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1. Drew (Primakov, Gungho Iguanas) Posted: August 05, 2012 at 09:34 AM (#4200788)Otherwise, he's certainly famous enough.
Anyway, Ichiro's going to get credit of some sort for his early and mid-20s. Everyone agrees he was a great baseball player in his 20s, and we have tons of evidence (his NPB stats) to back that up. Add that in, and he's a no-doubter by any measure.
I don't see a plausible Hall of Fame case for Mark Teixeira, barring a second peak in his mid-30s. Pettitte is a run support illusion, a lesser Chuck Finley with the good fortune to be drafted by the greatest dynasty of the modern era. Jones, unlike Pettitte, has a plausible case, but it's only a plausible case based on the same statistical measures that kill Pettitte's case. You can have the one or the other, but not both.
That is still a lot of HoFers / potential HoFers on a roster even if you drop Tex and one of Pettitte/Jones.
I don't think Cano gets in unless he becomes the best player in baseball for 3 years or age is much kinder to him than most 2B.
Soon his proponents will be able to point to HOFer Jack Morris.
Cano has more BA than most of those guys, and played in NY, so he's probably got a better shot at not being overlooked. He could really use an MVP award. (See Sandberg, Ryne.)
I've already been beating that drum for a couple years.
Kurjian said he would be top 10 2B all time by the time he's done, and I would probably agree with that.
Teixeira doesn't seem like a HOF to me, but it will be interesting to see how the voters look at his counting stats. He's got a fair shot at 500 HRs, he's going to have the Gold Glove reputation - some deserved, some not - and probably have about 1,700 RBIs.
Sure you can, if you're a ten-year member of the BBWAA.
What's the purpose of this comment? You might as well say that everyone in this thread has "a shot" at the Hall of Fame but "no chance in hell of actually making it."
My gut tells me A-Rod gets elected by the BBWAA. Some guys just don't seem to be tarred by the brush. And it's funny that that would be the case for A-Rod, since it's not like he's well-respected personally at all, and although he certainly was a five-tool player at his best, it's still gonna be a little tough to argue he's "not really a homerun hitter" when he's in the top five all-time in homers. Maybe, in addition to the "well-rounded" criteria and the "just generally mind-bogglingly great" criteria, it also helped that he seemed to confess quickly and completely. Anyway, I envision that by the time A-Rod comes up, either Bonds or someone else will have already secured entry in which case A-Rod will have no problem at all, or that A-Rod becomes the one to break the trend.
Hmm... I wonder. I suspect that neither Andruw's peak nor his decline will be viewed in the proper light. It's not appreciated how good Andruw was when he was good, because he had a low BA, and because it's advanced fielding stats that cite him as so much better than even a "generic" Gold Glove CF. (Meanwhile, the other guys you mentioned probably are having their peaks overrated -- Oliva is getting "dominance" credit, while Wills is getting "pioneer" credit.) And then as Matt says, Andruw's decline is viewed to be self-sabotage, not due to injury (this is where Oliva gets a pass) or to age. (It probably shouldn't matter why the decline happened, just that it did. But in reality, to the voters, it surely does matter.) Finally, as stated, there may still be the ballot overcrowding issue. So I'd bet the under on Andruw doing as well as Oliva/Wills, even though it's quite possible, given that that'd mean peaking at about 40%, which doesn't seem too crazy.
Cano, we'll see. Although as mentioned it's hard for even clearly deserving 2B to get elected, it's starting to look plausible. CC likely. Pettitte, I do think Morris' election would help him out (I believe if Morris is not elected, Pettitte would have the highest ERA of any HOF pitcher, which is a good "gotcha" number to cite.) I see Pettitte lasting 15 years on the ballot and having 90,000 articles written about him, sadly.
Mariano Rivera -- Lock
Ichiro -- Lock
Alex Rodriguez -- should be a Lock, but too much political wrangling yet to come on PEDs
CC Sabathia -- established peak, good durability, but more work to do.
Robinson Cano -- established peak, but too soon to telll
Mark Teixeira -- doubtful unless he has an unexpected second peak
Andy Pettitte -- very doubtful even as the next Jack Morris
Andruw Jones -- If he loses 40 pounds, goes back to starting, and has 3 great years, then maybe.
Perhaps, but didn't Tony Perez make it solely on RBIs? I know he was on an all-time team, and Joe Morgan blathered on about how great he was to voters, but...
And I don't believe Tex is a HOF now, but 500 home runs would certainly put him in the discussion, even at an offense-heavy position.
I've noticed this, too. It's weird, because until recently it was like their main qualification for MVP votes -- but I don't know who holds the career RBI record (is it Aaron?) or even remotely how many the record is. You could tell me it was 1900 or 3000 and I would probably go, "Oh, OK." Compare to hits, where I know the record holder, and while I don't know the exact number I know it's 4200-something. Or homers, similar deal. Stolen bases, same. But career RBI? Don't hear much about it.
