Will Lou Whitaker Join Alan Trammell in the Hall of Fame?

In 2018, six living players were inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Longtime teammates with the Detroit Tigers, pitcher Jack Morris and shortstop Alan Trammell, were among them. It was a glorious day in Cooperstown, and yet it was a day in which it felt as if the distinguished six were missing one specific player who would have made it a splendid septet. That one player was second baseman Lou Whitaker, Trammell’s longtime double-play partner. Whitaker and Trammell played 1,918 games together with the Tigers, the most by any double-play combination in Major League Baseball history.

Think of some of the great duos in popular culture: Tom & Jerry, Bert & Ernie, Kirk & Spock, Holmes & Watson, Han & Chewie, Bonnie & Clyde, or Abbott & Costello. It’s hard to think of one without the other. Trammell without Whitaker is like peanut butter without jelly or macaroni without cheese.

Yesterday, the Tigers announced that Whitaker’s uniform number (#1) would be retired on August 6. The Tigers had initially announced the intention to retire Sweet Lou’s number on December 17, 2019, a week after he fell short of the Hall of Fame on the Modern Baseball Eras Committee ballot (on which catcher Ted Simmons and union chief Marvin Miller were elected). However, the retirement ceremony has been long delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Whitaker’s jersey number is the 10th to be retired by the Tigers. The others are Trammell, Morris, Charlie Gehringer, Hank Greenberg, Al Kaline, Sparky Anderson, Hal Newhouser, Willie Horton, and Jackie Robinson (whose #42 has been retired by all 30 MLB franchises).

Before the Modern Baseball Eras Committee vote, Whitaker’s only chance at the Hall of Fame had been his lone appearance on the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) ballot in 2001. On a stacked ballot with many famous first-timers, the BBWAA collective did not see the value of Lou Whitaker, conferring upon him just 15 votes (2.9% of the electorate). Because the Hall has a 5% minimum rule, Whitaker became ineligible for all future writers’ ballots for the next 14 years. Whitaker’s next chance at a plaque in Cooperstown will be on the next Modern Baseball Eras Committee vote in December 2023.

In this piece I’ll share why Whitaker is supremely worthy of the honor of joining Trammell and Morris in the Hall of Fame.

Cooperstown Cred: Lou Whitaker (2B)

• Detroit Tigers (1977-1995)
• Career: .276 BA, .363 OBP, .426 SLG, 244 HR, 1,084 RBI, 2,369 Hits
• Career: 117 OPS+, 75.1 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• 4th most DPs turned for 2B in baseball history
• 1978 A.L. Rookie of the Year
• 5-time All-Star
• 3-time Gold Glove Award Winner, 4-time Silver Slugger

(cover photo: USA Today Sports)

Lou Whitaker: Before the Major Leagues

Louis Rodman Whitaker Jr. was born on May 12, 1957, in Brooklyn, New York. His mother moved the family (without Lou Sr.) to Martinsville, Virginia when Lou Jr. was just one year old. Martinsville is a small town in the southern/central part of the state, about an hour south of Roanoke and an hour north of Greensboro, NC. Lou grew up in a house with 15 others, including his grandmother, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins.

At the age of 18, Whitaker was drafted as a third baseman by the Detroit Tigers in the 5th round of the 1975 player draft. The next year, the Tigers drafted Alan Trammell and pitchers Jack Morris and Dan Petry, forming the building blocks that would eventually lead to a World Series title in 1984.

Trammell and Whitaker were roommates at the team hotel in St. Petersburg, FL for the ’76 Fall Instructional League. That fall, Whitaker was moved to second base to form a keystone duo with Trammell. The pair played together in Montgomery, Alabama (AA ball) in 1977 and became close friends.

“We didn’t have anybody else. We comforted each other a little. If one of us had a bad night, the other one wouldn’t let him stay down. We became pretty close.”

— Alan Trammell (in Whitaker’s SABR Bio)

The dynamic duo led the Rebels to the South Atlantic League championship after which both young infielders were promoted to the major leagues.

