Larry Walker Is In the Hall of Fame, Overcoming the Coors Field Bias

Last January, in his 10th and final year of eligibility, Larry Walker was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Walker’s election was seemingly impossible six years ago, when he received the 17th most votes and garnered just 11.8% support in an election requiring at least 75% for induction. On the day Walker got the Hall call, January 21, 2020, everybody knew that Derek Jeter would be an easy first-ballot inductee. The two elements of suspense were whether Jeter would join his Yankees teammate Mariano Rivera as a unanimous pick and whether Walker would also get the call. When Hall of Fame President Tim Mead that “we have two new Hall of Famers,” close observers knew that it meant that Walker had scaled all the way to the top of the Cooperstown mountain.

Just over one year ago, Walker was supposed to get his plaque and give his speech at the Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual enshrinement ceremony was canceled. Walker (along with Jeter and Ted Simmons) had to wait another year before getting his day in the Cooperstown sun. The induction ceremony is finally here, taking place tomorrow.

When it comes to the Hall of Fame debate, Walker’s case was controversial. He was a five-tool player, the type that is beloved by those who study advanced baseball metrics. And yet, because of an injury-plagued and shortened career, he fell short of many of the benchmark offensive numbers that Hall of Fame voters usually like to see, especially in an era filled with eye-popping statistics. And, of course, there is the Coors Field effect. The Mile High ballpark yields offensive numbers that disorient analysts, giving them a buzz or fog from which it’s hard to gauge a player’s true merit.

Walker’s Last Chance

The Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) Hall of Fame ballot of 2020 represented Larry Walker’s 10th and final year of eligibility. Before 2018, he had never pulled above 22% in the vote, bottoming out at 10.2% in 2014, when 18 players received more than his 58 votes. However, a cause developed around him. His voting percentage surged to 34% in 2018 and then 55% in January 2019, still far short of the 75% needed but a positive trend.

As writers started revealing their ballots (reported on Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame tracker), it was clear that many hearts and minds were being changed. Minutes before the official announcement, the tracker had Walker at 83.6%. Those of us who follow the vote trends closely know that the tracker almost always over-estimates a player’s final tally because the voters who choose to keep their ballots secret tend to be a bit more stingy. Anyway, the multi-talented outfielder for the Montreal Expos, Colorado Rockies, and St. Louis Cardinals made it over the finish line.

Because of his 72.7 career WAR (Wins Above Replacement), Walker was a popular candidate in the sabermetric community, popularity that fueled his stunning rise from the ballot doldrums to a Hall of Fame plaque. Among the larger community of voters, spending half of his career in the thin air of Colorado cast doubts on the degree to which his statistics were inflated by those years in Coors Field. Now, remember that WAR is supposed to take ballpark effects into account but Coors is a special brew among baseball diamonds and there is considerable skepticism about whether WAR is up to the task to account for the unique effect it has on baseball statistics.

This piece will start by putting perspective on the historic voting surge that Walker enjoyed. Next, I’ll recap the highlights of his career. Finally, I’ll discuss the pros and cons of Walker’s Cooperstown case, including one of the most original analyses of the Coors effect that you’ll ever see. Walker is the first player in the 28 years of the Colorado franchise to earn a spot in Cooperstown and his plaque will have a Rockies logo on it.

Finally, during the piece and at the end, I’ll also pay homage to Walker’s role in the continuing honors for key players on a team that no longer exists, the Montreal Expos.

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Cooperstown Cred: Larry Walker (RF)

Elected to the Hall of Fame in January 2020 with 76.6% of the vote

• Montreal Expos (1989-94), Colorado Rockies (1995-2004), St. Louis Cardinals (2004-05)
• Career: .313 BA, 383 HR, 1,311 RBI
• Career: 141 OPS+, 72.7 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• 7-time Gold Glove winner
• 5-time All-Star
• 1997 MVP with Rockies (.366 BA, 49 HR, 130 RBI, 178 OPS+)
• From 1997-2002, averaged .353 with a 157 OPS+
• 3-time batting champion (1998, 1999, 2001)
• 9th most double plays turned as RF (40) in MLB history

(Cover Photo: Denver Post)

Portions of this article were originally posted on July 20th, 2017. The piece has been updated multiple times since then, including with the new induction date of September 8th, 2021.

