SBN Hall of Fame Voting: Bert Blyleven Comes Out On Top
by Charlie on Jan 4, 2010 5:11 PM EST
58 comments
I voted for Bert Blyleven, Roberto Alomar, Tim Raines and Barry Larkin. If SBN were in charge, Blyleven would've made the Hall; Alomar would have missed by one vote. You can check out all the SBN bloggers' ballots here.
| Player | % Vote | Total Votes |
| Bert Blyleven | 92.3% | 48 |
| Roberto Alomar | 73.1% | 38 |
| Barry Larkin | 63.5% | 33 |
| Tim Raines | 53.8% | 28 |
| Mark McGwire | 51.9% | 27 |
| Edgar Martinez | 48.1% | 25 |
| Alan Trammell | 40.4% | 21 |
| Andre Dawson | 32.7% | 17 |
| Lee Smith | 26.9% | 14 |
| Fred McGriff | 25.0% | 13 |
| Dale Murphy | 17.3% | 9 |
| Jack Morris | 13.5% | 7 |
| Don Mattingly | 11.5% | 6 |
| Harold Baines | 7.7% | 4 |
| Dave Parker | 3.8% | 2 |
| Kevin Appier | 3.8% | 2 |
| Ellis Burks | 1.9% | 1 |
| Ray Lankford | 1.9% | 1 |
| Shane Reynolds | 1.9% | 1 |
| Not receiving votes: Andres Galarraga, Pat Hentgen, Mike Jackson, Eric Karros, David Segui, Robin Ventura, Todd Zeile | ||
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so the big cat didn't get a vote
the dude came back from cancer and still played at a very high level
Players who should be in the Hall of Fame: DIck Lebeau, Pat TIllman, Dwight White, Donnie Shell, L.C. Greenwood, Ray Guy, Steve Tasker, Greg Llyod, Andy Russel, Chris Carter, Kevin Greene and Jerry Kramer
"If you give Arians a fullback, he won’t use one. Instead, he insists on using Matt Spaeth, who probably doesn’t cast a shadow because it would require blocking sunlight." Cliff harris is still a punk with some very true words
Blyleven, Larkin, Trammell, and Raines are the only players in the class I would put in. It’s a very weak HOF ballot after those four.
It’s clear that the anti-Blyleven backlash is about the fuddy-duddys sticking it to the stat nerds. It’s too bad that Blyleven has to get punished in order for this ridiculous agenda to be carried out.
I never got the perception that he was a lousy pitcher despite the good numbers. Even when I was very young and not into stats, I could tell that he was one of the best in baseball.
Particularly when...
…a lot of the voters who aren’t voting for Bert ARE voting for Morris.
There isn’t a single area of the game where Morris was better. Not one. Bert had a longer career and a higher peak, was more durable, was more dependable, and even pitched better in the postseason. It should be a slam dunk.
Just wins.
According to Bob Smizik:
He won 287 games, which is 27th all-time, and 13 away from what amounts to automatic enshrinement. He is fifth all-time with 3,701 strikeouts. He’s 10th with 250 losses. I’m not opposed to pitchers with less than 300 wins entering the Hall and I’ll vote for Pedro Martinez, who won’t have 300, when his time comes. But Blyleven never dominated the game. He was a 20-game winner only once and he made only two All-Star teams. No to Blyleven.
He’s using pretty much the same logic for why he won’t vote for Curt Schilling in five years stating:
Schilling does not fit that standard. He won 216 games, tying him for 80th all time with Wilbur Cooper and Charley Hough, two men who will not be in the Hall of Fame. He is behind Kenny Rogers, 219, and Jerry Reuss, 220, two more non-enshrinees.
All-Star teams??? At least wins are an actual statistic, even if they aren’t revealing about any individual player.
This doesn’t support my theory about the agenda against statheads. Smizik just has no clue what he’s doing, end of story.
by Adam Reynolds on Jan 4, 2010 8:20 PM EST up reply actions
Is this unreasonable?