Early Years in Detroit (1977-82)

Lou Whitaker (at the age of 20) and Alan Trammell (at 19) both made their Major League Baseball debuts on September 9, 1977, penciled into the starting lineup by manager Ralph Houk. The Tigers were out of contention for the 5th straight season and could afford to give playing time to young prospects.

The team lost Whitaker’s and Trammell’s debut tilt to the Boston Red Sox but the young double-play combination impressed. Whitaker went 3 for 5 with a double, RBI and run scored; Trammell went 1 for 3 with a run scored. The duo turned their first double play together the next day.

Trammell started more games in September 1977 because he was replacing a .197 hitter (Tom Veryzer) while the incumbent second sacker was veteran Tito Fuentes, who hit .309 for the Tigers in’77. Anyway, the Tigers parted ways with Veryzer and Fuentes in the off-season, paving the way for the young keystone combo to play full time as official rookies in 1978.

The left-handed hitting Whitaker (who hit .285 with 58 RBI) was the ’78 A.L. Rookie of the Year, besting Trammell and Milwaukee’s Paul Molitor. Thanks in part to the young DP combo, the ’78 Tigers won 86 games, an improvement of 12 games from ’77 and the team’s first winning season since 1973. Houk retired after the ’78 campaign and was replaced by Les Moss. 53 games into the 1979 season, however, Moss was fired and replaced by Sparky Anderson, the former skipper of the Cincinnati Reds. Sparky would manage Whitaker for the rest of his MLB career.

Overall, in his first five MLB seasons, Lou Whitaker was a decent but inconsistent batsman and a mostly excellent fielder. Although Kansas City’s Frank White won the Gold Glove for each of those five seasons, modern metrics (Total Zone Runs) from FanGraphs list Whitaker as easily the best defensive second sacker over those years. Using “old school” statistics, Whitaker turned the most double plays at 2nd base from 1978-82 and had more total chances than White.

Offensively, Whitaker had a second half surge in 1982, hitting .315 with 10 HR and a .507 slugging percentage in 71 games after the All-Star break. For that and his sterling work defensively, Sweet Lou was awarded a 5-year, $3.5 million contract in the off-season.

All-Star Years (1983-87)

In the early years of the Sparky Anderson regime, the Detroit Tigers were an above-average but not contending team. Then, in 1983, the Tigers won 92 games, not coincidentally because of breakout offensive seasons for both Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell along with a 20-win season from Jack Morris.

In 1983, Whitaker established career-high benchmarks in batting (.320), hits (206) and doubles (40), totals he would never surpass. He made his first All-Star team, won his first Silver Slugger and won his first Gold Glove even though, ironically, today’s metrics pegged it as the least effective defensive season at that point of his career. Still, by WAR (6.7), it was one of the best two seasons of his 19 years on the diamond. Whitaker finished 8th in the A.L. MVP voting.

The 1984 Tigers famously got off to a 35-5 start, en route to 104 regular season wins and a World Championship. Whitaker did his part, hitting .315 with a .811 OPS during that 35-5 start. His overall first half was good enough to earn another All-Star berth, this time as the A.L. starter.

While Trammell, Morris and right fielder Kirk Gibson became household names during the ’84 postseason, Whitaker did not make his mark, hitting just .219 with no RBI in 8 playoff games.

In the three years that followed (1985-87), Sweet Lou remained an All-Star each season and developed more power, hitting 20 home runs in ’85 and 21 in ’86. The highlight of the ’86 season was in the All-Star Game, in which Whitaker hit a two-run home run off the Mets’ wunderkind ace Dwight Gooden. The blast proved to be the key blow in the A.L.’s 3-2 victory.

The Tigers returned to the playoffs in 1987 but lost in 5 games in the ALCS to the Minnesota Twins, with Whitaker hitting just .176. The one highlight of that ALCS loss was a solo home run in Game 2 off future Hall of Famer Bert Blyleven.

In terms of the over-arching narrative of the respective careers of Detroit’s keystone combo, Trammell finished 2nd in the MVP voting in a career best season.

