Steve Garvey

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Steve Garvey

2020 Modern Era Hall of Fame Ballot: Steve Garvey

The Baseball Hall of Fame recently announced their 2020 Modern Era ballot. One player on the ballot is former Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres first baseman, Steve Garvey.

Five highlights of Steve Garvey's career:

Steve Garvey was selected to ten All-Star teams. He was the starting first baseman for the National League nine times and was named All-Star Game MVP twice, in 1974 and 1978.

Garvey won four Gold Glove awards and received MVP votes nine times. Garvey won the NL MVP in 1974 when he batted .312/.342/.469 with 200 hits, including 21 home runs, 111 RBI, and 95 runs scored, and his Los Angeles Dodgers won the pennant.

Garvey played in the postseason five times. His team reached the World Series all five times. He batted .338/.361/.550 with 11 home runs, 32 runs scored, and 31 RBI in 55 career postseason games (232 plate appearances) and was named NLCS MVP twice, in 1978 and 1984.

Steve Garvey played 1,207 consecutive games from September 3, 1975 through July 29, 1983. This is the longest consecutive-game streak in National League history and the fourth-longest streak in major-league history.

Steve Garvey was part of the longest-tenured infield in major-league history. Garvey, Davey Lopes (2B), Ron Cey (3B), and Bill Russell (SS) were the starting infield for the Los Angeles Dodgers for eight consecutive seasons, from 1974 - 1981. They started at their primary fielding positions in the same game a total of 873 times across nine seasons (1973 - 81).

The first two tables below present Steve Garvey'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
1969	LAN	20	3	0.0	0.0	-0.0	-0.0
1970	LAN	21	34	1.8	2.9	-0.9	-1.2
1971	LAN	22	81	8.1	6.5	2.0	1.2
1972	LAN	23	96	9.3	9.9	0.1	-0.9
1973	LAN	24	113	10.4	9.6	0.9	-0.1
1974	LAN	25	156	20.3	14.0	6.3	4.6
1975	LAN	26	160	21.2	17.0	4.0	2.2
1976	LAN	27	162	20.0	14.9	5.1	3.4
1977	LAN	28	162	18.3	14.7	3.6	2.0
1978	LAN	29	162	22.5	15.8	6.9	5.1
1979	LAN	30	162	19.5	17.4	2.1	0.3
1980	LAN	31	163	21.7	16.0	5.9	4.1
1981	LAN	32	110	11.4	11.0	0.5	-0.6
1982	LAN	33	162	15.2	15.4	-0.2	-1.7
1983	SDN	34	100	11.8	9.9	1.9	0.9
1984	SDN	35	160	15.7	16.1	-0.5	-2.0
1985	SDN	36	162	17.9	17.3	0.3	-1.4
1986	SDN	37	155	14.2	15.2	-1.2	-2.6
1987	SDN	38	27	1.4	2.3	-1.0	-1.1
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,330	260.6	226.0	35.6	12.1
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			55	7.0	5.2	1.9	1.3
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,385	267.6	231.2	37.5	13.3

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1969	LAN	20	3	0.0	0.0	0.0	-0.0
1970	LAN	21	34	2.3	2.5	-0.1	-0.3
1971	LAN	22	81	7.3	7.3	0.6	-0.1
1972	LAN	23	96	10.1	9.2	1.6	0.7
1973	LAN	24	113	10.0	9.9	0.2	-0.9
1974	LAN	25	156	18.9	15.5	3.3	1.6
1975	LAN	26	160	21.2	17.0	4.0	2.1
1976	LAN	27	162	19.3	15.5	3.8	2.1
1977	LAN	28	162	18.0	15.0	3.0	1.4
1978	LAN	29	162	21.3	17.0	4.4	2.6
1979	LAN	30	162	19.6	17.2	2.5	0.7
1980	LAN	31	163	20.4	17.3	3.3	1.5
1981	LAN	32	110	11.6	10.8	1.0	-0.1
1982	LAN	33	162	15.6	15.0	0.6	-0.9
1983	SDN	34	100	11.7	10.1	1.7	0.7
1984	SDN	35	160	15.7	16.1	-0.7	-2.2
1985	SDN	36	162	18.0	17.2	0.6	-1.1
1986	SDN	37	155	14.3	15.0	-0.8	-2.2
1987	SDN	38	27	1.5	2.2	-0.8	-1.0
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,330	256.9	229.8	28.0	4.5
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			55	7.1	5.1	2.0	1.4
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,385	263.9	234.9	30.0	5.9

Steve Garvey 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 Steve Garvey at that time.

In the late 1970's, Steve Garvey was a STAR! From 1974 through 1980, Steve Garvey had 200 or more hits six times in seven years, with 192 hits the seventh season (1977) - interestingly, he got exactly 200 hits three times during that stretch. He drove in 100 or more runs five times over those seven seasons, with 95 RBI in one of the other two seasons. He batted over .300 six of seven times (.297 in 1977). He made the All-Star team all seven of those seasons, plus three others. He received MVP votes all seven of those seasons (plus two others), winning the 1974 NL MVP award, finishing second in 1978 and finishing sixth three other times. He won four Gold Glove awards. He played in five World Series in his career. He set the National League record for consecutive games played. Really, he was a star!

