Mays is out, obviously, and so too is Ernie Banks. I mean, that dude never even got a hit in the playoffs. That’s a Hall of Regular Season Stats guy if ever I’ve seen one - I mean, who the heck has ever heard of Ernie Banks?
A moment’s reflection might reveal how silly you both are being.
Well, Chipper is now on the bubble. I don’t get it. Damuri Ajashi? Velocity? I have to ask, why not a vote for him?
We grade tough here. I thought I was fairly stingy, but this board is tight. Chipper Jones seemed like an easy pick. Though I guess he didn’t punch any of the standard numbers and was never really the best player. But he was probably the best third baseman of his generation and all of his numbers look Hall of Fame level to me. I’m not a WAR guy but it appears he has the 6th highest all time for Third basemen.
Thome also seems easy, not really a truly great player but 612 homers for a clean player should be enough to get the votes.
This is pretty much what I did. I think the 10 person limit is an issue and I take issue with anyone who can’t find 10 sure HOFers in the list unless they are an extreme “small hall” person who thinks the Hall should be like Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Willie Mays, and that’s about it. Even if you want to punish PED guys or just exclude them, it’s easy finding another 10 who are least as good as the average HOFer at their position. There are players worse than the 15th best player on this ballot who’ve actually been elected in the past decade. That said, I didn’t have much problem picking my top 10 and sticking with it.
But mistakes of the past should not permanently lower the bar for who is a Hall of Famer.
Yes votes:
Barry Bonds
I don’t think we cheated, and if you don’t think he cheated, there is not much of a case against. I also think he gets a rap as a bad teammate, when mainly he was a bad interview.
Roger Clemens
See Bonds comment.
Mike Mussina
The rest of the greats that have been languishing on the ballot are due to steroids or personality, but there is no such qualms about Mussina. Rather Mussina is kept out for baseball reasons, which is a total misunderstanding of context. Mussina pitched his entire career in the AL East, which is a lot harder then say throwing one inning at a time in San Diego. He didn’t have the standout amazing year, but he was really good for a really long time. And he was good in the postseason too. He is well above the historical line that gets pitchers in.
Manny Ramirez
Unlike Bonds and Clemens, Ramirez actually failed drug tests after baseball bothered to care. That is a definite point against him, but I don’t think it undoes a amazing career. While he could be a lazy defender, he worked really hard at his hitting, as you don’t become that good on skill alone.
Curt Schilling
Terrible person. Great Pitcher
Jim Thome
Similar to Mussina in that he was consistently really good without ever really standing out.
Chipper Jones
As a Met fan, few have caused more pain in my life.
Scott Rolen:
The redone hall of fame effort that kind of fizzled out taught me a couple things. First off, it is hard to have opinions on players who pre-date me. Secondly, at positions like 3rd, the bar to get into the top ten isn’t as high as I would think. Rolen was a great defender and a solid hitter at a place where there aren’t many of thos.
Jeff Kent
My favorite Met who became much better after he left the squad. He would fit really well into modern baseball. He was an under-rated defender and a great hitter for a long time.
Vladimir Guerrero
A borderline candidate, but I’m going to give him bonus points for fun-ness
Maybe if had a bigger ballot:
Sammy Sosa:
He was a historically important player, which helps an otherwise borderline case.
Andruw Jones:
He has a weird case as much of his value comes from defense when he was really young. His numbers are close though, and I hope he stays on the ballot long enough to be discussed.
Edgar Martinez:
My hesitation with Edgar has always been how much the dh let a brittle player stay healthy, and who else could have put up those numbers with that advantage. Still being a dh is hard, so maybe I’m being too hard on him.
Larry Walker:
Never considered him a hall of famer, but Rickjay makes a compelling case, so perhaps he needs a second look.
Some consideration, but no:
Fred Mcgriff:
His case is that his numbers are more impressive in the pre-steroid era, but he didn’t do enough to standout at a loaded position.
Trevor Hoffman:
1,089 innings.
Johan Santana:
His career and peaks were too short, though I’ll note still almost double the innings of Hoffman. His no-hitter probably ended his usefulness as a pitcher, but it was one of the great moments in Met history.
Gary Sheffield:
Now he was a terrible teammates, quitting on his squad when he was unhappy. Like Manny, but not quite as historic a hitter to overcome the rest.
Billy Wagner:
Has a case for being better than Hoffman, but not really one for the hall.
Omar Vizquel:
Just cause he was a good defender doesn’t mean he was Ozzie Smith.
Everyone Else
Chris Carpenter:
Really good until he broke
Johnny Damon:
Well I liked him on the Red Sox
Livan Hernandez:
Hung around way longer than you would think, kind of surprised he isn’t still pitching.
Aubrey Huff:
Better at baseball than science at least.
Jason Isringhausen
Not bad for a failed Met prospect.
Carlos Lee:
I got nothing
Brad Lidge:
If my biggest memory is Pujols destroying his soul, it probably isn’t a good sign.
Hideki Matsui:
Godzilla was a cool nickname.
Kevin Millwood
Was great on my fantasy team that one year.
I’m curious about why you list Ramirez as an all-time great while consigning Mcgwire to “pound sand” status.
Fangraphs WAR has Ramirez at 66.4, McGwire at 66.3. (McGwire had a higher peak, Ramirez lasted longer.)
