this list, he’s behind 7 Hall of Famers (all-time greats), the incomparable Mike Trout, and Carlos Beltran, who retired a few years ago. Incidentally, to me, Beltran is a certain future inductee (read all about it here).

Now, to be fair, if you rank Bernie in some other offensive categories (OPS+, HR, RBI, Hits, Runs), he does not come up in the top 10. One could argue that Jim Edmonds’ 393 HR and 8 Gold Gloves put him a cut above. One could argue that Andruw Jones’ 434 HR and 10 Gold Gloves put him two cuts above (his case discussed here). There’s Kenny Lofton’s superb base-running and defense. What about Dale Murphy and his two MVP awards?

Then there’s Johnny Damon, Bernie’s successor in center field in the Bronx; the Caveman finished his career with 2,769 hits, 408 steals, 235 HR, and two World Series rings of his own.

I would argue that, in the absence of Bernie’s four World Series rings, Edmonds and Lofton might be superior Cooperstown candidates. But Bernie has those rings, the others don’t. He’s had more important moments in baseball history than any of the other non-Hall of Famers on the list (see “Bernie’s Greatest Post-Season Hits” below).

The Lack of Center Fielders in Cooperstown in Recent History

There’s one final thing to consider: in recent history, the Hall of Fame is vastly underrepresented among center fielders. Griffey and Kirby Puckett are the only players to debut in the last 50 years to enter Cooperstown as a player with more than 50% of their career starts in center field.

As a sidebar, Baseball Reference’s JAWS rankings list Andre Dawson as a center fielder, even though he only played there for the first 8 years of his 21-year career.  The reason, according to Jaffe, is that more than half of the Hawk’s WAR value occurred during those 8 campaigns. 

KEY POINT: from 1871 to 1951 (80 years), 15 players made their debuts who would eventually make the Hall of Fame as a center fielder (with 50% or more of their career starts at the position). Since then, there is only Griffey and Puckett. It seems to me that there’s room in the Hall for not just one, but 7 to 10 more center fielders from the last 77 years.

Bernie vs. Kirby

Before wrapping up, let’s look at Puckett and Williams side by side:

WP Table Builder

Hmmm. Bernie tops Kirby in everything but batting average and WAR (thanks to those pesky defensive metrics).

Kirby won 6 Gold Gloves; Bernie won 4. Kirby made 10 All-Star teams; Bernie made 5. Kirby won 2 rings with the Minnesota Twins but Bernie won 4 with the Yankees.

Like Williams, Puckett was a post-season hero. His 11th inning walk-off home run in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series propelled the Twins to Game 7, which was won thanks to 10 shutout innings by 2018 Hall of Fame inductee Jack Morris. Puckett retired in 1996, his career cut short because of blurred vision in his right eye. Five years later he was a first-ballot inductee to the Hall of Fame.

Was Puckett a first-ballot Hall of Famer because the voters were extrapolating “what might have been” if injury had not cut short his career; was it because he was a perennial All-Star; or was it because of his post-season heroics? My guess is that it was a combination of the three and that, if the Twins had not won those two World Championships, Puckett would have waited years to make the Hall (if he made it at all).

A final fun fact about Williams as an underrated offensive player: in five different campaigns from 1995-2002, Bernie hit over .300 with more than 100 RBI and over 100 runs scored. In the last 50 years, only seven players have put up those numbers more than five times. Their names are Albert Pujols, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Frank Thomas, Miguel Cabrera, Chipper Jones, and Vladimir Guerrero.

Nice company, Bernie.

The Post-Season Star

Finally, let’s look at the argument that Williams was merely a member of an ensemble cast of above-average performers and thus his role in leading his team to four titles is overstated. While it’s true that the Bronx Bombers of 1996-2003 had a multitude of good hitters, we’ve already shown definitively that Bernie was the best of all of them. He may have had less star power than Jeter or Rivera or the starting pitchers but he was the best hitter on most of those teams.

In his 121 career post-season games, Williams was the cleanup hitter for 78 of them. For the 56 games he started during the four championship seasons, he was the fourth-place hitter in 42 of those games.

Manager Joe Torre clearly saw the value of his center fielder as an offensive cornerstone. Only 7 times out of 121 games did he bat lower than 5th in the order.

As stated earlier, the premise of a Bernie Williams Hall of Fame case is predicated on elevating the importance of October baseball. With that in mind, and with the obvious caveat that he had more opportunities than most, it’s still a relevant fact that no player in the history of the game has more post-season RBI than Bernie’s 80. Only Manny Ramirez has more than Bernie’s 22 post-season home runs.

