Billy Hamilton—Runs: Signed, sealed, delivered
Who’s the best leadoff hitter ever? Rickey Henderson. We all know it. He batted first 2,875 times among his 3,081 games played, or 93% of the time (per BBREF’s career splits). He got on base at a .401 clip, and he stole 1,406 bases. Amazing.
Scratch the surface of that leadoff question, however, and we find some unknowns:
- Who are the other candidates for the title of best leadoff hitter ever?
- Who did Rickey replace as the best?
- Who are the best right now?
We can answer a lot of these questions effectively, and, because we don’t have batting-order information before 1914, some merely pretty well.
From the top
So who else was (or is) a great leadoff hitter? As the first paragraph suggests, there are three qualifications:
- you have to be a leadoff hitter, which I’m going to define as spending more than half your career leading off
- you have to be awesome at getting on base (aka: have a high OBP)
- preferably you should also be a very fast, effective base runner so that you can score easily as the heart of the order hits behind you.
The leadoff man represents the most important lineup decision a manager faces because most runs score in the first inning, the only inning in which a team is guaranteed that its lineup dynamic can work.
I used BBREF’s splits play index to generate a ranked list of who led off the most times (going to back to 1914, remember). I then filtered that list by WAR’s batting and base running values and took only hitters with positive value in both. For batters before 1914, I sorted by steals, then went season by season to see who led their team in plate appearances per game for 50% or more of their seasons.
Here’s everyone who led off 80% of the time or more since 1914 and had positive value in batting and running:
NAME %LED_OFF ========================== Ron LeFlore 95% Rickey Henderson 93% Denard Span* 93% Jose Reyes* 88% Lenny Dykstra 86% Austin Jackson* 85% Shannon Stewart 84% Brett Butler 83% Eddie Yost 82% Bob Dilinger 82% Kenny Lofton 81% Brian Roberts 80% *=Active
If you knew that Ron LeFlore would beat Rickey in percentage of games led off, then I want you on my baseball trivia team. Also, I would have put money on Lou Brock making this list. Nope, he led off in only 72% of games. Tim Raines? Just 56%. In case you were wondering, Bobby Bonds, owner of the leadoff home run record prior to Rickey, led off just 49% of the time
Some other important leadoff men: Ichiro (79%), Chuck Knoblauch (79%), Davey Lopes (66%), Pete Rose (65%), Richie Ashburn (64%), Johnny Damon (63%), Paul Molitor (59%), Craig Biggio (55%), and others.
So how about the great leadoff hitters of the pre-1914 era? Billy Hamilton and Dummy Hoy may be the two who best fit the criteria. You expected, Cobb, Lajoie, Collins? Nope, those guys, even Cobb who used to hold the steals record, usually hit second, third, or fourth in the order. It surprised me to learn that even Max Carey only led off about a third of the time. I will disclaim one thing, however. I don’t entirely trust BBREF’s base running values before the play-by-play era (about 1945). They base them on regression analysis, but I’m a little skeptical. Leadoff hitters like Wee Willie Keeler, Harry Hooper, and George Gore all score negatively in base running, and something there feels a little off. Someday soon I hope we will have that information and revise this list accordingly.
You’re tops!
These are the top 10 candidates for greatest leadoff hitter ever. Plus a few other famous or interesting leadoff hitters, and the best active guys. I clipped off a few (like Bob Dillinger, Shannon Stewart, Brian Roberts, and Austin Jackson) who weren’t too great and didn’t hold my interest.
%LED NAME OFF PA OBP SB SB% RBAT RBASER ============================================================== Top-10 Rickey Henderson 93% 13346 .401 1406 80.1% 555 144 Billy Hamilton N/A 7608 .455 914 N/A 501 53 Paul Molitor 59% 12167 .369 504 79.4% 352 78 Tim Raines 56% 10359 .385 808 84.7% 292 115 Pete Rose 65% 15890 .375 198 57.1% 368 12 Craig Biggio 55% 12504 .363 414 77.0% 257 54 Brett Butler 83% 9545 .377 558 68.5% 188 37 Kenny Lofton 81% 9235 .372 622 79.5% 140 78 Lou Brock 72% 11240 .343 938 75.3% 121 78 Interesting/famous Lenny Dykstra 86% 5282 .375 285 79.8% 133 46 Eddie Yost 82% 9175 .394 72 52.2% 184 7 Chuck Knoblauch 79% 7387 .378 407 77.7% 106 43 Davey Lopes 66% 7340 .349 557 83.0% 86 83 Johnny Damon 63% 10917 .352 408 79.8% 93 77 Ron LeFlore 95% 4872 .342 455 76.2% 48 52 Richie Ashburn 64% 9736 .396 234 68.2% 197 8 Dummy Hoy N/A 8385 .386 596 N/A 178 15 Active Ichiro Suzuki 79% 9764 .359 490 81.4% 115 62 Jose Reyes 88% 6696 .340 458 80.5% 65 51
RBAT and RBASER are the number of runs above average in batting and running that BBREF reports, aka: the sorting filter I used draw up the list.
