I think Santo belongs in the HOF too.

But it's odd to see so many inductees -- Santo, Banks, Williams, Jenkins, Durocher -- on a team which couldn't win a pennant.

If Banks had played his entire career like he played in the late '60s, he wouldn't be within 5 miles of Hall induction. And it's not like Durocher is in on the strength of his Cubs tenure.

But it's still quite a few.

Eric, Santo did play his entire career at the level of his play in the late 60s. Career OPS+ of 125 and OPS+ of 126 and 131 in 1968 and 1969 respectively.

1968 doesn't look like much, but remember the context. He was 10th in OBP and that's never going to be a horrible year.

And he did win his last gold glove.

As for not winning with so many great players (don't forget to add Jenkins) remember that Banks was nothing special by the time Santo and Williams had established themselves.

And you can always find an open wound negating the value of at least one superstar. To pick one, their RF combined to hit .225 /.307/.298 in 1967 -- and you'll find at least one position in that general range. Big black mark against Durocher IMO.

Ron J., Eric made the late 60s comment about Banks, who was obviously past his prime. Inferring that he wasn't ERNIE BANKS when that group was together.

Or basically what you said in your 4th paragraph.

Why is 1968 the cutoff for the end of Santo's best years? He was better in 1969 than in 1968 in pretty much every offensive category.

I know ... I do this too because it's an easily available historical overall value stat ... but we simply have to stop using WARP because their defensive stats stink.

In the absence of decent historical defensive statistics, a better approach is probably to compute the difference between two players on offense then look at more modern statistics to see whether it's plausible that the offensive gap could have been made up via defense, using their defensive reps to help judge how plausible that might be.

For example, a few years ago, I compared Chipper and Santo. Chipper clearly the better career hitter (the peaks are reasonably close actually) but he had much less time at 3B and a worse defensive rep. But BPro clearly under-rates Chipper's defense and they had him something like 30 wins behind Santo. However, Chris Dial had just come out with his historical rating of players' defense back to sometime in the late 90s (which had Chipper at average which I believe is accurate enough). Rolen dominated 3B and the 2nd best over the time period Chris looked at was Matt Williams. Looking at the offensive gap between Santo and Chipper, Santo needed to be Matt Williams defensively to make up the gap in career value.

Given his gold gloves and defensive rep, I think it's reasonable to think that Santo was as good defensively as Matt Williams -- you'd certainly think he was probably in that ballpark. If he had needed to be as good or better than Rolen, then it would be hard to make the case.

Chipper's added another 3-4 years since then and has clearly passed Santo in career value at this point so it would be a silly comparison now. It would be useful now for comping him to Brett and Boggs (I'd guess) and maybe Mathews and Schmidt by the time he's done (he's still far behind Schmidt and Mathews in games at 3B).

Well, for Santo we do have things like TotalZone and Simple Fielding Runs, which are based on retrosheet data and correlate quite well the modern metrics. I don't have the data in front of me, but my vague recollection is that Santo's defensive numbers were good, if not Scott Rolen level, which agrees with what Walk suggests.

But it's odd to see so many inductees -- Santo, Banks, Williams, Jenkins, Durocher -- on a team which couldn't win a pennant.

Say hello then to the c. 1996-1999 Seattle Mariners. Unit, Griffey and A-Rod are locks, and then there's Edgar and Moyer to boot.

The problem in each case was that there was a terrible dropoff to the 2nd-line talent. Actually the '69 Cubs had an excellent pitching staff, but had a bunch of sub 95 OPS+ guys like Glenn Beckert and Don Kessinger. The Mariners pitching staff in 1997, outside of their top 3 starters, was horrendous. I don't really see the lack of a pennant being Randy Johnson's or Billy Williams' fault.

Yeah, mis-read Eric's post. Sorry about that.

Moyer is no Santo ; )

But it's odd to see so many inductees -- Santo, Banks, Williams, Jenkins, Durocher -- on a team which couldn't win a pennant.

as a guy who grew up with liking the mid 70's football Cardinals, I perfectly understand this concept. (heck to a lesser extent the baseball Cardinals also--- Hernandez, Simmons, Templeton, Brock..)

I usually don't buy the "At first I saw" posts, but hand to God, when I first read this, I saw "Ron Gant". That was a confusing two minutes of trying to remotely picture how someone could think such a thing, and 11 comments seemed quite low.

Of course, after these four years Allen’s behavior overwhelmed his performance on the field and his career went into decline.

The author is clearly an idiot. The only thing that declined in Allen's career was his shoulder.

Allen is a more deserving HOF candidate than Santo. If you're going to make an argument for Santo being in the HOF, it's best to leave Dick Allen out of the conversation because once you review the statistics of the two players, Allen's stats leave Santo's in the dust.

It's funny that people throw in Banks as a Hall of Famer in assessing those Cubs teams circa 1970, because his sub-100 OPS+ at first base on those teams was a real problem. It's like asking why the White Sox weren't better this year when they had a HOFer like Griffey playing centerfield.

If the Cubs had had the 1959-60 version of Banks on the 1969-70 teams, they probably win the pennant both years.

Allen is a more deserving HOF candidate than Santo.

Only if it's the Hitting Hall of Fame. Or the Not Knowing What That Big Leather Thing On Your Left Hand's For Hall of Fame.

Perhaps the Guys Whose Careers Were Longer Than Charlie Keller's Hall of Fame.