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Lou Whitaker’s Productive but Underappreciated Final Years (1988-1995)

In 1988, Lou Whitaker was not selected to the All-Star Game for the first time since 1982. Ironically, the A.L. starter at 2nd base (Paul Molitor) only played one game at the position during the entire season. Molitor had been moved over to second base briefly at the end of the 1987 season and was printed on the ballot at 2nd base. Anyway, Whitaker was passed over for a backup role by the Angels’ Johnny Ray (who was hitting over .300) and the Mariners’ Harold Reynolds, that team’s lone representative. Sweet Lou would never be selected to the Mid-Summer Classic again.

Whitaker’s ’88 season ended ignominiously in early September; he tore cartilage in his knee while dancing with his wife at an anniversary party. The Tigers desperately missed Sweet Lou’s bat down the stretch. His replacement (Jim Walewander) slashed a lowly .211 BA/.288 OBP/.239 SLG with just 3 RBI in 27 starts in Whitaker’s absence. The Tigers fell one game short of the Boston Red Sox in the A.L. East and would never get within seven games of the playoffs again in the balance of his career.

In 1989, Whitaker had a big year (setting career highs with 28 HR and 85 RBI to go with a 133 OPS+). Trammell, however, had an off-year with the bat and Morris, pitching through pain, was downright terrible. The team won 59 games against 103 losses.

Whitaker slipped a bit in 1990 (.237 BA, 107 OPS+) but rebounded with highly productive seasons from 1991-93. He averaged .282 with 17 HR, 72 RBI, a 137 OPS+ and a 5.2 WAR in those campaigns. Despite Sparky Anderson’s decision to start platooning him, Whitaker posted a 4.7 WAR in ’92 and a 4.1 WAR in ’93. Sweet Lou only started four games against left-handed starters in ’92 and ’93 and none in the two seasons that followed.

In 1994 and ’95, thanks to strict platooning and the players’ strike, Whitaker’s playing time diminished. Still, he remained effective, averaging .298 with a 125 OPS+ in the final two campaigns of his career. Late in ’95, Whitaker and Trammell set an A.L. record for the most games played together (1,915), passing the mark previously held by George Brett and Frank White.

Given his continued effectiveness against right-handed pitching along with continued effectiveness defensively, Whitaker had offers from the Tigers, Braves, Athletics, Yankees and Red Sox for the 1996 season but decided instead to retire after 19 MLB seasons, all in Detroit.

Whitaker finished his career with 244 home runs, 1,084 RBI, 2,369 hits, 1,386 runs scored and (using modern metrics) a 117 OPS+ and superlative 75.1 WAR. Defensively, he finished his career with the 4th most double plays turned and 6th most assists for second sacker in MLB history, most of them with Trammell by his side.

“You would’ve had to watch us day in, day out to appreciate what a second baseman and a shortstop accomplished playing for the Detroit Tigers… You would have had to watch us play the game – game, not just defense, but the whole game, the full game (and) you would see that Tram and I were definitely worthy of being in the Hall of Fame.”

— Lou Whitaker (in The Sporting News, as told to Graham Womack, 2/14/17)

Lou Whitaker’s Lone BBWAA Ballot Appearance

By rule, players become eligible for baseball’s Hall of Fame five years after their final MLB game. Since Lou Whitaker finished his career in 1995, he became eligible for the ballot sent to the BBWAA in December 2000. However, when the results were revealed in January, Whitaker finished in 20th place, earning just 15 votes for 2.9% of the total electorate. That result was far shy of the 5% needed to remain on future ballots.

Why did it go so badly for Whitaker with the BBWAA? There are several likely reasons.

1. Whitaker was consistently very good but rarely spectacular. Even though he was an excellent hitter, he had no black type in which he led his league in a statistical category. Even if you count defensive black type, he only led the league at his position in putouts once, DPs turned once and assists twice.
2. Along the lines of “rarely spectacular,” only once was Whitaker considered one of the ten best players in the American League. That was in 1983, when he finished 8th in the MVP vote. In no other season did he receive even a 10th place vote.
3. He picked the wrong year to retire. Whitaker was on his first BBWAA ballot in the same year as Dave Winfield and Kirby Puckett (both of whom were first-ballot inductees) along with Don Mattingly, who was never inducted, but spent his full 15 years on the ballot. Whether deserved or not, all three had vastly more All-Star appearances and Gold Glove Awards than Whitaker.
4. Two of Whitaker’s key assets on his Cooperstown resume (a superior 117 OPS+ for a second baseman and a superb 75.1 WAR) were in statistics that were not known at the time. Whitaker had the second highest WAR on the 2001 ballot (to Bert Blyleven) but that was meaningless 18 years ago. Today’s writers would likely have eventually inducted Sweet Lou based on his WAR alone.
5. Offensively, Whitaker did not often do the things that Hall of Fame voters (at the time) looked for in a Cooperstown candidate: he only hit .300 twice, he only got more than 200 hits once. His career high in RBI was 85. He scored 100+ runs twice. Yes, of course, he was a second baseman, where one is not expected to hit like a corner infielder or outfielder. However (see below)…

