Editor's Note: This article makes use of the Fangraphs calculation of WAR, this is done only for consistency from where my research began.
This is going to start poorly, but I promise this is about my opinion that Mark Belanger should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Ok?
No baseball fan exists who doesn't enjoy a good piece of hitting; from casual fans who want to see bombs, to savants who get excited simply to see a hitter who's capable of fouling off a pitch or two. Perhaps disproportionally, hitting is what creates the lasting ethos we associate with many legends of the game.
From a pure value standpoint, the statistics tend to align themselves similarly. After all, baseball is a game about putting bat to ball, and those who've mastered the craft pop up all over the all-time WAR leaderboard.
To put up a respectable WAR with even average batting numbers can be difficult, but what about below average? And what about below that?
Below Average
Since Mark Belanger began playing baseball in 1965, a lot of players have accumulated a lot of WAR.
WAR, for the uninformed, stands for Wins Above Replacement. It is meant to signify the number of wins a player was worth his team over a season/career, compared to if a player who was "replacement level", or statistically average, had been in the game in his place.
By total WAR from the start of his career to the present day, he ranks merely 242nd. Per Fangraphs, his career WAR of 34.9 puts him in the same category as Edgar Renteria (35.1), Lonnie Smith (35.0), Jose Bautista (34.9) and JT. Realmuto (34.8). However, their routes to such a WAR differ greatly from Belanger's.
With minimal exaggeration, Mark Belanger could not hit. Almost at all. Here's the same group of players from above, with added batting statistics.
How's that for a triple slash? An OBP of .300? A sub-.300 slugging? 20 career home runs?! Yuck!
Maybe it's not as bad as it looks? Surely some concessions are deserved.
At minimum, Belanger (and his manager Earl Weaver) seemed to not only understand his limitations, but find ways to work around them. Twice he led the league in sacrifice hits and only once did he amass more than 100 strikeouts in a season.
Secondly, he was competent on the basepaths. In his 18 seasons he held a career stolen base percentage of 70% on 242 attempts, and even hit 33 triples to boot.
He was even INTENTIONALLY walked 22 times. As a baseball fan of the more modern era, this left me positively dumbfounded. I struggle to think of a single scenario wherein giving Belanger a free base made more sense than letting him hit.
Unfortunately, more advanced stats back up the original claim; it is, in fact, as bad as it looks.
A wRC+ of 71 means that across his career Mark Belanger was 29% worse than the average hitter, a prevailing attribute of his entire career. The one year Belanger hit above league average, 1976, he made his only career All-Star Game.
When compared to above-average hitters it's even worse. In fact, of the top 500 position players by WAR all time, Belanger's wRC+ is the worst (and quite comfortably too).
It's nothing short of a miracle that Belanger is even in this graph at all. For reference, the player with the second most career WAR with a 71 wRC+ is Clint Barmes, who finished his career with the Rockies, Astros, Pirates and Padres having amassed 7.8 WAR, good for 1,137th place since 1965.
So, Mark Belanger couldn't hit. And yet here he is, nearly 35 WAR in a career that certainly isn't defined by his performance at the plate. He must've been some kind of fielder.
Some Kind Of Fielder
Well look at that.
Since Mark Belanger began playing baseball in 1965, a lot of players have played a lot of defense. None have ever done it like Mark Belanger.
Here's the same group of comparable players from above, this time accompanied by their Offensive and Defensive ratings on Fangraphs.
Belanger's defense rating of 345.6 is dazzling. It's the 3rd highest defense rating since 1965, behind only Ozzie Smith and Yadier Molina. It isn't the only defense stat that puts Belanger in rarified air either.
Total Zone is a defensive metric that, at its simplest, aims to measure how many runs a defender either saved or cost his team as a result of his defense.
With a career Total Zone of 241, Belanger once again ranks third, this time behind Brooks Robinson (293) and Andrew Jones (253). Belanger, however, reached his total with only around 15K innings, compared to Jones's 17K and Robinson's 25K. This per-innings basis stands out particularly well when viewed amongst the shortstops of history.
Put differently, despite only being 25th all-time in career games as a shortstop, he finishes virtually tied with Ozzie Smith as the most Total Zone for a shortstop in baseball history.
Even further, on a per-innings basis Belanger is the best defender of all time by both metrics, as well as defensive WAR. Despite having a shorter career and fewer opportunities, Belanger's peak was immense. From 1973 to 1978, it could be argued he had the greatest 6-year peak of any defender of the last 60 years.
By Fangraphs' Defense Metric, his 6-year peak from 1973-1978 is the highest of any player in the modern era, only challenged by Yadier Molina.
In Total Zone, his peak is second in the modern era, behind an otherworldly stretch by Andruw Jones. However, it still has him ahead of Ozzie Smith, Cal Ripken Jr, and other all-time defenders.
The year before his lone All-Start appearance, 1975, Belanger finished the season with an average of .226 and an OPS of .562. With his 66 wRC+; he would've finished the 2024 season as the worst qualified batter in baseball. Yet he put up a Total Zone of 35, the 5th best season of all time. In a year in which he hit like a player who was lucky to be in the majors at all, he put up 4.3 WAR, the second best season of his career.
To be an all-time poor hitter is one thing, but to be an all-time great defender at the same time creates a very interesting juxtaposition which lays at the heart of this article's thesis.
To The Point
Mark Belanger should be in the Hall of Fame.
Baseball's Hall of Fame ballot system is relatively simple. A panel of writers vote on ballots for multiple players, and if a player eclipses 75% of the vote he is elected to the hall. If a player gets more than 5%, he is allowed to stay on the ballot the next year, up to 10 years. It is common for players to hang around long enough to eventually be voted in, as will likely happen with Andruw Jones in the coming years.
How long did Belanger last? Not very. He was named on merely 3.7% of ballots in the 1988 vote, his first year, and was not seen back on the list for another year.
Why? Because of his bat? We're talking about a consensus greatest defender of all time at a premium position during a period of sustained success for his franchise, and he couldn't even make a second vote?
WAR is a fantastic metric. It's capable of condensing so much data into a digestible and approachable statistic, and it's often used in modern-day discourse as the main driver for a Hall of Fame resumé. But in this case I cannot abide.
Defense is a major part of this sport. Mark Belanger may be the greatest defender in its history.
His 34.9 WAR is lacking, no argument can be made against this. However, to look into the underlying metrics tells a tale of a very layered ballplayer.
Baseball has been around a long time and has seen many players amount to anywhere from bad, to average, to great. Yet, it's a sport that finds particular fascination with the all-time. Mark Belanger was all-time. Regardless of how poorly he hit, I struggle to see how a conclusion can be reached that one of the greatest defenders in the history of the sport shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame. In fact, it angered me so much it served as the driving force behind this article.
To be both an all-time bad hitter and all-time good defender is, above all else, so interesting. To be so polarizing that you occupy both ends of extremes in the history of a game that loves to find itself in the middle-ground is quite frankly amazing.
Not all of Belanger's game deserved to be remembered, but you can't look at the story of Belanger's two-faced career without feeling as though it deserves to be immortalized.