Eric Chavez

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Eric Chavez

2020 Hall of Fame Ballot Series: Eric Chavez

Five facts about Eric Chavez:

Eric Chavez won six Gold Gloves (consecutively from 2001 through 2006). He won one Silver Slugger, in 2002, and received MVP votes four times (consecutively from 2002 - 2005).

Surprisingly, given that he won both a Gold Glove and a Silver Slugger in the same season, Eric Chavez was never named to an All-Star team. He was named AL Player of the Month once (September, 2001) and AL Player of the Week twice (August 25, 2002, and June 5, 2005) in his career.

Eric Chavez hit 20 or more home runs seven consecutive seasons. He drove in 100 or more runs four times. He led the league in walks once, in 2004 with 95.

Chavez led AL third basemen in assists three times and in putouts, double plays, and fielding percentage twice each. His career fielding percentage at 3B (.970) is seventh in major-league history. As measured by my Player won-lost records, Chavez led major-league third basemen in net fielding eWins from 2000 through 2007 (cumulatively, not every season) with 4.9 net fielding wins over those eight seasons.

Chavez was the youngest player in the American League when he made his debut on September 8, 1998 at the age of 20 years, 275 days old

The first two tables below present Eric Chavez's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1998	OAK	20	16	1.8	1.2	0.8	0.6
1999	OAK	21	115	10.2	9.6	1.7	0.7
2000	OAK	22	153	15.4	13.2	3.6	2.2
2001	OAK	23	151	21.7	13.3	10.2	8.4
2002	OAK	24	153	21.0	15.7	7.2	5.3
2003	OAK	25	156	21.3	16.9	6.3	4.5
2004	OAK	26	125	17.4	13.2	5.6	4.1
2005	OAK	27	160	19.9	17.4	4.1	2.3
2006	OAK	28	137	16.3	13.5	4.0	2.6
2007	OAK	29	90	9.8	10.5	0.1	-0.8
2008	OAK	30	23	2.6	2.5	0.2	-0.0
2009	OAK	31	8	0.4	1.2	-0.8	-0.9
2010	OAK	32	33	2.2	2.5	-0.0	-0.3
2011	NYA	33	58	4.3	3.9	0.9	0.4
2012	NYA	34	113	6.7	7.2	0.3	-0.5
2013	ARI	35	77	8.1	6.3	2.4	1.7
2014	ARI	36	44	1.7	2.0	-0.1	-0.3
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			1,612	180.8	150.1	46.5	30.0
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			34	2.9	3.9	-0.7	-1.1
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			1,646	183.7	154.0	45.7	28.9

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1998	OAK	20	16	1.5	1.4	0.3	0.1
1999	OAK	21	115	10.0	9.8	1.3	0.3
2000	OAK	22	153	14.8	13.9	2.4	1.0
2001	OAK	23	151	19.8	15.2	6.4	4.6
2002	OAK	24	153	19.6	17.2	4.3	2.4
2003	OAK	25	156	20.7	17.4	5.3	3.4
2004	OAK	26	125	17.2	13.4	5.2	3.7
2005	OAK	27	160	19.8	17.6	3.8	2.0
2006	OAK	28	137	15.7	14.1	2.8	1.4
2007	OAK	29	90	10.3	9.9	1.3	0.4
2008	OAK	30	23	2.5	2.7	-0.0	-0.3
2009	OAK	31	8	0.5	1.1	-0.6	-0.7
2010	OAK	32	33	2.3	2.5	0.0	-0.3
2011	NYA	33	58	3.8	4.3	0.1	-0.3
2012	NYA	34	113	7.4	6.5	1.6	0.9
2013	ARI	35	77	7.6	6.8	1.4	0.7
2014	ARI	36	44	1.9	1.8	0.4	0.1
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			1,612	175.5	155.4	35.9	19.5
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			34	3.1	3.7	-0.3	-0.7
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			1,646	178.6	159.1	35.6	18.8

This is Eric Chavez's first year on the Hall-of-Fame ballot.

Vote Prediction

Eric Chavez had a better career than probably most of the other players debuting on this ballot. But even so, it is an honor for Eric Chavez simply to appear on a Hall-of-Fame ballot.

Player Won-Lost Records and Eric Chavez

Eric Chavez was very good for a brief time. In particular, his 2001 season was outstanding. It was so outstanding, as measured by Player won-lost records, that I wrote about it in my article about the 2001 season. With apologies to those who already read that article, I'll repeat what I wrote there here.

As measured by pWins over positional average, Eric Chavez's 2001 season was one of the top 10 single-season performances by a third baseman for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records.


Top 10 Third Base Seasons, ranked by single-season pWOPA (at third base only)
	Player	Season	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA
1	Al Rosen	1953	26.7	17.1	8.8
2	Scott Rolen	2004	23.0	13.8	8.7
3	Eric Chavez	2001	21.7	13.0	8.6
4	Alex Rodriguez	2007	24.6	16.0	8.4
5	Joe Torre	1971	26.2	17.1	8.3
6	George Brett	1980	18.3	10.1	8.1
7	Alex Rodriguez	2005	25.2	17.0	8.1
8	Adrian Beltre	2004	24.7	16.3	7.8
9	Robin Ventura	1999	23.3	15.3	7.6
10	Ken Caminiti	1996	23.8	16.0	7.4

At first glance, Eric Chavez's 2001 season was certainly very good but not exactly "one of the five best seasons of the past 100 years" good. He batted .288/.338/.540 with 43 doubles, 32 home runs, 91 runs scored, and 114 RBI. He also won a Gold Glove - which Player won-lost records agree he deserved. That's a good season, perhaps even great. But one of the best all-time? In context, yes. But context is doing a lot of work here.

By leverage, Chavez batted .333/.393/.543 in high-leverage situations compared to .265/.309/.537 in low-leverage plate appearances. He batted .333/.402/.552 in late and close situations, .325/.384/.587 in tie games, .320/.366/.584 in one-run games, but .239/.307/.582 when the A's were either leading or trailing by four or more runs. And here's the most remarkable split: in A's wins, Chavez batted .339/.378/.670 with 98 RBI in 94 games. In A's losses, Chavez batted .199/.268/.313 with 16 RBI in 57 games. All of which led to Eric Chavez's performance translating into 1.9 more wins for the Oakland A's than would have been expected if Chavez's performance had been more evenly distributed across all situations.

Article last updated: November 24, 2019

2020 Hall of Fame Ballot Series

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