Without having given it much thought or looked at the numbers AT ALL I land firmly on No, with the DH thing playing the biggest role. Am I the biggest idiot ever?

Naw, he's not getting in. Doesn't have to counting stats and was overshadowed by Thomas as a DH.

Am I the biggest idiot ever?

Well, you root for a team owned by Jeffrey Loria.

But on the Edgar thing, I wouldn't say "firmly" no, but I tend to think he's on the wrong side of the line. He's probably one of the top 250-300 players in MLB history, so given the size of the actual Hall of Fame, you can argue that he belongs (i.e., he's got a decent Hall of Merit case). But, at the same time, there are at least six guys on this year's ballot that are more deserving I think: Raines, Blyleven, Trammell, Larkin, Alomar, and Dawson; plus a 7th, McGwire, depending on your view of steroids, and I'm not sure that Edgar really distinguishes himself that much from Dale Murphy or Fred McGriff either. And, of course, that's without getting into guys that aren't on the ballot but are among the more egregious HOF omissions - Santo, Grich, Whitaker, et al.

That said, one thing that I do like about Edgar's case is that he's a lifetime .300/.400/.500 hitter.

With a tip o' the hat to Larry Stone of the Seattle Times, here's a link to a pdf of the Edgar Martinez career summary that was mailed to the BBWAA members.

Without having given it much thought or looked at the numbers AT ALL I land firmly on No, with the DH thing playing the biggest role. Am I the biggest idiot ever?

Considering that his OPS+ is 39th all-time, tied with Willie McCovey, Mike Schmidt, Willie Stargell, and Alex Rodriguez, you might want to give his numbers a look.

I don't think there's any question whatsoever that the quality of his hitting is HoF-worthy. It's just a question of whether the quantity is there, and that's a close call...

Harold Baines, Don Mattingly and Steve Garvey aren’t in the Hall, so why should Edgar?

Well, without delving deep into statistical analysis, Edgar simply kicks arse over these guys when it comes to production at the plate.

Shooty is spot on when mentioning the Big Hurt. If anyone is going in and being recognised as mostly a DH, it'll be Thomas. There isn't any rational argument which would exlude Thomas from election.

And my first thought when I read the post was the same as Kiko's in #3, there are simply other guys that belong ahead of him, for me, mainly Raines, Larkin and Alomar. However I'm a big hall guy and if it were my place, Edgar would be allowed in without needing a ticket.

Thomas and Edgar are (or at least, will be seen) as different cases. Big Hurt's playing time split is about 55% DH, while Edgar is closer to 85%. Considering that his DHing time was mostly in his decline phase, I'm not sure Thomas will be seen as mainly a DH.

Could Edgar have played 1B regularly? They moved him directly from 3B to DH (I guess because they had Tino) and after that he never played anywhere else.

That's pretty awesome of the Mariners to do that. Is that typical procedure for teams and there ex-players?

Defensively, he could have handled 1B. Physically, I think it would have resulted in him missing a lot more time - like Molitor, the issue wasn't whether or not he had the tools to play the field (at least earlier in his career), but whether or not he could stay healthy in the field.

That said, one thing that I do like about Edgar's case is that he's a lifetime .300/.400/.500 hitter.

20 players have done so in major league history (minimum 3000 PA). Ranked by career OPS+, Martinez is 16th and Thomas is 12th.

                                                       
Rk           Player OPS+   BA  OBP  SLG    PA   To From
1         Babe Ruth  207 .342 .474 .690 10616 1914 1935
2      Ted Williams  191 .344 .482 .634  9791 1939 1960
3        Lou Gehrig  179 .340 .447 .632  9660 1923 1939
4    Rogers Hornsby  175 .358 .434 .577  9475 1915 1937
5     Albert Pujols  172 .334 .427 .628  6082 2001 2009
6       Joe Jackson  170 .356 .423 .517  5690 1908 1920
7           Ty Cobb  168 .366 .433 .512 13072 1905 1928
8       Jimmie Foxx  163 .325 .428 .609  9670 1925 1945
9       Stan Musial  159 .331 .417 .559 12712 1941 1963
10   Hank Greenberg  158 .313 .412 .605  6096 1930 1947
11     Tris Speaker  157 .345 .428 .500 11988 1907 1928
12     Frank Thomas  156 .301 .419 .555 10074 1990 2008
13    Manny Ramirez  155 .313 .411 .591  9437 1993 2009
14          Mel Ott  155 .304 .414 .533 11337 1926 1947
15   Harry Heilmann  148 .342 .410 .520  8960 1914 1932
16   Edgar Martinez  147 .312 .418 .515  8672 1987 2004
17    Chipper Jones  143 .307 .406 .541  9273 1993 2009
18      Lefty ODoul  143 .349 .413 .532  3659 1919 1934
19      Todd Helton  140 .328 .427 .567  7761 1997 2009
20     Larry Walker  140 .313 .400 .565  8030 1989 2005

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/24/2009.

