Switching from thin air to sea level all season takes a toll on the body, Weiss said, and the Rockies are the only team that must leave its time zone for every road game. Hitters can struggle on the road because pitches behave differently, he added; the same ball that hovers in the strike zone in Denver may break out of the zone elsewhere.
To be sure, Walker benefited from Coors Field, where he hit .381 with a .462 on-base percentage and a .710 slugging percentage. But his career road totals are excellent (.278/.370/.495), and when he won the National League’s Most Valuable Player award in 1997, Walker had a better O.P.S. on the road than at home.
His career road O.P.S., .865, is equal to or better than those of George Brett, Ken Griffey Jr., Reggie Jackson and Willie Stargell, all first-ballot Hall of Famers. Walker has more stolen bases (230) than all of those players, in addition to winning seven Gold Gloves.
“He’s one of the best base runners I ever saw, and other than Andruw Jones, he’s the best outfielder I’ve ever seen — and for sure the best corner outfielder,” Weiss said. “He did all the other things, the peripherals, and for me that’s what puts him over the top.”
Weiss compared Walker’s baseball acumen to that of another former teammate, the Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux. Nobody else, he said, could so routinely surprise him with a tip or a strategy he had never considered.
“In the outfield, when the ball was hit down the line, he’d run in the general area of the ball, but he wouldn’t watch the ball — he’d be watching the runners,” Weiss said. “He always said that the hitter would tell you if it’s fair or foul, and then he wanted to know where the runners were the whole time. He just did things like that that I never heard anybody else say before.”
Advanced metrics have raised the profile of recent electees like Bert Blyleven, Tim Raines and Ted Simmons (elected by a veterans’ committee this month), and they are kind to Walker, too. Baseball Reference credits him with 72.7 wins above replacement; Jeter had 72.4, in 759 more games. Of the last four outfielders elected to the Hall of Fame — Andre Dawson, Griffey, Guerrero and Raines — only Griffey has more WAR than Walker.