Black Ink Pitching – 16 (134), Average HOFer ≈ 40
Gray Ink Pitching – 240 (25), Average HOFer ≈ 185
Hall of Fame Monitor Pitching – 120 (69), Likely HOFer ≈ 100
Hall of Fame Standards Pitching – 50 (38), Average HOFer ≈ 50
I don’t intend to present a “case against”, but like the line that is (rightly) between Rice and Parker, I can see Blyleven being the first pitcher on either side of the in/out line. I don’t think it’s anywhere near as slam-dunky as some are making it out to be.
Yes, it's unreasonable.
Per HOF Standards, Blyleven is better than 50% of the pitchers in the Hall of Fame (a “50” is calibrated at exactly average HOF-level performance). Per the HOF Monitor (a predictive tool, not an evaluative one), he’s in between “good possibility” and “virtual cinch”, and closer to the latter than the former. Black ink is biased against more recent players, since it was easier to lead the league in a category when there were fewer teams – and in any event, his gray ink total confirms that he was consistently among the league’s leaders.
To make a case against Blyleven, you also need to make a case against guys like Robin Roberts and Gaylord Perry and Tom Seaver. Which would leave you with a pretty tiny Hall.
Perry and Seaver?
They had significantly better black ink scores and they are Blyleven’s contemporaries. Roberts, at a glance, had a higher peak. Some people prefer brilliance over a shorter period than sustained really goodness. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. (Shrug).
That's a reach.
The main difference between Blyleven and, say, Perry on black ink is in wins. Here’s the breakdown for the two:
Blyleven:
4 points: Strikeouts (1x)
3 points: Innings Pitched (2x)
2 points: Complete Games (1x)
1 point: Shutouts (3x), Games Started (1x)
Total: 16
Perry:
4 points: Wins (3x)
3 points: Winning % (1x), Innings Pitched (2x)
2 points: Complete Games (2x), BB/9 (1x)
1 point: Games Started (1x), Shutouts (1x)
Total: 29
So, Perry has an edge of 13 points – but 15 of his points come from Wins or Winning %, both of which are really crappy measures of actual pitching ability. On the stuff that actually measures how well you pitched, as opposed to how many runs your teammates scored, they’re neck-and-neck.
Roberts has a higher peak, but not by much, and it’s due more to volume of innings than quality of work during that time. Over Roberts’s best five-year stretch (‘50-’54), he had a 138 ERA+ in 1632 IP. Over Blyleven’s best five-year stretch (‘73-’77), he had a 140 ERA+ in 1414 IP. So yeah, Roberts wins on volume, but that’s as much a reflection of changing pitcher usage patterns as it is a reflection of actual skill. And on career numbers, Blyleven’s actually better: 117 ERA+ over 4970 IP, compared to Roberts’s 113 ERA+ over 4688 IP.
Seaver is, I will admit, probably a level above Blyleven. Blyleven does, however, have remarkably similar career numbers to Steve Carlton in everything but the win column…
Only one eligible pitcher with higher “Standards” isn’t in the HOF. I guess you could literally draw the line in front of Blyleven, but since there are a ton of names below him then I don’t see that as a great case against Bert.
The hitting Standards show Alomar as a lock, Martinez as an average candidate (though it’s hitting only and he had little defense), Bobby Abreu as an average HOFer, McGriff along with Bernie Williams, and Luis Gonzalez as fairly likely candidates. Does that seem right as to how much they all are deserving?
by Adam Reynolds on Jan 5, 2010 3:38 PM EST up reply actions
Nope, missed it.
Same deal, though: a different short-career guy from the 19th century. The highest number for a non-elected guy from the so-called “modern era” is ex-Buc Sam Leever, with a 46. Next moderns after him are Deacon Phillippe and Jim Kaat, tied at 44.
Hitting standards are going to be a bit out of whack for active players, due to the offensive explosion of the ‘90s. As a counting-stat-based measure, it’s not adjusted for era, and IIRC James first published the formula in ’94 (i.e. prior to the most recent offensive peak). It overrates hitters from the ’30s, for similar reasons.
On second Reflection, Alomar is very deserving as well, for being one of the best second baseman of the 90s. I hate to flip flop, but he is deserving as well based on standing above his class at the position.
