Don Mattingly

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Don Mattingly

2020 Modern Era Hall of Fame Ballot: Don Mattingly

The Baseball Hall of Fame recently announced their 2020 Modern Era ballot. One player on the ballot is former New York Yankees first baseman, Don Mattingly.

Five highlights of Don Mattingly's career:

Don Mattingly was named to six All-Star teams in his career. He received MVP votes seven times.

Mattingly won nine Gold Gloves and three Silver Sluggers awards in his career. He won both in the same season - i.e., he was viewed as the best offensive and defensive first baseman in the American League - three times, from 1985 through 1987.

Don Mattingly was named American League MVP in 1985. That season he batted .324/.371/.567 with 35 home runs and league-leading totals for doubles (48), total bases (370), and RBI (145). He had a better season in 1986, when he batted .352/.394/.573 with 31 home runs, 113 RBI, and league-leading totals of hits (238), doubles (53), and total baseds (388). He also led the league in slugging percentage and OPS (.967). He finished second in MVP voting in 1986 to Roger Clemens.

From July 8 to July 18, 1987, Don Mattingly homered in eight consecutive games, tying the major-league record and setting a new American League record (which was subsequently tied by Ken Griffey Jr. in 1993).

Don Mattingly appeared in the 1992 episode of The Simpsons, Homer at the Bat, in which Montgomery Burns brings in nine major-leaguers to play on the company softball team.

The first two tables below present Don Mattingly'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
1982	NYA	21	7	0.2	0.6	-0.3	-0.4
1983	NYA	22	91	8.2	7.8	0.8	0.0
1984	NYA	23	153	18.4	16.1	2.8	1.2
1985	NYA	24	159	21.4	16.1	5.8	4.0
1986	NYA	25	162	19.9	15.7	4.7	3.0
1987	NYA	26	141	17.3	14.0	3.5	2.0
1988	NYA	27	144	17.2	14.1	3.5	2.0
1989	NYA	28	158	17.1	16.9	0.4	-1.3
1990	NYA	29	102	9.0	11.8	-2.8	-3.8
1991	NYA	30	152	15.5	15.5	0.5	-1.0
1992	NYA	31	157	17.0	17.4	0.1	-1.6
1993	NYA	32	134	14.6	13.3	1.6	0.2
1994	NYA	33	97	10.7	8.3	2.7	1.7
1995	NYA	34	128	11.5	12.5	-0.9	-2.1
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			1,785	198.0	180.2	22.4	4.0
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			5	0.5	0.6	-0.1	-0.1
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			1,790	198.4	180.8	22.3	3.9

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1982	NYA	21	7	0.3	0.5	-0.1	-0.2
1983	NYA	22	91	7.7	8.2	-0.2	-1.0
1984	NYA	23	153	18.8	15.7	3.7	2.1
1985	NYA	24	159	21.4	16.1	5.8	4.0
1986	NYA	25	162	19.2	16.4	4.4	2.7
1987	NYA	26	141	17.4	14.0	3.6	2.1
1988	NYA	27	144	16.6	14.7	2.3	0.8
1989	NYA	28	158	18.2	15.7	2.8	1.1
1990	NYA	29	102	9.8	11.0	-1.1	-2.1
1991	NYA	30	152	15.3	15.6	0.3	-1.3
1992	NYA	31	157	17.7	16.7	1.5	-0.2
1993	NYA	32	134	14.3	13.6	0.9	-0.5
1994	NYA	33	97	9.8	9.3	0.6	-0.3
1995	NYA	34	128	11.4	12.5	-1.0	-2.2
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			1,785	198.0	180.2	23.5	5.1
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			5	0.6	0.5	0.1	0.1
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			1,790	198.6	180.6	23.6	5.2

Don Mattingly made the Modern Era ballot the last time this committee voted, in 2018. The remainder of this article is drawn largely from the article which I wrote about Don Mattingly at that time.

Don Mattingly's Hall-of-Fame case rests on a very short window when he was among the best players in baseball.

The next table shows everybody who is in the Hall of Fame who debuted in 1947 or later, and earned at least 50% of their career player wins as a first baseman, along with Don Mattingly, ranked by total pWins over replacement level from ages 23 through 27.

Player	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL
	Hall-of-Fame First Basemen, age 23 - 27 (ranked by total pWORL)
Eddie Murray	91.6	64.6	22.9	30.4
Jeff Bagwell	89.8	67.2	15.1	22.7
Willie McCovey	76.3	55.6	15.9	22.6
Don Mattingly	94.2	76.2	12.2	20.3
Orlando Cepeda	78.3	60.2	12.0	19.0
Tony Perez	78.1	67.0	7.7	15.0

To be honest, I think the most surprising thing to me about the preceding table is how few first basemen are actually in the Hall of Fame - although the 50% cutoff eliminates several players that I think of as first basemen, such as Frank Thomas, Willie Stargell, and Harmon Killebrew. But, certainly, in his prime, Mattingly was playing at a Hall-of-Fame level.

Unfortunately for Mattingly, everybody else in that table played more than 100 games with positive pWins over positional average (pWOPA) in their age-35 season. Mattingly last reached that level in his age-32 season, and by the age of 35, Don Mattingly was retired. It's a shame.

2020 Modern Era Hall of Fame Ballot

Article last updated: November 8, 2019

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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