Bagwell Retires
December 17, 2006 by Geoff Young
Filed under Personalities
Jeff Bagwell, who missed all of 2006 due to injury, has announced his retirement from baseball. Bagwell hit .297/.408/.540 over a 15-year career, all with the Houston Astros.
Despite having an unorthodox stance and violent swing, Bagwell was one of the more consistent offensive performance in the major leagues. Nine times he cleared the 30-homer mark, 7 times he posted an on-base percentage better than .400, 10 times a slugging percentage better than .500.
Bagwell, acquired as a minor-league third baseman from the Boston Red Sox in a famous exchange for reliever Larry Andersen, was named National League Rookie of the Year in 1991. Bagwell went on to win the NL MVP award in 1994 with an unbelievable .368/.451/.750 performance in the strike-marred season.
Bagwell finishes his career in the top 50 all time for on-base percentage, slugging percentage, home runs, RBI, and walks, while just missing for runs and doubles. The numbers have been brilliant, and he leaves the game as arguably the best player in Astros history.
It will be interesting to see how Hall of Fame voters respond when his name first appears on the ballot. Bagwell didn’t reach the big automatics (3000 hits, 500 home runs), but Baseball-Reference shows him as being slightly above average in several indicators of HOF worthiness.
Baseball-Reference also lists the 10 most similar batters in history, and all 5 who are eligible have been inducted. The ones who aren’t eligible are all guys on the cusp — Frank Thomas, Gary Sheffield, Fred McGriff, and Ken Griffey Jr. If I were a betting man, I’d say that Thomas and Griffey will get in for sure, while Sheffield and McGriff won’t make the cut.
Bagwell is a tough call. Sheffield probably will end up with better counting numbers, but Bagwell will get extra credit for spending his entire career with one team and truly representing a city. I’d be inclined to vote for Bagwell, but we’ll see what the voters decide when the time comes.
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Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] Right-handed pitcher Brad Radke has announced his retirement from baseball. Although he isn’t a legitimate Hall of Fame candidate like the recently retired Jeff Bagwell, Radke was a solid big-league ballplayer for many years, which is more than most of us can say. He also, like Bagwell, spent his entire career with one team — in Radke’s case it was the Minnesota Twins. [...]
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[...] Here is the latest poll from the archives to revisit. This was inspired mostly by Jeff Bagwell’s retirement in December and also somewhat by the trade of Gary Sheffield to Detroit a month earlier. [...]