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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Tuesday, July 01, 2008Dugout Central: Catalano: Milestones Not Proper Measure of Hall-Worthiness (see Sheffield)Ray “I Suck” Culpa, sends this HOF jazz over…
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Posted: July 01, 2008 at 09:22 AM | 21 comment(s)
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Exhibit A: Jimmie Foxx.
Exhibit B: Eddie Mathews.
Exhibit C: Harmon Killebrew.
He didn't actually. The quote got stretched out of context because of the mutual dislike between Sheffield and the organization at the time.
He was clearly angry, but there's no evidence that it actually happened - there were no cases of him actually doing that and he committed just as many errors in the minors and in San Diego as he did in Milwaukee. It was simply bitterness of the "Well, I wasn't trying to win anyway" of some teenage kid playing a game which, while hardly praiseworthy, is a big step from actually trying to lose.
I've mentioned this before, but I determined that if I was MLB player I'd want to be Catalanotto. Decent player, no one really knows or cares about you, make a lot of money.
And he later said that he didn't actually do that. He was just mad.
I think that over time 500 home runs DID evolve into an automatic qualifier for the Hall. Back in the 60s and 70s and into the early '80s, they were still trying to figure out what made somebody a HOFer, which is why guys like Mathews and Killebrew had to wait a few ballots before getting in. But eventually, I think the mainstream consensus that emerged was clearly that 500 home runs did qualify as an automatic ticket to Cooperstown. The last four guys to show up on HOF ballots with 500+ home runs and no steroid taint all went in first ballot - McCovey, Jackson, Schmidt, and Murray. On the one hand, it's easy to look at those guys and say, "Well, those are obvious Hall-of-Famers. Of course, they all went in first ballot." But then you look at the history of BBWAA voting and I have to think that McCovey and Jackson in particular and to a lesser extent even Schmidt and Murray (who also has the 3,000-hit benchmark), are the kinds of players that wouldn't have been slam-dunk first-ballot guys not so long ago, a'la Harmon Killebrew and Eddie Mathews.
I think there was a similar consensus reached with respect to 300 pitching wins. When Don Sutton made it in, that showed that they'd reached consensus: 300 wins gets you into the Hall of Fame, no matter how you got there (perhaps short of using steroids, depending on what they do with Clemens).
I think the BBWAA has gotten lazier over time in this respect and they have come to rely more heavily on these automatic qualifiers than they used to - while simultaneously trying to claim that it's not just about the numbers. Sheffield won't get elected to the Hall of Fame any time soon, not because 500 HRs isn't an automatic qualifier, but because steroids are an automatic disqualifier for enough voters that they won't have to actually think about it. Barring steroid revelations, Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome, and Frank Thomas are going to get elected to the Hall of Fame, almost certainly on the first ballot, and for all that will be written at the time, it'll be because they hit 500 home runs without using steroids.
I disagree with you. There have always been standards; its just that those standards have changed over time. It used to be that every single pitcher who won 250 or more games made it to the hall - that changed around the 80's. Just because 500 home runs was a crucial milestone 25 years ago doesn't mean its going to be a crucial milestone today. I don't think Thome is going to make it on the first ballot, and partly because 500 home runs is not the milestone that it used to be.
It should also be noted that the notion of making it on the first ballot is different now than it used to be. It doesn't mean that the voters have gotten any lazier.
Sheffield may not make it, and if so, it won't just be the steroids. It will be the changing standards related to home runs, and the fact that despite great offensive stats for many years, I don't think many people have thought of him as a Hall of Famer while he has been active (a mistake in my opinion).
But Shock's point in #5 that I was responding to (and this is quite correct) is that 500 home runs wasn't a crucial milestone 25 years ago. Harmon Killebrew wasn't in the Hall of Fame 25 years ago despite having 500 home runs. It used to be that every single pitcher who won 250 or more games made it to the Hall because Hall-of-Fame voters decided, on a case-by-case basis, that each of those specific pitchers deserved to be in the Hall of Fame and the fact that everybody with over 250 wins was on the "In" side of the line was, in some sense, just a coincidence (not completely, of course, because Wins by a pitcher do reflect some level of the quality of the pitcher).
This is also true of 500 home runs and, in fact, was true of 400 home runs before Dave Kingman. But I think that at some point in the mid-80s or so (Killebrew was finally elected in 1984, McCovey went in 1st-ballot in 1986; that's the breakpoint I see, you can argue whether Killebrew's election or McCovey's was the trigger), voters switched over from coincidentally thinking that every 500-homer guy deserved to be in the Hall to viewing 500 home runs as an automatic qualification for the Hall of Fame.
In fact, the very talk of how "milestones [are] not [a] proper measure of Hall-worth" is an implicit recognition that this is exactly how Hall-worth is currently measured by the voters. I'll be convinced that BBWAA voters aren't blindly using 500 home runs as the standard for measuring HOF-worthiness if Fred McGriff gets serious consideration in two years when he appears on the ballot. I don't think he will; people will talk about how home runs aren't worth as much as they used to, but what they'll mean in that case is that Fred McGriff finished his career 7 home runs shy of Cooperstown.
No, what they'll mean is that home runs aren't worth as much as they used to. If Fred McGriff had seven more home runs, I still don't think he'd make it in, because 500 homeruns isn't impressive anymore. Fred McGriff won't prove anything, regardless of whether he makes it in or not.
IMO, Palmeiro killed it, and it had nothing to do with the steroids. Palmeiro just didn't seem that impressive a home run hitter - he was never the best home run hitter in the game, or anything close - yet he surpassed 500 with ease. Well, if someone like Palmeiro can hit 569, how impressive is it when someone else hits 500? McCovey got in during a different era, when virtually everyone hitting 500 home runs was a great baseball player at some point in their careers.
I disagree.
I'm also shocked that Sheff only has 229 DH games. Still has twice as many 3B (468) games as DH.
2.48 MVP shares. 48th all time in runs, 74th in OBP, 24th in walks, 61 in OPS+, 25th(!) in runs created.
The key is 11th all time in power/speed.
From Raffy's age 23 through age 39 seasons, inclusive, the most games he missed in a season was 10. Over those 17 seasons, by my probably slightly incorrect count, he missed 63 games. Durability isn't something to be ignored. He is 17th in games, 15th in AB, 10th in total bases, etc. etc. Not on the OPS+ career board. He is 74th all time in ABs per HR. 15th in career outs.
Quantity has a quality all its own.
Not quite. Red Sox fans know Catalanotto all too well. We hate him because he always destroys the Sox.
He'd have been an easy first ballot guy if the BBWAA ignored steroids as blatantly as 1990's MLB did.
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