Albert Belle

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Albert Belle

2019 Today's Game Era Hall of Fame Ballot: Albert Belle

On Monday, November 5, 2018, the Baseball Hall of Fame announced the candidates for the 2019 "Today's Game Era" ballot, the latest version of the Hall-of-Fame's Veterans' Committee. The ballot included six players (plus two managers who had significant, but not Hall-of-Fame caliber, playing careers). This article looks at Albert Belle.

The first table below presents Albert Belle's career as measured by Player won-lost records.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWin Pct.	pWOPA	pWORL	eWins	eLosses	eWin Pct.	eWOPA	eWORL
Albert Belle Basic Player Won-Lost Records
												Value Decomposition
1989	CLE	22	62	6.4	6.9	0.481	-0.3	0.2	6.4	7.0	0.475	-0.4	0.1
1990	CLE	23	9	0.6	0.5	0.511	0.0	0.1	0.5	0.6	0.434	-0.1	-0.0
1991	CLE	24	123	14.2	15.2	0.483	-0.8	0.5	15.2	14.2	0.518	0.3	1.5
1992	CLE	25	153	15.7	15.1	0.509	-0.1	1.5	15.8	15.0	0.512	0.0	1.6
1993	CLE	26	159	23.1	19.9	0.538	1.2	3.0	23.2	19.7	0.541	1.4	3.1
1994	CLE	27	106	16.7	12.3	0.575	2.0	3.2	17.1	11.8	0.591	2.4	3.7
1995	CLE	28	143	22.4	16.0	0.583	2.8	4.4	21.9	16.5	0.570	2.3	3.9
1996	CLE	29	158	23.7	18.3	0.564	2.1	3.8	22.6	19.4	0.538	1.0	2.8
1997	CHA	30	161	21.2	21.0	0.503	-0.0	1.7	21.5	20.7	0.510	0.3	2.0
1998	CHA	31	163	23.0	20.0	0.535	1.3	2.9	23.8	19.1	0.555	2.1	3.8
1999	BAL	32	161	21.2	19.8	0.516	0.0	1.6	21.9	19.1	0.533	0.7	2.3
2000	BAL	33	141	16.8	18.7	0.472	-1.4	0.2	17.1	18.4	0.482	-1.0	0.5
------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			1,539	204.9	183.9	0.527	6.9	23.1	207.1	181.7	0.533	9.1	25.3
			------	------	------				------	------
PostSeason (career)			18	2.6	1.8	0.583		0.5	2.5	1.9	0.574		0.5
			------	------	------	------		------	------	------	------		------
COMBINED			1,557	207.4	185.7	0.527		23.6	209.6	183.5	0.533		25.8

At his best, Albert Belle was one of the greatest (most feared?) hitters in baseball. In 1994, Belle had a slash line of .357/.438/.714. In 1995, Belle hit 52 doubles and 50 home runs, scoring 121 runs and driving in 126. All four of those totals led the American League. And this was done in a 144-game schedule. In 1996, Albert Belle hit 48 home runs, drove in 148 runs, and put up his third straight OPS over 1.000 (1.033). In 1998, Belle batted .328/.399/.655 with 49 home runs and 152 RBI.

Unfortunately, Belle slumped somewhat in 1999 and 2000 before suffering a career-ending injury. For his career, he had a slash line of .295/.369/.564 with 381 home runs and 1,239 RBI. To put these in context, Jim Rice hit 382 career home runs but drove in 1,451 runs.

But from 1993 - 1998, Albert Belle was a terrific hitter. The next table shows the top 10 players in batting wins over non-pitcher average over these six years.

		Top Batters, 1993 - 1998
		eWins	eLosses	eWOPA
1	Barry Bonds	94.9	57.0	17.5
2	Frank E. Thomas	88.7	59.7	14.5
3	Jeff Bagwell	89.3	58.4	14.1
4	Mark McGwire	65.2	36.4	14.1
5	Albert Belle	89.9	65.3	12.3
6	Ken Griffey Jr.	80.6	57.7	11.4
7	Mike Piazza	81.2	56.0	11.3
8	Edgar Martinez	68.1	48.1	10.0
9	Tim Salmon	76.5	56.9	9.7
10	Jim Thome	64.5	45.2	9.7

Positional Average excludes pitcher offense

Belle didn't bring a lot more to the table than his batting, but, of course, batting is a pretty big key to winning baseball games. The final table, then, shows the top 10 players in eWins over replacement level over the same six seasons.

		Top Players, 1993 - 1998 (sorted by eWORL)
		eWins	eLosses	eWOPA	eWORL
1	Barry Bonds	145.7	97.5	20.6	30.4
2	Greg Maddux	97.7	60.7	21.6	29.3
3	Ken Griffey Jr.	112.4	83.8	14.1	22.1
4	Craig Biggio	129.9	107.5	12.2	21.7
5	Randy 'Big Unit' Johnson	81.9	54.2	14.1	21.4
6	Mike Piazza	100.0	74.1	14.3	21.4
7	Jeff Bagwell	113.9	76.9	12.6	20.2
8	J. Kevin Brown	82.3	60.0	12.7	20.0
9	Roger Clemens	80.9	56.3	12.4	19.8
10	Albert Belle	130.3	107.3	9.6	19.2

Belle's peak was, I think, ultimately neither high enough nor long enough to warrant the Hall of Fame. But, at his best, Albert Belle was certainly one of the best players in Major League Baseball.

All articles are written so that they pull data directly from the most recent version of the Player won-lost database. Hence, any numbers cited within these articles should automatically incorporate the most recent update to Player won-lost records. In some cases, however, the accompanying text may have been written based on previous versions of Player won-lost records. I apologize if this results in non-sensical text in any cases.

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