Jack Morris had two long-time teammates who I consider to be more hall-worthy: Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker.
WAR is hardly everything, but…
Lou Whitaker: 74.8
Alan Trammell: 70.4
Jack Morris: 44.1
IMO Very Good for 20 years is the same as Great for 10. YMMV
How can you be sure that one player is twice as good/valuable as another? It’s never that precise.
Bagwell, Biggio, Maddux, Mattingly, McGriff, Piazza, Raines, Schilling, and Frank Thomas.
With the exception of Mattingly, who is more of a sentimental favorite, each one of these guys would be in the top half of players at their positions now in the HOF.
You can claim all you want that you “tend to see” this, but nobody in the thread has claimed that playoffs don’t count. If you want to argue with someone who’s making that claim, you need to go find someone to argue with.
Then you will agree that Albert Belle should be in the Hall of Fame?
Yes, I know. That’s why I wrote:
I guess my choice of vocabulary made you skip it. 
The idea that someone feels they have to “hold back their vote” to preserve the integrity of the “no one should be elected unanimously” idea is ludicrous. Those voters should lose their right to vote. Period. That they DON’T vote for a deserving candidate is enough proof to me that they don’t know what they are doing and don’t deserve the vote they have.
Belle would be far from the worst pick.
Bagwell
Biggio
Glavine
Maddux
Martinez
McGriff
Morris
Mussina
Piazza
Shilling
Some of the others were my faves of the time, but not HOF material.
Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Clemens and Palmero can suck it.
As I mentioned last year, I am honestly curious as to why - in this case Typo Negative - one would vote for Edgar Martinez but not Larry Walker.
It is impossible, to my eye, to construct a convincing argument that Martinez was a better player. He was a slightly better hitter, but not by as much as you might think, and of course he had almost no defensive value, while Walker was a very good defensive outfielder.
This article makes a fairly good argument for Martinez, though not as a direct comparison to Walker. In short, his rate stats were fantastic, and he was quietly one of the offensive powerhouses in the AL for many years - his late start at playing full-time (age 27) cost him a lot in the counting stats.
In terms of intangible woo-woo stuff, he was a career Mariner, and possibly the heart and soul of the franchise. There was also just something so dignified about the way he approached the game, and I bet he gets a few points for that in some people’s eyes. And… 1995 ALDS Game 5 
If you did want to consider Martinez vs Walker side by side, don’t you also have to adjust for altitude? How many HRs a year is playing half your games at Coors Field worth?
I have a problem with this argument. If a marathon runner has a mile lead with 100 yards to go, then hops on a motorcycle and does a wheelie across the finish line, they don’t win the race. No one would say, “Well he was obviously gonna win anyway, so just give him the trophy.” He cheated, so he lost. Just cause Bonds had already put up H.O.F. numbers prior to his steroid use doesn’t mean that he doesn’t forfeit his right to the H.O.F. after he started using. Either he cheated or he didn’t, and he did.
And if I were King of the Hall for a day, my new law would be that if anyone receives at least 95% of the vote, whoever didn’t vote for that player loses his vote. You’ve just proved to me one of two things - either you failed to vote for someone on purpose or you don’t know enough about baseball to have a vote in the first place. Anyone who doesn’t vote for Maddux should lose their vote immediately.
But this is his final year to use that bonus as part of his resume. Randy Johnson gets added to the ballot next year with KEN GRIFFEY JR following in 2016.
Bonds
Clemens
Maddux
Piazza
I’d use HGH in a second if I had the money and in the future everyone who can afford it will be using something similar. So I don’t care too much that Maddux, like Andy Pettitte and probably a huge percentage of pitchers (since recovering from MLB pitching is difficult), may have used PEDs.
I was looking at the wrong column. Thank a crazy work schedule yesterday, when I should know better than to post stuff like that on the fly…
One theory some pundits have put forth (Craig Wright) for the lack of HoF-quality pitchers born between 1950 (Bert) and Clemens (1962-I’m positive he’ll make it one day) is that young pitchers in the 70’s were being subjected to the workloads of the dead ball era of the 60’s (from which we got a ton of 280+ game winners), but at time when offense was picking up. Gary Nolan was probably the poster-boy for that: 226 innings at age 19. Said workloads likely affected more veteran pitchers too-heck go take a look at Catfish Hunter-30 complete games in 1975, retired 4 years later.
And if we look at OPS+, which tries to do just that, for both Martinez and Walker, we find that Martinez’s is better by 6 points, despite giving up 32 points in OPS itself.
I really don’t get dWAR. To pick on Martinez’s 1997 season, he played 144 games as a DH and 7 games as a first baseman. Any rational defensive system would have his defensive metric near zero: he didn’t do anything as a DH, either good or bad. Instead, BBRef shows a dWAR of -1.3. I get that WAR is to compare against all replacement players, but shouldn’t it be normalized by position a little?
Further, despite RickJay’s observation that Walker was a great defensive outfielder, which should be a premium in a park with the cavernous outfield that Coors is, he only had a dWAR of 1.5. That seems silly to me. Minute Maid’s outfield isn’t as big as Coors’s, but because of the weird dimensions, it makes a gigantic difference who you put out there in Center Field. I’d think Coors would also require similar attention. So if the ballpark is challenging, and Rick’s observation is right, how is that only good for 1.5 extra WAR over a 17 year career, 10 at Coors?
Anyway, Martinez’s oWAR was 66.4 while Walker’s was 62.2. So if you want to prefer Martinez slightly, I don’t have a problem with that, though IMHO, really both should go in. Oh, and I have no idea how I omitted Schilling from my list of people who should go in, but that was a mistake. I’d probably kick Walker off my ballot and give the spot to Schilling if I could fill it in again.
Crazy that Maddux is the only guy getting in on our ballot. Even Piazza’s fallen below 70%. Who’re the guys who voted for Nomo and Alou?
Yeah. I don’t think everyone is keeping to the spirit of the thread. Luis Gonzalez?
Gonzalez had an excellent career. It’s more disturbing that Gagne has three votes.
No, I accounted for that. Walker was still just as good or better than Martinez, overall.
I appreciate Martinez didn’t start his career, really, until he was 27, but he didn’t, so that’s that. I wouldn’t give Walker credit for the games he missed to injury, either.
But then the entire vote here baffles me. Who the hell isn’t voting for Tom Glavine? Seriously?