Look at his last 3 or 4 seasons - he shouldn’t have been pitching in the majors at that point.
That would be his last two seasons, wherein he was a little subpar. His third-to-last season, he was a top vote-getter for the Cy Young Award.
Re: Roberto Alomar. Wasn’t the umpire-spitting incident pretty much isolated in a career of decent sports-citizenship? I think it shouldn’t stop him from getting voted in. It’s not like umpires are paragons of virtue. I believe that Robbie was provoked, and while it was a wrong way for him to react, it shouldn’t soil his whole career.
I think Fred McGriff belongs. He was an amazing player. The way adding him to the 1993 Braves pushed them to beat the Giants for the NL West title was just one example.
Edgar Martinez should get in. We don’t penalize pitchers for being crappy hitters, or career AL pitchers for never hitting. I highly doubt that any truly great batsmen were denied the Hall of Fame no matter how bad their glovework was. So I don’t buy this “he only played half the game” business.
Yes, but it was egregious. And high publicity matters - Orlando Cepeda’s drug arrest kept him out for years, and it wasn’t even baseball-related.
There’s a difference between playing only half the game because the rules don’t allow it, and playing only half the game because you suck at the other half but the rules provide a refuge for you.
On the other hand there are plenty of examples of writers looking the other way on off field incidents if a player happens to be media friendly. Kirby Puckett being one of the more recent examples.
Would Edgar have been more valuable if played a terrible defensive first base every day?
I thought Edgar’s problem was that he got injured too much playing the field.
Uh. So to speak.
The point was that Edgar was limited as a player. It was through no fault of his own, sure, just like it’s not the fault of all the other people who could have been great if not for major injuries. But his limitation was still real and it does have to be considered when deciding if he belongs among the Greatest of the Greats.
The era of the career DH may be ending anyway, forced out by teams going to 12-man pitching staffs instead of the once-normal 10. It is getting hard for a player who can’t take the field to hold a roster spot anymore. Even David Ortiz, as close as you’ll see to a fulltime DH anymore, can still play 1B once in a while.
Agreed about Puckett, btw.
Just once that mattered. He tore a hammy (in an exhibition game, at that) and never got it all back.
ElvisL1ves:
Cepeda was a borderline candidate to begin with. Alomar was the best player at his position for a significant period of time.
What rule prevents a pitcher from hitting well? Even in the AL, the manager could let his pitcher bat, but for some reason, no manager ever wants to…not even a Hall of Fame pitcher.
Like it or not…and I recognize that many people don’t…the Designated Hitter has been part of organized baseball for 35 years now. To shut the DH out of the Hall of Fame is just as wrong as ignoring the old Negro Leaguers was. Not MORALLY just as wrong, mind you, but just as wrong from the perspective of preserving and celebrating baseball greatness.
Obviously wrong; Ryan’s no-hitters aren’t a tipping point that got him into the Hall. Had every one of them been broken up, he’d still be in the Hall of Fame for the same reason Don Sutton is; 300+ wins gets you in.
Five times, actually. The relevance to this discussion is unclear.
I don’t agree. It’s a settled matter and there’s no precedent for denying a player enshrinement for a single offense of poor sportsmanship.
Few baseball fans, even pretty dedicated ones, can reliably remember who was or wasn’t elected on the first ballot, especially given the fact that for much of the history of the Hall of Fame the distinction didn’t mean anything, because truly inner-circle Hall of Famers weren’t elected on their first try (Joe DiMaggio, for instance) since the voting dynamics were different. Alomar either is deserving, or he is not. If he is, they should put him in, and if not, they shouldn’t. Unless, of course, a lot of the voters think he’s deserving but that ten other guys are more deserving, which seems unlikely.
I think he is clearly a Hall of Famer, so I see no reason to say “well, I’ll vote for him in 2011” because one time back in 1996 he lost his shit at a guy who was verbally abusing him and who now supports Alomar’s election to the Hall.
- I don’t think so, and 2. So what?
