I mentioned the Lee Smith/Rollie Fingers comparison and I’d like to dive further into that.
Saves:
Fingers - 341
Smith - 478
Even if we throw saves out the window for being meaningless, their other stats are not so dissimilar. By the way, I do think throwing out saves would be unfair because, like it or not, it’s how we generally measure relievers. The same is true of wins for starting pitchers.
Blown Saves:
Fingers - 109
Smith - 103
ERA:
Fingers - 2.90
Smith - 3.03
WHIP:
Fingers - 1.156
Smith - 1.256
K/9:
Fingers - 6.9
Smith - 8.7
ERA+:
Fingers - 120
Smith - 132
Both Fingers and Smith appeared in 7 All Star games. Both finished in the top 10 for the Cy Young 4 times, Fingers actually won it one and Smith was a runner up once. I think the comparison between these two players is fair and we all know Finges is in the HOF. I think Lee Smith has a great case.
Nice try playing the “you didn’t play or watch the sport” card because I both played and would bet that I watch more baseball games than you do.
Utterly ridiculous. So you’re the #1 or #2 hitter, the #3 hitter (“your best batter”) is up, and you get into scoring position for the #4 hitter and that’s a bad thing? Should you stop at first on a double because otherwise the next guy will get walked and a weaker batter will be up, otherwise you’re not a team player? Getting into scoring position is NEVER a net loss for the team, unless your success rate for the attempt is too low, and in that case you won’t be playing much longer by blowing through a coach’s sign anyway. If you don’t play by the coach’s rules, you’re on the bench. How can you chase nothing but your own stats? Think for fucking half a second before you start denigrating someone’s baseball experience.
How is trying to hit the ball further on average bad for your team? Because you might strike out? You also might hit a home run or double or sac fly. What are you advocating, a half-swing? Less likely to strike out, sure, but also more likely to hit a weaker ball that accomplishes nothing.
Larry Walker - No. Had some hall of fame years, but not enough of them.
Roberto Alomar- Yes. Fell off the cliff when he got to the Mets, but was high enough before to be an easy hall of famer.
Carlos Baerga - No. Mets really should stop acquiring veteran 2nd basemen.
Jeff Bagwell - Yes. I can’t believe that people think he is borderline. He was every bit the offensive force of his contemporaries, played in a severe pitchers park in his prime, and was an excellent defender and base-runner. I’d have him as in the top 5 1st basemen of all time.
Harold Baines - No.
Bert Blyleven - Yes.
Bret Boone - No.
Kevin Brown - No. He has a bit of case, but fell off a bit too soon and a bit too severely
John Franco - No. I have a friend who is convinced he is a hall of famer for having the most saves ever for a lefty. He is wrong. You have to be exceptional to a hall of fame closer and he was merely good.
Juan Gonzalez - No. Had a hall of fame first half of a career, but provided nothing after that. Makes the hall of fame of bad contract decisions though.
Marquis Grissom - No.
Lenny Harris - No
Bobby Higginson - No. Best player on some bad tigers team. Good enough to e on the ballot, but obviously not a hall of famer.
Charles Johnson - No Another guy who tailed off real fast.
Barry Larkin - Yes. The list of shortstops who were the all around player that Larkin was in baseball history is vanishingly short.
Al Leiter - No. Great potential as a broadcaster though.
Edgar Martinez - No. I understand the argument, but I think it discounts just how much dhing helps a players offensive numbers and more importantly ability to stay healthy. Just imagine the numbers a guy like Chipper Jones could have put up if he was an every day dh. That combined with the relatively short career leaves him short of the dividing line.
Tino Martinez -No. Good at a position you need to great.
Don Mattingly - No. Prime way too short.
Fred McGriff - No. Mcgriff is tough. I think he gets underrated a bit due to the offensive explosion towards the end of his carerr. In his prime his numbers were very impressive for those years. Still 1b has a very high standard and he isn’t quite in the Palmerio/ Thome/Murray/Thomas/Bagwell class.
Mark McGwire - Yes. Of course. What exactly is the point of having a hall of fame if you aren’t going to put in the best players. I don’t even think he has poor character.
Raul Mondesi - No.
Jack Morris - No.
Dale Murphy - No.
John Olerud - No. Excellent player though.
Rafael Palmiero - Yes. A bit tougher than Mcgwire since he broke an actual baseball rule as opposed to a vague and unenforced line on a memo. Still, I’m willing to accept that baseball 's current punishments are adequate and feel no great need to demerit his case much beyond that. If he was borderline I’d say no, but I think he is a bit past that.
Dave Parker No.
Tim Raines - Yes. No strong opinion on him, but people who knows much more about it then me say he is one the best to ever play a game, and I’m willing to take their word for it.
Kirk Reuter - No.
Benito Santiago - No
Lee Smith- No. Like Franco merely very good, not great
BJ Surhoff -No
Alan Trammell - No. Certainly deserves more consideration then he has gotten but a little short for me.
Alomar, Raines, Blyleven, Larkin - definite yes. All should be solidly in.
Bagwell, Edgar Martinez, Trammell - all “yes”, if not quite as solid.