He first appeared on a BBWAA Hall-of-Fame ballot in 1993 and was named on 176 of 423 ballots (41.6%). Debuting over 40% is usually a first step toward eventual election. But Garvey got no traction at all. He managed to hold fairly steady for six elections, before gradually losing ground. In his 15th and final appearance on the BBWAA HOF ballot in 2007, he received barely more than half of his original vote percentage (21.1%).

Part of that may have been character. But part of it was that I'm not sure there's ever been a player who, when people looked back at his career objectively, it turned out, there wasn't as much there as people had thought at the time. Yes, Garvey played a lot of games and, partly because of that, he got a lot of hits. But he never won a batting title and only finished as high as 2nd once (1978, .316) - and he never finished in the top 10 in the NL in on-base percentage. He only hit 272 career home runs - longtime teammates (and definite non-stars, compared to Garvey) Ron Cey and Reggie Smith hit more in their careers.

I almost wonder if the tide has turned and some people have become so convinced of how overrated Steve Garvey is that he's actually become underrated.

The next two tables try to put Steve Garvey in the best possible light that I can. The first table shows the top 10 first basemen of the 1970s, ranked by eWins over positional average, earned only at first base.

		Top 10 First Basemen of the 1970s
		eWins	eLosses	eWOPA
1	Willie Stargell	72.8	54.8	11.7
2	Dick Allen	80.9	63.9	10.0
3	Steve Garvey	126.7	105.2	9.8
4	Tony Perez	131.6	109.5	9.6
5	Andre Thornton	75.6	61.3	9.1
6	Rod Carew	67.5	54.5	9.0
7	John Mayberry Sr.	126.7	109.2	8.1
8	Willie McCovey	113.9	94.9	7.9
9	Bob Watson	91.4	76.3	6.9
10	John 'Boog' Powell	87.8	73.2	6.5

That table is probably about the strongest Hall-of-Fame argument that one can make for Steve Garvey. Willie Stargell was a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer, so there's no great shame finishing behind him. On the other hand, Dick Allen is not in the Hall of Fame, and Stargell did not move to first base until 1975.

The next table looks at the top players in pWins over replacement level over a time period cherry-picked to match up precisely with Steve Garvey's prime, 1974 - 1980.

		Top Players, 1974 - 1980 (ranked by pWORL)
	Player	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL
1	Mike Schmidt	158.7	115.5	39.2	52.5
2	Joe L. Morgan	142.6	104.6	40.3	52.3
3	Reggie Jackson	150.1	112.2	32.5	45.7
4	George Foster	142.8	105.8	29.8	41.9
5	Steve Carlton	123.6	104.0	26.9	40.0
6	Ron Cey	146.1	114.9	27.0	39.6
7	Jim Palmer	104.6	79.0	26.6	38.4
8	Amos Otis	130.6	101.3	27.0	38.3
9	George Brett	133.6	106.6	26.0	37.7
10	Dave Parker	144.3	111.7	24.2	36.7
11	Dave Concepcion	140.9	125.0	23.4	36.3
12	Johnny Bench	108.8	84.1	25.6	35.0
13	Graig Nettles	133.1	109.4	22.7	34.5
14	Bobby Grich	122.5	104.1	23.2	34.1
15	Dave Winfield	157.9	128.5	20.1	34.1
16	Steve Garvey	143.3	109.9	21.7	34.0
17	Toby Harrah	135.7	118.7	21.3	33.7
18	Tom Seaver	107.6	92.8	21.3	32.9
19	Ken Singleton	141.2	115.4	19.4	32.0
20	Jim Rice	123.0	98.9	20.0	31.8
21	Fred Lynn	114.2	90.8	21.5	31.5
22	Davey Lopes	130.8	113.3	19.5	31.3
23	Tommy John	80.7	61.4	22.3	31.0
24	Nolan Ryan	120.4	105.8	16.4	30.8
25	Luis Tiant Jr.	98.1	80.4	18.6	30.1

Again, to repeat, the above time period was cherry-picked to match up precisely with Steve Garvey's prime.

The top three players on the list were all well-deserved first-ballot Hall-of-Famers: no shame being behind any of them. But Steve Garvey isn't even the best Los Angeles Dodger on the list: that would be Ron Cey.

Don't get me wrong: Steve Garvey was certainly not a bad player. He was a very good player in his prime. He helped five teams make the World Series, even if he might not have been as important to most of those teams as was believed at the time. And he really was the most valuable player of one pennant winner: the 1978 Los Angeles Dodgers. But Hall-of-Famer? Not really.

2020 Modern Era Hall of Fame Ballot

Article last updated: November 5, 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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