Taking a second look at some of the other candidates, it’s hard to distinguish yourself from history as a first baseman or DH, even as a very good power hitter. That is what would make Edgar and McGwire borderline candidates to me.
by Adam Reynolds on Jan 4, 2010 8:43 PM EST up reply actions
among first basemen, only lou gehrig, albert pujols, dan brouthers and jimmie foxx have a better career OPS+ than mcgwire… compare mcgwire’s 162 to the 147 posted by willie mccovey and willie stargell… or the 143 put up by harmon killebrew… or, if you’re looking for a contemporary (besides pujols), how about frank thomas’ 156 or jeff bagwell’s 149?
yeah, it’s tough to stand out as a first baseman, but I’d have to say mcgwire did a rather fair job of doing just that…
by Captain Easychord on Jan 4, 2010 10:13 PM EST up reply actions
Bagwell, Thomas, and Pujols also sport .400+ OBPs for first basemen. That’s the more important component of OPS. They had a good balance between power and getting on base in the PEDs era. Also, the first two played longer and were more consistent.
by Adam Reynolds on Jan 5, 2010 1:52 AM EST up reply actions
it’s not an either-or question for mcgwire vs. bagwell, thomas, pujols or any of those guys… I think they’re all pretty much no-doubt-about-it hall of famers… and let’s also not look at mcgwire’s .394 OBP like it’s chopped liver, y’know? oh, and that .588 slugging percentage? 9th all-time… even if it’s an artifact of his era, mcgwire’s only contemporaries to top it are pujols, bonds and manny… he was the best of his time… he was an all-time great… yes, mark mcgwire should be in the hall of fame…
by Captain Easychord on Jan 5, 2010 10:50 PM EST up reply actions
The case against McGwire...
…comes down to the length of his career (assuming we disregard the stupid anti-steroid protest voters). He only played in 1874 career games, which is on the short side for a Hall of Famer. The question then becomes whether his peak is high enough to make up for the lack of career value, and in my view, it does.
For me...
…McGwire gets in on peak, and McGriff gets in on career value (though he has a decent peak – it’s just kind of hidden in the raw numbers by the offensive explosion of the ‘90s). Edgar is a little short on both ends, IMO. His peak isn’t high enough, once you apply debits for his total lack of defensive value, to compensate for what’s essentially a 13-year career as a regular.
I can see a viable in/out case on all three, though.
I absolutely hate
the way the Hall voting is devised, this 15-year climb-the-ladder bullshit. What has Blyleven done in the years since he first made the ballot that makes him any better a candidate? He hasn’t won a single game or recorded a single strikeout. How can he possibly be more an HoFer today than the day he retired? This is what the Hall is about, waiting until you’re the best guy left in a mediocre class?
Absolutely ludicrous. If you’re not obviously an HoFer the first time on the ballot, then you’re not an HoFer. Period. That should be easy. But if baseball were logical it wouldn’t be the last major North American team sport left with asymmetrical divisions and no salary cap either.
It wouldn’t make sense to me if the voters made defensible decisions, but they often don’t, so if the process allows a totally legit HOFer like Blyleven to get in after the voters passing on him a few times, I’m all for it.
I think
if they changed the rules to one ballot, in or out, the voters would adjust and you’d see more sensible decisions. It would be OK to put in seven qualified guys one year and none the next (there seems to be an unofficial cap of about two now). Of course, the Hall wouldn’t like that because the Hall exists in large part as an arm of the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce, and if there’s no one to induct there’s no party in Cooperstown, no hotel rooms get filled, no lines at the restaurants for a weekend.
What happens now, it sure looks like, is the voters get to procrastinate. “Player A is everything an HoFer should be, he goes in first ballot, but I can’t make up my mind about Player B, even though all the statistical evidence he will ever accumulate is right here in front of me, and even though I saw him play five years ago, geez, I just can’t make up my mind. But what the hell, in 14 years he’ll be somebody else’s problem.”
I’m saying, in that case, if it’s that uncertain that Player B belongs in, Player B doesn’t belong in.
If you're not a HoFer the first time you're on the ballot...
…then the Hall is pretty empty. You’re missing Roy Campanella and Arky Vaughan and Yogi Berra and Eddie Mathews and Pee Wee Reese and Duke Snider and Juan Marichal and Warren Spahn and Gary Carter and Carlton Fisk and Ryne Sandberg. And that’s not even an exhaustive list. It’s not even close.
