He murders Palmiero on peak, whose sole advantage is a bit more longevity. [I am admittedly biased towards peak, vs. career accumulations, note. I consider a season or two like Helton’s 2000 much more significant than an extra 2400 PA’s-on both ends- at a rather low level.]
Big Mac was great-when he wasn’t on the DL (note I added him on my latest ballot).
Thomas was a butcher with the glove, and gives away almost all of his edge with the bat while playing D (or sitting in the dugout. Note I think WAR’s DH penalties are a bit excessive).
Cabrera you can consider a 1B, and may, at the moment, deserve a slight edge.
Thome’s peak is very anemic, only 2 seasons above 5.9 WAR.
Bags and Pujols I’ll give you.
I put him 3rd, 4th at worst (depending on where you put Cabrera).
I’d forgotten just how good Helton was in the early 2000s, or maybe I hadn’t ever really known (not only the “Denver discount,” but also playing on teams that generally weren’t all that good).
You make some good points about Helton vs. Palmeiro and Thome, especially if you’re giving more weight to peak performance. I’m not so sure about Thomas, though…where career WAR is concerned Thomas has a pretty sizable lead (73.7 to 61.2) in very close to the same number of games. True, the very top seasons belong to Helton, but it’s not a rout by any means.
I’m actually of the opposite opinion from you regarding DHs–for various reasons I think WAR should downgrade full-time DHs more than it does–and yet I’d still prefer Thomas, if I had to choose between them.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m conflicted about whether to include multiposition guys here, or save them for what I anticipate will be a considerably weaker DH/multiposition field later on. That would be especially Carew, Cabrera, Thomas, Thome, and a couple of others…
Anyway, with these folks included I had no trouble getting down to twenty, unlike with catchers. From then it was a little more complicated. Here’s my ballot.
Albert Pujols
Rod Carew
Miguel Cabrera
Jimmie Foxx
Willie McCovey
Todd Helton
Jeff Bagwell
Johnny Mize
Hank Greenberg
Frank Thomas
I wish that we voted top down, ranking our candidates in order (which is what I do anyway), either 10-9-8-7…or, if you think giving the top guy 10x as much weight as the bottom one is too excessive, something like 20-19-18-…12-11. Otherwise the entire focus is on the borderline, and we don’t get to see who ends up on top, either. Yeah, a HoFer is a HoFer, but I’d like to argue for Pujols just as strongly as I do for Helton, but Albert is a shoo-in in this format, so there’s no incentive to waste pixels on him.
At the very least I’d like to see the full voting results, % each candidate showed up on the ballots, etc.
Sure, I’ll provide full voting results henceforth. With due respect, I will not ask for a weighting or ranking system. It’s a list of names. I believe, in the long run, you will find that making the voting simple will be a good thing.
I’d post the numbers for the first two ballots but I can’t find the papers I ticked them off on.
I encourage everyone to find more people who like baseball to sign up and vote.
So everyone at my work is still off from the holidays, so I just tallied these up on the back of an envelope. No offense intended, Rick, I’m just impatient for progress.
In
Jimmie Foxx - 24
Albert Pujols - 24
Johnny Mize - 21
Willie McCovey - 20
Hank Greenberg - 19
Jeff Bagwell - 18
Frank Thomas - 17
Eddie Murray - 17
Cap Anson - 12
Jim Thome - 12
Harmon Killebrew - 12
Rod Carew - 12
That’s the top 12 right there, with four guys tying for the last two spots out of ten. I think the rule is they all get in.
Swung and Missed
Miguel Cabrera - 10
George Sisler - 6
Mark McGwire, Buck Leonard - 4
Dan Brouthers, Todd Helton, Bill Terry - 3
Roger Connor, Rafe Palmeiro - 2
Keith Hernandez, Stan Musial, Tony Perez, Pete Rose - 1
If Rickjay sees this before making the count final, I’d like to switch Hernandez for Greenberg. I’m aware of most MLB stars who lost seasons to WWII, but I overlooked Greenberg. He was a monster, and lost nearly 4.5 seasons. Wow.