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The Hall of Fame case for Tuffy Rhodes

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Outfielder Tuffy Rhodes, who in 2001 tied Sadaharu Oh’s single-season home run record with 55–and unlike Oh hit his while his team was fighting for a championship, saw his vote percentage drop last year from 39.6 percent to 22.8.

In the vote for this year’s class, Rhodes’ total rebounded slightly, improving to 29.6 percent of the votes, but four players shot ahead of him in the voting leaderboard, two ballot newcomers, Shinya Miyamoto and Alex Ramirez, and two guys who had trailed him a year ago, Hiroki Kokubo and Masumi Kuwata. One newcomer, Tomonori Maeda, pulled even with Rhodes.

Below are the position players who were named on at least 25 percent of the ballots cast for 2019. The categories are: Votes, Career Win Shares, MVPs, Best Nine awards, Golden Gloves, Hits, Home Runs and Stolen Bases.

2019 Hall of Fame Ballot: position players on 25 percent of ballots

NameVotesWSMVPsBest 9GGOff titlesHitsHRsSBs
Tuffy Rhodes110298170181,79246487
Hiroki Kokubo11929603262,04141358
Tomonori Maeda11024304422,11929568
Alex Ramirez150230240122,01738020
Kenjiro Nomura138227031102,020169250
Shinya Miyamoto153187011002,13362111
Masahiro Kawai18813701601,1994347

Rhodes is–by the standards of Hall of Famers enshrined for their playing–a decent candidate for the Hall. His career was long when compared to most foreign players, but short in comparison with many Japanese Hall of Famers, who became regulars a few years younger. His case poses an interesting comparison with Masahiro Doi, the best outfielder not in the Hall of Fame.

I am uncertain why Doi is not in the Hall. I’ve been told he slipped through the cracks created by the old rules that required a candidate to have been out of uniform for five years before being eligible. Since his retirement in 1981, Doi has been a perpetual and ubiquitous coach. He recently said he has finished coaching for good. Whether that means he will be eligible for selection through the expert’s division or not.

Rhodes is often held up as an example of NPB’s inferiority. How could a player whose only MLB credentials are three home runs against Dwight Gooden on Opening Day in 1994 and a .224 batting average in 590 at-bats spread over six seasons before moving to the Pacific League’s Kintetsu Buffaloes in 1996.

Rhodes had a .996 OPS on April 30, but went 0-for-10 in the first three games of May with three walks, came off the bench the next. On May 6, he was back in the lineup but went 1-for-5 with three strikeouts and the struggles got worse and worse. He failed to hit the next year, but in a half season at pitcher-friendly Triple-A Pawtucket, Rhodes hit about what he had over his 1,761 AAA at-bats.

Given regular playing time with the Buffaloes, Rhodes made adjustments he was unable to make in his lone extended time in the majors. NPB is not MLB. It is not Triple-A. It’s a combination of players who could star in MLB, players who would be borderline MLB regulars, guys who would struggle to succeed in AAA or get out of AA. But the NPB adjustments are made complex by the cultural differences and style of play.



In NPB the only outfielder who has been eligible for induction, and isn’t in the Hall with more career win shares than Rhodes is Doi with 355. Rhodes with 298, is 12th all time. Below him are two similar players, Shoichi Busujima and Tsutomu Wakamatsu. Busujima (285 win shares) is out, while Wakamatsu (281) is in.

Below is a pdf file of the win shares leaders among NPB’s outfielders who have been eligible for selection to the Hall of Fame:

Top NPB OF ranked by win shares

That being said, Wakamatsu won nine Best Nine Awards, and no player with more than seven has been excluded from the Hall of Fame. Five players have seven, including Rhodes, and two of them are in the Hall.



Every outfielder who has 16 times led his league in an offensive category is in–with the exception of Rhodes.

Every outfielder with 390 or more home runs is in, except for Rhodes (464) and the aformentioned Doi (465).

