The traditional stats, the ones Morgan reveres, such as the Triple Crown categories of batting average, home runs, and RBIs, well, they tell a different story, one where you would be surprised that Joe was a first-ballot inductee. Morgan's career batting average was .271, which ranks 143rd out of the 162 primary position players in Cooperstown. Who are some guys that had a higher batting average than Morgan who aren't in the HOF: do the names Don Clendenon, Hans Lobert, and Joe Orsulak mean anything to you? Where does Joe rank all-time among hitters with at least 3,000 plate appearances? Tied for 944th. As for Morgan's 268 home runs, it places him 57th among HOFers, but among all players in MLB history, he ranks 200th, behind legends like Tom Brunansky, Raul Mondesi, and Lance Parrish. He did knock in over 1,000 RBIs, finishing with a total of 1,133, but he just barely cracks the top 200 on that list, with immortals such as BJ Surhoff, Roy Sievers, and Tommy Corcoran coming in ahead of him. Now I'm an extreme baseball nerd, and obsess over the history of the game, but of those nine guys I just mentioned, the only one I had ever heard of before doing research for this piece was Raul Mondesi (and even then, only vaguely). On the basis of those categories, with Morgan's highest finish being 195th in RBI, why on earth would he have been elected first ballot to the HOF? It doesn't make much sense at all on the surface, and there's the thing: the stats that Joe Morgan hates are what show how fantastic of a ballplayer he really was. The various sabermetrics, the stats he despises, well, they don't hate Joe Morgan: they love Joe Morgan.
Joe Posnanski said it best in his Baseball 100 article: "Joe Morgan the broadcaster never seemed to understand exactly what made Joe Morgan the ballplayer so electrifying and wonderful." As described in the above paragraphs, Morgan's traditional stats are not that impressive, at least not in comparison to fellow HOFers and even many individuals not in the Hall of Fame. So, why exactly are the analytics so favorable towards him? Well, I think there are several reasons, and all come together to tell an interesting story about Morgan: his home ballparks, the era he played in, his awesome stealing prowess, and his amazing efficiency at getting on base. Let's go through each of them, and hopefully, by the end of this, you can also appreciate just how special a ballplayer Joe Morgan was, even if Joe Morgan would disagree with why we think that.
A Hitter's Worst Nightmare
The Houston Astrodome was not the most cavernous place to play. According to researcher Andrew Clem, from 1965-1991, its dimensions were 406 feet to dead center, 390 to both right and left-center field, and 340 feet down each foul pole. While not a small park by any means, the previous home to the Astros (when they were called the Colt .45s), Colt Stadium, actually had a longer dimensions, with its center field going back to 420 feet, and the foul poles at 360 feet from home plate. However, that's where the niceties ended for batters who were unfortunate enough to have to play there. For starters, the foul ground was quite expansive, covering nearly 27,000 square feet. In contrast to another indoor stadium, Seattle's Kingdome, the ball didn't really carry, and the dim lighting didn't help hitters either. It definitely wasn't the ideal environment for a young hitter to grow up, and Morgan was no exception in his first nine seasons with the team from 1963-1971 (he didn't play the majority of the year in '63, '64, and '68). Part of this could be due to his relative youth, and the fact that Morgan just got better when he went to the Reds, but I think the a sizeable portion of the blame should also go to the Astrodome. Just to give a quick explainer, park factors are evaluated to determine how hitter or pitcher-friendly a ballpark is. 100 is neutral, above 100 means it is easier for hitters compared to league-average, and below 100 means it is easier for pitchers compared to league-average. From Morgan's first full season with Houston in 1965, to his last one in 1971 (not counting the 1968 season in which he only played 10 games), the Astros had an average park factor of 95.33, meaning that on average, a Houston hitter's hitting statistics (and subsequently baserunning opportunities) were suppressed by nearly five percent. Now that may not sound like a massive amount, but considering that Morgan had really good hitting seasons from 1965-1967, when the Astrodome was an even more pitcher-friendly 94.67, it really goes to show how much it hurt his rate numbers like batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. Morgan's triple slash stats in his first three full seasons as an Astro were as follows: .276/.385/.408. Morgan's numbers if he were in a neutral ballpark: .292/.407/.431. While the slugging percentage is not particularly impressive, his batting average certainly is, and that OBP is elite no matter the time period. And from 1972-1974, when he was with the Cincinnati Reds, Morgan had a slash line of .291/.416/.474, which on the surface, is really good. But again, during those three years, the average park factor was even worse than his Astros years: 93.67. So what are his rate stats in a neutral park? .307/.439/.501, superstar-esque. Finally, in his '75 and '76 MVP seasons, Cincy had a 102 park factor. Morgan led both leagues in OBP, OPS, and OPS+ those seasons, two of the ten best hitting seasons in the National League during the 1970s. In fact, the only NL player with a higher OPS+ than Morgan's 186 in '76 during that decade was Hank Aaron, with a mark of 194 in 1971. It just goes to show how with a little bit of digging, Morgan was nothing short of a monster with the bat during his prime. Unfortunately, that prime would be smack dab in the middle of the worst hitting environment since the 1910s.
