That was likely a “no way in hell are you getting inducted but you done good, kid” vote. Same for Dunston and, a few years ago, Deshaies.
So you can name all of the best shorstops in the game from the 50’s? If you can without looking it up, I would say that you are the exception not the rule. Ozzie Smith was not much better in the field that Allan Trammell, btw, he just did it with more flair–which made him a marketable kinda guy.
Alomar is an absolute, no-doubt-about-it Hall of Famer. He may have to wait one or two years but it would be insane not to elect him. It would be quite unprecedented for a man with his credentials to be left out.
Alomar was a much greater player than McGriff, and I say that as a big McGriff fan. McGriff was superficially a better hitter, but the difference in defensive value is monstrous.
For what it’s worth Baseball Prospectus rates Alomar as being 134 wins above a replacement player for his career, McGriff as 100 on the nose. That’s a pretty significant difference, and crosses the range of HoF standards among position players; most players at 100 are marginal picks, and most at 134 are in.
Larkin and Edgar are interesting cases. Larkin’s credentials are about the same as Trammell’s, though his career had a different shape. Martinez is more in line with McGriff; a better hitter, but a shorter career and, of course, very little defensive contribution. I would rank them as:
Alomar - No doubt
Larkin - Probably
Trammell - Probably
Martinez - Wouldn’t mind if he got in, wouldn’t mind if he didn’t
McGriff - Wouldn’t mind either way
Cone - A very good player but not HoF standard
I believe there’s better HOF commentary to be found here than with ESPN or SI online. As we’re looking on down the road, it’ll be interesting to see what shakes out with current investigations and in what regard Clemens will be held. I’ve searched each day and am consistently amazed no one’s started a thread yet on his plight, what with all the passionate and knowledgable posters we’ve here.
Wee Bairn did have a thread called something like “Why won’t everyone stop lying on Roger Clemens?” a few weeks ago. I thought about bumping it after his press conference the other day, but I didn’t.
Obligatory Baseball Primer plug.
Best baseball discussion on the Net, bar none.
I just did a new one.
That’s what happens when you cherry-pick numbers, especially when the numbers you’re cherry-picking have relatively little to do with a player’s actual performance.
How many times should a player hit .300 to be Hall-worthy, in your mind? The following list indicates how many times each of the players mentioned hit .300 in their careers (all are shortstops, and all are either post 1950-Hall of Famers or certan to become them, when they retire):
Derek Jeter: 9*
Alex Rodriguez: 8*
Robin Yount: 6
Cal Ripken, Jr: 5
Ernie Banks: 2
Phil Rizzuto: 2
Luis Aparicio: 1
Pee Wee Reese: 1
Ozzie Smith: 1
So, according to your own statistic - Trammell hit over .300 “only” seven times in his career - Alan Trammell “only” outperformed every single post-1950 shortstop who is currently in the Hall of Fame, and performed on par with two first ballot Hall of Famers whose numbers were compiled in the offensive boom of the last decade and a half.
Incidentally, Trammell’s career OBP was .352. Not a single one of those post-1950 Hall of Famers did better. So Alan Trammell was better at getting on base than anyone who has been elected to the Hall of Fame at his position in more than five decades. Banks, Ripken, and Yount all outperformed Trammell in terms of slugging percentage (Banks by a considerable margin), but none of the others did. His 185 career home runs would make him fourth on the all-time HoF list (behind those same guys).
The fans vote for the All-Stars. The argument here is that the fans, and the writers, are wrong about Trammell. Citing popular opinion in a discussion about whether popular opinion is correct is a bit circular.
The Gold Glove is the most meaningless award, quite possibly, of all time.
Here it is: “Over the course of a very lengthy career in which he played well-above-average defense at the second-most-challenging position in baseball, Alan Trammell was better at getting on base than literally any other player elected to the Hall of Fame at shortstop since 1950, including Ripken and Yount (his primary competition in his prime years). He also hit for substantial power given his position, and was emphatically the best player at that position for several years in the 1980’s and early 1990’s.”
Look, Ripken was obviously a better hitter, though not a better fielder. Was Yount demonstrably better as a hitter? A bit, perhaps, over the course of a long career - Trammell a bit better at getting on base, Yount with a bit more power. But of course, Yount was only a shortstop for about half of his career, and built up a lot of his best stats playing much easier defensive positions. And Trammell was a much better defensive shortstop than Yount. They were three great players. Should Derek Jeter be left out of the Hall of Fame just because he can’t carry Alex Rodriguez’s jock?
Good post and good argument, two quibbles.
The All Stars are half vote and half picked by managers. They are of a little more value then I think you are according them. I agree on the GG though.