Stargell, to me, is the most interesting comp.........

edgar is less of a hofer than dick allen, and I can't see dick allen in the hof. from that group, albert belle is as good of a choice as any. DH requirements should be minimally based upon 1b offensive quality, and career length is important.

There are 231 players elected to the Hall of Fame. Of those, only 106 have been elected by the BBWAA.

While Edgar certainly has a case for eventually making it into the Hall via the VC (assuming that the VC isn't reconfigured into some other odd format between now and then), I think it's questionable whether or not he meets the general BBWAA standards for election.

again, edgar needs to be compared to hitters with his career range, not basing his argument among his career rates....I mean a 13 year guy like edgar has a better chance of looking good compared to 20 year guys....let's look at his career relative to pure hitters with similar career arguments...or at least their peaks...edgar had no growing years and few declining years, once he couldn't hit he was gone, not like others he is compared against.

4. Basil Ganglia Posted: November 24, 2009 at 09:29 PM (#3396256)
With a tip o' the hat to Larry Stone of the Seattle Times, here's a link to a pdf of the Edgar Martinez career summary that was mailed to the BBWAA members.

That career summary presentation was very well done. I'm not sure that it changed my mind, but the real goal of something like that is to give the voter not sure but leaning "YES" a decent reason to hang their hat on. That presentation was informative enough that several writers will use info from it to fill columns in December.

Of course he wasn't just short of milestones, he was WAY short of milestones. C and IF aside, I think the only post-Ruth HOF 1B/LF/RF types with fewer HR -- Clemente, Brock, Gwynn, Molitor -- are guys with 3,000 hits. On the hit front, you're talking mainly Stargell, McCovey, Schmidt, Killebrew, etc. To find guys with less than both, I think you have to go back to guys like Medwick (elected by the writers) and Klein (not sure).

It's hard to use P-I to get decent comps for Edgar because of the late start to his career. Looking at players from their 2nd to 15th seasons (try to get rid of some crap rookie seasons) with 5000+ PA, Edgar is an impressive 23rd in OPS+. But he's below Dick Allen (same PA) and Manny (more PA for Manny). You've got Schmidt, Reggie, Thome, Bagwell, Berkman, Sheffield, Belle, Vlad, Giambi not too far behind (but some definitely behind) -- and that's ignoring guys like Chipper, Griffey, Mathews, AROD, Piazza. Anyway, look at how many modern guys are on that list -- for whatever reason, putting up a 145-150ish OPS+ over 7000 or so PA isn't anything that special anymore. From Manny (155) to Giambi (144), there are 22 players on my list. Of those 22, 13 of them are currently active and/or roughly contemporaries of Edgar.

Alternatively, looking at players from ages 27 (Edgar's first full season) to 36, he comes in an impressive 16th with an OPS+ of 154. Again you've got Manny at 162, Giambi at 155, Sheffield at 154, and then Jones, Thome, Thomas, Bagwell, Walker, Piazza and even Helton and Delgado down at 144 and 143. Again a ton of current/contemporary players.

Edgar's career was just too short and what he did in those PA simply doesn't stand out in this era. There's no denying there are some fairly similar or worse players, especially by value, in the HoF. And not just the obvious Jim Rice comparison. But I'll argue for Larry Walker over Edgar and maybe Bobby Abreu. It would be hard to argue against Todd Helton too probably.

I'd really like somebody to take a look and explain the high relative performance of today's hitters (and pitchers?). Dan R's point about looking at standard deviations rather than an OPS+ type stat would certainly explain at least part of the reason why we're seeing such a high number of 150ish OPS+ type peaks. Do the fancier stats show anything similar?

edgar had no growing years and few declining years, once he couldn't hit he was gone, not like others he is compared against.

Edgar played until he was 41, when he put up an OPS+ of 92 in 549 PA. At age 40, he put up an OPS+ of 141 in 603 PA. How many of the "others he is compared against" were hitting that well at over age 40?

@#18

Edgar played until he was 41, when he put up an OPS+ of 92 in 549 PA. At age 40, he put up an OPS+ of 141 in 603 PA. How many of the "others he is compared against" were hitting that well at over age 40?

