Article: Dwight Evans Is Overdue for a Date With Cooperstown

[Daniel Fox]

With the BBWAA gaining new writers who properly value on-base percentage and advanced defensive metrics, Evans' Hall of Fame case has never been more undeniable.

Last week, the 2025 class for the National Baseball Hall of Fame was officially announced, with CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki, and Billy Wagner earning their rightful place alongside Veterans Committee selections Dave Parker and Dick Allen. While it's worth celebrating anytime five deserving Hall of Famers get inducted into Cooperstown, I couldn’t help but think about a former Red Sox great who never got his due from the writers. With his return to the Contemporary Baseball Era ballot expected in the next few years, I thought it was a good time to re-examine Dwight Evans' overlooked Hall of Fame case.

The timing of Evans' career always seemed a little bit off. For his first 10 years, he was a defensive wizard on a team that featured sluggers like Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, Carlton Fisk, and Carl Yazstremski. From 1972 to 1980, Evans racked up 41.3 defensive runs above average and three well-deserved Gold Gloves but never hit more than 24 home runs or drove in more than 70 runs in a season.

Thanks to an adjustment to his stance in 1981, Evans broke out with an AL-best 22 home runs and a 163 OPS+ that blew away his career-high. A midseason strike wiped out nearly two months of action and prevented Evans from piling up even more impressive numbers. The bad luck didn’t stop during the regular season: Evans finished third in the American League MVP race even though he had an extremely strong case to take home the hardware.

Rollie Fingers (1st Place): 4.2 WAR, 78 IP, 1.04 ERA, 0.87 WHIP, 28 Saves
Rickey Henderson (2nd Place): 6.7 WAR, .319/.408/.437 89 R, 6 HR, 35 RBI, 56 SB
Dwight Evans (3rd Place): 6.7 WAR .296/.415/.522, 84 R, 22 HR, 71 RBI

The biggest point against Evans is that both the Brewers and Athletics made the playoffs, another example of bad timing. The four best offensive seasons of his career came during seasons in which the Red Sox missed the postseason, hurting his MVP case:

1981: 6.7 WAR, 163 OPS+, 22 HR, 71 RBI, MVP-3
Red Sox Record: 59-49 (5th place)

1982: 6.5 WAR, 149 OPS+. 32 HR, 98 RBI, MVP-7
Red Sox Record: 89-73 (3rd place)

1984: 5.4 WAR, 147 OPS+, 32 HR, 104 RBI, MVP-11
Red Sox Record: 86-76 (4th place)

1987: 4.8 WAR, 157 OPS+, 34 HR, 123 RBI, MVP-4
Red Sox Record: 78-84 (5th place)

Evans quickly proved that 1981 was not a fluke and emerged as one of the best hitters of the 1980s. From 1980 to 1989, only Hall of Famers Mike Schmidt, Eddie Murray, and two-time MVP Dale Murphy hit more than Evans’ 256 home runs and drove in more than 900 runs. While those three topped Evans in the power department, he was on an island of his own in terms of patience: His 919 walks during the decade were nearly 100 more than second-place Jack Clark.

Unfortunately, Evans' offensive breakout coincided with a steady decline in the field, which prevented him from racking up gaudy WAR totals. After back-to-back six-win seasons in 1981 and 1982, Evans topped the five-win plateau just one more time despite frequently ranking near the top of the leaderboards in home runs, on-base-percentage and OPS. Had Evans' offensive and defensive peaks come at the same time, he probably would have had three of four 8-win campaigns. Instead, his peak WAR, defined by Jay Jaffe's JAWS metric as a player’s seven best seasons, is 37.4, below the 42.2 average for Hall of Fame right fielders.

Evans' career quickly fell off once the 1990’s began. He posted just a 0.9 WAR for the 1990 AL East champion team before finishing his career with one bizarre season with the Baltimore Orioles. Though he was the strongest first-year candidate by WAR on the 1997 Hall of Fame ballot, Evans had to compete for votes with 11 future Hall of Famers, including fellow debuting right-fielder Dave Parker. He barely remained on the ballot with 5.9% of the vote, made an encouraging jump to 10.4% in 1998, but a 1999 ballot that added Robin Yount, George Brett, and Nolan Ryan spelled doom. Evans received just 3.6% of the vote and fell off the ballot.