If you don;t like WAR, McGwire had 30 more homers, a higher walk rate (17% to 13%), and a very slightly higher slugging percentage (while playing in parks that were much less homer-friendly than Ramirez did), while Ramirez had about twice as many doubles, a higher batting average (by about 50 points), and a higher OBP by about 15.
Neither was much of a baserunner and neither added much value as a defensive player–McGwire was less than stellar at a less than key position, Ramirez downright bad at a somewhat more important one.
It’s really hard for me to see how to separate them at all, let alone decide that one is among the greatest players of all time and the other is borderline.
There are, I think, 255 people in the Hall of Fame for their playing exploits, which includes 35 Negro League players.
I don’t know for sure who the absolute WORST Hall of Famer was, but Rube Marquard is often cited as a possibility, and there’s gotta be six hundred, maybe eight hundred players better than Marquard who aren’t in the Hall of Fame. Maybe a thousand. If you put everyone in the Hall of Fame who was better than Marquard, it’s not just that you’d have to put in every marginal case; you’d have to put in guys you never even considered, guys like Dave Stieb, Ray Lankford, Mel Stottlemyre, and George Foster. You just couldn’t do it that way.
That’s pretty much it. Ramirez was a complete offensive force. McGwire was a one-dimensional slugger. I marvelled at Manny’s hitting and I regarded McGwire as a cartoon sideshow. I guess it’s not entirely rational.
You make some good points. They are a lot closer than I thought.
There’s a backlog caused by the No PED Users voters who’ve kept guys on the list who should have gone in already.
Marquard does appear to be the worst pitcher in the Hall. No lifetime baseball achievement that adds to his career either. Really is a mystery why in 1971 the Old-Timers added him. I know he had some colorful stories about old-time baseball, must have helped. Bill Mazeroski & Roger Bresnahan would seem to be competition for worst of all time.
Catfish Hunter is uncomfortably close to Marquard in that regard.
I hope Bill Mazeroski was the best fielding second baseman of all time. His hitting stats are anemic: 84 OPS+ and a .299 OBP. Ouch.
His peak was significantly better wasn’t it? A 5 year run of 20+ wins when they were already getting rare. In the conversation for best pitcher in baseball in that run. But yes, not a strong candidate.
It’s true that he won 20 games 5 years in a row, but overall he one great year (1975) and three other excellent years. And that was really it.
Hunter was greatly helped in this run by virtue of having strong offensive and defensive teams behind him. I mean, he was a fine pitcher, but he wasn’t in the same class as Roy Halladay, and I don’t think Halladay is an inner circle guy. If Mike Mussina had come up with the A’s in 1965 he would have won 325 games.
I would however argue that Hunter was a significantly better pitcher than Rube Marquard. He is a bad HOF choice but he’s not that bad. Hunter had a higher peak, and played well in the playoffs for World Champion teams. I also forgot about Jesse Haines, who is a lot like Marquard.
I believe the all time lowest WAR for a modern player in the Hall is George Kelly, at 25.2, which doesn’t even crack the all time top thousand. Kelly was a well regarded player and a good one for about five years, but at his peak he wasn’t any better a player than Bill White, John Olerud, or Gil Hodges, and his peak was very short.
Yeah, when I hear McGwire described as “one-dimensional” I always want to know whether that one dimension is power or the ability to get on base. Well, obviously people mean slugging, and homers in particular, as McGwire was top 12 all time in both (.588/583)…but his .394 OBP puts him into the top 100 all time, ahead of among others Carew, Gwynn, Morgan, Wagner, and a bunch of other names that surprise me.
One of my favorite comparison stats is that McGwire beats out David Ortiz in both OBP and slugging, and neither is especially close (OBP by 14 points, .394 to .380; slugging by 36 points, .588 to .552). People never seem to believe that one.
As to Ramirez vs. McGwire–There’s no doubt that Ramirez had a whole bunch more singles and a ton more doubles than McGwire, but a) McGwire hit so many homers that he made up for it with a better slugging percentage than Ramirez, as noted, and b) McGwire drew enough walks to come close to wiping out Ramirez’s advantages in non-HR hits…Ramirez definitely is ahead in OBP, but not by as much as you’d think given the batting average disparity.
So “cartoon sideshow” is not really accurate, but I know what you mean: McGwire hit so many homers and had so few other hits that it just seems hard to make sense of it. Certainly you’d never see him as a “pure hitter” the way we would view Ramirez. What’s interesting to me is that he was every bit as good even if he did it in a weird way.
Vizquel wasn’t on the ballot, which made me a bit sad. I don’t really expect him to get into the Hall, though I’ve gone back and forth with you at least a couple of times, RickJay, about why I think he should be in.
That being said, it’s starting to feel awkward to have names like Bonds and Clemens on the ballot, and to see this pile-up of players that have much worse numbers, and not even hold a candle to them in terms of their contribution to the story of baseball.
What I don’t understand is how Edgar Martinez continues to not be inducted. He never had the steroid taint about him, just the fact that he didn’t play a defensive position. There are plenty of guys in the Hall who would have served their teams much better not ever playing a defensive position who didn’t have his bat. It’s great that the Mariners got a street named after him in Seattle, but he should absolutely be in Cooperstown.
I have to believe that that’s the entire reason. I suspect that there’s a subset of voters who see themselves as baseball purists, who still hate the DH, and who feel that “if Martinez were a real player, he would have been a fielder, as well.”
Sure. because guys like, say, Dave Winfield wouldn’t really be players worthy of the Hall if it wasn’t for the massive contributions they made with their gloves.