I discussed Bagwell's Hall of Fame candidacy mainly by discussing WAR. I'll admit I was very brief about his qualifications not using WAR, so I'll discuss it a bit longer here.
I'll start with this, this is just Bagwell's baseball reference page but it tells an interesting story. An average season from Bagwell would have produced a slash line of .297/.408/.540 with 34 homeruns 115 RBI's, 114 runs, 37 doubles, and two triples. It's actually a good season, a very good season.
What is a Hall of Fame season? That's the question that is centered around the Bagwell debate. Typically an OPS+ of 150 or higher is excellent, an OPS+ of 125 is very good, an OPS+ of 100 is league average and an OPS+ is poor. With that in mind, Bagwell had 6 seasons of an excellent OPS+, 7 seasons that would be defined as very good to excellent, one season that would be described as average to very good, and one season that is below average to terrible. An OPS+ of 155 for a career would be top 25 all-time, he got higher than that mark 5 times. His career mark is 37th all-time.
Let's set some arbitrary cut-off marks. The batting average line is .300, which is usually considered the mark of a good hitter. Bagwell batted above .300 a total of 6 times with a high of .368. Top 25 of all-time in batting average for a career is a .334, Bagwell got above that mark 1 time. His career batting average is 251st of all-time.
The OBP mark, I'm setting as a cut-off would be .400, he got above that mark 7 times. A .415 OBP would be #25 all-time for a career, Bagwell got above that mark 6 times. His career OBP makes him 40th best of all-time.
The arbitrary slugging percentage mark, I'm setting is at .500. Bagwell got above that mark 10 times. A .555 slugging percentage for a career is 25th best all-time, Bagwell got above that mark 7 times. His career mark is 35th all-time.
The reason I like WAR is that it helps to answer the question of what a season is actually worth while trying to be fair to all positions. I have a hard time deciding for myself what a Hall of Fame season is or even an All-Star season comparing Bagwell to Omar Vizquel.
That's why I use WAR. I'll try to explain better in subsequent posts, but it's not always guaranteed.
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