If the Hall of Fame starts creating tiered enshrinement then it would be interesting to discuss where Alomar belongs (I’d say he’s middle of the HOF pack - not super elite, but clearly a Hall of Famer) but they don’t.
I haven’t seen anyone say DH’s should be shut out of the Hall, just that the lack of defensive contribution should be considered when weighing the evidence. The fact is that Martinez contributed very, very little to his teams defensively, so in putting together the case for him you have to bear that in mind, just as you would for a really inept fielder.
Martinez was clearly a superior hitter, but there’s next to no fielding value there AND he had what was, for a HOFer, a short career. You can’t ignore those facts. If Martinez had hit like that over a career of 2700 games I’d say he was a no brainer. If he’d hit like that and been a passable fielder for the 2000+ games he did play I’d also say he was a no brainer.
Frank Thomas was a DH most of his career, too, and when he did play first base he was horrible, so he didn’t really have any more defensive value than Edgar. I think you have to consider those things… but I’d definitely vote for Thomas. He was an even better hitter, and played a bit longer.
Lee Smith had the career saves record until 2006. He deserves to be in.
So, somewhat off-topic: what’s everyone’s opinion of Jeff Bagwell? In, or too many postseason struggles/his shoulder injury ended his career too early?
Well, even if you had an AL pitcher who was as good of a hitter as his manager had on the bench (to use as a DH)…as I understand it, part of the DH rule states that if a team sends its pitcher up to bat, it cannot use a DH for the remainder of the game.
So, even if you had a Greg Maddux (strawman example, I know, as he never played in the AL), who could bat, if the manager eschewed using the DH when he pitched, he’d be forced to let the relief pitchers bat, or use pinch-hitters. Which is exactly what NL managers do, though I suspect that most AL managers don’t build their rosters to take that kind of pinch-hitting into account.
Anybody who doesn’t think Bert Blyleven should be in the HOF should read this. It is especially interesting breaking down the Cy Young voting. There were years when Blyleven was clearly one of the elite pitchers in the AL and he didn’t get a single Cy Young vote.
You know the guy who the sports bloggers are always complaining about? The one who doesn’t understand elementary statistics and makes all his decisions based on arbitrary subjective criteria?
I…I think it might be you.
So… are you talking about DHs here, or pitchers? Because it’s equally true of both in the AL. The only reason the designated hitter exists is because pitchers are, by and large, shitty hitters, just like designated hitters are, by and large, shitty defenders. To penalize one for playing “half the game” and not the other is ridiculously poor logic.
But nobody gives pitchers credit for being good hitters when considering their Hall of Fame qualifications, so Elvis isn’t proposing anything illogical.
The existence of the DH rule doesn’t have a significant effect on AL pitchers’ qualifications because the difference between a pitcher who doesn’t bat at all and most Hall of Fame pitchers who have batted is inconsequential. But the difference between Edgar Martinez’s defensive qualifications and most Hall of Fame hitters in terms of defensive value is very significant. When viewing Martinez’s overall candidacy it’s perfectly fair to point out that he probably has the fewer fielding credentials any position player has ever had who was a serious HoF candidate.
I don’t understand what’s illogical about considering Martinez’s candidacy based on what he actually did in his career to help his teams win. Defense was not one of the things he did (not much, anyway.) Pretending he has the same qualifications as a player with real fielding credentials would be… well, ludicrous. It would be like pretending Martinez also pitched.
If we look at Martinez’s career using an analytical stat that factors in defense, he looks like a mediocre candidate. He has 69 career WARP, which is better than some guys in the Hall, but is way below a lot of the guys we’ve been discussing in this thread:
Blyleven: 88.4
Larkin: 86.4
Raines: 81.7
Alomar: 79.4
Trammell: 78.1
McGwire: 71.6
Edgar: 68.9
I’m not absolutely sold on WARP. But go ahead, trot out any overall measure you want and it’ll tell you more or less the same thing.
kenobi 65:
Not entirely strawman, since he’s played in interleague games in AL parks, in which the DH rule is in effect.
So what is “WARP”? I haven’t seen the acronym spelled out here.