Larry Walker: Beating the BBWAA Clock

Larry Walker nearly ran out of time, with 2020 being his last year on the ballot. There was very little precedent for a player skyrocketing from 22% to 75% in just three ballot cycles while the clock is ticking.

The kind of three-year surge that Walker completed to wind up in Cooperstown via the BBWAA ballot hasn’t happened since the early years of Hall of Fame voting. The last player to go from under 22% to over 75% in the span of four voting cycles was Herb Pennock, who went from 18.2% in 1945 to 77.7% in 1948.

Several years ago, the Hall of Fame decided to shorten each player’s time on the ballot from 15 years to 10 years. At the time, many pundits speculated that the shortened timeline would make it harder for borderline players to make it to over 75%. Bert Blyleven, Jim Rice, Bruce Sutter are players in the last 15 years who needed more than 10 ballots to get the call to Cooperstown.

What’s happened, however, is that the shortened timeline has focused the minds and created urgency among the BBWAA writers. Before Walker, there were two recent examples of late surges by players who recently have been inducted into the Hall of Fame on their 10th and final ballot.

Tim Raines went from 46% in his 7th year to 86% in his final year on the ballot. Edgar Martinez was at 43% in his 7th year and in his 10th made it all the way up to 85%, earning him a Cooperstown plaque. The hill that Walker climbed was much steeper. Still, he had a passionate constituency and the ballot was less jam-packed in 2020 (with Jeter the only new candidate who was an obvious Hall of Famer).

Ultimately, Walker became the first player since 1956 to make the jump from under 55% to over 75% in one year.

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Career Highlights

Larry Walker made his Major League Baseball debut with the Montreal Expos in 1989, becoming a solid regular in 1990, the first of five excellent seasons. The British Columbia-born Walker, who went by the nickname of Booger, was far and away the best Canadian-born player in the history of the Expos and, in a different economy, would likely have been a cornerstone for the franchise.

1994 should have been the greatest season in the team’s history. The Expos, led by Walker, Marquis Grissom, Moises Alou, and a skinny 22-year old pitcher named Pedro Martinez, had the best record in baseball before the players’ strike that would ultimately end the season and cancel the World Series.

After the strike-shortened ’94 season, the Expos gutted their powerhouse team. Center fielder Grissom, starter Ken Hill and closer John Wetteland were traded and Walker was allowed to walk away as a free agent. He signed a four-year, $22.5 million contract with the fledgling Colorado Rockies, a franchise entering just its third season of existence.

A Decade at Coors Field

1995 marked the season in which the Rockies moved from Mile High Stadium into their new jewel of a ballpark on Blake Street, Coors Field. Larry Walker and his fellow Blake Street Bombers took quickly to their new ballpark, winning 61% of their games there in 1995, enough to propel them to the playoffs under the brand new Wild Card format. The Rockies were bounced in the first round of the playoffs but baseball was super hot in the Mile High City.

After an injury-plagued 1996 campaign, Larry Walker broke out in 1997 with his lone MVP season. The numbers were other-worldly: 49 home runs (13 more than his previous career high), 130 RBI (29 more), a .366 batting average (far better than his previous best of .322), and a ridiculous 1.172 OPS. Even when adjusting for ballpark effects, Walker’s OPS+ was 178, 2nd best in the N.L. to Mike Piazza.

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1997 was the beginning of a brilliant 6-year run where Walker hit .353 with a 1.089 OPS (157 OPS+). Remember, OPS+ is designed to adjust for ballpark effects. 100 is league average so a 157 OPS+ is 57% better than average. Anyway, Walker’s 157 OPS+ for those six years was 6th best in the majors for any player with at least 2,500 plate appearances.

Here’s the top 10 list (showing the actual OPS as well for point of comparison):

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Nearing the end of his career, in the middle of the 2004 season Walker was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals, a super team that won 105 games in the regular season before losing the World Series to the “break the curse” Boston Red Sox. Battling a herniated disc in his neck, Walker only lasted one more year, his career ending after the 2005 season at the age of 38.

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How Larry Walker Compares to Other Hall of Fame Right Fielders

There were two chief complaints against Larry Walker’s candidacy for the Hall of Fame: #1, that he didn’t last long enough to accumulate the “counting” stats that you would expect from a corner outfielder and #2, that his statistics were overly skewed by the ten years when he called Coors Field his home ballpark. Remember, statistics like OPS+ and WAR are supposed to take ballpark factors into account but there are many who question whether the Coors effect is fully accounted for in these metrics.

