You call him borderline, but Sisler was the eighth 20-th century player to be inducted, by people who were very familiar with the calibre of players in the first third of the century. He was, overall, not as good a hitter as Gehrig, but there is room for two first basemen in the Hall.
As for Sosa, I listed him among my ten or so picks not because he was the best, but in protest of the holy premise that the drug issue should be a bar to the Hall. Club owners paid those guys a shitload of money to hit home runs, then looked the other way for five years while the players were doing what they had to do to produce the homers. During those years, the club owners made obscene amounts of money, ignored PEDs, and now those same club owners are going to be inducted into the executive wing of the Hall, while conspiring to keep out the players who served their greed. Shame on MLB, where the shame is deserved. Get their dirty finges out of the HOF.
Your first sentence sort of misses the point a bit, it seems to me.
If we’re trying to evaluate for ourselves whether Sisler is good enough to be in the Hall of Fame, pointing out that he’s already in the Hall of Fame does not really seem to fulfill the criteria for the task we have undertaken. We should look at his actual career, and think about how it compares to other players. I’m not arguing that he shouldn’t be there; i’m simply saying that using the fact that he was selected before as a justification for selecting him now is rather circular logic. “He’s in the Hall, so he should be in the Hall.” See what i mean?
To say that Sisler was “not as good a hitter as Gehrig” is, especially in a discussion of the relative merits of different Hall of Famers, one of the more significant understatements i’ve seen for a while. And i’m not sure that RickJay was ever arguing that ther should only be a single first baseman in the Hall of Fame. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that he probably supports Jimmie Foxx’s presence in the Hall, and that he will probably vote for Albert Pujols when the time comes.
Just out of interest, jtur88, would you mind listing your choices? Apart from Sosa, we don’t know who you selected.
And could we get off the sisler tangent? Really, if you think George Sisler is a clear Hall of Famer, great, but that isn’t the point. The point is that a single statistical accomplishment doesn’t prove much.
To use a rather immediately relevant point, is 500 home runs an automatic in? Well, the support so far for Gary Sheffield in this poll suggests most SDMB baseball fans do not think so, and I think that is a reasonable position. Now, had Sheffield produced the same stats in a career that ended in 1990, everyone would assume he was a slam dunk, because they’d mean something different. In 1990 I think the 500 homer club only had fifteen members (I’m eyeballing the list) so it was a rather unusual accomplishment. Ernie Banks was probably the WORST player to ever hit 500 home runs, him or Harmon Killebrew, and they were awesome. It was a safe bet a guy who hit 500 home runs was a superb player.
Since then MLB has pumped out eleven more. The number of guys in the 50-homer-a-year club doubled. Hitting wads of home runs was just not as unique a thing as it used to be. Nobody seriously thinks Gary Sheffield is as good a hitter as Eddie Mathews was, though Sheffield’s career numbers are superficially just as good, nor does anyone think Jim Thome was a better player than Mike Schmidt. Stats are only meaningful in a relative context, not absolute.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, Sammy Sosa could play some baseball and he had some monster years. He would not be the worst player in the Hall of Fame, or close to it.
Can’t argue most of the arguments above, except that I have trouble finding space for the 'roid hitters.
Richie Aurelia is on my list, though, ahead of other mid-pack players because he was a truly solid player and a good guy, and in my book that has weight over endless calculated stats.
He’s also the only uniformed big-leaguer to ever tell me, “Go get 'em” as I left the dugout.
It’s ridiculous to call Sisler “borderline”. I didn’t just say he was in the Hall along with Lindstrom and Flick, I said he was one of the 8 players in the first third of the century to be inducted right off the bat by people who saw him play. That counts for more than your enslavement to stats, but if you wish, he batted .340 career, led the league in stolen bases 5 times, had a WAR average of 3.6, and was acknowledged as the best fielding first baseman of his time, which no statistic can quantify.
Those of you who wish to restrict the HoF to power hitters are welcome to have it your way, and don’t bother harping on that central fixation with me. All you can say in defense or Gehrig over Sisler was more power, ignoring that he had little speed and was a mediocre fielder.
