Craig Biggio gets emotional before his final major-league at bat in 2007 / Icon SMI

Our recent discussion about Lou Brock a couple of questions about comparisons with Craig Biggio, who himself will be eligible for the Hall of Fame for the first time coming up soon. In short, there really is no comparison.

At first glance, Brock and Biggio have a number of similarities:

• They both hit leadoff a lot in their careers
• 3000 hits thanks in part to a long career
• lots of speed & stolen bases
• lots of doubles
  negative defensive contribution
• OPS+ of about 110

After that high-level view, though, Biggio really separates himself from Brock (and most other players) when you dig into the details.

Now, about a year and a half ago, I wrote a detailed summary of the cases for and against Biggio’s Hall of Fame candidacy. I’m not going to rehash that entire argument here but rather draw specific distinctions with regards to Brock.

In terms of basic hitting, the players actually look fairly similar. Biggio is 21st all-time in hits, while Brock is 24th. Biggio had over 1,000 more plate appearances than Brock and actually had a slightly lower battering average (during a much higher run-scoring era).

I already mentioned above that their career OPS+ were similar–111 for Biggio and 109 for Brock. Since Brock’s batting average was a little higher, it means that Biggio did better in OBP and SLG. Indeed he had about a 20-point margin in each, thanks mainly to more walks, doubles, and homers.

As a result, Biggio was worth a lot more with his bat. He amassed 233 batting runs (the batting part of WAR) over his career, while Brock had 99 (by no means a poor total but obviously many fewer.) Brock made up some of the difference in his baserunning runs, where his stolen bases in part gave him a 79 to 49 edge over Biggio.

The massive difference for these guys, though, was positional adjustment. Brock was a left fielder. Some of his best LF contemporaries were Willie Stargell, Jim Rice, George Foster, Greg Luzinski, Carl Yastrzemski, Billy Williams, and Don Baylor. These guys all produced a lot more runs and had OPS+ of at least 125.

Biggio, meanwhile, played C, 2B, and CF–all positions that receive a bump in positional adjustment. Looking just at 2B, the only contemporaries of Biggio with an OPS+ of 125 were Lou Whitaker, Chase Utley, and Jeff Kent.

The net result is that for positional runs, Biggio scores a 55 while Brock had a -127. Ouch.

If you sum it all up, Brock was worth 361 runs above replacement for his career. Biggio, by comparison, was worth 648 runs above replacement.

As I said before, I don’t have a real problem with Brock being in the Hall of Fame. I can accept that he was the best leadoff hitter of his era and did a lot of good things on the field. Biggio, though, was one of the best players of his era and one of the most deserving Hall of Fame candidates I’ve ever seen.