Lou Whitaker compared to other BBWAA Inducted Second Basemen

Think about what other second basemen might have been on the brain of the BBWAA voters in 2001. The two most recently inducted second sackers were Joe Morgan (in 1990) and Rod Carew (in 1991). Morgan was a 10-time All-Star, two-time MVP who scored 100 runs 8 times and stole 689 bases (Whitaker swiped 143 bags in his career). Carew was a 18-time All-Star, a MVP, 7-time batting champion and career .328 hitter.

Obviously, a player need not be as good as Joe Morgan or Rod Carew to be a Hall of Famer but now think about Ryne Sandberg, another second baseman, one who retired two years after Whitaker. Ryno was a 10-time All-Star, 9-time Gold Glove Award winner, and a MVP. As we’ll see shortly, if you look closely, Whitaker was every bit as good both offensively and defensively as Sandberg but the Cubs’ second sacker had more accolades.

Prior to 2001, the BBWAA had only inducted 8 second basemen to the Hall of Fame (Morgan, Carew, Charlie Gehrigner, Jackie Robinson, Frankie Frisch, Rogers Hornsby, Eddie Collins and Nap Lajoie). Of those 8, all were career .300 hitters except for Morgan. All had more than 2,500 hits except for Jackie Robinson. All scored more than 1,500 runs except for Robinson.

Frankly, the writers might have just looked at Whitaker’s .276 average and said, “nope,” not unless you’re Joe Morgan. The irony is that, in the same year Lou Whitaker was booted off the BBWAA ballot, Bill Mazeroski became the 9th second baseman to be granted a Cooperstown plaque by the Veterans Committee, a voting body traditionally much more generous than the BBWAA.

Mazeroski was a World Series hero, 10-time All-Star, 8-time Gold Glove Award winner and widely considered the best defensive second sacker in MLB history but take a look at his numbers compared to Sweet Lou’s.

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Ahem, no offense to Maz, but he wasn’t that much a better defensive second baseman to Whitaker to offset the offensive disparity.

Why Lou Whitaker Belongs in the Hall of Fame

OK, let’s look at what the writers missed in 2001 and what a future Eras Committee (perhaps in December 2023) will hopefully see. I’m going to start with Lou Whitaker’s career WAR (Wins Above Replacement). The chart below shows the highest WAR among all players who have appeared on at least one Hall of Fame ballot who do not have a plaque in Cooperstown.

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Note: Pete Rose never appeared on a BBWAA ballot but received 74 write-in votes from 1992-94.

Needless to say, Rose is not in the Hall because of his ban from baseball due to gambling. Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, and Rafael Palmeiro are out because of links to performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). Bill Dahlen is a shortstop who played from 1891-1911. He fell two votes shy of the Hall on the 2016 Pre-Integration Eras Committee ballot. Scott Rolen is on the current BBWAA ballot; he got 63.2% of the vote last month and will likely make the Hall in 2023 or 2024. Finally, Bobby Grich (a second baseman) is often cited in tandem with Sweet Lou as a significant Hall of Fame oversight.

Forget about WAR: the Case We Could Have Made for Whitaker in 2001

We don’t need WAR to make a case for Lou Whitaker for the Hall of Fame so, for the sake of the readers who don’t really understand or believe in the all-knowing-all-encompassing statistic, let’s go with numbers that were in the public square in 2001, when Whitaker made his only BBWAA appearance.