Deadball 2.0
Throughout the history of baseball, there have been various periods in which hitters have reigned supreme, and other prolonged stretches in which pitchers have held the decided advantage. For example, from 1921 to 1930, the average OPS in the National League was .750, peaking in that 1930 season with an almost impossible-to-believe .808 in 1930, the highest in National League history since 1901. For context, during the entirety of the steroids era, the highest OPS in a season for the NL as a whole was 2000, with an average OPS of .773. Conversely, we have the so-called "deadball" era, with OPS reaching an all-time low of .605 in 1908. Context is extremely important when evaluating players from different eras, so it's important to understand what the environment was like for Morgan during his years. Well, as mentioned at the end of the last paragraph, that environment was rather hostile to hitters. Actually, that's an understatement. During the 21 years Joe Morgan played in the National League, the highest OPS during that period was .724. The average OPS was a pitiful .690. It only exceeded .700 (think a .300 OBP and .400 SLG, bad numbers in today's game) three times: 1970, 1977, and 1979, and those were not close to Morgan's best hitting seasons. It is not hyperbole at all to say that besides the 1900s and 1910s, there was no worse time to be a position player in the National League than the decades of the 60s and 70s. It's why Morgan's rate stats, even after accounting for the difficult home parks he played in throughout the majority of his career, don't look extremely impressive. But what if were were to take Morgan's performance relative to his peers and transport them to more favorable hitting environments? Well, his okay years become good years, his good performances become great performances, and his great seasons become all-time seasons. let's take his 1976 season, his best offensive campaign, and put him in a neutral ballpark with a 2019 hitting environment. What does it look like? It looks like a slash line of .309/.439/.674! That's good for an OPS of 1.113, which would have led the NL. Oh, and his home runs pro-rate out to 64. (Before you come for my head, the home run rate in the 1976 NL season was 1.51%. In 2019, it was 3.54%. You can see firsthand how much times have changed.) What about his 1973 season, when he slashed a good, but not great, .290/.406/.493? Well, that line increases to an Bondsian .311/.442/.614. Just goes to show you how context is everything. And finally, let's look at his 1965 campaign, his first full season in the Bigs. On its face, it's nothing to write home about: .271/.373/.418 with 14 home runs. Above-average, but good? I wouldn't go that far. But then, we remember that he played in a hitter's desert in the Astrodome during a season when the average OPS was .685. How does he fare in 2019, in what is on the surface, a merely decent year? Try 22 home runs while slashing .304/.430/.534. Yeah, he was that good. Joe Morgan deserves your respect for putting up the hitting numbers he did in the environment he was placed in.
A Beast on the Basepaths
The great thing about a statistic like WAR is that it takes all of a player's contributions into account. You can have the most dominant hitting season in history, but if your defense is garbage, you're going to be hurt in that metric. WAR also takes into account things like baserunning, grounding into double plays, and even the position a player plays. It really is the best, most comprehensive statistic available to fairly evaluate players not just across positions, but eras as well. In terms of importance, hitting carries the most weight by far, followed fielding, baserunning, position, and then double plays. So even though Ted Williams was never great in any other category besides hitting, he was so transcendentally amazing that his other shortcomings didn't really matter. However, since most players aren't Ted Williams, those other components are very important. For Joe Morgan, where he set himself apart was when he got on base. Now, this isn't to say that Morgan was bad at the other components that make up WAR, as he was phenomenal at avoiding grounding into double plays, and the fact that he played a very important position (second base) helped to offset his subpar defense there. However, where he really stood out was his baserunning ability: he was awesome. First, we have the stolen bases, where for his career, he stole 689 bases, a very impressive number. Of course, things are skewed by Rickey Henderson, who had over 1,400, but dig a little deeper, and one could make an argument that it was actually Morgan who was the more efficient thief. For starters, Morgan's stolen base rate was 81.0%, slightly more efficient than Henderson's 80.8%. Of course, Rickey's sheer volume overwhelms Joe, but it's not as if Morgan wasn't also being aggressive; from 1969-1977, he stole at least 40 bases every year, totaling 490 at a 81.9% success rate, very efficient numbers. Those are the surface stats, and they're very good, but let's dive into how many runs they generated for his team. As mentioned earlier, WAR's framework incorporates pretty much everything a player does on the field, and for baserunning, it's not just stolen bases, but also taking the extra base and advancing on passed balls and wild pitches. If you accrue a total of 0 runs from baserunning, that means you're average, while 5 runs means you're really good, garnering about 1/2 a win just by being a baserunner (a win is worth about 10 runs on average in WAR). In Morgan's prime, from '69-77, he averaged 7.3 runs a year just from baserunning! In his MVP seasons, he was good for 10 in each. He added an additional win just from being a great baserunner, knowing when to advance and being ruthlessly efficient when stealing bases. Also, he rarely grounded into double plays, garnering 25 runs saved from not doing so very often. For reference, Henderson, generally considered the greatest baserunner ever, grounded into DPs much more frequently, and only saved 3 runs. Morgan was almost the perfect all-around ballplayer in his prime, and his baserunning was no exception. However, it wasn't his best attribute. Let's talk about his excellence at getting on base that set up his numerous opportunities to showcase his skills on the bags.
