Pete Rose
The all time hits leader needs to be in the hall
No.
And not even on the ballot in his final year of eligibility. He’s done.
Rick Aguilera (1st year on the ballot) -
Albert Belle (1st year)
Bert Blyleven (9th year)
Will Clark (1st year)
Dave Concepcion (13th year)
Andre Dawson (5th year)
Gary DiSarcina (1st year)
Alex Fernandez (1st year)
Gary Gaetti (1st year)
Steve Garvey (14th year)
Dwight Gooden (1st year)
Rich Gossage (7th year)
Ozzie Guillen (1st year)
Orel Hershiser (1st year)
Gregg Jefferies (1st year)
Tommy John (12th year)
Doug Jones (1st year)
Don Mattingly (6th year)
Willie McGee (2nd year)
Hal Morris (1st year)
Jack Morris (7th year)
Dale Murphy (8th year)
Dave Parker (10th year)
Jim Rice (12th year)
Lee Smith (4th year)
Bruce Sutter (13th year)
Alan Trammell (5th year)
Walt Weiss (1st year)
John Wetteland (1st year)
There’s an awful lot of closers there. Wetteland, Sutter, Smith, Jones, Gossage, Aguilara. Of those guys, Gossage, Sutter and Smith were the best, so I’ll vote for those three.
I’ll vote for Blyleven and Jack Morris.
For position players I’ll go with Conception, Trammell, Rice, Parker and Dawson.
Bert Blyleven and Lee Smith on numbers alone. Dale Murphy and Andre Dawson for carrying such bad teams for years and years.
Sutter
Smith
Gossage
Blyleven
Dawson
Trammell
The toughest ones for me are McGee (Cardinal love), Clark and Rice. I think of the three, Rice probably has the best argument, although Clark was good.
Next year will be the first test of the Steroid Era. If Big Mac gets in, Bonds and Sosa have less to worry about. The only other mortal locks on that list are Tony Gwynn and Cal.
Yeah, the only real issue next year is whether they rename the thing after Rip. Hoo-ah, that’s quite a ballot.
Blyleven, Smith, Gossage, Rice. And you could probably talk me into Trammel if you tried.
If you mean Joe DiMaggio, the man had sensational stats. How do they not back up his greatness?
In fact, WHAT intangibles? DiMaggio was a sour, taciturn loner who wasn’t very popular with his teammates and fought with the Yankees about money all the time.
Gossage, Smith, and probably Trammell.
He was not just a great player, not just a hall of famer but he is considered one of the absolute elite players.
Willie Mays said Joe D was the best CF of all time.
Ted Williams said Joe D was the best player of their era.
He is considered a top 10 player but his stats fall short of Ruth, Cobb, Aaron, Mantle, Mays, Etc. That is all I meant. He was respected for his grace, his teammates worshiped him, he always made the play, and he was the ultimate competitor. He was respected beyond the game despite the biographies that have come out in the last 10-15 years.
I hope that makes more sense now.
Jim
This year… I’m not enthusiastic about ANY of the people on the list.
I tend to agree with Jim Rome’s philosophy on the Hall of Fame: “If you have to think about it for more than a few seconds, then he doesn’t belong.”
If my standards were used by most voters, there’d a be FAR fewer players in the Hall of Fame, and that would suit me fine. There are already far too many borderline cases in the Hall, and that only leads to MORE borderline cases getting elected.
To use an example, Bert Blyleven was a very good pitcher for a long time. In MY opoinion, however, he does NOT belong in the Hall of Fame. In my mind, the Hall is for the elite, the all-time greats, NOT the guys who were better than average for a long time.
And yet, when a guy like Don Sutton is in the Hall, how can I argue that Blyleven (who I think was better than Sutton in every way) shouldn’t be?
That’s the problem- once enough good-but-not-great players are in the Hall, voters start thinking, “Well, So-and-so is in the Hall, and he was no better than this guy, really, so why not?”
There’s nothing wronbg with being a very good athlete… but I see no reason to water down our standards. Instead of saying, "Bert Blyleven is worthier than Don Sutton, I’d prefer to toss Sutton.