Anyway, understanding the context-defining virtues of OPS+ and WAR, let’s look at Walker’s numbers and compare them to eight other legends already enshrined in Cooperstown (choosing among right fielders who played their entire careers after World War II).

These are ranked by OPS+. The goal here is to classify Walker with these eight greats in terms of pure hitting results.

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OK, I think you’ll understand now why I put the ballpark-and-hitting-era OPS+ into this chart. If you show just Walker’s raw on-base% plus slugging%, it’s better than every Hall of Fame right fielder of the past 70 years, including Hank Aaron! However, even after stripping away the Coors Field factor, Walker’s OPS+ is still better than Hall of Fame power hitters Vladimir Guerrero, Reggie Jackson, Al Kaline, and Dave Winfield.

The Counting Stats Problem

Where Larry Walker falls dramatically short is in the counting stats. His 2,160 hit total is low and his 383 home runs are low for a right fielder who didn’t accumulate 2,500 hits, much less 3,000. This is, of course, because Walker only logged 8,030 career plate appearances.

This was one of the complaints about Walker’s Cooperstown candidacy and it was a valid one: he battled injuries throughout his career and had a hard time staying on the field consistently. Only once in his career did he play as many as 144 games (his MVP season, when he played in 153). During his 17-year career, Walker played in just 1,988 of his team’s 2567 games, a 77% total. By comparison, fellow Expos Hall of Famer Andre Dawson played in 89% of his team’s games from 1977-1993, the 17 years in which he was a full-time player.

Now, let me offer a quick reminder that Wins Above Replacement is another “counting” stat. The longer you play, the higher your WAR is likely to be. The fact that Walker’s WAR is almost the same as Reggie Jackson’s is notable, considering that Reggie played in 832 more games. Because of the value gained by his vastly superior defensive and base-running metrics, Walker’s WAR is also higher than Dave Winfield’s, Tony Gwynn’s, and Dawson’s, despite his significantly shorter career.

Larry Walker vs. Andre Dawson

The comparison to Dawson is particularly relevant because, in many ways, Larry Walker was Dawson’s heir in right field in Montreal (if we forget the Mitch Webster/Hubie Brooks era). The Hawk, feeling the pain in his knees on Olympic Stadium’s artificial turf, left the Expos after the 1986 season, signing a one-year blank contract with the Chicago Cubs for the 1987 campaign.

The change was good for Dawson; he hit 49 home runs, drove in 137, and won the N.L. MVP in his debut season on Chicago’s north side. In the first chart below, the basic “back of the baseball card” numbers between Walker and Dawson are compared. We’ll also show the numbers for Walker’s heir in right field in Montreal, Vladimir Guerrero, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in the summer of 2018.

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One thing leaps from the page:

Dawson was not the same quality of hitter as Guerrero and Walker. Every element of his slash line (AVG/OBP/SLG) is far, far below his right field successors in Montreal. Dawson did not play in the prolific hitting era as the others, but you can’t explain away a disparity that large based solely on playing in the ’80s vs the ’90s or 2000s.

Guerrero hit 11 more home runs in his career than the Hawk despite 1,710 fewer plate appearances. Walker scored just 18 fewer runs in his career than Dawson despite 2,739 fewer times at the plate.

Now, for our three power-hitting Expos products, let’s look at their advanced metrics.

WAR Components for Walker, Guerrero, and Dawson

With regards to WAR, I’ve broken it down by three of its key component parts, batting, fielding, and base-running. It’s not crucial to understand precisely how the numbers are calculated. What they represent is the number of runs each player created (or saved) above or below that of a replacement-level player (defined as someone you could find in AAA).

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Remember that WAR, like home runs or hits, is a “counting” statistic. The longer you play, the more “Wins” you can accumulate. The difference between WAR and a counting stat like home runs or hits is that you can go backward and many players, even Hall of Famers, do in fact lose WAR points at the ends of their careers as they’re hanging on based on their past glories and not their current production.

This was the case with Dawson: his WAR was -2.3 for the last four seasons of his career (in Boston and Florida). Still, if you exclude the Hawk’s last four seasons, he still logged 9,658 plate appearances in his first 17 seasons, more than his future outfield replacements.

As it was with the 8-time Gold Glover Dawson, Walker’s Hall of Fame case was in the totality of his game; he was an excellent hitter, fielder, and base runner.

