Which Baseball Legends Had Two Separate Hall Of Fame Careers When discussing Rickey Hendersons Hall of Fame prospects, Bill James once wrote that if you could split him in two, youd have two Hall of Famers. Its a seemingly hyperbolic quip from one of sports most precise thinkers. So its probably worth a closer look. Delete Temporary Internet Files Remote Computer. Henderson is a pivotal figure in baseball and all of sports as an early test case for how advanced analytics can alter our perceptions of a player. His gaudy stolen base numbers and impressive standard batting statistics made him a shoo in for Cooperstown well before the rise of sabermetrics his value has grown even further under the analytical lens. More than any single statistic, however, its Hendersons longevity that makes him a legend. Its not simply that Henderson played for 2. Richard Richie Rich, Jr. Rihie Rih is a fictional character in the Harvey Comics universe. He debuted in Little Dot 1, coverdated. OTdfW-9G5Iw/hqdefault.jpg' alt='Richie Rich Christmas Wish 1998 Download' title='Richie Rich Christmas Wish 1998 Download' />If you take Hendersons first 1. WAR wins above replacement, as calculated by Baseball Reference of 6. If you throw all of that out, and use only his stats in the 1. Henderson had a second career with a WAR of 4. Thatd be good enough on its own for 3. MLB history, the same as Ralph Kiner and better than the likes of Lou Brock, Dizzy Dean, and many other Cooperstown residents. To put it another way, if Rickey Henderson had never played those first 1. Hall of Famer. This is what Bill James meant. So who are the other members of this exclusive club In honor of Jamess observation well call them the Hendersonian Hall of Famers, though it would be more accurate to call them Ruthian, in honor of the man with the highest second career WAR, a whopping 8. Who are those players with excellence so long lived that they had two entirely independent. Hall of Fame career arcs And whos the current player most likely to join them One way to examine this would be to use a method used by Matt Klaassen of Fangraphs. Klaassen suggests dividing a single players career into two hypothetical players, determined by a snake draft of that original players individual seasons. Image Deadspin, Photos baseballhall. When discussing Rickey Hendersons HallofFame prospects, Bill James once wrote that if you could split him in two. This method, in which the seasons can be out of order, is designed to account for the fact that the true halves as in, cutting a career down the middle of players careers are often unequal. Using Klassens method, a player who lasts 2. Bondsian. Albert Pujols might actually end up with this kind of career. More on him later. But we dont think that method quite captures the essence of Jamess comment, because it downplays longevity and emphasizes peak performance. So well use a different method Well divide the careers of players who have played 2. WAR of the lesser but still contiguous half. By doing this, we squeeze out the two most likely Hall of Fame windows, each of at least 1. HOF induction, while keeping the order of the individual seasons. What constitutes a Hall of Fame career in baseball is a messy science, even in the age of advanced stats. Special achievements awards, peak seasons, playoff heroics, the era in which one played dead ball or juiced ball, for example, and other details if you played for a big market team inform how we judge the excellence of a career. The most popular single measure for overall career value is wins above replacement, which ostensibly translates to the number of wins a player added to his team relative to a replacement level player at that position. We can use Baseball References calculation for WAR to get an idea of how good a player was, and use that as a proxy for Hall of Fame chances. To do this, we determined the list of MLB players who played 2. WAR of at least 4. The average Hall of Famer has a career WAR between 6. Cooperstown tend to begin. For example, plenty of well regarded Hall of Famers have career WARs below 5. Sandy Koufax 4. 9 and Hack Wilson 3. Fitting here, 4. 5 is also very close to the career WAR of Addie Joss 4. MLB seasons before dying young from tuberculous meningitis, leading the Hall of Fame to waive its usual 1. So two half careers with WARs of 4. Hendersonian. Just 2. To put that in perspective, the Hall of Fame contains 2. Major League players, so the Hendersonianswould represent 1. Hall. Though not all the Hendersoniansare in the Hall of Fame, for. Here they are Thats a fine list of the best of the best ever to play the game, along with a couple of real surprises. And when we begin to dig into the data, we learn some really interesting things. For one, even among the elite, there appears to be a real correlation between the two windows of a players career. Sure, the second windows of careers were slightly less productive on average 6. Hendersonians did a remarkably good job of maintaining their excellence, as demonstrated by a positive correlation Pearsons product moment, r 0. We can also examine the composition of Hendersonians by position. There are seven pitchers, zero catchers, zero first baseman, four second baseman, two shortstops, zero third basemen, three center fielders, and six corner outfielders. The zeroes at the corner infield positions first base and third base are somewhat surprising, especially because first base is usually thought of as a superstar position. Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx came close to Hendersonian, but their careers were cut short in their mid 3. Perhaps the defensive penalty WAR places on first basemen is too much, though a number of slugging corner outfielders Ruth, Bonds, Musial, Ott were able to overcome WARs defensive penalty for their positions. We also see a large number of middle infielders and center fielders, who combined defensive contributions at valuable spots with stellar offensive numbers for their positions. The absence of any catchers from the list is telling the toll of playing the position places drastically limits those players longevity. So who are the Hendersonian Hall of Famers For the most part, the list is a good approximation of the truest inner circle of the Hall, minus a few players who didnt quite have the longevity Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Mike Schmidt or gave up parts of their primes to military service Ted Williams. Perhaps the only raised eyebrows go to Phil Niekro and Gaylord Perry, who snuck onto the back end of the listtheyre the only two Hendersonianswith career WARs under 1. But their careers were not only long and successful, but also remarkably balanced between their first and second halves. Most players with WAR totals in the 9. Niekro and Perry to basically equal the very good numbers put up by their younger selves. But the biggest surprise arrives when we ask the question Who is the next Hendersonian Who is the active baseball great cramming two Hall of Fame careers into one No, its not Albert Pujols, who racked up an incredible 8. WAR over his first 1. Its not Clayton Kershaw, who is just finishing up his stellar first 1. Mike Trout, who is barely halfway through his. Both may join the club someday, but its too early to safely project now. The current player most like to be not just a Hall of Fame, but a Hendersonian Hall of Famer isAdrian BeltreYup. From 1. 99. 8 to 2. Beltre put up roughly 5. WAR. In his six seasons since then, hes added another 3. WAR. Although hes in his age 3. WAR just last year, and projection systems like ZIPS and Steamer forecasted another 3 to 4 in 2. Beltre missed nearly two months to start the season with a calf injury, which is a real risk of age, but hes been great since returning and should still reach those projections. If Beltre sticks around another four seasons or so through age 4.