Everyone else: Varying degrees of “Barely, but no”, “Hell, no”, and “Kirk Reuter”.
“Vanishingly” short? An interesting adverb there, considering that after Larkin’s day, there’s quite the list of shortstops who are Hall-of-Fame caliber.
Trevor Hoffman currently sits at 1089.1. The record that Hoffman broke for all time saves leader at the time belonged to Smith. Smith held that record for 13 years. I think that counts for something. It will be interesting to see how many of today’s closers get more consideration than Smith while pitching fewer innings and picking up just as many or more “cheap” saves.
It sounded good in my head. I’m not sure I see quite a list there. There is Jeter for sure (though certainly much worse defensively) and Arod though he will end up being as much a 3rd baseman. Anyone else?
Hoffman was more dominate then Smith, and had the best save percentage of all time too (or at least did at one point), but you can certainly argue neither should be enshrined. I don’t really care about saves, they are more a result of opportunity then anything else. Even bad pitchers are going to be successful 85% percent of the time. The average teams wins over 95% of games they lead after 8 innings. A guy who changes the number from 95 to 97 isn’t really helping all that much. Also, they haven’t been tracking the stat all that long, so most all time isn’t really as impressive as it sounds.
Besides you run into issues when you use the argument that this guy is a hall of famer and that guy is better so that guy should be in the hall too. There are some poor choices of hall of famers, and if the standard is players better than say Jim Rice the hall is going to get awfully crowded.
The flipside to that is that the game hasn’t seen the use of the reliever for all that long either, so there weren’t likely to be any real contenders for that particular title if you could go back and assign Saves retroactively to 1888.
The difficulty is that while Smith (or Fingers or Goose, etc.) may have been GREAT and/or DOMINANT relievers, they’re still relievers. It’s very difficult for them to amass enough brilliance over a career of 70 IP seasons to warrant putting them alongside Walter Johnson, Cy Young or Bob Gibson.
For me, it’s really hard to nail down what I’m looking for when I’d vote for a reliever. I hate the Yankees, but I simply can’t justify not voting for Mariano when his time comes around. John Smoltz seems an even easier vote, simply because he showed he could pitch at a top level as a starter. I think for a specialist position/role, you need to decide a) if that role is important enough to be judged amongst it’s own peers (that eliminates the LOOGY) and b) a clear argument can be made that the player was dominant in that role.
Miguel Tejada and Nomar Garciaparra as well, off the top of my head. The days when teams could acceptably be built with no-hit shortstops are in the past.
I don’t think either of those are hall of famers. Nomar fell off real fast and Tejada 800 career ops with middling defense seems a little short. At the very least I don’t think there is case that either was better than Larkei who put up better numbers in a less hitter friendly era. And of course we get to compare Larkin to the players 80 years before him too, and if they aren’t named Wagner or Ripken he fairs quite well.
I also could point that the era of offensive shortstops seems to have been more of a blip then an extended change. Outside or Tulo, Ramirez, and the occasionally healthy Reyes there aren’t really any good offensive shortstops at the moment. The top OPS by an al ss last year was Alexi Ramirez at all of .744
Alomar - must be measured against other second-basemen. Easy yes.
Bagwell - great at everything.
Blyleven - finally?
Martinez - DH is a positon. DH’s should be measured against other DH’s. The best should go to the hall, and he’s the best ever (so far.)
Smith - Closer is a position. Closers should be measured against other closers. Smith was one of the best. Maybe
Gonzalez - Why does it matter how long a career, as long as it’s 10 years minimum? The guy had a long, monster peak. 2 MVP’s and check out his 162 game averages: 102 runs/42 home-runs/135 rbi. The only thing that looks bad is the .343 OBP. I’m not really for him because Texas was a steroid party.
Palmeiro - Without the steroid bust they’d have to vote those numbers in.
Raines and Larkin - I need to read some pro arguments…I think I could be persuaded on both.
Blyleven, Martinez, Palmeiro (yes, really) and Larkin are no-brainers. They belong in the Hall.
So does Mark McGwire for that matter. Steroids or no, the man was king of the game for a long time.
As for Bagwell, look at his career highlights from Wikipedia:
NL MVP: 1994
NL Rookie of the Year: 1991
NL All-Star: 1994, 1996, 1997, 1999
Gold Glove Award (1B): 1994
Silver Slugger Awards (1B): 1994, 1997, 1999
Houston Astros Career Leader in Home Runs (449), RBI (1,529), Walks (1,401), Runs Created (1,715), Sacrifice Flies (102) and Intentional Walks (155).
Holds Houston Astros single season records for Batting Average (.368 in 1994), On-base percentage (.454 in 1999), Slugging Percentage (.750 in 1994), OPS (1.201 in 1994), Runs (152 in 2000), Total Bases (363 in 2000), Home Runs (47 in 2000), Walks (149 in 1999), Times on Base (331 in 1999), Intentional Walks (27 in 1997) and At Bats per Home Run (10.3 in 1994)
Bagwell’s best seasons took place in the pitcher-friendly Astrodome.
Baseball statistician Bill James, in his New Historical Baseball Abstract, listed Bagwell as the fourth best first baseman of all time.
