Why Fred Lynn isn’t in the Hall of Fame

Fred Lynn was one of the brightest stars of the 1970s and ’80s. He was a five tool player and a perennial All-Star who led the Boston Red Sox to the World Series in his rookie year and was the hero of the 1983 All-Star game, hitting the first Grand slam ever hit in that game, and helping the American League win its first All Star game since 1971. And yet, he was eliminated from Hall of Fame consideration after just 2 years of voting and receives minimal support from the veterans committee. So why isn’t Fred Lynn in the Hall of Fame?

Fred Lynn had Hall of Fame talent

Fred Lynn was a player who could do it all. He hit for average, he hit for power, he was a good base runner, and he played good defense in center field.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with what Fred Lynn did on the field. His problem was staying on the field. He only played 150 games in a season one time in his career. He wasn’t the type of player to get hurt early in the year and then miss more than half of a season, but he did typically miss about 25% of his team’s games.

So even though he played 15 seasons, it works out to the equivalent of more like 12.

And that’s why, when you look at Fred Lynn’s Baseball Reference page, you see the same kind of disconnect that you see with Jack Clark. His adjusted OPS says he was 25% better than the average player of his era.

But when you scroll to the end and look at the advanced statistics, you find that his career WAR and his 7-year peak WAR are both about 25% below that of the average Hall of Fame center fielder.

In his case, the Hall of Fame voters weren’t looking at advanced statistics, but his conventional statistics show the same kind of shortfall. He didn’t collect 3000 hits and he didn’t hit 400 career home runs. He was far enough short of those milestones that at the time he retired, he didn’t have any clear path to reaching any of those totals.

Not a typical “Hall of Very Good” player

Fred Lynn is the type of player who draws the comment “Hall of Very Good” when his name comes up. but it’s a little more complicated than that with him. When you take what he did over his career and project it out, it’s clear he had Hall of Fame talent. What he didn’t have was Hall of Fame durability.

And that’s really why Cal Ripken, his teammate for a few seasons in Baltimore, is so remarkable. He played more games in a row without missing a single one than Fred Lynn played in his whole career.

A reliable formula for a Hall of Fame career is to be in All Star for 10 years and be an average player for 10 more, playing long enough to reach some career milestone. The major problem for Fred Lynn was that while he had nine consecutive All Star seasons, none of them was a full season. And he never played more than 124 games in a season after the age of 32. He didn’t decline to the point of being an average player until his age-37 and age-38 seasons, so it’s likely he had something left when he retired.

A path for Fred Lynn to the Hall of Fame

It’s possible that if he had moved off center field much earlier in his career, he might have had an easier time avoiding injury. Injuries can still happen in the corner outfield positions, but they are theoretically less frequent. Moving to first base would have been an extreme measure. But it’s justifiable in the case of a talent like Fred Lynn. For that matter, spending more time at designated hitter would have been good for him. It was an option, given his 16 years in the American League.

Changing positions might have helped

This is a big if, admittedly. But if changing positions had allowed him to play 25% more games, he would have had about 2,600 career hits and 400 home runs at the end of 1990. And then, reaching 3,000 hits would have been a matter of playing 3-4 more seasons. Reaching 500 career home runs would have been difficult, but possible. But 3,000 hits would have meant automatic induction.

He had three contemporaries who struggled with injuries, also lost a season in their prime to the 1981 strike, and still pulled together a Hall of Fame career. Paul Molitor, Robin Yount, and George Brett spring immediately to mind. What all three have in common is that they changed positions to make themselves less susceptible to injury. Yount spent less time at DH than Molitor or Brett. But Yount still spent nearly twice as many games DHing in his career than Lynn.

But to be fair, he may not have been happy making those changes. Fred Lynn has said he has no regrets about his career.

It was more than the 1981 strike in Fred Lynn’s case

With many of Fred Lynn’s contemporaries, it was more than one thing that kept them out of the Hall of Fame. With Fred Lynn, it’s not terribly complicated. The strike shortened 1981 season didn’t help him. The interruption seemed to keep him from getting on track. And it artificially shortened a season while he was very much at his peak. But his major problem was just staying on the field.

So the reason Fred Lynn isn’t in the Hall of Fame comes down to injury.