Again
I think that’s a function of the terrible voting system that lets you punt guys from Hall classes that are loaded and punt them again and again and again and again … until they happen to land in a mediocre class and then you can say “Well, he’s the best man standing, so in he goes.” I could understand that if the Hall limited itself to, like, one enshrinement a year. Then, obviously, you’d have to punt Ty Cobb to enshrine Babe Ruth, then you’d have to punt Cy Young to enshrine Ty Cobb. But there’s no reason many of the players you mention shouldn’t and likely wouldn’t have gone right in if the voters knew they only had one chance to vote on them. And there’s no reason the ballot couldn’t be expanded to, I dunno, 15 to accomplish that — IIRC it’s 10 now.
Vaughan didn't get in until the '80s
He fell off the writers’ ballot after a long wait, and only became eligible again after the voting rules were changed.
His case may or may not be typical – but it’s pretty clearly a case where the incentives you describe did not work the way you believe that they would.
by Vlad on Jan 5, 2010 10:17 PM EST via mobile up reply actions
Or how about Reese?
He drew 36% in his first year on the ballot, topped out at 48% in subsequent elections, and fell off the writers’ ballot before getting picked by the VC. I can buy that some number of writers might have been holding off as you say, but for more than a third of those who think he’s qualified to do so seems a bit odd.
[Just to clarify my earlier post – Vaughan was also, ultimately, a VC selection.]
by Vlad on Jan 5, 2010 10:28 PM EST via mobile up reply actions
I'm going to say
the voters got it right on Reese and that he isn’t an HoF player. Guy had an OPS+ of 99. That’s pretty low standards, even for the Hall. He must have had some old Dodgers buddies on the Vets Committee when he came up.
His even bigger crime is that his induction, of course, aroused the supporters of Rizzuto, because “If you’re going to put Reese in, then how can you not have Rizzuto?” And they campaigned and campaigned and 10 years later Rizzuto and his 93 OPS+ and his 38 career homers went into the Hall. But at least he had a notable broadcasting career and one great Meatloaf song to his credit, so I’d be OK with him in there if it were in the broadcast wing or the wing with the guy who wrote “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Otherwise, no. They’re both mistakes.
Vaughn is a better argument for you, and he put up gaudy numbers in a high-scoring era, and he did lead the league in more than a doxen positive offensive categories, primarily because of one monster season. But I find this interesting:
Black Ink Batting – 29 (62), Average HOFer ≈ 27
Gray Ink Batting – 156 (78), Average HOFer ≈ 144
Hall of Fame Monitor Batting – 116 (123), Likely HOFer ≈ 100
Hall of Fame Standards Batting – 53 (67), Average HOFer ≈ 50
You’d think a guy who once put up an OPS+ of 190 with a career mark of 136 would be better than a little above-average HOFer. But I guess when the “average” includes Ruth, Cobb, Wagner etc. at the high end, I’d say he was a pretty good choice. I have no idea why he got punted so many times, unless it’s just because he wasn’t a Yankee or a Dodger or a Giant or a Cub in the ‘30s and if you weren’t nobody paid any attention to you,
But you know what? If he WEREN’T in the Hall it wouldn’t be a crime. He apparently wasn’t famous enough in his day to inspire the writers to remember him much at all. Possibly they thought he was just another pretty good hitter in an era that was full of inflated offensive numbers, if they thought of him at all. And if they didn’t think of him at all, doesn’t that count for something?
So if he weren’t in the Hall he might have stathead devotees lamenting his case today, but I don’t know that the Hall would be worse off without Arky, as long as it also didn’t have anybody in it who was worse than him. Like Rizzuto and Reese.
Depending on exactly how you weight career...
…Vaughan is between the second- and fourth-best shortstop of all time. Period. Wagner’s the best, and the only other guys who really have a case are Pop Lloyd and Cal Ripken (with Jeter and/or A-Rod maybe getting in the discussion once they retire). If you’re a top-five guy at your position, and you didn’t make the Hall of Fame, then yes, that’s absolutely a crime and a shame and a blight on the whole institution.