Not going to happen, I know. Not a chance.
Regardless, I see no one on this list who passes my “If you have to think about it” test.
Goose Gossage comes the closest. If ANYONE on this list makes it in, I hope it’s the Goose. But I’d rather see the voters give a collective shrug this year and say “Nobody really deserves it this time.”
I’ve thought about this one for a while.
For me, the only on there worth considering is Goose Gossage. However, I have a huge bias. I like him as a person.
Honestly, they’re not going to have a year where no one is inducted. So, I’d vote for Goose although I know he is very, very borderline.
Sutter…wow, if it wasn’t for the injuries, sure he’d be a pick.
Murphy, Rice, and Parker? Better than average players, worthy of All Star, but not quite Hall of Fame players. I wonder if voters are swayed by all the Atlanta Braves games that were on during the 80s? I know I watched quite a few of them.
Gooden? Could have been dominant for many years. Damn drugs.
Can someone please explain to me, when Dawson is compared to his contemporaries, how he is not in the hall? Please?
9 gold gloves, 4 silver sluggers, one MVP award on a awful Cubs team mind you (and 2 second place finishes), rookie of the year, a 20 year career almost entirely in the NL and was a top ten hitter by any measure for the entire decade of the 80s. You could make a strong arguement that he was the best all around player in that decade.
If the concrete in Montreal hadn’t destroyed his knees who knows what kind OPS and SB numbers he’d have had. If he’d have been on some decent teams with someone protecting him in the lineup he’d have a scary BA and OBP.
Even with those factors having hurt him statistically, his resume is a HOF no-brainer. If you watched him play it’s even more obvious he belongs. Anyone who doesn’t vote for him deserves to have their ballot recinded.
Just to punctuate it, look at the most similar players list:
He has to be in the Hall.
I guess you could, but you would be wrong, since the best all around player of the 1980s was Mike Schmidt, even with him getting hurt in 1988. And Dawson’s 1987 MVP Award is widely, and rightly, considered one of the dumbest MVP Awards ever.
Dawson is, I admit, an unusual duck. He did play a long time and had a lot of good years, and played much of his career in Montreal, a poor hitters’ park at the time.
But look at his career stats. Truth be told, he never had any REALLY awesome years; he was very good for a long time, but there weren’t any years there, to use another guy in this year’s vote, that even touched Dale Murphy’s 1982, 1983 or 1987, or any number of Albert Belle seasons.
Dawson was a very undisciplined hitter, as a result of which if he didn’t bat .300 or close to it he didn’t help his team that much; he had a lot of years in the middle of his career, like 1979 or 1985, where he was an average player at most, and he didn’t have any super awesome years.
Dawson’s most comparable players are an instructive example in that they’re mostly marginal Hall of Fame picks or guys who aren’t in. Billy Williams was a BETTER hitter than Dawson; Perez was pretty close, but he too is in pretty much on career length and a major guilt trip advertising campaign.
Nothing against Mike Schmidt, he was a hell of a player and you’d probably lose an argument stating Dawson was better, but it’s not a run away. Schmidt was on some great teams and always had a great team around him. The fact that it raised his profile as much as it did certainly makes it an uphill argument.
Still, Schmidt had a career .267 batting average compared to Dawson’s .279. And they have an identical .908 OPS. Dawson’s two down years towards the tail end of his stint in Montreal were those in which is knees were at their worst, and he immediately rebounded as soon as he got into Wrigley. And if you want to talk about undiciplined hitters, Schmidt was 6th all-time on that list and led the league in Ks 4 times. Dawson had nearly 400 fewer in 3 more seasons. I think you’re drunk if you don’t think Dawson’s '87 season was better than Murphy’s (Dawson won the MVP while Murphy finished 11th), Dawson’s numbers were better in nearly every category and he was still the best fielding OF in the game that year. Even in '83 Dawson’s numbers were right there with Murphy’s and if adjusted for ballpark they crush Murphy’s who played in the Fulton County Launching Pad. As for Albert Belle, his numbers were better in his best years, but relative to his contemporaries they weren’t. The eras simply aren’t compatible, and Belle’s career was too shart and lacking defensively to use him in the same conversation with Dawson.
