astorian:
This is a sincere question: how would we be able to tell?
I believe Bill James (and others independently, in a Darwin/Wallace kind of way) used new ways to interpret defensive statistics which indeed showed that Hernandez was at (or very near) the top of the defensive Win Shares/162 games list for 1B.
If you can track that down, I would love to see what that list looks like. Please post it if you or someone else finds it.
Bump because I’m excited to see the results and to move on to vote #3.
Me, too. Second base is my favorite position; it was my position in Little League.
For one inning, once, when they let me out of right field in an act of mercy.
Hey you too? I was a terrible player and could not judge fly balls, but I could play grounders and had enough (barely) arm strength to throw accurately to first from second. I almost never embarrassed myself at second. I did at Catcher and Right Field.
I had a really good throwing arm. A+. I was a terrible hitter, because I’d swing at anything, and I was below average at actually catching ball, but once I had it, I could throw it a mile.
But I had absolutely no control. They’d put me in right field because if someone hit the ball over my head, I could get it quickly back into the infield, but when that happened, the whole infield would scatter because they had literally no idea where the ball was going to end up.
If I had played the infield regularly, I’d have made six throwing errors a game and probably killed someone.
The voting is over. Thank you so much for helping to build the SDMB Baseball Hall of Fame! I apologize for being late; I was away on business.
Elected in this round of voting are:
Lou Gehrig
Jimmie Foxx
Hank Greenberg
Willie McCovey
Johnny Mize
Harmon Killebrew
Frank “The Big Hurt” Thomas
Eddie Murray
George Sisler
Jeff Bagwell
Sorry, no summaries; I don’t have time because I need to do the Second Baseman’s ballot! Someone else is welcome to do career summaries of these ten great players.
Coming in 11th was Cap Anson, who missed by three votes.
Rules Notes:
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I had to disquality one vote for Orlando Cepeda because it was the 11th name on a ballot and I completely discounted the ballot that was twelve votes for Lou Gehrig; neither decision made a difference.
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Willie Stargell received two votes despite the fact that he spent most of his career in the outfield, so he’ll be named on that ballot, though again it’s an open ballot and you can vote him in as a shortstop if you want.
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It is clear that pre-homer-era players are at a significant disadvantage. Do not worry. The wild card rounds will take care of any deficiencies.
This was a very open ballot, more so than catchers. Several players who did not make it got good support, and 34 players received at least one vote.
I will go make the Second Baseman’s thread now and return here with that link. Thank you again, and play ball!
The vote for second basemen is here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=10059974#post10059974
Sorry for not getting back to this thread until today, and thus not realizing that you had made this inquiry. After reading the thread, I realized that I should have picked either Bill Terry (knew of his stats and impact, but just overlooked his name) or Dan Brouthers (whose reputation has apparently gone up since the 1970-1990 period when I was learning most of my baseball history). Galarraga always seemed to have a couple of hits whenever I watched him (mostly in Expos games against the Mets and Braves on superstations), so he’s the beneficiary of a biased sampling.
And he didn’t really benefit, as he missed the cut. Still, I like the fact I’ve made him analogous to those teams in college basketball or football polls that get one or two nods and are thus listed as “also receiving votes” in a particular week. Or one of those guys on his first (and, as it turns out, only) Hall of Fame ballot who get a couple of sentimental votes before dropping out of consideration…