Having that kind of a productive tail on a career is generally a signature for a rare and gifted hitter.

Understanding that you can't credit a guy for what might have happened ..... that does lead into the interesting speculation of what "might have been" had the Mariners hired someone more intelligent than Woody Woodward as GM in 1988. Woodward let Martinez spend his years from 24-27 in Calgary posting >900 OPS because the Mariners didn't need a third baseman since they had the awesome Jim Presley at third.

Of course he wasn't just short of milestones, he was WAY short of milestones. C and IF aside, I think the only post-Ruth HOF 1B/LF/RF types with fewer HR -- Clemente, Brock, Gwynn, Molitor -- are guys with 3,000 hits

Very minor nitpick: it's a little hard to call Molitor a "1B/LF/RF type" when he's the almost perfect complement of that: 2B/CF/3B/DH. But since he was mostly elected as a "bat" your point probably still stands.

The two things I'd say:

(1) That is quite clearly not true pre-Ruth (and with some of Ruth's contemporaries.) Many were elected without 3000 hits and without that many HR.

(2) And the Hall of Merit take is that the Hall of Fame is being too picky with post-WWII bats in limiting it to the guys with the milestones. We've opened our doors to Dwight Evans, Reggie Smith, Keith Hernandez, Will Clark, Tim Raines (of course) and I think some others. Our 2010 election is in progress right now: an elect-3 year; two clear favorites (Larkin and Alomar) and a fairly weak backlog. Against that, Edgar stands a chance of first-year election, although that is far from certain.

Basil Ganglia - go read the HoM thread for Martinez. Many of us went in willing to give him some credit for his production while trapped in the minors; I think that after the evidence was laid out, rather fewer of us wound up impressed with the necessity of that. Perhaps he was just a late bloomer, like Bob Johnson or Jose Cruz.

There is absolutely no difference in standards between a BBWAA HOFer and a VC HOFer. The standard is exactly the same: in/out. To me arguments like "he shouldn't be voted in, but maybe for the VC" make no sense. Johnny Mize is in just as much as Tony Perez is.

I think Edgar's traditional case would have been helped a bit by the 1995 AL MVP. As it was the voters picked a guy who probably wasn't even the most valuable player on his own team.

I always favor guys like Edgar Martinez over guys like Molitor and Palmeiro. Being the cream of the crop for six or seven years means more to me for the HOF than being significantly above average for 20.

By the way, I would personally vote for Edgar. When I say he's not a HOFer, I'm anticipating how I think the voters will handle him. I'm a Big Hall guy, for full disclosure. I would probably vote for ten guys every year if I had a ballot.

I like Edgar. He is a class act.

That being said this community makes itself look rather suspect when it markets Edgar Martinez for the HOF.

Edgar could hit. And that's it. Period. He wasn't good at third base. He was ok. His range was limited but he held onto what he caught and didn't compound situations which is common to some third baseman. And at the first chance the Mariners yanked him off the diamond and put him at DH.

Edgar was not fast nor was he a good baserunner.

Edgar was a key member of teams famous more for their failures than their successes. Fairly or no that is how those Mariner teams are remembered.

And my quibble of the value placed on Edgar's 7 year run where he arguably was the best right-handed hitter in the AL is that Edgar:

--missed on average almost 20 games a year
--never used his glove
--never seemed to really leverage the circumstances

This last point may seem odd. But if you look at the game there are players who take circumstances to generate some special output. McGwire did that in this time period. One would think a guy with Edgar's skill set would do the same. But while he was REALLY GOOD he didn't do anything that jumps out as extraordinary. No run of .350ish averages. No huge total base totals. Nothing that truly elevates.

Unfair? Well, if you are ONLY going to bring a bat to the table as your resume than it had better be a pretty d*mn special bat.

Being really good for 7 odd seasons just isn't there.

Looking at the Mariners' document for Edgar Martinez I have one conclusion:

Lefty O'Doul needs to be elected to the HOF.

Polish:

Ha! Good one.....

Edgar had a five year run from 95-99 where he was 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 1st and 1st in OBP in an average hitters park, with good power mixed in. He was the best hitter in the AL over that period of time (Thomas faded and McGwire switched leagues).

A better hitter and player than Palmeiro, in my opinion.

Voros:

I just think that is too short of a run to overcome the other items listed.

And no, not a Ralph Kiner in the HOF guy either or some such.

The easy example of uber peak being a qualifier is Sandy who did leverage circumstances to his advantage to dominate the league and push his team to multiple championships.

If Edgar had done things similar to THAT I could perhaps look past being a partial player.

But then I am a smallish hall kind a fella'