Jeff Cline and the Keltner List

[Lions]

Jeff Cline was already 29 years old when the PEBA came into existence. As a catcher who could hit, he was high on draft boards for the inaugural draft despite not being the best defensively. In fact, the Canton Longshoremen took him with the 17th pick of the 2nd round of the inaugural draft.

Cline was the 3rd of 5 catchers taken in the draft, behind Bartolo Martínez (LON) and Jeffrey Graham (FLA) and ahead of Eric Morse (CON) and Carlos Gómez (KAL). One of the challenges of the inaugural draft was that of managing payroll, and it became clear to Canton leadership pretty quickly that they had a financial problem. The result was that Cline was sent off to Connecticut for Morse the very day of the draft. Morse wasn’t as good as Cline, but he was both younger and cheaper.

Connecticut would only hold on to Cline for a season before trading him to the 103 win New Orleans Trendsetters as the Nutmeggers decided to commit to a rebuild. After 4 years in the Bayou, Cline was sent to Charleston midway through 2012.

As a free agent, Cline signed with Manchester for 2013 at age 35. After two seasons there, he had one year stints at Florida and finally Canton, the team that originally drafted him 10 years earlier. Interestingly, as a Longshoreman, Cline wound up being teammates with the man he was originally traded for, Eric Morse.

With that brief summary aside, here, then, is how Cline rates on the Keltner List. For those unfamiliar with it, the Keltner List was invented by Bill James in his book Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame. It asks a number of subjective questions to get at the quality of a player’s career in context to the environment they played in. You can’t really rank players against each other off of it directly, but after reviewing how a player answers the questions you should have a much better feel for the player’s career than before.

Was he ever regarded as the best player in baseball?

Yes. In 2009, his Royal Raker season, Cline’s 10.3 WAR were the highest WAR of any position player during the first 4 PEBA seasons. In fact, Cline was the only player aside from teammate and starting pitcher Conan McCullough to put up a season of 9.0 WAR or greater until SP Markus Hancock joined them in 2010. No other Royal Raker winner posted a WAR as high as Cline’s until 2033.

Cline has a tendency to get overlooked in this regard because of players like RF Pat Lilly. Lilly won 3 SL Royal Rakers in the first four PEBA seasons, all with comparable or higher OPS’s than Cline’s, but his WAR didn’t reach the peak that Cline reached due to the positions they played. While Cline never won an All Leather award, he could throw.

Was he the best player on his team?

He was the best position player for the Trendsetters during his tenure there. The aforementioned McCullough has an argument as the team’s best player, but he was a pitcher. He won the first 3 IL Golden Arm awards, but Cline was the offensive leader once he arrived.

Was he the best player in baseball (or in the league) at his position?

As mentioned above, his status as one of the best players in the league also gets him a yes for this question. During the 4 years from 2007 to 2010, he holds 4 of the top 5 WAR seasons among catchers, with Pat Holman‘s 2010 season for Duluth slotting in at 4th.

Did he have an impact on a number of pennant races?

Cline’s best 3 seasons in New Orleans coincided with the team’s last 3 playoff appearances. Adding him to a 103 win team resulted in division rivals bemoaning the best team getting stronger and led directly to the Trendsetters winning the PEBA championship in 2008.

In the postseason, Cline was a large contributor to the title winning team, but he didn’t play particularly well in either of the two following postseasons, and New Orleans ended up just winning the one title. It’s certainly not all on him, but his lack of contribution certainly didn’t help.

Charleston acquired Cline for the 2012 playoff push, filling one of the teams offensive weaknesses. Incumbent Jeffrey Graham (yes, the same one drafted ahead of Cline) had a .594 OPS in 81 games that year and was worth -0.1 WAR. Cline came in and was worth 1.8 WAR after posting a .874 OPS in just 54 games. Unfortunately, Cline didn’t appear for the Statesmen in the postseason.

Manchester didn’t make it back to the postseason with Cline as they tried to keep the band going despite heading in the wrong direction. Cline’s season with Florida was the one year that Florida missed the postseason between 2010 and 2030.

Was he a good enough player that he could continue to play regularly after passing his prime?

Cline’s prime came from the ages of 29 to 33, and while he was limited to injuries and part time duty as he aged, he continued to post positive WAR numbers until he retired.

Is he the very best player in baseball history who is not in the Hall of Fame?

No. Cline was a great hitting catcher with what can be construed as a short peak due to the nature of how old he was when the league kicked off.

Are most players who have comparable career statistics in the Hall of Fame?

His most similar batters are Manuel González, Chad Hull, and Jason Corbett. None of these players are in the Hall of Fame, but we also don’t yet have a catcher in the Hall. None of them are likely Hall of Famers, either. Corbett is the only other player with a 6.0+ WAR season.

Wilson Berry, who’s 5th on his similar batters list, was eventually dropped off the ballot after maxing out at 7 votes (24%).