There are several reasons that Vaughan wasn’t elected: He played for bad teams out of the spotlight, he drew a lot of walks at a time when that skill wasn’t particularly valued, and he died only four years after retiring and thus fell fairly quickly out of the public eye (drowned in a boating accident). You noted the context of his era, which is proper, but even within that context he was a killer bat. He put up a 136 career OPS+. That’s the kind of production that gets you a Hall pass as a corner outfielder – and he did it as a top defensive shortstop.
As for Reese: A 99 OPS+ is actually well-above-average offensive production for a shortstop (remember – OPS+ is all league batters, not league batters at position). And Reese gets substantial wartime credit that isn’t reflected in his stats – he missed his age 24, 25, and 26 seasons while serving during WWII (he had a 98 OPS+ at 23, and a 116 OPS+ at 27). He’s probably somewhere in the 10-15 range all-time at the position, depending on how much war credit he gets and how you weight peak vs. career and things like that.
(Similarly, Vaughan’s #s on the HOF standards, a measure focused on career totals, don’t reflect his wartime credit – he missed three seasons in the service, ages 32-34. He may not be short three full seasons’ worth of numbers, since he transitioned into a part-timer role after returning, but even a conservative estimate would probably give him 300+ extra hits with good rate numbers.)
And it's not just those two.
Duke Snider debuted at 17% of the vote, and needed eleven years’ worth of balloting to get in. 400+ HR, career .295 hitter, plus defender at a difficult position, two WS rings. Slam dunk, right? Guess not.
When Eddie Mathews retired, he had 512 HR, the sixth-highest all-time total (behind only Ruth, Mays, Mantle, Foxx and Ted Williams). He still only got 32% in his first year on the ballot, and needed five rounds of voting to get in. Five!
Hank Greenberg started at 44%, and took eight years. Ernie Lombardi topped out at 16% in nine years on the writers’ ballot, and got in through the VC. And don’t even get me started on 19th century players. Slidin’ Billy Hamilton, a CF who batted .344 for his career, put up a 141 career OPS+, and held the career SB record until Lou Brock broke it, was finally picked by the VC sixty years after he retired. He drew votes on exactly one writers’ ballot. Not one round of balloting – one ballot, cast in 1942, placing him in a 27-way tie for 46th in that year’s voting.
The writers, by and large, don’t have the slightest goddamn idea what they’re doing, and any attempt to correct the situation that does not address this is doomed to failure right out of the gate.
Just to elaborate a bit on the Mathews thing:
He drew votes in five rounds of balloting: 1974-1978. The complete list of non-Mathews players elected during those five rounds of voting: Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Ralph Kiner, Robin Roberts, Bob Lemon, and Ernie Banks. That’s an average of 1.2 non-Mathews guys per year, if you’re arguing that their reluctance was due to some sort of quota system.
In 1975, the year the voters elected Kiner, Mathews finished eighth in the voting, with 41%. He drew 40 fewer votes than Gil Hodges, and 19 more than the immortal Phil Cavarretta.
I repeat: The writers, by and large, don’t have the slightest goddamn idea what they’re doing.
And I'm saying
that that’s possibly in part because the way the voting system is structured allows them to punt guys for years. Somehow there developed some strange notion that if Willie Mays is up for election the first time and so is Willie Stargell (I’m making this up), well, Willie Stargell was a fine ballplayer, an excellent power hitter, he played for World champions, but … he’s clearly no Willie Mays. Willie Mays is a first-ballot HoFer. That has become an honor we reserve for the greatest of the great. (Or for Bert Blyleven, if he’s the best guy in a poor class.) Willie Stargell? Well … he’ll get in eventually, so no great urgency to vote for Willie this year.
And that’s just stupid. (So yeah, you’re right, the writers do stupid things.) I don’t know if that’s what happened with Matthews, but if you stood him next to the other guys you list there, you might see how the writers could continually dick him around. “Well, he hit 512 homers, but he’s no Ernie Banks, sooo …” punt.
And to second your accusation of stupidity again, even Ernie Banks and Willie Mays didn’t have the honor of going into the Hall with 100% of the vote (I don’t think; I didn’t look it up), which is an insult. But you can see where some voters, out of ignorance or prejudice or whatever, looked at Willie Mays and said, “He’s no Babe Ruth. No one less than Babe Ruth gets my vote on the first ballot.”
And why can they get away with that? Because they can always vote for Willie Mays next year, or next year, or next year.