If you are going to argue about today’s inflated offense, then comparing Trammell to a list of short stops where Ernie Banks was the only true offensive threat seems a little odd. No shortstops in the 40s through 70s had really great offensive numbers except Ernie, then in the 80s we suddenly had bigger stronger Shortstops. Ernie was truly exceptional and put up his best power years as a Shortstop. One of the greatest players of all time in my opinion. You know that top 100 of all time concept. Scooter & Pee Wee were all about defense and making things happen on the bases. A different role and a different game.
BTW: Little Scooter did manager a .351 OBA without any power at all. Pee Wee had a .366 which beats Trammel. I didn’t check the others, these are the three I know best.
Jim
Since the HoF is a private entity that’s supposedly not part of MLB (yeah, right - they’re just accidentally joined at the hip), maybe some baseball fans with money to spare should create a rival Hall of Baseball Heroes or something.
At least before they admitted Bowie Kuhn (with or without Marvin - who cares?), I could kinda sorta believe they weren’t totally a joke. Now the matter’s pretty much settled.
What if he is very good at everything, which is arguably true? Solid average, good power, stole some bases, drew some walks. There’s been plenty of such players (“Generalists”) who have been elected and who have deserved to be elected, but history tends to underrate such players, as you have done. It’s a silly argument.
I excluded the NL guys (Ozzie, Larkin) because it is harder to be the #1 player at a position over 28-30 teams than it was when we had 16 teams. So he was the 3rd/4th best guy-so what? Many HoFers, not all mistakes or borderline, weren’t the best at their positions when active. The 50’s by my count had FIVE HoF CFers, in a league half the size.
He’s not top 10 now, once we start including ARod, Jeter, or even Tejada, but he was when he retired. I just think he’s “high borderline”, vs. low borderline. Explain how he is worse than the guys I mentioned, all comfortably HoFers in my book (not going to bring up the names of Joe Tinker, Bobby Wallace, Dave Bancroft, Travis Jackson, or Rabbit Maranville).
If you exclude Trammell then the Hall should, according to your unstated standards, have about 8 SS, not 22, and that is the essence of my position. Me, I’m comfortable electing about the top 13-15 (All Time) or so at a given position, but I start to get a little uncomfortable beyond that, partly because it becomes progressively harder to differentiate each candidate from the pack. Trammell IMHO is right in that tail end group, arguably a bit better than them. [The real Hall has about 20 per position (including Negro Leaguers).]
Then justify Ozzie Smith lifetime 262 hitter with 28 hrs. He does not belong.
Ozzie Smith was elected primarily on the strength of his defense. Likewise, Luis Aparicio and 2B Bill Mazeroski.
I won’t justify it, because I don’t think he belongs. He had a .978 career fielding percentage, while Trammell had a .976–but he was no where near the offensive player that Trammell was.
To me, Ozzie is comparable to someone like Omar Vizquel. Definitely not a hall of famer, in my opinion. I guess if Vizquel would have turned backflips on the field–he would have a chance to get in the Hall.
Fielding percentage is useless. Win Shares has Ozzie as the best defensive SS ever.
Suggesting that they were defensively close because they had similar fielding percentages is like saying Mike Schmidt was a worse hitter than Garry Maddox because he had a lower batting average. Shortstops are great because they take away hits with their range, not because of their fielding percentage.
Ozzie Smith was the greatest defensive shortstop in the entire history of baseball. He was absolutely incredible; in some years he was stopping **one hundred to one hundred and fifty more grounders than the average shortstop. ** I’d guess, conservatively, that his defense robbed the opposition of at least six hundred hits over the course of his career. So imagine if instead of Ozzie Smith you had a shortstop who batted .306 with over 3000 hits and played major league average defense at shortstop. You’d put that guy into the Hall, right? Well, that’s basically equivalent to Ozzie.
And the two most recent shortstops inducted prior to Smith, not counting verterans, had less range.
I’ll admit he was a better defensive shortstop than Trammell–no problem. So now let’s start the HOF campaign for Omar Vizquel–who is an incredible defensive shortstop.
Actually, I find Omar at least as deserving as Trammell. He would get my vote before Trammell. This is strictly having watch both play and being unimpressed by Trammell as anything special defensively and watching Omar play and believing him to be almost as good as Ozzie without the flash. Omar was a better offensive player than Ozzie to help boost him a bit.
Overall, I think both Omar & Trammell belong in the category of not quite Hall of Famers.
I would be interested in RickJay providing the saberstats to compare the three defensively. where do you get those? I rely on baseball-reference.com of course for most of my stats.
Jim
How awesome is that site, by the way? It’s fast, and the extensive linking between pages makes it easy to research whatever weird arcane thing you want to research. No registration, no fee… and near as I can tell, it’s pretty much the brainchild and work of one guy (with a lot of help, of course, but still).