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Vladdy and Larry

Against his near-contemporary Vladimir Guerrero, some writers made the case that, if you put Guerrero into the Hall of Fame, you had to put Larry Walker in as well. The argument was compelling and ultimately successful: Walker’s WAR is 13.3 points higher despite over 1,000 fewer plate appearances. By the WAR components, Walker was a better defensive player (also evidenced by 8 Gold Gloves), a better base-runner, and just as good a hitter as Vladdy.

But Walker was mired at the bottom half of the Hall of Fame ballot for eight years while Guerrero made it on his second try (getting a whopping 93% of the vote in January 2018). Vladdy’s quick path to Cooperstown is best explained that, from the moment he set foot on the diamond, he had a “wow” factor. Also, Guerrero is a member of an exclusive 400 home run/.300 career batting average club that Walker couldn’t reach.

Vladdy became a slam-dunk Hall of Fame player because of two key statistics: his career .318 batting average and 449 home runs. The only other players in history with that many taters and an average that high are Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Jimmie Foxx, and Stan Musial. Nice company!

The other obvious reason that Guerrero made the Hall of Fame in two tries and Walker had to wait ten years is because of the natural skepticism attached to Walker’s numbers due to the decade he spent plying his trade in the Mile High air of Coors Field. Walker’s OPS+ of 141 is nearly identical to Guerrero’s (140) and OPS+ is supposed to take park effects into account but it still doesn’t feel right because of Walker’s dramatic home-road splits.

If you look at just the career road numbers for each player, it’s not close.

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For whatever it’s worth, in 25 career games at Coors, Guerrero hit .382 with 9 home runs, 20 RBI, and a 1.134 OPS.

Finally, although it’s an irrelevant point, it’s a fun one, the matter of their nicknames. Guerrero was known as “Vlad the Impaler,” Walker was known as “Booger.” An “Impaler” is feared; the original “Vlad the Impaler” was a 15th-century Romanian prince whose reputation for cruelty gave rise to the name of Count Dracula. And of course, the name of Vladimir itself is memorable and very much in the news these days.

“Booger” was the nickname of one of the socially challenged teens in “Revenge of the Nerds.”

The Coors Effect for Larry Walker

Anyway, whether you consider him a Hall of Famer or not, Larry Walker was a great baseball player. But, but, but, the narrative goes, Walker’s statistics can’t be believed because he got a heavy buzz off the Mile High air that lightens the resistance to ball flight in Coors Field. His home-road splits are out of whack.

So let’s compare start by comparing Booger’s home-road splits for the time he spent in the Mile High City:

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Well, there’s a pretty dramatic difference here, methinks. Because those of us who are older baseball fans were conditioned since childhood to recognize a hitter’s batting average, the .383 batting average at Coors is especially eye-popping over this 10-year period.

Let’s be clear about something. There is no such thing as a career .383 hitter. Ty Cobb’s career .366 is the best ever for any player with at least 1,000 plate appearances; Ted Williams hit .344 lifetime. Since Williams hit .406 in 1941, only four players have bested .383 for an entire season (Williams, Gwynn, George Brett and Rod Carew).

Four players in 74 years. A .383 batting average is just plain silly.

Also, Walker’s .463 on-base% at Coors Field would be (if sustained throughout his career) 3rd best ever only to Williams and Babe Ruth.

His .713 slugging% at Coors Field (if sustained throughout his career) would be the best ever (Ruth’s career slugging% was .690).

These numbers are simply ridiculous, as inauthentic as a barometer of Walker’s overall skill as Bonds’ 73 home runs or Sosa’s three out of four seasons of 60+ home runs.

Comparing Larry Walker to Other Rockies

Larry Walker’s overall Coors Field average as a member of the Rockies was .384 (the .383 total from 1995-2004 includes two games as a visitor with St. Louis in 2004 in which he went 1 for 8). The .384 average is the best ever for any Rockies player with at least 1,000 plate appearances.

Using the more complete offensive number OPS, Booger blows his fellow Coloradans away. For players with at least 500 plate appearances, his 1.179 OPS as a member of the Rox is more than 100 points higher than the next best player (Matt Holliday at 1.068). So it is absolutely undisputed that Walker has been the best hitter (by a mile) in the brief history of the Colorado Rockies.

Home Field Advantage/Road Game Disadvantage

In the first 25 years (from 1995-2019) since the opening of Coors Field, Rockies hitters posted a .306 batting average and a .876 OPS in their home games, best by far in the majors. Conversely, those same hitters posted a .242 average and .690 OPS in road games, the worst in the majors.