The other people I selected werfe pretty much the same ones the rest of you chose, no surprises. I already told you that I mentioned Sosa only to register my protest on the drug dogma, and I already explained why.
One would hope that in order to protest the drug dogma, you also voted for Bonds and Clemens, who had first-ballot Hall of Famer careers before they ever touched steroids. Sosa, not so much.
For what it’s worth, my picks were Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza, Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, Lee Smith, Edgar Martinez, and Alan Trammell. I’m still not over the PED scandal so I left off Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, and McGwire. I didn’t choose Curt Schilling because over the course of his career, he was too inconsistent; he always seemed to follow two good seasons with one crappy one. Mike Mussina, on the other hand, was consisently very good but he never had a truly great (i.e., a Cy Young Award) season. I know Won-Loss record is a stat that’s becoming increasingly meaningless in evaluating a pitcher but if Mussina had hung on for another two or more seasons so he could top 300 wins, he’d be an easier pick for the HOF under the Don Sutton rationale.
Resurrecting this to point out that the actual HOF election results will be announced today. Per the 75% rule it looks like the SDMB votes in the following players:
Randy Johnson…95.95%
Pedro Martinez…86.49%
Mike Piazza…75.68%
Biggio and Smoltz each missed the cut by under 10%. For what it’s worth, here’s how the voting shook out according to ESPN’s BWAA voters. LINK
Randy Johnson…97.3%
Pedro Martinez…91.1%
John Smoltz…82.9%
Craig Biggio…82.7%
Mike Piazza was a near miss at 69.9%. Clemens and Bonds at 37.5% and 36.8%, respectively. Why you vote for one but not the other is odd to me, but whatever.
It’s the first time since 1955 the writers have voted in 4 players.
Ninja’d! So I guess the writers have more suspicion regarding Piazza’s substance use than our SDMB voters? Not sure how else you leave him off your ballot.
This happens every year. I have a feeling the most popular excuse would be, “I don’t think he should be the first player inducted unanimously over (insert the names of any number of players here),” followed by, “I vote for players I think are borderline - I don’t want to see somebody miss by one vote because I just had to vote for the obvious ones.”
I still remember Howard Cosell pretty much accusing the seven(?) voters who left Hank Aaron off of their ballots of being racist.
If Ted Williams, Babe Ruth or Nolan Ryan couldn’t get unanimous entry, no one ever will. I think there are some writers who just refuse to vote a first ballot guy because they think HOF voting is some kind of silly game.
In some years, there is no justification for failing to vote for a specfic nominee. Tom Seaver and Willie Mays, among others, were worthy candidates, EVERYBODY voting knew it, and even so, a few writers didn’t vote for them (perhaps thinking, “If Musial and Mantle weren’t unanimous picks, nobody should be”).
But this year was a LITTLE different. This year, there were more than 10 worthy candidates but only 10 spots on each ballot. So, IF you were a supporter of, say, Alan Trammell and Tim Raines, you might have reasoned, “Trammell is runnng out of chances. Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez will get elected easily, so they don’t NEED my vote. But Trammell does, and Raines does, and…”
Happy with all four who were elected, though I could’ve wished for a few more votes for Walker, Trammell, and Raines, none of whom seem on a course to get elected by the writers, and would like to see Bagwell and Piazza get in too. But certainly Martinez, Johnson, Smoltz, and Biggio are deserving.
I tend to think that prospects are overvalued, and have traditionally been overvalued as well, but anybody notice that three of the four were traded very early in their careers? Montreal got Mark Langston for Johnson, and Langston was pretty good but not for all that long. Martinez went to the Expos for Delino DeShields in a trade that would’ve been even more one-sided if Montreal had kept him, and of course Smoltz was traded as a minor leaguer for Doyle Alexander, who was at the end of a long if not especially distinguished career at the time. A few deals like that and you see why teams are a bit squirrely about giving up on prospects too soon.
Of course Bagwell was Traded While Young as well. So was Curt Schilling. Also Fred McGriff. No shortage of 'em on this ballot, truth be told.