So we have a voting system by which great ballplayers are continuously insulted, who have to suffer the indignity of not knowing for years and possibly dying while waiting to see if they are worthy of the Hall, and you don’t think there’s a better way to vote? You don’t think “In or out” is at least part of a solution?
I don't think writers were "punting" on Mathews.
I think they just didn’t, as a group, realize that he was deserving of induction, and didn’t start voting for him until they’d been screamed at enough times by people who weren’t gross, fumbling incompetents.
On that 1975 ballot, if you were going to honor only one guy, why would it be Kiner instead of Mathews? Kiner was a good player and a great guy, but he wasn’t nearly close to as qualified as Mathews was. Mathews had just as high a peak, and his career was significantly longer. If you were going to “punt” on anyone, it would’ve been Kiner.
He really was the prototype...
…for the modern conception of the leadoff hitter. Though Arlie Latham was more fun.
If you like high OBPs, check out the numbers for John McGraw (yes, the manager). That .547 in 1899 ain’t too shabby…
OK, I take back
“it wouldn’t be a crime” on Vaughn. But I’m puzzled what you mean by “wartime credit.” Do you mean credit for serving his country? Well, maybe that falls under a ciizenship clause in the voting instructions somewhere, but if you mean I’m supposed to pencil in and give him credit for OPS+s he didn’t have, I can’t buy that. Reese and Vaughn losing three years fighting a war is no different to me than you trying to argue that Ray Chapman should get credit for the years he didn’t play because he was dead. Or pick any promising career shortened by injury or illness or death (Lyman Bostock?) or hampered by drug abuse (I’m looking at you, Dave Parker). I think Bill James wrote something like this about someone else: “He doesn’t get credit for what he didn’t do, it’s hard enough to make sense of what he DID do.”
James always drew the distinction...
…between time missed due to a player’s own actions (i.e. injuries, suspensions, time spent in a different sport/career, etc.) and time missed due to the actions of forces beyond the player’s control (i.e. the color line, mandatory wartime service, etc.). There’s a good essay on that subject in James’s book The Politics of Glory, if you feel like doing some reading.
That has always seemed the most sensible approach to me. If you don’t want to give credit for wartime service, so be it, but it’ll take you some strange places if extended to its logical conclusion (why honor Negro League players at all?), and it’ll take you further away from recognizing greatness, which is after all the whole point of a Hall of Fame in the first place.
"Alomar would have missed by one vote"
John Hirschbeck forgot to vote?
Hawk in
Blyleven, Alomar just miss.
Must have been lots of writers who wished they could spit on an umpire too.
Dawson via AP:
``If you’re a Hall of Famer, eventually you’re going to get in no matter how long it takes. [AND WHY SHOULD THAT BE? WHY SHOULD A REAL HALL-OF-FAMER HAVE TO WAIT?] The wait isn’t a big factor in the scheme of things [UNLESS YOU DIE WHILE YOU’RE WAITING]. You get frustrated when, you know, people continue to say, `Well, when do you think you’re going to get in?’ And you don’t really have the answer to that. [UM, “BECAUSE THE WRITERS ARE IDIOTS AND THE VOTING SYSTEM IS TERRIBLE?” HOW’S THAT FOR AN ANSWER?]
``As I sit here, the only thing I can think of is that it was well worth the
wait. I can’t really describe the elation that, you know, me and my family
experienced when I got that call.‘’ [WOULDN’T IT HAVE BEEN EVEN BETTER NINE YEARS AGO? OH, WAIT, YOU WEREN’T A REAL HOFER NINE YEARS AGO. OR EIGHT, OR SEVEN … BUT SUDDENLY YOU ARE? WHAT HAPPENED THIS YEAR, HAWK, THAT MADE YOU A BETTER CANDIDATE? OH, LOOK, IT’S A PRETTY CRAPPY CLASS. CONGRATULATIONS, ANDRE, YOU’RE THE WORTHIEST PICK IN A BAD CLASS. AND AND AFTER ALL THAT, THE WRONG FORMER EXPOS STAR IS GOING IN].
When I see guys like Jim Rice getting the call from Cooperstown,
it makes me wonder why there is so little attention paid to Dale Murphy.