October baseball matters more than ever in today’s 10-team playoff format. It’s ironic that, when the post-season matters more than ever, today’s BBWAA voters are routinely ignoring playoff game heroics. Because of his post-season record, Curt Schilling should be a shoo-in to the Hall and one can’t solely blame his Twitter feed for the reason he’s still on the outside.

Many other post-season heroes with significant regular season resumes have fallen far short of the Hall and been summarily booted off future ballots since Puckett’s induction: Posada, Edmonds, Cone, Keith Hernandez, and Bret Saberhagen are five names that come to mind.

Interestingly, before Morris in 2018, Puckett and Veterans Committee selection Bill Mazeroski were arguably the last two players inducted into Cooperstown in great part due to their famous October moments. With the possible exceptions of the Braves’ John Smoltz and Yankees’ second baseman Joe Gordon (a Veterans Committee pick), there’s no player who appears to have crossed the Cooperstown threshold between 2002 and 2017 based significantly in part because of their October legend. Morris was the first since 2001.

Bernie’s Greatest Post-Season Hits

For those who may have forgotten, here are the top 10 Bernie Williams moments in the post-season (all Yankees wins):

1. Game 1 1996 ALCS (vs Baltimore): walk-off solo HR bottom 11th
2. Game 2 1999 ALCS (vs Boston): walk-off solo HR bottom 10th
3. Game 1 2002 ALDS (vs Anaheim): 3-run HR bottom 8th with 2 outs gives Yankees a 8-5 lead
4. Game 4 2001 ALCS (vs Seattle): solo HR bottom 8th ties the score at 1
5. Game 3 1996 WS (at Atlanta): 2-run HR top 8th extends lead to 5-2
6. Game 5 2000 WS (at Mets): solo HR top 2nd gives Yanks a 1-0 lead in the clincher
7. Game 3 1996 ALCS (at Baltimore): 2-out RBI single top 8th ties score at 1
8. Game 2 2000 ALCS (vs Seattle): RBI single bottom 8th ties score at 1
9. Game 6 1996 WS (vs Atlanta): RBI single bottom 3rd extends lead to 3-0 in the clincher
10. Game 4 1996 ALDS (at Texas): hits solo HR from both sides of the plate in the clincher

Honorable mention, because it includes a defensive highlight: in Game 3 of the 1996 ALDS (at Texas), Bernie hit a solo home run in the top of the 1st to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead and then, in the bottom of the frame, robbed Rusty Greer of a home run. Then, in the top of the 9th, with the Yankees trailing 2-1, Williams hit a sacrifice fly to tie the score (the Yankees would win 3-2).

Bern Baby Bern!

When you combine the fact that Bernie Williams was the key offensive cog in the Yankees dynasty (with multiple significant game-altering moments) with the fact that he was the best center fielder in the game for 8 years with the fact that he was arguably one of the ten best hitting center fielders of all time, you have a Hall of Famer player.

The arguments against Bernie are legitimate. If you’re a true believer in the defensive numbers or just feel that his career numbers fall short, your argument is valid.

Allow me, though, to make one last point about the defensive metrics. Maybe they’re spot on. Maybe Bernie was a lousy defensive player; maybe Jeter was too. If it’s true, they certainly didn’t hurt the team. The bottom line in baseball is winning and the Yankees as a team were certainly able to overcome any deficiencies these two stars had with the leather. I’m not making the case that defense doesn’t matter; of course, it does. I’m saying that, going back in time using statistics, offense is much easier to measure and ring totals are easy to measure too.

Now, if your reason to not side with Bernie as a Hall of Famer is that you believe in a “small Hall” and that players such as Williams don’t belong in it, consider this: the “small Hall” ship sailed a long time ago when various Veterans Committees voted in dozens of second-tier Hall of Famers.

Williams would be a second-tier Hall of Famer and that’s fine. He was a better player than dozens of second-tier players already in. When you have a career profile similar to a first-ballot inductee from just 20 years ago (Puckett) and better than seven inductees at your position from the game’s first 70 years, you might deserve a longer look.

Per the voting rules, Bernie won’t be eligible for induction by the Today’s Game Committee until 2023 (with the committee members voting in December 2022). So there are many years ahead for people to argue for and against.

His uniform number (51) is one of the many that has been retired by the New York Yankees. Personally, I’m in favor of Bernie Williams getting a plaque in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown as well.

Thanks for reading.

Chris Bodig

Please follow me on Twitter @cooperstowncred.

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