Bobby Abreu and Round-Number Bias
Abreu’s career numbers are inches from superstardom — but they’re a tad below that, so he gets completely forgotten.
There’s so much argument around the BBWAA Hall of Fame announcement every year that it almost feels counterproductive to contribute to it. Each ballot that comes in, it seems, causes some sort of fresh new controversy, and before you can figure that one out, yet another has replaced it atop the pile. Here’s a ballot that voted for Sammy Sosa but not Alex Rodriguez — how does that work? There’s one where the writer restricts himself to four votes every year even though ten are allowed — why? That guy decided to vote for Omar Vizquel and nobody else — what’s going on here?
Well, here’s my addition to the discourse: any ballot that doesn’t include Bobby Abreu is wrong. Abreu is a Hall of Famer, plain and simple. He only earned 8.7% of the vote on last year’s ballot, and barely stayed on the ballot with 5.5% the year before, but his candidacy merits vastly more consideration than it has gotten.
A brief summary of Abreu’s qualifications: for his career, he batted .291/.395/.475, good for an .870 OPS and a 128 OPS+, and compiled 60.2 bWAR. He hit 288 home runs and stole an even 400 bases. For some reason, Abreu only made two All-Star teams, and I say “for some reason” because if there’s a reason, I have no idea what it is. In 11 different seasons — seriously, count ‘em, eleven — Abreu either had an OPS above .850 or received MVP votes, but did not make his league’s All-Star team.
Obviously, it’s fine to think that Abreu’s numbers, while excellent, aren’t quite good enough to make him a Hall of Famer. But 5.5%? That’s shockingly low for someone with Abreu’s qualifications. There has to be something holding back Abreu’s candidacy, and I think I’ve figured out what that is: round number bias.
Think about it this way. Abreu was not far at all from being a career .301/.405/.475 hitter with 300 home runs and 400 steals. That player is probably a Hall of Famer on the first ballot. But instead, Abreu finished his career a little below .300, and a little below .400, and a little short of 300 home runs. Come to think of it, it’s almost shocking that he actually made a comeback in 2014 with the Mets and stole one more base to reach 400. 399 seems much more in character.
But while .291 is worse than .301 and .395 is worse than 405 and 288 home runs is fewer than 300, they’re not that much fewer. If the .301/.405/.475 hitter with 400 steals is an easy Hall of Famer — and I think he is — the player who’s just a tad worse might not be quite such an easy choice, but he’s also not nearly bad enough to almost fall off the ballot on his first go-round.
Certainly, Abreu wasn’t an offensive superstar on the level of Ted Williams or Babe Ruth. His Hall of Fame case rests on his exceedingly rare combination of power, speed, and on-base ability. How rare? Here’s a list of every player in MLB history with a .390 OBP, 250 home runs, and 400 steals:
Barry Bonds
Rickey Henderson
Joe Morgan
Bobby Abreu
Morgan and Henderson were first-ballot Hall of Famers. Bonds, of course, was tainted by his steroid association, but his numbers are clearly Hall of Fame worthy. And Bobby Abreu...is stuck down at 8.7%.
The other thing that’s impressive about Abreu is his career trajectory, and the way he aged smoothly from superstardom into consistency. At his peak — from 1998 to 2006, aged 24 to 32 — Abreu was truly a superstar: he batted .305/.416/.513 with 202 home runs and 264 stolen bases. Then, from age 33 through the end of his career at age 40, he was still pretty good! He batted .273/.365/.422. From 2007 to 2010, his age 33 through 36 seasons, he was good for 15 to 20 home runs a year, and in each of those seasons, plus 2011, he stole at least 20 bases. Once he faded from the top of his game, he kept at it and remained a rock-solid contributor.
This year’s ballot — and let’s face it, every ballot for the last five years, and probably every ballot for the next five years too — is consumed with bitterness and controversy over voting tactics and competing visions of morality, which is a shame. There are some excellent players on the ballot, and they deserve to be remembered as more than players adjacent to arguments about steroid users. Bobby Abreu combined power, speed, and getting on base in ways that few others in baseball history have. He deserves genuine Hall of Fame consideration. Hopefully, when the steroid users start to fall off the ballot next winter, he’ll start to get it.