Let’s break this down into getting on base and motoring around them once on. Here’s the difference in OBP between each of these guys and a league average player in their ballpark (expressed in the same way as OPS+) and the number of additional times they reached base than average.
ADD’L NAME PA OBP lgOBP OBP+ TOB ================================================ Top-10 Billy Hamilton 7608 .455 .354 129 768 Rickey Henderson 13346 .401 .327 123 988 Tim Raines 10359 .385 .331 116 559 Brett Butler 9545 .377 .327 115 477 Pete Rose 15890 .375 .331 113 699 Paul Molitor 12167 .369 .331 111 462 Kenny Lofton 9235 .372 .342 109 277 Craig Biggio 12504 .363 .336 108 338 Lou Brock 11240 .343 .330 104 146 Interesting/famous Richie Ashburn 9736 .396 .337 118 574 Eddie Yost 9175 .394 .343 115 468 Lenny Dykstra 5282 .375 .329 114 243 Chuck Knoblauch 7387 .378 .341 111 273 Dummy Hoy 8385 .386 .348 111 319 Davey Lopes 7340 .349 .328 106 154 Johnny Damon 10917 .352 .339 104 142 Ron LeFlore 4872 .342 .342 104 58 Active Ichiro Suzuki 9764 .359 .325 110 332 Jose Reyes 6696 .340 .331 103 60
On a per plate-appearance average, it’s Billy Hamilton, not Rickey Henderson who is the on-base king among leadoff men. There’s a big gap there before you get down to Ashburn, Raines, Yost, and Butler. Hamilton played in a time of shorter schedules and so couldn’t amass quite as many PAs. But, let’s assemble Rickey’s 7600 or so best OBP+ oriented PAs to match Sliding Billy’s fourteen seasons.
ADD’L NAME PA OBP lgOBP OBP+ TOB ============================================== Top-14 Seasons Rickey Henderson 7742 .415 .322 129 718 Billy Hamilton 7608 .455 .354 129 768
Henderson catches up in relative OBP, but he doesn’t quite catch up in the raw times on base despite 140 more plate appearances. Hamilton retains a slight advantage when it comes to demonstrating on-base ability. If you want to tell me that Rickey played during a more difficult period in history, you won’t hear dissent from these quarters. Call ‘em tied in this ability if you want. It’s fine. But in this department, Rickey does have a match or a better among our pool of leadoff men.
Run for it!
Now what about once on the bases? Here we’re on slightly shakier ground since detailed information isn’t available for all of history. And also, BBREF doesn’t make this easily queryable at the league level for a given player’s career, so we’ll turn to WAR’s base running values. There’s a bunch of unfamiliar stats here:
- TOB: Times on Base
- PKO: Pickoffs
- XBT: Extra Bases Taken (e.g. going first to third)
- XBT%: Percentage of times a player takes the extra base
- OOB: Outs on Base (outs made attempting to gain an extra base)
- BASES/TOB: A junk stat I just made up that tells us how many positive events a player created on the bases, net of the outs he ran into, per times on bae
- RBASWER/200: Another junk stat I made up that returns the Base running runs per 200 times on base (which is around a season’s playing time)
BASES/ RBASER/ NAME TOB* SB CS PKO XBT XBT% OOB TOB RBASER 200 ======================================================================== Top-10 Rickey Henderson 4989 1406 335 161 820 55% 105 .33 144 5.8 Lou Brock 3543 938 307 66 602 53% 138 .29 78 4.4 Kenny Lofton 3159 622 160 53 599 55% 97 .29 78 5.0 Tim Raines 3694 808 146 51 539 50% 75 .29 115 6.2 Billy Hamilton 3517 914 .26 53 3.0 Brett Butler 3357 558 257 61 599 54% 72 .23 37 2.2 Paul Molitor 4112 504 131 23 679 48% 99 .23 78 3.8 Craig Biggio 4159 414 124 29 616 45% 125 .18 54 2.6 Pete Rose 5634 198 149 14 953 49% 180 .14 12 0.4 Interesting/famous Ron LeFlore 1547 455 142 42 278 61% 51 .32 52 6.7 Davey Lopes 2330 557 114 41 393 53% 41 .32 83 7.1 Lenny Dykstra 1845 285 72 18 289 50% 42 .24 46 5.0 Chuck Knoblauch 2816 407 117 44 456 50% 62 .23 43 3.1 Johnny Damon 3478 408 103 16 583 48% 89 .23 77 4.4 Dummy Hoy 3027 596 .20 15 1.0 Richie Ashburn 3677 234 113 52 644 52% 100 .17 8 0.4 Eddie Yost 3381 72 66 14 546 47% 66 .14 6 0.4 Active Jose Reyes 2040 458 111 55 323 51% 83 .26 51 5.0 Ichiro Suzuki 3295 489 112 28 464 41% 80 .22 62 3.8 *H + BB + HPB – HR – 3B ^Includes unofficial PBP CS from BBREF for years with no official CS data
Nobody tops Rickey when it comes to creating positive base running events. This way of looking at things is, however, subject to some contextual issues such as how the batters behind the player perform (which itself is subject to park effects), the run environment, and even the base-running norms of the day. That’s where rbaser/200 comes in. It shows us the estimated run value the player generated on a roughly per-season basis. The first one is descriptive, the second analytical.
