The Jimmy Rollins Case Study

Jimmy Rollins lives right on the line between the historic perception of baseball greatness and the modern, analytical one. Had he played a few decades ago, he’d surely be considered one of the greatest shortstops to ever play. Had.he played today, he’d be considered a marginally better than average shortstop. Because he played right in the middle of baseball’s transformation into a spreadsheet driven collection of thought experiments, though, he’s somehow considered both.

In terms of accolades, it’s hard to not see Rollins as an all-time shortstop. He had the eighth most home runs, ninth most steals and 12th most hits ever by any player to play more than half of their games at short. He also made three all-star teams, won four Gold Gloves, and even was named the National League’s Most Valuable player in 2007, when he hit 30 homers, 30 triples, stole 41 bases (while only being caught six times) and led the league in runs.

He even furthered his case in October, playing huge a huge role in multiple runs to the World Series with the Phillies in the late 2000’s, one of which resulted in a championship. There seems very little that a baseball traditionalist could not find in his resume.

In terms of analytics, though, Rollins’ career appears much different. His 47.6 career rWAR points to an extremely good player, but not one with the same legacy that Rollins’ accolades would point to, and certainly not a Hall of Famer. FanGraphs is a little kinder to him, giving him 49.6, but that still falls well short of other players of his stature.

Even worse, one of the main talking points of Rollins’ career was how outstanding he was offensively for a shortstop. The game hadn’t seen such a small, speedy player hit for his kind of power before. Sadly though, this perception doesn’t totally hold up to today’s standards. His 95 career OPS+ has him as actually being a below average hitter, as his power didn’t nearly make up for his incredibly low walk rate.

This isn’t a totally fair way to evaluate him, though. It’s entirely possible that his approach would’ve been different in today’s game. He’d have sacrificed putting some balls in play in order to get on base more. He may even have been more aggressive with his swing, giving up some of his contact skills to get more extra-base hits. These strategies were unthinkable during his prime, but are basically par for the course today.

That’s really what makes Jimmy so weird. He was so obviously one of the most talented players in the league, providing solid offense and great defense out of one of baseball’s premiere positions. Yet many the things that he did well aren’t considered nearly as valuable today. Even though he only retired six years ago, his career already has an entirely different context than it did when it ended. I suppose it’s only up to the voters to decide how they want to account for that, but it would seem to me at least that Rollins’ legacy is far more complicated than many of his contemporaries.