OK, well, A Rod is sitting north of 110 WAR. If that’s a contribution of 5, under the circumstances, who are these comps we’re talking about? Who is, say, an 8?
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Not to pick on Adrian Beltre–I’d love to have him on my team–but it’s interesting to me how unimpressive his career offensive totals actually are. I suspect that very few people know that he trails Luke Scott, Carlos Quentin, and Jason Bay, often by a lot, in both career slugging percentage and career on-base percentage. You need a mighty heap of defensive value, and a major uptick for playing a bunch of games in Dodger Stadium and Seattle, to make up for that. Evidently WAR gives it to him, as he ranks as the 4th-top position player; perhaps I should be more sold on his current HoF credentials than I am.
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On the other hand, those are guys who, based purely on their rate stats, are fairly elite and would be extraordinarily valuable if they’d’ve been able to stay on the field at that level of production full-time for 20 years. I mean, this is roughly Paul Molitor / Scott Rolen / Robin Yount / Pete Rose offensive territory, too; it’s just the difference between ten thousand PAs and a few thousand.
Cano and Pedroia are comparable in WAR… with Pedroia averaging 5.5 WAR per season, and Cano just over 5.0.
ARod has 115 career WAR, but it’s over 20 seasons, which comes down to 5.75 per season, but he’s not comparable to Pedroia or Cano since he’s played more years, including years out of his prime. ARod averaged close to 8 WAR per season with Seattle (5+ years). His WAR in Seattle is about half of his total WAR with Texas and New York combined. (12+ years)
Let’s be blunt, the evidence is overwhelming that Rodriguez is a gigantic asshole.
In time, however, no one will much care. Joe DiMaggio was an asshole, too. Nobody remembers that now and in fact he’s remembered fondly, but he was a sour, mean, antisocial dick who got into regular arguments with the Yankees over money. Ted Williams was an asshole. Reggie Jackson was an asshole. John McGraw, holy moly, what a huge asshole he was. Rogers Hornsby was a titanic asshole. Ty Cobb was Assholus Maximus Rex.
But in time, all that ended up mattering was if they could play ball.
Yeah…with my status as a non-member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, I’m free to make decisions based entirely on my personal biases, with no need to bother with meddlesome details like statistics
Of course, evidence suggests that a good portion of the BBWAA frequently uses the same process in making *their *voting decisions, so maybe it’s not too late for me to quit my day job!
And speaking of gigantic assholes…Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame.
Jeter
Ichero
Rivera
They are the top three vote getters.
They are also no-brainers as far as I’m concerned. However, some tool left Maddux, Glavine and Thomas off of his ballot for this years HOF, so I guess anything can happen.
The arbitration ruling concerning ARod will come out in a week or two. I’ll be interested to see if they also release their findings as to the extent that ARod tried to obstruct the investigation. It’s possible that if the obstruction is strong enough, that ARod could get the Pete Rose treatment, which would make this whole debate moot.
Unlikely to happen, though, because a) ARod, unlike Pete, has enough money to keep MLB tied up in court for the next 20 years, and b) Selig probably doesn’t want to to see the moronic Steinbrenner brothers get off the hook for their idiotic contract.
But if they feel they have the evidence, but don’t ban him, just suspend him, I’m willing they release all the evidence, to further poison the well against him. If it comes out that ARod instructed shredding of documents and forging replacements, then he guilty of crimes against baseball than Pete Rose or the Eight Men Out.
Well, he IS Mean Mr. Mustard, not Nice Mr. Mustard.
They did need him. I agree with you, but don’t forget that the Yankees also want that career HR record held by a Yankee. They think it is their birthright. IMO, they overpaid for A-Rod because he had the best shot of breaking the record at the time. A-Rod used that to his advantage, and I don’t blame him one bit for that.
The one guy I wish that we could have seen in the majors for his entire career is Ichero. What an amazing hitting talent (not to mention hat cannon of a right arm.)
Pedoria is a good example. Team leader, high WAR, played 2013 with injury incurred in week 1, but eschewed surgery, signed an 8 year extension where he’ll get paid an average of $13.7 mil per year. He could have let Cano set the market value this year and then gone FA next year. If he plays out his contract, he’ll make less than a 1/3rd of what ARod will make in his career, and he’ll probably end up with just shy of s2/3rd of the ARod’s WAR. Not to mention he’s a positive force on a team rather than a pain in the ass.
I’d say, so far, Pedroia is easily an 8, probably higher.
What’s funny is that the OP erred in putting Verlander on the ballot. He’s only played 9 seasons, so if he never played another game, he wouldn’t be eligible.
And agreed with another poster that Cabrera is a no-brainer. He’s closing in on Jim Rice counting stats, with only a third of Rice’s plate appearances. And, consequently crushes Jim Ed in OPS and OPS+ (Although Rice was a very marginal HOF pick.)
Combination Typo/Error by me. Meant to say that Cabrera only had 2/3rds of Rice’s Plate Appearances, which still isn’t right, because I was comparing Rices PAs vs Cabrera’s ABs.
No, they don’t. I have never ever heard anyone associated with the Yankees or any Yankee fan say anything even remotely like this. The career HR record hasn’t been held by a Yankee for 40 years
One of the annoying things about A-Rod is that he’s done so many legitimately crappy things and yet when people go to bash him, they focus on the stupidest and most irrelevant ones.
They overpaid for him because he was their best player and they would have been significantly worse without him. That’s by far the biggest reason.
I’m interested to learn more about MLB’s documents in the A-Rod case, Bellhorn, but it’s worth noting that both sides have been ethically shitty. A-Rod probably tried to buy and destroy Biogenesis documents; and MLB more or less extorted a witness, interfered with a government investigation, and … bought Biogenesis documents.
Yeah, I understand all of that, but I do want to see what comes out. The question posed by the OP was which players belong in the HOF even if they never played another game. And I can’t say yes to ARod, IF he was some kind of mastermind in obstructing MLB’s efforts to try and clean up the game. But I won’t sink him just on nebulous innuendo. If it’s just the usual he-said/they-said BS, I support ARod’s eventual candidacy, in spite of his being a sociopath and a-hole, because I give far more weight to accomplishment and ability than I do character issues.
And for that same reason, if I were a BBWAA member, I’d put Bonds and Clemens on the wait list just to see what shakes out over the next few years, and if nothing substantial comes out, then voting them in around year 10 or so. But I have no problem with voting for Sheffield or Pettitte, because I consider their cases closed.
Fair enough. We don’t need to get into the weeds on the A-Rod thing in this context.
That doesn’t make much sense to me. The government failed to prosecute them, I don’t think there are any active investigations, and we probably know pretty much everything we’re going to know about Bonds and Clemens unless they 'fess up for some reason.
As my late uncle used to see, “Let’s wait until the “statue” of limitations is up.” Maybe now that Andy Pettitte is retired (again) his conscience will get to him and he’ll write a tell-all book, with the proceeds going to some religious foundation.