An On-Base Machine
There are no shortage of ways to judge how well a hitter performs. For over a century, since the formation of the first baseball club back in 1845, batting average, or the number of base hits a player accrued divided by his official at-bats (basically chances to hit minus walks, hit by pitches, sacrifice bunts, and sacrifice fly balls) was seen as the best judge of a player's hitting prowess. Cars were given to the player with the highest batting average back in the 1910s, and even today, having a BA above the ever-so-important .300 line carries weight. However, now with the advent of sabermetrics, we have a better idea of which statistics have the most impact in terms of scoring runs. At his website, Tom Tango (a baseball analyst with the MLB), ran regressions to determine that OBP is much more predictive to a team's ability to score runs than any other metric, including BA or slugging percentage. Basically, to arrive at a version of OPS that is best predictive of how much value a player contributes to his team in terms of scoring runs, you need to multiply the OBP component (as OPS is just OBP + SLG) by about 1.69. This has implications in the WAR framework, which uses linear weights (like Tango did) to properly account for the components of an individual hitter. On-Base Percentage has a very outsized importance regarding how much a hitter contributes toward the success of his team: if a batter gets on base, that means he did not record an out, meaning his team has more opportunities to score runs. OBP is probably the single-best number that can be easily calculated to produce a measurement of how well a hitter performed. So, what does this all mean for Joe Morgan? Well, as we found out above, Morgan played in a time period that was brutal on hitters, and for almost all of his prime (and the majority of his career), he played in ballparks that were pitcher-friendly (in some years, extremely pitcher friendly). Those two factors really hurt his slash lines, as he would have put up far better numbers if his surrounding environment would have been neutral. However, even with the situations that were detrimental to his hitting statistics, Morgan still excelled at getting on base, but how could he with that relatively pedestrian-looking batting average? Well, if you adjust for the era he played in, Morgan actually was above-average in that category; he was 8% better than the league-average over the course of his career. Of course, that's not awesome, but it isn't bad or even just mediocre; he was pretty decent with it. However, when you compare his 8% above-average mark to a guy like Tony Gwynn, who was 31% better than league-average in that category, well, Joe falls far, far short. However, his OBP was an amazing 23% better than league-average; among all 550 NL hitters who have had at least 3,000 plate appearances, that ranks 22nd all-time, ahead of titans like Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, and Larry Walker (who had the luxury of playing in Coor's Field for a large portion of his career). Now this isn't even adjusting for the ballpark each played in, yet Morgan was still extremely efficient at setting up opportunities to score, and he did it with a batting eye unmatched by anyone aside from Ted Williams, Rogers Hornsby, and Barry Bonds. Joe Morgan's ability to draw walks was, in a word, brilliant. There's simply no other way to describe his prowess at that facet of the game. He wasn't being intentionally walked like Bonds was in his heyday: Morgan had to work for his "free" passes. Among those same 550 NL hitters, Joe's unintentional walk percentage is third all-time once you adjust for era. His figure of 216 (basically he drew an unintentional walk 2.16x more often than average) is higher than Hornsby, it's higher than Bonds, and it's higher than Ted Williams. For context, let's take Morgan's 1975 season, when he led all of baseball with a .466 OBP, and convert that to some more hitter-friendly years in the NL. Well, we see that he have slashed a Ruthian .386/.514/.617. Yeah, Joe was great. What about 2000, the peak year of the steroid era? Well, we see that Morgan walks 146 times with a OBP of .487, both of which supersede what Bonds did that season. Finally, in 2019, with strikeouts at an all-time high and walks hard to come by, Morgan still slashes an incredible .320/.461/.593. Basically, Morgan's prime would have been great in any season, and the fact he didn't have to rely on his batting average, and that he was so great with waiting for his pitch and walking if necessary, that really increases his WAR totals. He was awesome at the most important job a hitter has: avoiding outs. He did it about as well as anyone ever has during his peak.
It truly is one of the great oxymorons, Joe Morgan hating the very stats that say he was not merely a HOFer, but one of the best players in the Hall, every bit of deserving of his being elected on the first ballot. His magnificence was masked during his time, yes, but with the new metrics we have, we can truly appreciate what a dominant player he was. His prime is second only to Hornsby in terms of second basemen, and his years from 1972-1976 are exceptional, as he averaged 9.6 bWAR, hitting his highest peak in 1975 with an incredible 11.0 bWAR. Here's a list players in baseball history who never attained 11 bWAR in one season: Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Mike Trout, Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., Rickey Henderson, Hank Aaron, Eddie Collins, Tris Speaker, Albert Pujols, and Mike Schmidt. A who's who of the greatest players ever, and none of them equaled what Morgan did at his best. I hope this helps you appreciate Morgan's career more, even if the tools we do use make Morgan seethe with rage.
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