Let’s start with Whitaker’s defense. He won “only” 3 Gold Gloves (usually losing out to Frank White, who was truly superb) but Sweet Lou has other credentials to his credit. First of all, he played 2,308 games at second base, the fourth most in history (to Collins, Morgan and Roberto Alomar). In 2001 (with Alomar still active), Whitaker was third on the list. Because (until recently) a second baseman routinely would get pounded by runners trying to break up double plays, longevity was forever a challenge for second sackers.

Next, Whitaker’s 1,527 double plays turned are the fourth most in history, behind Mazeroski, Nellie Fox and Willie Randolph. As we’ve seen, Maz won 8 Gold Gloves. Fox, like Whitaker, won just 3 but his first Gold Glove was in 1957, the first year the award existed. Randolph, surprisingly, never won one despite a career of defensive excellence.

Finally, Sweet Lou had 6,653 career assists, 6th all-time behind Hall of Famers Collins, Gehringer, Morgan, Mazeroski and Bid McPhee. Randolph and Whitaker are the only second baseman in the top 10 of the career assists list who are not in the Hall (Alomar and Sandberg weren’t in Cooperstown yet in 2001).

Lou Whitaker’s Offensive Numbers

As we’ve noted, two of Lou Whitaker’s biggest Hall of Fame problems are his low batting average (.276) and lack of MVP votes. This was due to his general consistency. He didn’t have any monster years but, with the exception of 1980, didn’t have any poor ones. So let’s look at a potpourri of offensive numbers in Whitaker’s favor as of the end of the 2000 season as they compare to all of the other second basemen in history at the time.

Remember, these statistics are as of the year 2000 and for second basemen only:

• 244 HR, 5th most for 2B (behind Hornsby, Sandberg, Morgan, Joe Gordon)
• 1,084 RBI, 9th most for 2B (behind Lajoie, Hornsby, Gehringer, Collins, Bobby Doerr, Frisch, Tony Lazzeri, Morgan)
• 2,369 Hits, 11th most for 2B (behind Collins, Lajoie, Carew, Hornsby, Frisch, Gehringer, Fox, Morgan, Red Schoendienst, and Sandberg)
• 420 Doubles, 10th most for 2B (behind Lajoie, Gehringer, Hornsby, Billy Herman, Frisch, Morgan, Carew, Collins, and Schoendienst)
• 1,386 Runs, 9th most for 2B (behind Collins, Gehringer, McPhee, Morgan, Hornsby, Frisch, Lajoie, and Carew)
• 1,197 BB, 4th most for 2B (behind Morgan, Collins, Randolph)

Two things here. First, with the exception of Randolph (listed once), every player ahead of Whitaker in these statistics is a Hall of Famer. Second, what makes Whitaker look somewhat weak (that he’s close to but not near the top of these categories) is actually a strength. It’s a strength because Whitaker was a well-rounded offensive player, one who had the ability to get on base but also hit with power.

Combining Power and On-Base Ability

What the writers missed in 2001 is that Lou Whitaker had a unique ability to hit with respectable power while getting on base frequently at a key position on the defensive spectrum.

There are only five second basemen in MLB history who have had at least 200 HR, 1000 RBI, 1000 Runs, 2000 Hits and 1000 Walks. Those five are Horsnby, Morgan, Alomar, Craig Biggio and Whitaker.

Now, it’s true that it can be easy to gerrymander a list like this for a particular player if you choose 5 statistical criteria. So, let’s shrink the criteria to two categories, Home Runs and Times on Base (adding hits, walks and HBP). If you make a list of second sackers with at least 200 HR and 3,500 Times on Base, you get the same five names.

I can’t speak for the 500 members of the BBWAA who did not cast a ballot for Lou Whitaker in 2001. However, I think it’s very likely that Whitaker was not given credit for his 1,197 walks as a part of his offensive portfolio.

If you want to make this super simple and just make a list of second basemen who reached base at least 3,500 times you’ll get a bigger list. The list will still be of 9 Hall of Famers and Whitaker.

Comparison to Ryne Sandberg

I noted earlier that Lou Whitaker’s numbers were every bit as good as Ryne Sandberg’s with the notable exception that Sandberg had far more accolades and awards. On Whitaker’s Baseball Reference page, the #1 player on his “Similarity Score” list is in fact Sandberg, followed by Trammell and Alomar.

