I mostly agree, but if you’re down to Cano and Utley for the 10th spot on your ballot, I’m OK if you’re deciding factor was future performance.
Now, you put Jose Altuve on your list of 10 greatest 2nd basemen of all time, that’s maybe an issue. Great player, no doubt. But we can’t bank on his future performance.
This is kind of where I was going with this. I missed the catchers voting, but I’m not sure I am ready to vote in Gary Sanchez based on his half a season. If he had had the same consistent performance over the next several years, I’m gonna consider that his future production will be a similar arc to the player with comparable current accumulated stats but at the end of his career.
That’s my perspective, Hawkeyeop. It’s a pretty dangerous game, to be honest, since it can come back and bite you in the other direction if the player immediately hits the wall soon after your vote, which can indeed end up looking equally silly. Now, to be fair, Canó may well get in anyway if he gets hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow, but just on the 2nd base side of things we have Chuck Knoblauch as a perfect counter example: 38 WAR through age 28, only 6.7 afterwards. Andruw Jones same thing, 60.9 through age 30, only a miniscule 1.9 afterwards (defense hit a wall too). Would you have voted for Andruw if this exercise had taken place after said age 30 season, by “merely” extrapolating what he has done so far? Bill James said this of Dale Murphy once, after his stellar 1987 campaign, that he was a mortal lock for the Hall.
Only what a player has done up to this point has to count here, else you start sliding down ye olde dangerous slippery slope… I was worried about this when RickJay said that active players were eligible.
Part of what I like about this exercise is that everyone gets to decide what their own criteria are. Ignore pre-WW1 players? Cool. Give WW2 players credit for years missed? Sure. Focus on career WAR, or best 5 years? Either is fine. 'Roids or no 'roids? Your choice.
If people want to vote based on future potential, I say go for it. I enjoy people voting for different reasons than I did and explaining why - it gives me a different perspective on players.
I chose Utley over Cano, mainly because I think he’s had a better career so far. I certainly don’t have any problem with folks who chose Cano for any reason, including their belief that he will have a better career when all’s said and done.
However, I don’t think it’s a given by any means that Cano will keep on keeping on as he has been doing–and not just because of the possibility of catastrophic injury. Second basemen seem to have a particular habit of collapsing around age 34, Cano’s current age:
*Roberto Alomar ages 31, 32, 33: WARs of 7.4, 5.6, 7.3; total WAR thereafter, -0.2.
*Ryne Sandberg ages 31 and 32, WARs of 7.0 and 7.8; never cracked 3.5 again after that.
*Jeff Kent, ages 32-34: WARs of 7.2, 5.2, 7.0; never reached 4.0 again.
*CRaig Biggio, ages 31-33: WARs of 9.4 (!), 6.5, 5.0; one 3.2 season after that, which was the only one over 2.5.
*Bobby Grich was not at the same level as these guys in his early thirties, but had a 4.3 at age 34, never broke 3 in his remaining three seasons.
Obviously, there are counterexamples: Lou Whitaker didn;t show a huge decline at this age, for instance. Joe Morgan wasn’t JOE MORGAN any more after age 34, but he remained very good. Cano won’t necessarily follow in the footsteps of the Kents and the Biggios. But I suspect that people discussing Sandberg and Alomar, when they were around Cano’s current age, would have assumed that they’d have another four or five really good years, if not great years, and…well, they would have been wrong. Projecting is a tricky business.
Relevant Fangraphs article today: Looking for Active Hall-of-Fame Position Players
They discuss all of the active borderline 2B mentioned above. I’ll just note that their defensive system loves Utley and Pedroia’s defense, but unlike Baseball Reference has Canó in the negatives, dropping him down 10 WAR, more or less even with Pedroia and Kinsler and below Utley.
Note: He seemed a bit too wedded to his specific evaluation system and did not discuss players which fell through his cracks, most notably Kinsler.
Thanks, that was interesting. Especially their take on Cano, because they list his WAR at 49. Baseball-Reference says 62.4. Now that is a hell of a discrepancy and I think fangraphs severely underrates him if you just look at numbers. I guess fangraphs puts quite a lot of weight on defense, but still…
Utley’s WAR on fangraphs is 63.3, B-Ref is 64.4. Seems much more in line.
Looking back at catchers, I was wondering why the article mentioned Posey but not Mauer, and saw quite a discussion on him in the comments. I said in the catcher thread, at this very moment I think Mauer’s got a better case than Posey. Posey will *probably *end up ahead, but in this instance I’d give the nod to Mauer.
Eddie Collins
Nap Lajoie
Joe Morgan
Charlie Gehringer
Ryne Sandberg
Joe Gordon
Bobby Doerr
Roberto Alomar
Davey Lopes
Frankie Frisch
I’m saving Biggio for the multi-position round.
In alphabetical order:
Roberto Alomar
Rod Carew
Eddie Collins
Charlie Gehringer
Rogers Hornsby
Jeff Kent
Nap Lajoie
Joe Morgan
Jackie Robinson
Ryne Sandberg
Rod Carew, Rogers Hornsby and Jackie Robinson were elected on previous ballots as per the OP. Could you please choose 3 replacements?
ETA: Voting will end Thursday, January 12.
Thank you to everyone for voting! We have elected an additional ten second basemen to the Hall of Fame. With their vote totals:
Ryne Sandberg (21, unanimous)
Joe Morgan (21, unanimous)
Napoleon Lajoie (20)
Roberto Alomar (19)
Eddie Collins (19)
Charlie Gehringer (18)
Craig Biggio (15)
Lou Whitaker (13)
Frankie Frisch (11)
Robinson Cano (11)
No one was really close to Cano; Bobby Grich got six votes.
The Third Basemen ballot starts immediately:
This election was rigged! No Billy Martin?
Hey, maybe we’ll have a Managers ballot.