During those first 25 years, as a franchise, Colorado had had a .549 winning percentage at Coors Field (199 games above .500). As a franchise, those same Rockies have had a .399 winning percentage in road games (407 games under .500). That’s a 150-percentage-point difference; the second biggest home-road disparity for any team during those 25 years is just 101 points (the Pittsburgh Pirates). Depending on how you look at it, the Rockies have either the biggest home-field advantage in baseball or the biggest road-game disadvantage.

However you label it, it’s fairly clear by the data that the Rockies hitters have an abnormal home-field advantage that goes beyond their familiarity with the dimensions at Coors. A visiting pitcher has to adjust to the fact that his pitches simply don’t break as much. That’s a much bigger adjustment than you might make to compensate for the Green Monster in Fenway or the short porch in right field at Yankee Stadium.

So how do we properly account for this when evaluating Walker’s Hall of Fame worthiness? What you’ll see here in the chart below is a hypothetical. I’ve re-calibrated Walker’s career numbers by doubling his road statistics during the 1995-2004 seasons and compared those numbers to his actual career.

Double the Road Stats

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Gulp. For a right fielder, this hypothetical career doesn’t look like a Hall of Fame career at all, seven Gold Gloves or not.

Is that fair? Is it fair to “double the road stats” to determine a player’s true worth? Well, it does level the playing field. It strips away the huge advantage or disadvantage of a player’s home ballpark. It can provide a greater apples-to-apples comparison among contemporary ballplayers.

But Larry Walker of course isn’t the only player in baseball history to derive an excessive benefit from his home ballpark. Peter Gammons made a point several years ago that, if you look at the career road statistics of Walker and first-ballot Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr., there are some rather surprising results.

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Whoa! If you look just at the “rate” stats, there’s no difference between the two. Griffey sailed into Cooperstown in January 2016 with 99.3% of the vote on the BBWAA ballot while Walker got a paltry 15.5%. Of course, rate stats aren’t everything. Junior piled up 630 career home runs (to Walker’s 383). If you created a hypothetical “double the road stats” calculation for Griffey, he still would have had 596 career home runs.

Still, it’s evident that Junior’s career in the Kingdome (.310 BA, .393 OBP, .605 SLG, .998 OPS) was a huge asset in building his career numbers, not as great an asset as Walker’s years in Coors but a huge asset nonetheless and nobody holds that against Griffey.

How Coors Compares to other Home-Field Advantages

The Hall of Fame is filled with players who took advantage of home cooking. Many a Cub took advantage of the short power alleys at Wrigley Field and many a member of the Red Sox took advantage of the Green Monster. It’s part of the game.

Anyway, let’s put this into context by examining how big a factor Coors Field was in Larry Walker’s career as it compares to other home-field advantages that players have enjoyed in baseball history.

Thanks to Baseball-Reference, we have an answer to questions like these. The chart below shows the best OPS splits in the history of baseball from a home-road perspective. To explain the three key columns:

OPS home = the OPS in home games for each player’s career.

OPS total = the total OPS for each player in their career (with both home and road games).

Diff = the difference (or “spread”) between the player’s OPS in home games compared to their OPS in all games.

On this chart, we’ll show the best ten “spreads” plus a few other key players of interest. I’ve set a minimum of 2,500 home game plate appearances for these splits.

The list starts in 1908, which is the first year that Baseball-Reference has splits of this type. Please remember that these are not “home-road” OPS splits but “home-everything” splits. NOTE: be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom!!

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What Does This Mean?

Every once in a while you look at something and it takes a few minutes to contemplate how extraordinary it is. Let me highlight and explain some interesting things on this chart:

Hall of Famer Chuck Klein and Cy Williams played for the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1920s (Williams) and 1930s (Klein) in the Baker Bowl. Both were left-handed hitters. The Baker Bowl’s right-field fence, 60 feet tall, was just 281 feet from home plate.

The Rockies (despite having only existed since 1993) dominate the above list. Longtime Rockies Gonzalez, Blackmon, Walker, Bichette, and Helton occupy 5 of the top 9 spots; Holliday, Castilla, Tulowitzki, Galarraga, Cuddyer, Young and Perez spent many years in Colorado as well. Rockies alums occupy 11 of the top 50 spots in the OPS home-everywhere splits in over 100 years of baseball history.