The whole system is pretty crazy anyway.
Murphy gets hurt on career length.
He definitely had a HOF-level peak. If he’d been productive through age 34, say, instead of totally (and inexplicably) falling apart at 32, he’d probably be in.
I don't get the votes for Alomar, Raines, and Larkin.
They were good. – The were All Stars, but not HOF’ers to me.
I’d have voted for Dawson and Blyleven if I had the privilege of a vote.
Funny.
All three seem pretty plainly and self-evidently deserving to me.
I mean, Alomar? Really? Twelve All-Star games, ten Gold Gloves, five top-10 MVP finishes, 2700 hits, strong postseason performer (.313/.381/.448 in 58 games, ‘92 ALCS MVP), and you don’t see the appeal there?
Wait, what?
You (YOU?!) are citing ASG and GG?
Not exactly.
He was saying that he couldn’t understand why Alomar was getting so many votes. Even if stuff like that isn’t the best indicator of player quality, writers like it – how many writers aren’t going to vote for a guy with that trophy chest?
But yeah, in isolation, a 116 OPS+ in more than 10,000 PA as a middle infielder should be all you need to know in order to conclude that he belongs.
Nutting Hostage,
If there had never been a Rickey Henderson, Raines probably would be universally recognized as the best leadoff man ever. But not only was there a Rickey Henderson, Raines also had the misfortune (if you want to call it that) of playing at the same time as Rickey, and he loses the comparison. But not by very much. Raines was an excellent ballplayer, probably a better all-around player than Dawson, certainly more of an offensive force.
Career OPS+:
Dawson 119
Raines 123
He had terrific speed, knew how to use it (top 10 in his league three times in doubles, eight times in triples, 11 times in steals; he’s fifth all-time in steals, with a high success rate), and was top 10 in the league eight times in runs scored and seven times in OBP. It would be interesting to know how many of Dawson’s RBIs as an Expo came from driving in Tim Raines after a double, or single/walk and a steal. Dawson probably owes Raines some for his HoF election.
BTW, Dawson led the league in five positive offensive categories and never once in any of the % categories; Raines led in nine (steals four straight years) and had a season where he led the league in batting and OBP.
FWIW, Dawson won eight Gold Gloves, Raines none. I think Dawson had a rep for a fearsome arm.
I'd have no problem with Raines, Larkin, and Alomar
getting into the HOF.
How much better would Andre Dawson have been without ruined knees from the concrete turf of the ol’ Olympic Stadium in Montreal?
Raines played
outfield on that turf too. At age 25 and 26, he had 70 SBs and 9 CS in both seasons. After age 26, he played as many as 150 games in a season only once, and his SB numbers fell from their customary 70+ into the low 50s and lower. Don’t know if he started getting hurt more often or just grew out of his speed some.
Anyway, it’s perhaps worth noting that at age 27 he played in 139 games and scored 123 runs. He hit .330, had an OBP of .429 and an OPS of .955. None of which led the league. The next year, at age 28, in the middle of what should have been his prime, he played 109 games and was never again the same guy who put up consecutive OPS+ seasons of 151, 145 and 149, though he was still a good ballplayer. But for a few years there he was Rickey without quite as much power (Rickey’s age 25-26 OPS+: 145 and 157).
Oh, and one more thing
Back in 1983 I visited Three Rivers (of course), Shea, the Vet, Busch, Wrigley, Fulton County, Riverfront, the Astrodome. Shea and the Dome and the Vet and Wrigley were dumps, of course, but the worst of them by far was Olympic, a huge, cold and ugly concrete bowl and a terrible place to watch a game. I can’t believe the people of a beautiful city like Montreal ever let that monstrosity loose on the populace, not to mention the approx. $1 trillion it cost Canadians.
This is what the Olympic movement inflicts on nations and their people, in return for two weeks of pricey TV commercials.
I don't miss watching games on TV or in person
at almost all of the places you mention above.
Speaking of Olympic Stadium, I remember Andy Van Slyke making one of the best catches I’ve ever seen in the late ’80s. (It was too bad for his back that he played so many of his games on fields with terrible artificial turf.
I didn’t like Three Rivers or Riverfront for attending games, but the few times I went to Wrigley Field I had a great time.
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