But beyond that, the man had that intangible “IT” that you want your Hall of Famers to have. The crazy goatee, the absolutely wacky batting stance, the all-around good guy reputation. Bagwell had it all. He’s in my Hall of Fame even if he never makes the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Ideally, the writers should keep him out this year and vote him in next year alongside Craig Biggio, who is a lock for the Hall in 2012.
You’ve made a great case that Lee Smith was as good as Rollie Fingers.
That’s not a super duper case that Smith is a Hall of Famer, though, because
“If-him-then” arguments would require us to put a thousand men in the Hall of Fame. If you put in every first baseman who was as good as George Kelly, we’d have at least sixty of them - guys like John Olerud and Fred McGriff would be no brainers and we’d also have to induct Kent Hrbek and Roy Sievers.
Rollie Fingers was a pretty doubtful Hall of Fame choice. Not that he wasn’t a fine pitcher, but his career is basically two thirds of David Cone or Jimmy Key. Kevin Appier and Dave Stieb were more valuable pitchers. I know relief pitching is a job that someone has to do but the fact is than a man who pitches 100 innings just is not as valuable as a man who pitches over 200.
If Smith compares well to Fingers, why not also compare him to Jeff Reardon or Doug Jones? Both men pitched about the same number of innings with essentially equal effectiveness, but neither’s going into the Hall.
I know it’s not the greatest measuring stick to say Player X compares favorably to Player Y, but really, isn’t it all relative? When looking at players’ worthiness, we compare them to other greats of their time or greats that came before them.
If you can say Lee Smith’s career was on par with Fingers, Sutter or Gossage, why then doesn’t he merit a HOF vote?
If you want to say closers in general shouldn’t get in the HOF, that’s a whole other argument. Their position, along with the DH, has become a vital role in baseball. Those positions merit All Star selections. Heck, even the occasionally spectacular LOOGY gets an All Star appearance (Hideki Okajima a few years ago). Obviously, an All Star selection is not nearly as monumental as a HOF bust, but the point is that we ought to measure players based on their relative effectiveness at their position.
Is that really that much beyond the pale? I mean at his peak this was a guy who hit .300, also hit for significant power, drew over 100 walks a year, was a good baserunner and defender.
So let’s see who ranks solidly ahead of him:
Lou Gehrig
Jimmy Foxx
I’ll both grant these two guys as the top 2, clearly ahead of everyone else.*
Who are you going to choose after that? I’ll make my list, and then you can make yours. Here’s the pool of candidates which I think are in Bags’ class:
Retired
Willie McCovey: While a fantastic hitter, was an indifferent fielder and baserunner, and spent much of his 30’s on the DL. Bags is ahead-note that despite the early end to his career Bagwell had close to 10000 PA, about on par with most of these other guys.
Eddie Murray: Gets lots of points for consistency (4 straight years of 156 OPS+? Wow.), and was also a good defender, but lacked those huge peak seasons. Bags ahead.
Harmon Killebrew: Able to play many positions, but in the end analysis closer to Stretch than to Bags in many ways.
Johnny Mize: Missed 3 prime seasons to WWII, and despite that finished with 70 WAR anyway. Hit for a higher average than anybody other than the 1920-1930 crowd. If you give him war credit he has an argument for the #3 spot, but he isn’t clearly better than Bags.
Hank Greenberg: Also hurt by the war; again depending on how much credit you give him for that, he could be close to even with Mize (and thus Bagwell).
The rest of the HoF 1B crowd includes guys like George Sisler and Bill Terry, who hit for high averages (but not much else) in the 20’s/30’s, and obvious mistakes like George Kelly. Bagwell almost certainly was better than any of them.
Contemporaries
Frank Thomas: Born on the exact same day as Bagwell, at his peak a better hitter, but Bags kills him everywhere else. Very even, too close to call really, depends a lot of how much you weight 1B defense and Thomas playing a lot of DH (where, BTW, he hit worse than he did when he played in the field).
Mark McGwire: Like McCovey, points off for durability issues, but he could certainly hit. Again Bags has the better total package, despite Mac’s extra HRs.
Fred McGriff: Lacked the huge seasons of his other 1B contemporaries. Likewise Carlos Delgado & Palmiero.
Jim Thome: Very close; slight edge in power, Bags had better average, walks about dead even. Again defense/baserunning makes the difference for me.
Edgar Martinez: Awesome hitter, but of course he DH’ed most of the time and got a late start to his career.
So I have:
Clearly ahead: Gehrig, Foxx
Too close to call: Thomas, Mize, Thome, Greenberg (maybe)
Bags looks like he belongs somewhere in the 3rd-7th range; there may be arguments to drop him below that, but it would likely involve saying that something (yeah, maybe roids) about the era he played in caused the difference between the average and best players to increase, but that would also take down all of his contemporaries a notch or two as well.
[*even tho personally I have a pretty steep timeline adjustment I make-as in, it’s pretty clear if you study the issue that the quality of play and the level of competition has increased over time very significantly. 8 WAR today likely means a greatly superior performance to 8 WAR 70 years ago (has it been that long since Gehrig died? Man.)]