Remember, what Baseball-Reference is showing here is the split for each of these players for their entire career. 

I feel I may have “buried the lead here.” What is truly stunning about this chart is the last row, where I did a manual analysis of Larry Walker’s Coors-vs-All Parks split. Larry Walker’s OPS differential of .207 is bigger than any in the history of Major League Baseball by ALMOST DOUBLE. Walker is 6th overall on this list in the last 104 years in home-everything OPS differential, but that includes his six seasons in Montreal and his final year and a half in St. Louis. His Coors-All Parks splits are ridiculous.

The Humidor

There is one other factor that needs to be considered when evaluating the impact of Coors. Starting with the 2002 season, the team started storing all baseballs in a humidor, a temperature and atmospheric pressure-controlled chamber. The policy was implemented because of tests that proved that balls were shrinking and hardening in the lighter Mile High atmosphere.

Here is the pre-humidor and post-humidor OPS for Larry Walker, Todd Helton, all Rockies players, and all National League players. I’m including Helton for comparative purposes because he is the only other member of the Rockies that has at least 500 plate appearances both before and after the humidor was used. Helton was on the BBWAA ballot for the third time this year and finished with 44.9% of the vote.

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The difference is striking and the super-charged Coors debut was concurrent with Walker’s prime. Some other facts about the difference between 1995-2001 Coors and 2002-2019 (Coors Light, if you will):

• In the franchise’s brief history, 22 different times a member of the Rockies posted a single-season OPS of 1.100 or greater at Coors (with a minimum of 250 plate appearances): 13 of those seasons occurred in the 7 pre-humidor years, only 9 were done it in the 18 seasons since.
• Of the top 16 batting average seasons for Rockies players (again with 250 minimum PA), 14 of them took place in the ballpark’s first seven years, ranging from Dante Bichette hitting .381 in 1995 to Walker’s .461 Coors BA in 1999.
• Walker hit 30+ home runs four times in his career: all four times occurred in the pre-humidor era.
• Walker hit .350 or better four times, all between 1997-2001.

The “Pro” Larry Walker Hall of Fame argument:

Larry Walker’s prodigious performance at Coors Field, the way he took advantage of his home ballpark, was so remarkable, so far and above any other player’s home game performance in the history of the sport that, in conjunction with his all-around game, it made him worthy of a Hall of Fame plaque. The other Rockies on these lists derived fantastic benefits from Coors but none of them produced like Larry Walker did and it’s not even close.

Walker’s OPS in all home games (which includes his years in Montreal and St. Louis) was 1.068. Among players with at least 3,500 plate appearances in their home games since 1913 (the first year of the available Baseball Reference splits), only three players did better.

Three. Those three names are Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Jimmie Foxx.

Walker’s career home-game OPS is better even than Barry Bonds’. If you just took Walker’s 1.172 OPS in his Coors Field home games, he would be second only to Ruth.

OK, that’s really impressive, some might say, but because of the Mile High air, it’s as “fake” as Bonds’ 762 career home runs.

Larry Walker’s Impressive Record on the Road

So, let’s go on the road again. From 1908 to the All-Star break in 2021, there have been 429 players who have had 3,500 plate appearances or more in their road games. Larry Walker’s career road OPS of .865 is still an impressive tied for 56th best among all 429 of those players. Among near contemporaries, his .865 road OPS is better than Griffey, Sosa, Helton, Jeff Kent, Robinson Cano, Will Clark, Carlos Beltran, and Adrian Beltre.

Among non-contemporaries (albeit those who played in less prolific hitting eras), he’s higher on this list than dozens of fellow Hall of Fame players.

Of the 55 players since 1908 who have 3,500 road game plate appearances and a career road OPS better than .865…

• 32 are in the Hall of Fame
• 6 were on the 2020 Hall of Fame ballot with Walker (Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, and Gary Sheffield).
• 4 are retired but not yet eligible for the Hall of Fame (Jason Giambi, Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, and perhaps Ryan Braun)
• 5 are still active (Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, Adrian Gonzalez, Joey Votto, Nelson Cruz)
• 11 have been linked to PED’s (Bonds, Ramirez, Sheffield, A-Rod, Giambi, Mark McGwire, Juan Gonzalez, Rafael Palmeiro, Jose Canseco, Cruz, and Braun)
• Only 7 eligible non-PED-linked players have a road OPS higher than Walker’s and are not in the Hall of Fame (Fred McGriff, Lance Berkman, Carlos Delgado, Tim Salmon, Brian Giles, Dick Allen, Jim Edmonds).

