Hall of Fame Omissions: Dale Murphy and Gary Sheffield

Former Braves have been notable the last few years in Hall of Fame elections with former players Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz being elected as well as former managers Bobby Cox and Joe Torre being elected in the last few elections. However, the Braves have some notable former players who head up Hall of Fame omissions. Dale Murphy was a Brave for 15 years, winning 2 MVP awards. Gary Sheffield only played two seasons for the Braves, but he finished 17th and 3rd in the MVP voting in those two seasons.

Hall of Fame Omissions #1: Dale Murphy

Murph was THE superstar in Atlanta in the 80s. His stats with the Braves are obvious – 2 MVP awards, 125 OPS+, 4 Silver Sluggers, 5 Gold Gloves, and 371 home runs. He was widely considered one of the top players in all of baseball throughout the entire decade of the 1980s. He averaged 31 home runs and 93 runs batted in throughout the decade as well. Despite all these arguments for his candidacy, Dale fell off the ballot in 2013, having gone through the 15 years of eligibility without garnering the required 75% of the vote to be elected.

Murphy is the epitome of the “burn fast and burn out”.  He had a decade of dominance, but after 1990, he was a subpar hitter and was out of the league quickly thereafter.  Murphy’s 18-year career includes 4 seasons where he accumulated less than 100 plate appearances, so he really played 14 full years in the major leagues to accumulate the numbers he has.  While Murphy certainly didn’t hang around long enough to accumulate many of the counting stats that would be “automatic qualifiers” in his era, like 500 home runs, he is an example of the difference in short bursts of dominance looked at differently by a hitter versus by a pitcher.

For solid comparison, let’s look at two of Dale’s contemporaries, Andre Dawson and Jim Rice.  Both players took a significant time on the ballot to get elected, but both did eventually make the Hall of Fame.

Rice – 16 seasons, 9,058 plate appearances, 128 OPS+, 382 HR, 1 MVP, 6 top-5 MVP finishes, 8 All-Star games
Dawson – 21 seasons, 10,769 plate appearances, 119 OPS+, 438 HR, 1 MVP, 3 top-5 MVP finishes, 8 All-Star games, 8 Gold Gloves
Murphy – 18 seasons, 9,041 plate appearances, 121 OPS+, 398 HR, 2 MVP, 2 top-5 MVP finishes, 7 All-Star games, 5 Gold Gloves

You can easily see that Murphy is at the very least comparable to Rice and Dawson except for one thing: Chicago and Boston.  Dawson and Rice had their MVP seasons while playing in huge baseball markets in front of long-standing huge fan bases.  To say the least, let’s hope the Veteran’s Committee realizes the error of the voters in not putting in Dale Murphy.

Hall of Fame Omissions #2: Gary Sheffield

Sheff had one of the best cheering section names in the history of the team with his Shef’s Chefs. Outside of that, his time in Atlanta was quite brief, so he’s likely less vested in the hearts of many Braves fans. While Sheffield never won an MVP award, he finished top 3 in the voting three times and top 5 six times along with 5 Silver Slugger Awards. Sheffield’s stats were also none-too-shabby as well, even though he did play in a more offensive-based era. Even in an offensive-loaded era, he posted an OPS+ of 140 for his entire career and hit over 500 home runs. One of the more amazing statistics of his career is that in an era where striking out 100+ times per season became quite normal for a power hitter and many guys even topped 150 annually, Sheffield finished with 1,475 walks to 1,171 strikeouts. Averaged out over his career, that comes to 93 walks and 74 strikeouts per season.

Among Hall of Fame omissions, there are many that people will have a longer-standing fight for due to Sheffield being on his first year of the ballot.  That said, to me, there was not a right-handed hitter I dreaded facing more in the National League than Gary Sheffield in my years of Braves fandom (starting in the mid-1980s).  Of his similarity scores on Baseball Reference, 7 of the 10 are already in the Hall of Fame with the only exceptions being certain first-ballot guys in Chipper Jones and Ken Griffey, Jr. and another often overlooked ex-Brave by Hall of Fame voters, Fred McGriff.

Let’s be perfectly honest.  There is one primary reason why Sheffield is even among the list of Hall of Fame omissions instead of a first-ballot Hall of Famer – steroids.  While he was never suspended by Major League Baseball for failing a test. he was named on the Mitchell Report, and he was a client of BALCO industries, famously convicted of providing certain clients with illegal growth hormone.  Sheffield has been very upfront that he was using what was known as “the cream”, a lotion-type substance laced with steroids to be absorbed through the skin.  In an interview with John Shea in 2004, he admitted to having the cream applied to his knee as he worked out with Barry Bonds, but never knowing it had steroids in it until after he had stopped working out with BALCO and Bonds’ trainer.  Interestingly, his first year after using that was his lesser of his two seasons with the Braves.  He played significantly better in his second season in Atlanta, when he states that he was no longer using any substances.  Sheffield was still productive, albeit oft-injured as many 40 year old players go through, but much like Barry Bonds, no one came calling, and he felt forced into retirement.  Many in the game felt it was because he had the audacity to call out Joe Torre and Derek Jeter in an interview with HBO in 2007.

While Fred McGriff heads another round of Hall of Fame omissions who have donned the Braves uniform, it is certain to me that Sheffield and Murphy deserve to have their busts in Cooperstown.