Why Jack Clark isn’t in the Hall of Fame

For a brief time in the mid-1980s, Jack Clark was the most feared power hitter in the National League. But he got very little Hall of Fame consideration after he retired. So why isn’t Jack Clark in the Hall of Fame?

Jack Clark presents an interesting Hall of Fame case. He hit for power, but he didn’t have the kind of power someone like Reggie Jackson had. But he hit for higher average than Reggie Jackson and got on base a lot. When you look at his career adjusted OPS, it’s an impressive 137. That suggests he was 37% better than the average player of his time. He has peers in the Hall of Fame who were merely 19% better than average.

But yet, when you look at other advanced statistics and compare Jack Clark to Hall of Famers, he would be a below average Hall of Fame outfielder or first baseman. And I think that’s why Jack Clark presents an interesting Hall of Fame case. He had impressive numbers at the time, and modern advanced statistics tell us what we were seeing was indeed something special. So why would he be a below average Hall of Famer?

Injuries and their effect on Jack Clark’s Hall of Fame case

When you look at Jack Clark’s Baseball Reference page, if you scroll down nearly to the end, you can see his comparison against Hall of Famers. And when you look at his career wins above replacement totals, he falls about 20 WAR short compared to a Hall of Fame right fielder. And his seven year peak comes up about 10 WAR short. The idea with that statistic is that a player’s prime is generally about 7 years, so this number looks at the player’s seven best consecutive years.

So even though Jack Clark was 37% better than the average hitter during his career, which is well within Hall of Fame standards, he didn’t help his teams win as many games as the typical Hall of Famer. Or, for that matter, a borderline case who didn’t make it, like Dave Parker or Keith Hernandez.

And the reason for that is injuries. Unlike Andre Dawson, who also struggled with injuries his entire career, Clark only played 150 games in a season three times in his career. Dawson did it seven times. Cardinal fans are not happy that Andre Dawson is in the Hall of Fame but Jack Clark isn’t. They argue that Jack Clark was a better player. And they’re right, but Dawson’s 7-year peak and overall body of work, while slightly below Hall of Fame average, was much closer to Hall of Fame average than Clark’s were.

1984 and 1986: Two lost seasons

Two glaring problems for Clark are his 1984 and 1986 seasons. In both cases, he missed more than half the season due to injuries.

In 1984, he was having the best year of his career when he sustained a knee injury in June that required surgery. That ended his season after just 57 games. He may or may not have been able to keep up that pace over a full season. But he didn’t get a chance to try.

In June 1986, he injured his thumb on a headfirst slide into third base and ended up missing all but 65 games. His interrupted 1986 season doesn’t look like much. But Clark was known for hitting better later in the season than early in the season. So there is every reason to think if he had played something resembling a full season in 1986, it wouldn’t have looked too different from his 1985 season. Clark had his two best seasons in 1978 and 1987, with several more excellent seasons in between. But no matter how you slice them, he has two essentially lost seasons interrupting any seven-year stretch of his career. Actually three, but more on that in a minute.

But beyond that, he missed significant time in other seasons. He had a good year in 1985, but missed 36 games. 1985 would have been a much better year for him if he’d missed less time. He missed a bit less time in 1987. But was playing hurt late in the season and that hampered his ability to drive the ball. If he’d been healthier in 1987, his monster year would have been even better.

The 1981 strike

It also doesn’t help that one of Clark’s prime seasons would have been 1981. He only played 99 games in 1981. But nobody played a full season in 1981, because of a player’s strike. 1981 was not a full 162 game season. The other unfortunate thing for Clark is he only missed 12 games in 1981. So it’s possible 1981 could have been a full season for him. He was having a good year anyway. He was healthy. So what could have been a great season for him was a lost season instead.

All in all, he missed significant time in 1981, 1984, and 1986. His best seasons came between 1978 and 1988. If he had been able to play around 150 games in each of those three seasons, his career total may have been very different. That could have been 10 WAR right there.

Off field troubles

Clark’s numbers tailed off noticeably after his monster 1987 season, but he still retired pretty abruptly in 1993. He spent a season in New York, two seasons in San Diego, and two seasons in Boston. He didn’t like playing in the American League, and he didn’t especially like playing in San Diego. The Montreal Expos signed him for the 1993 season. And on the face of it, that looked like exactly what he needed. It was a National League team where he could provide some veteran leadership and had a lower probability of clashing with other established stars in the clubhouse like he did in San Diego and, to a lesser extent, even in St Louis.

But he never played a game for the Montreal Expos. He ran into financial troubles, and in 1992, they were starting to catch up with him. He played the 1992 season distracted by his off-field troubles and only played in 81 games. And during the offseason, dealing with his bankruptcy cut into the amount of time he could spend working out. As a result, he showed up for 1993 Spring Training out of shape. Then he had to leave spring training to deal with his family getting evicted from their condo.

Clark abruptly retired to deal with his financial situation. To his credit, he was able to bring it under control. But it meant the end of his baseball career.

What might have been in 1993 and beyond

There is no guarantee Clark would have been healthy enough to play into his 40s, and there is no guarantee what those seasons would have looked like. But if he’d been able to play six more years, to the age of 42, at a comparable pace to his year-32 through 35 seasons, he would have ended up with somewhere around 2,500 hits for his career and around 440 home runs, and a career WAR resembling a Hall of Fame outfielder.

Why Jack Clark isn’t in the Hall of Fame, in conclusion

In the end, there wasn’t just one thing keeping Jack Clark out of the Hall of Fame. Injuries were the biggest factor. He lost two prime seasons to injury, and missed 25-35 games in some of his best seasons. In 1987, his best season, he was playing hurt and that affected his home run power, and it also meant he had to sit out the 1987 World Series.

He had contemporaries who famously struggled with injuries. Fred Lynn and George Brett are two very good examples. Brett was able to find ways to stay on the field the second half of his career and built up a body of work that resulted in his Hall of Fame induction. Fred Lynn, much like Clark, was an immensely talented player whose injuries kept him from building a Hall of Fame career, although his career had no shortage of great moments.

With fewer games lost to injury, fewer games lost to the 1981 strike, and being able to play a few more seasons, it’s very likely Jack Clark would have been a Hall of Famer. It’s even possible two of those three things would have been enough to make a difference.