Lou Whitaker: A Case for Cooperstown
The longtime Detroit Tigers’ second baseman is among the most heralded players of the 1980s, and one many feels deserve enshrinement in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
BY Louis Addeo-Weiss
If someone were to mention the mid-1980’s Detroit Tigers, particularly that magical 1984 team which started 35-5, en route to their fourth and most recent World Series victory, there are a myriad of names that come to mind.
Closer Willie Hernandez led the sport in games pitched with 80, throwing 140 innings in relief on his way to claiming AL CY Young and MVP honors, RF’er Kirk Gibson hit 27 home runs, slugged .516, posted a robust 142 OPS+, and tallied 5.1 WAR, SS and Hall Of Famer Alan Trammell built on a strong 1983 season with a .314 average, .382 on-base percentage, 136 OPS+, and stellar defense to capture his fourth career Gold Glove Award, and leader at the hemp Sparky Anderson, who, already a two-time World Series winning manager with the Big Red Machine in 1975 and ’76, was ready to, yet again, sit atop baseball’s highest mountain.
And then, there was Lou Whitaker, the teams’ all-around second baseman.
A constant force in the Tigers lineup throughout his career, Sweet Lou formed, along with teammate Trammell, the longest double-play combo in Major League history, with the two debuting together on September 7, 1977, with Whitaker spending the entirety of his career alongside Trammell.
While never necessarily the consensus best player on that Tigers team, Whitaker embodied one aspect of the sport all of us can marvel at, consistency.
And in a sport that has always seemed to honor those who produce at a consistent level, the fact that Whitaker received a mere 2.9% of the vote in 2001, his first year of eligibility for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, is a crime, not only for Whitaker, but for those who had the opportunity to see him play.
But, in the age of analytics, when the criteria for measuring player ability and production has drastically shifted, sportswriters and fans alike have begun to shift their perspective on Whitaker, as have I.
Referring back to this aforementioned consistency, one can look to 1982-1993, a period I have deemed as Whitaker’s best-extended stretch of play. During the span of time, the second baseman accumulated 57.2 WAR (Wins Above Replacement), averaging out to 5.2 WAR over the course of 162 games played.
By the criteria of saber-metrically-inclined folk, a four-five -win player is All-Star caliber, essentially what Whitaker was for more than a decade.
As mentioned when I wrote about potential Hall Of Famer Zack Greinke, the prevailing notion among voters is eight-ten seasons of at-least All-Star caliber play to merit induction in Cooperstown. For the entirety of his career, Whitaker averaged 4 WAR per season, again a reflection of the consistency he exuded.
One resource I employ in my “Cooperstown Justice” examinations is baseball-reference.com’s JAWS (Jaffee WAR Score System), based on writer Jay Jaffee’s book “The Cooperstown Casebook.”
For those who aren’t quite familiar with WAR, it is considered by many to be the darling-saber-metric statistic, developed and expanded upon by historian and statistician Bill James in his lauded “Baseball Abstract” series, one that serves to determine the overall level of production by any given player throughout the sport.
Whitaker, according to how baseball-reference calculates WAR, was worth 75.1 bWAR throughout the eighteen-plus seasons of his career, making him the seventh most valuable second basemen in baseball history. Jaffe’s system tells us that the average WAR among second basemen is 69.4, a mark well-surpassed by Whitaker.
Whitaker had a JAWS of 56.5, slightly below the Hall Of Fame average for second baseman of 56.9, but that’s where the word ‘average’ has a different meaning. His JAWS score is in line with Jackie Robinson, who accumulated a mark of 56.7. Always known for his ability to take his walks, Whitaker owns a career .363 on-base percentage, the same as Hall Of Famer Craig Biggio, and higher than Hall Of Famers Joe Gordon (.357), Ryne Sandberg (.344), and Bobby Doerr (.362), good enough for 28th all-time across the position.
Among all second basemen, Whitaker is fifth all-time in walks with 1,197, ending his career with more walks than strikeouts. Whitaker’s OPS+ of 117 is good enough for eighteenth all-time among second basemen with at least 1,100 games played.
According to WAR7, a concept developed by Jaffee which combines individual WAR from a player’s seven best seasons, while Whitaker’s WAR7 of 37.9 is well below the average WAR7 for second basemen of 44.4, that mark is still higher than the previously mentioned Doerr (36.4), Tony Lazzeri (35.1), and Billy Herman (35.5), all of whom are in Cooperstown.
And while the argument of “well he’s in, so he should be in,” isn’t necessarily the most compelling of arguments, Whitaker, who played in an era of expansion, one quip the modern baseball fan clinically blurps when discussing players of yesteryear, is more deserving being that he played in an era expanded competitive environment.
For many who feel traditional statistics and saber-metrics are sworn foes, need to look no further than the case of Doerr vs. Whitaker. Home runs, a measure, while obsolete in current player projections, is one traditional counting that stat that voters look for, and one that continues to provide great historical context when considering a player’s Hall Of Fame eligibility.
Of the 244 career home runs hit during his career, 239 came as a second baseman, good enough for eleventh-place on the all-time list, and 16 more than Doerr’s total of 223.
With all of these numbers taken into context, James has Lou Whitaker as the thirteenth greatest second basemen in baseball history, and yet, he was left off the most recent Veterans Committee on the “Today’s Game” ballot, which met in 2018 and elected Whitaker’s teammates, P Jack Morris, and Whitaker’s longtime turn-two partner Alan Trammell.
Hopefully, time will aid Sweet Lou, and with the next “Today’s Game” meeting in 2021, a greater look over his numbers will allow others to see how great a player Lou Whitaker was and why he belongs in the hallowed halls of Cooperstown