Simply put, Walker’s .865 road OPS is actually a respectable number and certainly turned out not to be a disqualifier.

Oh, and he won seven Gold Gloves and was a superior base-runner. People talk about five-tool players. The tools are hitting, hitting for power, fielding, throwing, and running. Walker excelled at all five facets throughout his career.

The bottom line: considering how truly extraordinary Walker’s Coors Field numbers were, how vastly better they were to anyone else who’s ever played there, the writers collectively decided that to exclude him from the Hall of Fame because we don’t believe those numbers would be a different way of saying that no hitter on the Colorado Rockies could ever get a plaque in Cooperstown.

The “Con” Larry Walker Hall of Fame argument:

OK, this technically doesn’t matter anymore but I’ll keep this section here (written over three years ago) for posterity.

I’ve gone through this before but the “con” argument was pretty simple: Larry Walker’s years in Coors have inflated his overall “rate” stats to such a degree that his Cooperstown credentials cannot be taken seriously, especially when you consider his relatively low career “counting” stat totals. In an era with so many players who posted huge numbers, Walker just didn’t play long enough to post the numbers he needs. And not playing long enough also includes not playing enough games per season. As we saw in the Dawson comment above, Walker missed 23% of his teams’ games in his career.

Atmospheric Adjustments

I’m going to address one final issue, as it relates to the Coors effect. One of the explanations for the weak road statistics for Rockies’ players is the constant adjustments that they have to make, transitioning to and from the thin air in Colorado. Just as jet lag and lack of sleep take a toll on the human body, there is unquestionably an adjustment that has to be made for all players going from a “normal” atmosphere to the Mile High City. Rockies players need to make this adjustment all year long.

Logically, being conditioned to the Mile High air should give the Rockies an enormous home-field field advantage but might also put them at a decided disadvantage on the road. As we’ve shown, the data bears this out. Rockies hitters have the best home OPS and the worst road OPS among all MLB teams over 25 seasons.

To be best at home but worst on the road would seem to lead to the conclusion that, just as visiting teams have to deal with the altitude effects of Denver, the Rockies players have to adjust the other way on the road. The hanging curve at home bites out of the strike zone on the road. So I dove into the game logs, downloading all of Larry Waker’s box score lines onto a spreadsheet and then sorted them for all road games that occurred in the three days after the team concluded a homestand.

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You can see very clearly that, on “the day after,” Walker seemed to have, at least statistically, a bit of a Mile High hangover. However, you can also see that there are significantly fewer plate appearances due to natural days off for teams after they finish home stands. So whether this is something to explain the league-worst road numbers for Rockies batters is inconclusive at best. The “Day Two” numbers would seem to indicate that there’s no impact beyond the next day.

Conclusion

So, after all of this, does Larry Walker deserve his spot in the Hall of Fame? Do you believe in WAR? How much credit do you give for being one of the greatest home-field hitters in the history of the sport? What are the seven Gold Gloves worth?

Personally, I think Larry Walker is a worthy Hall of Famer and am glad that he made it. While his numbers were boosted by Coors Field, he was an excellent all-around player and his Coors performance was other-worldly, far superior to any other player’s performance in his home ballpark.

When he finally gets his plaque in Cooperstown tomorrow, Walker will be the bridge of the direct lineage of Expos-bred right fielders from Andre Dawson to Vladimir Guerrero. Of course, when Booger is inducted, they’ll put a Rockies logo on the cap on his plaque because his greatest years clearly were in Denver.

Tim Raines was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2017. Vladimir Guerrero was inducted in the summer of 2018. Former Expos reliever Lee Smith was inducted in 2019 (yes, I realize you might have missed that big Lee finished his career in Montreal). For a franchise that has not existed since 2004, it’s interesting that the Expos are the only team to be represented by a former player in each of the last four Hall of Fame Classes.

Gary Carter, Dawson, Raines, Guerrero, and Randy Johnson were all drafted (or signed) and nurtured in the Expos farm system. For a team that no longer exists, the Montreal Expos have featured quite a trove of great players. Larry Walker was one of those great players and he’ll be rewarded tomorrow with a plaque in Cooperstown.

Thanks for reading. Please follow Cooperstown Cred on Twitter @cooperstowncred.

Chris Bodig

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