Commentary, Paid Content

MLB labor market changes hit Japan, but NBP could fight back

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Fernando Seguignol and Takaaki Ishibashi reliving their favorite scene from the movie “Major League” at QVC Marine Field–now Zozo Marine Stadium. Seguignol was a fringe major leaguer who revitalized his career through his exposure to Japan’s brand of baseball.

Japanese teams depend on foreign talent to make a larger impact in pennant races, but their ability to secure players of quality is decreasing as MLB tightens the screws on its talent markets, executives with three different NPB teams said this past week at the winter meetings in Las Vegas.

“You’d like to see (NPB) greater involved than what it is. I think it’s very wise for the Japanese teams to take a look at amateurs.” — agent Scott Boras

“It is getting harder and harder to sign good talent,” a Central League club’s international director said Wednesday.

On another front, agent Scott Boras said Japanese teams should look at the opportunity of signing North American amateurs — whose negotiating power has been sharply curtailed by the signing pool bonus rules imposed by MLB’s collective bargaining agreement with its union.

In the past, a lot of top targets for NPB clubs were former major league regulars looking to extend their careers in Japan before hanging up their spikes. Japan was, for many, the end of the road. This spring, a person on Twitter complained about Shohei Ohtani’s hype, saying he was coming out of a Four-A-level league.

What people often don’t get is that Japan is not a “level.” It exists in a different kind of baseball dimension. Because Japanese players stay in the system and don’t automatically move up if they succeed, a lot of players here are among the world’s elite. But because the pro ranks are thinner, some NPB regulars would struggle to get out of Double-A ball or succeed in Triple-A.



The average NPB attendance last year was 29,779. The pennant races and championships are real. The wins and losses are extremely meaningful. The competition could be fiercer, because as Jim Small, MLB’s vice president for Asia and a longtime fan of Japanese baseball, said, Japan’s game is essentially closed. Teams can only field four foreign-registered players in a game. (Players are registered as foreigners if they are not Japanese citizens, and did not play their amateur ball in Japan). This means that one of NPB’s de facto missions is to be a jobs program for Japanese and puts another hurdle in the way of growth.

Still, the four-foreign-player limit now only applies to the first team. Twenty years ago, it was two per organization. The increased number of players coming out of MLB and the U.S. minors, Taiwan and Korea has made Japan’s game better. And by getting better, it has changed NPB from a destination of last resort to a destination of choice.

Players over 25 with an uncertain future in MLB have been lining up to come. And because the game is different, NPB demands different adjustments to their skill sets or attitudes but also gives players a better chance to get regular playing time in pressure situations that their uncertain MLB status does not.



As a result, many of those who come to Japan and get better. Financially, it’s also a huge deal. A player who embraces NPB and improves, can make a lot of money and provide financial security for their families.

But MLB’s penny-pinching mentality–the one that denies minor leaguers subsistence wages, throws willing interns and new hires into a pit and gives living wages to the sole survivors–is now impacting the flow of talent to Japan NPB executives said in Las Vegas.

Instead of letting a big-hitting 27-year-old minor leaguer go in exchange for a lump sum from an NPB team, MLB clubs are now hanging on to guys like that with GI Joe Kung Fu grips. Because they are cheap insurance. If the guy is needed as a fill in with the big club, he’ll be paid an MLB minimum wage prorated to days on the roster. Guys who could be productive players and who would be available to enrich themselves and the fans of other countries are more and more often being kept in cold storage like frozen beef.

Because of its independence, NPB also has an opportunity to benefit from MLB’s efforts to put a damper on its talent markets. Agents for elite amateur players from North America have proposed two-year deals with NPB clubs, allowing them to earn more at an entry level and raise their profile before re-entering MLB’s amateur draft.

“You’d like to see (NPB) greater involved than what it is,” agent Scott Boras said. “I think it’s very wise for the Japanese teams to take a look at amateurs. I think that when they take a look at it and see the value of the player going forward, they’ll take a good look at it.”