Dawson was simply dominant in the 80s, and while his numbers by todays standards are so-so, in his day they were very impressive. He had much better plate discipline than anyone who had even remotiely similar power numbers, and was the best defender at his position for an entire decade. If you take away the bloated offensive statistics of the current era and put them in the 80s, Dawson is a 80’s version of Vlad Guerrero.
If '87’s MVP was a dumb decision, who exactly should it have gone to? Ozzie Smith? In a year in which Dawson hit 49 HRs, the most in any season between 1977 and 1990 by a wide margin (McGuire’s '87 season when he also hit 49 excepting). That argument is silly. Basically if you think Ozzie deserved it that year, you’re subscribing to the theory that the best player on the best team should always win the award. Thats a dumb theory IMHO.
In case it wasn’t clear, I’m refering to the number of strikeouts here. The season leaders list where Schmidt and Murphy appreared constantly, and Dawson never after his '79 season, and the career list where Schmidt and Murphy are 6th and 12th all-time.
It’s worth noting that Dawson was always considered the consummate class act, and was always the best teammate. In baseball’s HOF process where so many factors outsid ethe numbers come into play, this is a tilt in his favor as well.
Sandberg was a great and beloved, but I don’t think you’ll find anyone who doesn’t agree that Dawson was the best player on the Cubs in the 80s…including Sandberg.
I wouldn’t call the Dawson selection a “dumb” pick, as RickJay did, nor do I think Andre was a TERRIBLE choice. As I recall, 1987 was a year in which there wasn’t anybody with numbers that blew observers away. If there HAD been, no one would have been eager to cast a vote for a guy on a last-place team.
Still, if I had a vote, I probably WOULD have gone for Ozzie Smith #1, Darryl Strawberry/Eric Davis neck and neck for #2, and Jack Clark #4, all before Andre Dawson.
Not only was Ozzie the best defensive player at his position of all time (before Ozzie, I’d have given that title to Mark Belanger… but Ozzie had just as good a fielding percentage as Belanger and had MUCH better range), but he had a MUCH higher on base percentage than Andre Dawson did in 1987. That’s because Ozzie batted higher than Dawson and walked a LOT more often. (We expect a slugger like Dawson to strike out a lot, but he OUGHT to walk a lot more often than Andre did).
Again, Dawson wasn’t a terrible choice for MVP, but he WOULD be a terrible choice for the Hall of Fame, for the same reason Don Mattingly (one of my favorite players ever) would be: they just didn’t have ENOUGH stellar seasons.
Let this be clear, Dawson’s 1987 season where he hit 49 HRs and drove in 134 RBIs while winning a gold glove was a STELLAR season. People forget how absurd hitting 49 dingers was back in 87.
Now, he didn’t have a series of STELLAR seasons like some others (Frank Thomas perhaps) but I don’t agree with that standard to get in. If you’re very good and occasionally great for 21 seasons, you get in the hall. If you’re great for several seasons but only play 11 seasons, you also get in. Different paths, each equally valid.
Frank Thomas had 6 STELLAR seasons, and he’s a weaker canidate than Dawson.
As for 87 MVP, I could stomach an argument for Ozzie Smith, the Cards won the NL pennant and he had an excellent year. Granted for as good as Ozzie was defensively, Dawson was his equal in the outfield that year. Ozzie is the greatest SS I ever saw, but Dawson was in the conversation of best outfielders all time too. Probably not the best but still good enough to make the defense argument for Ozzie alot weaker. To extend your argument to your other choices, neither Davis or Strawberry qualify as great defenders and with offensive numbers on par with Dawsons seem like weak picks to supercede him. I’ll take an extra 12 HRs and great defense over 40 additional SBs. If SBs were so important Vince Coleman would have gotten the MVP.
I agree that lots of guys had monster seasons in 1987, all those mentioned could have deserved it, and likely would have won it in '86, '88 or '89 but I don’t think there’s a good argument that says Dawson didn’t deserve it.