The biggest surprise here, to me, is Ichiro, who has doesn’t have a tremendous number of outs on base but is clearly the least aggressive base runner at taking extra bases of anyone generally thought of as an elite leadoff hitter. It’s not even close. Is that a Mariners thing or an Ichiro thing? I don’t know, but as the now-old joke goes, he could take those bases if he wanted to.
Another big surprise to me is how poorly Ashburn shows. While his batting is oustanding, his base running looks pretty poor for a guy widely considered to be a great leadoff hitter. So much so that I had to knock him out of my top ten. Strangely, while his stolen base percentage isn’t very good, other aspects of his running game seem OK. Can’t say for sure what’s going on there, and there could be some sort of contextual factor.
Back to the top of the heap, it looks as though Henderson is not necessarily the best base runner among the true elites. Tim Raines might be that guy. Raines was on base about 1300 fewer times thanks to Rickey’s playing 579 more games. So let’s take Rickey’s 2500 or so best games in terms of base running and compare to all of Raines’ 2506 games (meaning we will cut out 1979, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2002, 2003).
BASES/ RBASER/ NAME TOB* SB CS PKO XBT XBT% OOB TOB RBASER 200 ========================================================================== Rickey Henderson 3464 1256 283 126 700 55% 83 .42 148 8.5 Tim Raines 3694 808 146 51 539 50% 75 .29 115 6.2
Yeah, Rickey’s very much da man. He would look even better when we peeled off more seasons to compare with the amazing Davey Lopes (who maybe does deserve some credit for the base running exploits of the late-aughts Phillies that he coached for) and the unheralded Ron LeFlore.
Now it’s very hard to say much about Hamilton and Hoy as base runners. At the very least, from 1892 to 1897, steals were recorded when the runner took extra bases on a batted ball (e.g. going first to third). Some sources, such as Total Baseball, have less certainty and suggest that as early as 1886 (when steals first became official statistics) they comprised more base running feats than modern steals do. Regardless, Hamilton topped 100 four times, led his league 5 times, placed in the top-five three other times, and finished sixth in yet another season. Until we know a lot more about him, God willing that time comes, we can’t say much. Except this context-dripping piece of information: Hamilton scored an astonishing 1.06 runs per game. That’s more than any player with 700 or more career runs scored or more than 600 career games. In fact, he’s one of only three men with substantial careers (George Gore and Harry Stovey the others) to score more than one per game.*
*There are 164 such players in all of big league history, at least that’s how many I found using BBREF’s play index. Among them 77 scored just one run, another 51 scored fewer than 10 runs, and 23 scored fewer than 100. After Hamilton, Gore, and Stovey the rest of the remaining 13 were all National Association players. While one Jimmy Wood scored 1.59 runs per game, he only played 102 times. Ross Barnes at 1.40 runs per game is my vote for the kingpin among the NA guys with 698 runs in 499 contests, in that wild and crazy NA run environment he scored a cool 1.40 runs per game played.
Coming Home
So Rickey’s the best, of course. I think I’d take Sliding Billy second until proven otherwise. Boy, it sure seems like Tim Raines is the third man here, easily. Another little plank in the argument for why he should be given a plaque. After that, it’s probably Molitor or Lofton, but it’s not an easy call like the top three are. No active player appears to be coming along to take their place either. Ichiro should ultimately make the top 10, but he’s more like Lou Brock and won’t challenge Rickey, Billy, and Raines. Of course, as mentioned, an influx of new data could cause a revision to this list, and I hope it does. It’s more fun that way. Maybe we’ll see the George Gores or Harry Hoopers or George J. Burnses elbow their way into the mix once we really know what they were doing on the bases. For now, though, this is what we can do.
the Hall of Miller and Eric 
Like the way you establish your criteria and understand context. Very nice piece.
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Posted by verdun2 | May 18, 2015, 8:31 am