Germán Hernández is the other catcher receiving high numbers of votes. He doesn’t have the peak of Cline, but he had a full career in PEBA, albeit only about 300 more games played.

Tony Carmona is an interesting comparison for Cline, as he made his PEBA debut at 29, just like Cline. Carmona came over from the San Juan Winter League having dominated over there, but he didn’t have nearly the impact that Cline had.

Do the players numbers meet Hall of Fame standards?

Cline’s got a Black Ink score of 7, Gray Ink of 67, and HOF Standards of 42. All of these are better than any of the guys mentioned above, as well as Bob Keller, another popular candidate.

Is there evidence to suggest that the player was significantly better or worse than is suggested by his statistics?

We have park factors available in StatsLab dating back to 2010, and New Frontier Park in New Orleans has always played as a park that favors hitters. The other parks he played in have a similar bent with the exception of Moultrie Field in Charleston, which is a pitcher’s park. Cline only spent half a season there.

In all, Clines raw offensive numbers are probably a bit flashier than they would have been had he spent his career in a less offensively inclined environment. That said, he did post a career 133 OPS+, which takes park factors into account.

Is he the best player at his position who is eligible for the Hall of Fame but not in?

In my opinion, this question comes down to how you value peak versus career due to the fact that he didn’t get to play in PEBA before he was 29. I’m reluctant to give him any credit for those years, and in spite of that, I think he’s probably the best eligible catcher.

How many MVP-type seasons did he have? Did he ever win an MVP award? If not, how many times was he close?

He won the 2009 Royal Raker and certainly deserved it. His 7.7 and 8.1 WAR in 2008 and 2010, respectively, were right up there with the actual Royal Raker winner. In 2007 he was a contender for the award, so he had 4 seasons where he was a legitimate candidate including the one he won.

How many All-Star-type seasons did he have? How many All-Star games did he play in? Did most of the other players who played in this many go into the Hall of Fame?

He made the All-Star team 5 times. In addition to the 4 seasons mentioned above, he was an All-Star during his first season with Manchester as he bounced back from a bit of a down year in2012. That’s not a particularly high number of All-Star games, but that is half of the seasons he played in. The only hitter currently in the Hall of Fame with fewer than 6 All-Star appearances is Tsumemasa Morimoto, PEBA’s all time home run leader.

If this man were the best player on his team, would it be likely that the team could win the pennant?

Absolutely, as proven by 2008. The team’s postseason run in 2009 also went to the 7th game of the Planetary Extreme Championship where they lost to the 125 win Aurora Borealis.

What impact did the player have on baseball history? Was he responsible for any rule changes? Did he introduce any new equipment? Did he change the game in any way?

None of particular note, although his trade before the PEBA’s inaugural season was certainly notable.

Did the player uphold the standards of sportsmanship and character that the Hall of Fame, in its written guidelines, instructs us to consider?

Instead of the above question, since that one was specific to the defunct MLB Hall criteria, let’s ask a question not on the original Keltner List:

Can you tell the story of PEBA without mentioning Cline?

Personally, I think you have to include him. His draft day trade to Connecticut was big news. His trade a year later to the already strong Trendsetters set them up with an offensive force to complement McCullough and ultimately win them that title.

The knock on Cline is never about the quality of player he was. The biggest question around Cline’s career really comes down to whether or not it was long enough to be considered Hall worthy. Cline appeared in just 10 PEBA seasons, and played in just over 1200 career games. On the other hand, his peak was excellent. There’s no catcher who has had a peak like his. He’s the only full time catcher to have a .300+ batting average over any significant length of time, and his OPS is highest among the same group. Twenty years after his retirement, he still ranks 4th on catcher WAR list at 44.3. Only German Hernandez has meaningfully passed him at 54.4. Pepe Espinosa, who’s 2nd on the list, is just 0.5 WAR ahead of Cline.



More on Jeff Cline:

Jeff Cline Announces Retirement

[Lions]

I present this Keltner List as an example of what I was talking about in the Hall of Fame discussion thread. I've never voted for Cline in the past. The reality is that his career was before my time and I always looked at it as too short, too impacted by the Big Bang of the league, etc. I must say that I'm now reconsidering him based not so much on any of that changing so much as the impression I now have that there really hasn't been another catcher quite like him. We'll see which way I go once the next ballot comes out.

One fun thing to do with these older players is to use the forum search for the player's name. In this case, if you search for Cline, you'll get all sorts of interesting posts that reference him, many of which talk of him glowingly and how various other players compare to him, which suggests to me that, at least early in PEBA history, he was the gold standard for future catchers. I think we've lost a bit of that perspective with time. It also reminds me just how valuable the forums are as a permanent record of how we view what's going on in the league. Something that Slack doesn't capture for us due to the short retention period of posts there.

[Board of the PEBA]

This is a great article and definitely an interesting take - and has me rethinking Cline as well!

I think this is also a great example of what you were talking about to hype candidates for the HoF...