Though Evans is by no means a slam-dunk Hall of Famer, we can see now that he was dealt a bad hand by the writers. Using JAWS, which combines a player's total WAR and the WAR from their seven-year peak, Evans' 52.3 mark is just 3.7 behind the average at the postion, squarely in between first-balloters Tony Gwynn and Ichiro Suzuki. His peak WAR of 37.4 is only 30th among right fielders, but his 67.2 total WAR is ahead of 19 Hall of Famers at the position, including one of his 1980s rivals:

Dwight Evans: .272/.370/.470, 385 HR ,1,384 RBI, 127 OPS+, 67.2/37.4/.52.3

Dave Winfield: .283/.353/.475, 464 HR, 1,833 RBI, 130 OPS+, 64.2/37.9/51.0

The Dave Winfield comparison is worth diving into. Why is it that despite playing in the same era in the same division and putting up nearly equal production, Winfield sailed into Cooperstown on his first try while Evans was stuck in the 5% purgatory? The most obvious reason is that Winfield was able to pad his counting stats by sticking around until his early 40s. From 1990-1995, Winfield accumulated just 4,7 WAR, but was able to trudge his way to key milestones, such as 3,000 hits, 450 home runs, and 1,800 RBI. Meanwhile, Evans retired after posting a 119 OPS+ at age 39, indicating that he still had something left in the tank. If he had stuck around for three or four more seasons, he would have surely reached 2,500 hits and 400 home runs, and we know how Hall of Fame voters love arbitrary thresholds.

Another key difference is that Winfield was in the spotlight more often than Evans. He earned a massive, 10-year contract from George Steinbrenner and the New York Yankees in 1980 and was a key member of the Blue Jays championship team in 1992. Evans, on the other hand, was overshadowed in the first half of his career by Hall of Famers Yastzremski, Rice, and Fisk, then by Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens in the second half. The presence of those legends resulted in Evans never getting the recognition he deserved despite posting a solid .806 OPS during the Red Sox' 1975 and 1986 World Series runs.

The biggest reason Evans didn’t get the love from the writers is that much of his value wasn’t recognized during his playing days. Evans possessed an exceptional eye, leading the league in walks three times and finishing in the top three another three times, but on-base percentage wasn’t a commonly used statistic in the 1980s. Batting average was the money maker, and Evans never topped the .300 mark or finished in the top 10 in the league.

Evans also doesn’t get enough credit for expertly playing one of the toughest right fields in the game. In recent years, Red Sox managers have toyed with playing their best defensive outfielders, such as Mookie Betts, Shane Victorino, and Jarren Duran, in right field rather than center due to the bizarre intricacies of Fenway Park. While Lynn got much of the attention for his prowess in center field, Evans played the right field corner as well as anybody ever has, as evident by this legendary catch in the 1975 World Series.

The good news is that it appears that the increase of sabermetrically inclined baseball observers has created momentum for Evans' Hall of Fame case. During the 2019 Veterans Committee vote, Evans received eight out of 16 possible votes, missing induction by just four votes. With Ted Simmons and Dave Parker gaining entry in recent years,  the path for Evans to get his well-deserved induction has never been clearer.

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[mvp 78]

He's the most deserving Red Sox to be excluded (aside from Clemens). The Veterans Committee stuff is always very obscure and never pans out the way it should. Makes no sense that it has the ability to enshrine Harold Baines and not more deserving players like Whitaker, Grich and Evans. 

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

Red Sox fans who watched their careers always knew Rice was a Hall of Fame hitter, but Evans was a better all-around big league player. Their career batting stats are very similar, except for BA where Jim has an edge, and OBP where Dewey rocks.

Baines hung around longer than either, so was honored for his longevity. He still had only 38.8 career WAR, compared to 47.7 WAR for Rice... and 67.2 WAR for Evans.

Rice had eight years with MVP votes, with six Top 5 finishes: 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5.

Evans had five seasons out of eight receiving MVP votes ('81-88), with rankings at 3, 4, 7, 9, 11.

Baines had four straight years receiving MVP votes ('81-84), but his highest finish was 9.

Of course, almost all MVP votes for the trio came because of their bats. There was never any question that Dwight Evans was the superior outfielder -- nor that he was regarded as the best at his position for the better part of a decade.

[moonslav59]

Defense is rarely a big selling point for these things, sadly.