Not sure if we have done this before. Choose one player that you think deserves to be in the HoF. I’m specifically excluding the great players tainted by PED scandal. To some extent, defend your choice with some evidence.
As a Yankee fan, I have a few in mind, but I will (surprisingly) kick things off with:
Dwight Evans.
67.2 WAR. 8 times Gold Glove. 385 HR. 2400+ hits. Rocket arm. His “similar players” on Baseball Reference aren’t pantheon, but he matches up with Beltran, Dave Parker, Billy Williams, etc. Asa kid in the late 70s/80s I remember him as a beast.
75 bWAR. 68 fWAR. When you’re that good on both sides of the ball, you wind up with numbers like that. There are a lot of hitters in the Hall with gaudy offensive numbers and crap fielding stats. When you’re well above average at both, your candidacy should be taken into consideration.
OK, Jim Edmonds. Extraordinary CF defense. 60.4 WAR (not great, but higher than more than a couple of HoF CFers). 393 HRs (7 more and I bet he gets more than 2.5% of the votes like he did in his one time on the ballot).
I kinda hate the “if so-and-so is in then so-and-so should also be in”, but I struggle to understand why Jim Rice is in but Jim Edmonds isn’t.
If you want another one, I could probably make an argument for Curt Flood as well, especially if you take off-the-field accomplishments into consideration.
Never mind that he hit .300, he should be in just for his defense. I’m not sure the statistics show it, but the guy was smarter than just about anyone else in the game. He saw nuances lost on players and spectators and ended up making some impossible looking plays. And he could throw, which many first baseman can’t. I loved watching him turn the 3-6-3 and pounce on bunts. If I had to pick an all-time first baseman, it’s him.
Interesting that two former Cardinals were nominted, both of whom derived a lot of their value from defense (but could hit pretty damn well too). I thought I would compare the two via JAWS:
Edmonds:
15th among CF (none retired higher that aren’t in the HOF)
60.4 WAR, 42.6 7-year peak WAR, 51.5 JAWS, 4.9 WAR/162
Hernandez:
22nd among 1B (2 retired higher that aren’t in the HOF; both due to PEDs)
60.4 WAR, 41.3 7-year peak WAR, 50.8 JAWS, 4.7 WAR/162
The defensive metrics used to evaluate 1B who played before the modern high-tech era are likely inadequate to deal with Hernandez’s glove. BBRef gives him credit for “only” 117 defensive runs. By comparison Ozzie Smith, his teammate for a couple of seasons, has 239-yeah a SS should get quite a bit more than a 1B, all things being equal, but Hernandez so completely broke the defensive mold that I am pretty certain that is much too low.
Billy Pierce. My parents knew him growing up and live in his old house. I met him a couple times, he was very nice and signed a card for me. Not a huge baseball guy, but it’s my understanding that he’d be on the low end of pitchers in the hall, but not unheard of. A contemporary of his with very similar stats (Whitey Ford) is in.
I’ll throw another one out, since he just passed away.
Tommy John.
288 wins, 61.6 career WAR, 3.34 ERA
Pioneered the recovery from the surgery that bears his name.
Most similar players: Jim Kaat (HOF), Robin Roberts (HOF), Bert Blyleven (HOF), Fergie Jenkins (HOF), Early Wynn (HOF), Tom Glavine (HOF), etc… - every single pitcher on his top-10 similarity list is in the Hall of Fame.
I’m sure he will go in some day via some committee, but it’s a shame it will happen after he’s dead.
Eventually, the sportswriters who remember 300-win pitchers will dwindle in number. Wherever the new pitching-wins benchmark settles, it will benefit Tommy John’s candidacy. 288 will seem like a freakish ironman career in an era where the high-teens can lead a league.
I don’t need to justify his stats. Had he not been banned for gambling, he’d have made the HoF on the first ballot. And I’m sick to death of the whole “but he gambled on baseball!” canard. The HoF is not about morality, else Cap Anson, Babe Ruth, and Mickey Mantle, among multiple others, would not be there.
I don’t remember the allegations against Ruth, Anson, Mantle etc. being child rapists, like Rose was (and admitted). And while “he gambled on baseball!” does seem like a tired anthem, it’s the truth and it’s a silver bullet.
Ruth and Mantle were womanizing drunks, and Anson was an unapologetic racist. Rose admitted to having sex with a teen girl, believing she was 16. I’m not saying that’s excuseable, but powerful men have gotten away with worse. Hell, Don Henley literally wrote a song putting the media on blast for putting him on blast for having sex with a teen girl.
But my point stands: regardless of how immoral the person was or is, it shouldn’t be a barrier to the HoF.
Despite Rose being a rapist and otherwise a real jerk (several people I know who met him attest to this), the gambling is what really puts the nail in the coffin for him. Whatever protestations he made about not betting on games he was involved in, if he was betting on baseball we have to suspect that he was lying and that game outcomes may have been affected.
Even if he claimed to not have bet on baseball, his behavior was highly suspicious. Even if we say he was still incentivized to win, I think just being a problem gambler is problematic.
But in a sense, it doesn’t matter. He got all those hits and played spectacularly for his whole career. Go ahead and put him in the Hall, for all I care. He’ll always have a big asterisk hanging over that stupid haircut of his as far as I’m concerned.
You could make a Hall of Fame case for a pitcher who won 20 games or more five times in his career (for 3 separate teams), had a lifetime record of 207-126, and helped two different clubs to pennants (one of them, the Boston Red Sox, won two championships).
In his best year he went 27-9 for the N.Y. Yankees and hit .343 in 156 plate appearances. He had a lifetime .268 batting average.
Several things have kept Carl Mays out of the Hall of Fame. In his time he was considered the most hated man in baseball (considering his career overlapped considerably with that of Ty Cobb, it was quite an achievement). He was suspected though it was never proven of having thrown World Series games in 1921 and 1922 while pitching for the Yankees. They may well have believed the rumors, dumping him in spite of his having won 66 games for them in 3 years.
And of course, Mays is known for throwing the pitch that fatally beaned Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians. Mays was considered a headhunter even before that.
Not trying to hijack, but it burned my ass when Buster Olney called Clayton Kershaw the “greatest of all time”–really? 223 wins is half of the legitimate GOAT CY Young