Markakis is retiring

[DrungoHazewood]

16 minutes ago, Philip said:

He ended at 2388, with a full season last year getting an additional 112 hits in 120 games would’ve been pretty unlikely. And I don’t think he’s the guy Who would be willing to start the season just to amass enough additional hits to retire at an even 2500.

And 2388 is not bad at all.

He's currently 127th all time in MLB hits.  20,000+ MLBers, 100,000+ minor leaguers, millions who've played below that level, and Nick ended up 127th.  That's a pretty awesome achievement.  He could walk down the street and bump into Ryne Sandberg, Alan Trammell, Barry Larkin, Jim Thome, Jeff Bagwell and say "yep, I had more hits than any of you guys."

He won some Gold Gloves, selected for an All Star team, played in the postseason multiple years, led the AL in rWAR in 2008.  That last one is a great trivia question: name the player who once led the league in WAR but didn't get a single MVP vote.  Not even a 10th place on some Baltimore sportswriter's ballot.  Jason Bartlett, who played 128 games and hit one homer with 37 RBI out-polled Markakis who had 7.4 WAR, 48 doubles, 99 walks and was a +22 RFer.

Anyway, hope Nick enjoys his retirement.  I always enjoyed his time with the O's.  I agreed with the decision to not resign him, but I liked and respected him as a player and a person.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

 That last one is a great trivia question: name the player who once led the league in WAR but didn't get a single MVP vote.

But is that the only time it has happened?

[DrungoHazewood]

2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

But is that the only time it has happened?

I don't know, and I'll have to investigate how hard it'll be to find out.  Obviously pre-1930ish it happened with a lot of players because there was no MVP award most years, and none at all prior to 1910ish.  But for years where there was a vote... let me see if that's easily searchable.

Oh, also there was the unwritten rule in the early MVP voting that you couldn't win twice, started when Chalmers would give away a car with the award and they didn't want Ty Cobb to end up with six cars.  So I'm sure there were years where Cobb or Ruth or something had a 10-win season and didn't get a vote.

[Chito]

 

[DrungoHazewood]

Incomplete spot check... but looks like Arky Vaughn led the NL in WAR in '36 and didn't get any votes.  Graig Nettles led the league in WAR twice, and finished 16th and 28th in the MVP voting.

It would take a while to look at all the WAR leaders in the past 90 years across two leagues, but eyeballing it I wouldn't be surprised if it's just Markakis and Vaughn.

[DrungoHazewood]

Here's the ultimate Nick snub from that 2008 season.  He was a 7+ win player with a .400 OBP, a 143 wRC+.  He was the 25-year-old up-and-coming star.  But even Baltimore sportswriters gave the Most Valuable Oriole award to Aubrey Huff.  Who had the same offensive performance as Nick as a 31-year-old DH with no defensive value and who once called Baltimore a "horse**** town".

Can we retroactively give Nick some kind of award for being both a better player and a better person than Aubrey Huff?

[Sports Guy]

1 minute ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Here's the ultimate Nick snub from that 2008 season.  He was a 7+ win player with a .400 OBP, a 143 wRC+.  He was the 25-year-old up-and-coming star.  But even Baltimore sportswriters gave the Most Valuable Oriole award to Aubrey Huff.  Who had the same offensive performance as Nick as a 31-year-old DH with no defensive value and who once called Baltimore a "horse**** town".

Can we retroactively give Nick some kind of award for being both a better player and a better person than Aubrey Huff?

Well, he’s not far off about Baltimore.

That was at a time where OldFan was all mad because we would call him All Star caliber even though he had never made an AS game.  Lol. What a nut that guy was.

[Sports Guy]

My biggest issue with Nick is that I thought he should have been a better BA/OBP guy.

He would always go into these prolonged slumps that would kill his stats.  He should have been a batting title threat in a lot of years and his OBP should have been 375+.  
 

As good as he was, I think he could have been better.  

[HowAboutThat]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I don't know, and I'll have to investigate how hard it'll be to find out.  Obviously pre-1930ish it happened with a lot of players because there was no MVP award most years, and none at all prior to 1910ish.  But for years where there was a vote... let me see if that's easily searchable.

Oh, also there was the unwritten rule in the early MVP voting that you couldn't win twice, started when Chalmers would give away a car with the award and they didn't want Ty Cobb to end up with six cars.  So I'm sure there were years where Cobb or Ruth or something had a 10-win season and didn't get a vote.

Boy, you don’t want to anger all those Chalmers Motors stockholders!

[Number5]

9 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

As good as he was, I think he could have been better.  

This is true of us all.

[Moose Milligan]

10 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

My biggest issue with Nick is that I thought he should have been a better BA/OBP guy.

He would always go into these prolonged slumps that would kill his stats.  He should have been a batting title threat in a lot of years and his OBP should have been 375+.  
 

As good as he was, I think he could have been better.  

I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of nitpicking a great career, but for me I thought he should have been a better power guy.  16 homers, 23 homers, 20 homers in his first 3 years...and never cracked 20 again.  Never really came close after hitting 18 in 2009.

I never thought he should routinely hit 35+ but I thought he was going to turn into a guy who was routinely in the high 20s, low 30s.  

[DrungoHazewood]

13 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Well, he’s not far off about Baltimore.

That was at a time where OldFan was all mad because we would call him All Star caliber even though he had never made an AS game.  Lol. What a nut that guy was.

My uncle talked all the time about this great play Curt Blefary made in 1965.  Nick could never make a play like that!  Don't know why you idiots keep saying he's Gold Glove caliber!!  Dumber than tarnation to trade Curt Blefary.

[Frobby]

16 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

My biggest issue with Nick is that I thought he should have been a better BA/OBP guy.

He would always go into these prolonged slumps that would kill his stats.  He should have been a batting title threat in a lot of years and his OBP should have been 375+.  
 

As good as he was, I think he could have been better.  

It was all that offseason hunting.  

[Sports Guy]

5 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of nitpicking a great career, but for me I thought he should have been a better power guy.  16 homers, 23 homers, 20 homers in his first 3 years...and never cracked 20 again.  Never really came close after hitting 18 in 2009.

I never thought he should routinely hit 35+ but I thought he was going to turn into a guy who was routinely in the high 20s, low 30s.  

He talked about how he didn’t make baseball his life in the offseason.  I think that held him back.

I don’t fault him for it but he didn’t eat, drink and sleep baseball.  Very much like Joe Flacco in that regards.  He valued his time off, kids, etc..he probably could have worked out more, gotten stronger, etc...Just wasn’t what he wanted.

[DrungoHazewood]

14 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

My biggest issue with Nick is that I thought he should have been a better BA/OBP guy.

He would always go into these prolonged slumps that would kill his stats.  He should have been a batting title threat in a lot of years and his OBP should have been 375+.  
 

As good as he was, I think he could have been better.  

Nick had some injuries in the 2011-13 period, including the Sabathia HBP, that really changed him as a player.  Took away his power.  And I think he really was hurt by the transition to the current all power/all power pitcher game.  bb-ref says he had an OPS 80 points higher against finesse pitchers than power pitchers.  I don't know what the typical split is, but I see Nick as a guy who in an earlier era could have been a Paul Waner or maybe even a George Brett kind of player who hit .330 or .350 with 50 doubles.  But in 2015 facing wall to wall power pitchers and LOOGYs with an average 9 K/9 nobody hits like that any more.  In a full season nobody's hit .350 in 11 years.