Let’s take a look at Sweet Lou and Ryno. I’m adding back two key sabermetric stats, WAR and OPS+ (which measures on-base% + slugging% adjusted for ballpark effects and the overall hitting era in which a player toiled).

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It’s hard to pick between the two isn’t it? Unless you believe strongly in OPS+ and WAR, in which case the choice would be Whitaker.

By the way, both Baseball Reference and FanGraphs show Whitaker as a superior defensive player despite his three Gold Gloves to Sandberg’s nine. Here are the stats, both the sabermetric numbers and the statistics that were available in 2001.

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As you can see, Whitaker’s defensive numbers are actually superior to Sandberg’s with the singular exception of the total number of errors. Ryno was famous for successfully fielding 582 consecutive chances without an error in 1990-91. His fielding percentage (.9894) was the highest for a 2B in baseball history (minimum 6,000 IP) at the time of his retirement. That’s what he’s known for.

But think about it: Sandberg committed 80 fewer errors than Whitaker. On the other hand, Sweet Lou turned 369 more double plays and had 964 more putouts. You don’t need a PhD in mathematics to understand that 369 more DPs and 964 more putouts is more valuable than 80 fewer errors.

Unfortunately for Sweet Lou, nobody was looking at these numbers. He was one-and-done on the BBWAA ballot while Sandberg was a third ballot pick in 2005.

Conclusion: Hall of Fame Keystone Combos

Whitaker and Trammell wouldn’t be the first Hall of Fame keystone combo but they would be the combo with by far the most longevity. That’s the story that I believe will move enough Modern Baseball committee members to vote for Whitaker to reach 75% at some point and allow him to join his teammate in Cooperstown.

It starts with what I wrote at the top of this piece. Trammell without Whitaker is like peanut butter without jelly. There’s a lack of harmony for one to be in the Hall without the other. The Hall of Fame is about more than numbers, it’s about a story. With Tram and Sweet Lou, there’s a great story. No double-play combination in history spent more days on the diamond together than the Motown duo.

Among Hall of Famers, Cal Ripken and Roberto Alomar spent one season turning DPs together. Robin Yount and Paul Molitor turned two for three seasons. Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio spent six seasons next to each other on the diamond. Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson were teammates for 10 seasons but Robinson was only the team’s primary second sacker in five of them.

Second baseman Joe Gordon had two fellow Hall of Famer double play mates, Phil Rizzuto for three years with the Yankees and Lou Boudreau for four in Cleveland. Joe Cronin’s and Bobby Doerr’s careers at short and 2nd intersected for five years in Boston. Finally, Frankie Frisch had back-to-back Hall of Fame DP mates with the New York Giants (Dave Bancroft and Travis Jackson) from 1922-26.

The only Hall of Fame double play combination with anything approaching the 18+ years of Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell was the duo of  Joe Tinker and Johnny Evers (who played together with the Chicago Cubs from 1902-1913).

Sweet Lou, Evans, and Tram

As I noted in my piece about Trammell after his election, Tinker and Evers (along with first baseman Frank Chance) were immortalized in a poem by Franklin Pierce Adams:

These are the saddest of possible words:
Tinker to Evers to Chance.
Trio of bear Cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double-
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
Tinker to Evers to Chance.

Maybe if, during the mid 1980’s, someone had written a poem like this, the Hall of Fame prospects of Trammell and Sweet Lou would have been been enhanced. The “Evans” in this poem is Darrell Evans, who played first base for the Tigers for 435 games between 1984-1988 and is another great underappreciated player from the ’70’s and ’80’s.

These are the sweetest of possible words:
Sweet Lou, Evans and Tram
A trio of Tigers, all smoother than birds
Sweet Lou, Evans and Tram
Flawlessly turning a great double play
Swinging the bats while making our day
Leading the Tigers by showing the way
Sweet Lou, Evans and Tram.

I think we can safely conclude that I, your humble author, have no future career whatsoever as a poet. None.

Fans of Lou Whitaker can only hope that his Hall of Fame future is brighter.

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

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