As to Jones, given that he won't be eligible for probably another 10 years, I think it's an open question as to whether he gets elected. The odds are against it -- he has a lot of standard strikes against him (itinerant career, early end, lack of milestones, value tied up in defense), but by the time he's eligible there are going to be a lot more young folks voting for the award who may view him as the CF version of Ozzie Smith.
If Teixiera makes the Hall, I'll eat my hat. He's a rich man's Paul Konerko without the (mostly) 1-team thing.
Rivera & Ichiro also make it easily.
By the time A-Rod is voted on, I think the voters will have moved towards electing the most obvious candidates of the steroid era, so he should get in with the normal delay from some BBWAA members making a statement.
Pettitte is still adding to his case, but I don't think he's going to be the first pitcher with 100 wins over .500 to not make it.
Cano & Sabathia seem to be on pace for election, but they have a little work to do.
Teixeira has more work to do - getting the batting average up would help demonstrate that he's not a later day Dave Kingman.
Jones seems likely to be "punished" for his career tanking so early, but the Veterans Committee might find it difficult to overlook his peak.
Interestingly, Konerko is Teixeira's fourth most similar player through age 31. And that was before Paul Konerko turned into a poor man's Paul Konerko. If Teixeira has a Konerko-like second peak, you just might be doing some hat eating.
Also, Teixeira's currently at 6457 PA of 131 OPS+ with four gold gloves. Konerko through age 32 was 6272 PA of 116 OPS+, so a Konerko-like second peak for Teixeira would be a lot more plausible than it was for Konerko.
And then his knees went. His questionable conditioning might have had something to do with it, but not necessarily. I saw the same thing happen to another CF by the name of Dale Murphy.
Is he HoF? I think he's got a pretty darn good case. It all depends on if the voters ever warm up to advanced defensive stats (ie probably not).
Are people really being hard on Jones, or just predicting that HOF voters will be?
Anyway, I think Jones makes it eventually, provided he has an internet cheering section willing to push his candidacy.
Rivera
Jeter
ARod
Ichiro
Sabathia
Pettitte (a combination of Honest Andy and dumb luck to pitch in the postseason for the Yankees puts him in)
WON'T MAKE IT:
Teixeira (no jaw dropping years; already in decline)
The Grandy Man
AJones
ON TRACK; TOO EARLY:
Cano
Any decent defensive metric puts Jeter at something like 55-60 career WAR (e.g. using DRA puts Jeter at 60 WAR). I think most people would call that a borderline HOF candidate. Certainly you can make a solid case for Jeter, especially if you want to weight post-season heavily. But he will be viewed by many as an "automatic first ballot" candidate instead, and obviously is a lock in terms of the voting.
That's not clear. How many 117 OPS+ first basemen have been elected on the first ballot? Obviously, the 3,000 hits is a big plus with voters, but his offensive profile is not what is expected at 1B.
HALL OF FAMERS:
Rivera (overrated due to lack of innings and nonlack of saves, but completely deserving)
Jeter (poor defense overcome by excellent offense and durability/longevity for a SS)
ARod (writers will eventually ignore his steroids issues)
Sabathia (more work to do but I expect him to get there)
ON TRACK; TOO EARLY TO TELL:
Cano
NOT HALL OF FAMERS:
Granderson
Ichiro (one day I'll explain to people why)
Pettitte (I have a ton of respect for his career, but he's HOVG; too few great seasons)
Teixeira (no jaw dropping years; already in decline; batting average has cratered)
AJones (similar problems as Ichiro; only has 10+ years worth much; extreme measures of defense doing too much work)
Other than that, I wouldn't really argue with Ray. But also I don't want this to turn into another Ray-vs-the-World Ichiro thread.
I'm holding off on anointing Sabathia until I see how Mussina, Smoltz and Schilling do. I think they're all in eventually but it's been so long since the voters had a starting pitcher worth voting for and then they might get blinded by Maddux, Johnson, Glavine, Pedro and Clemens and start expecting everybody to have 300 wins, a couple CYAs, 3000 Ks, etc.
Contrast that with Dale Murphy, who crashed and burned at a time when he _did_ "feel like a Hall of Famer."
There might not be a specific season or time, but considering his age, he was basically a future-HOFer-if-he-keeps-it-up for his entire Braves career. I think there was a very prevalent sense that he would make it one day.
I was thinking the same thing when I reviewed his stat line earlier. But whatever it was, it ended his career as a full-time player, and, effectively, his chance of making a strong case for a HOF career.
As it stands now, he's a guy that was washed up at 30. And voters don't like it when you fall off the cliff mid-career without an extenuating circumstance. I think he has a better chance of falling off the ballot than not.
I admit that Tony Perez is a weird case, and that his supporters were able to sell a "RBI man" narrative in his case. But I maintain that that's an anomaly, and that if you took out the natural correlation between RBI and hits/homers, RBI by itself is doing very little work in the HOF voting. (It's true that RBI can affect MVP voting which in turns affects HOF voting, but Tex's only meaningful MVP support is that he finished second once, so that's not a significant factor for him.)
If Tex is below-average in BA/H/HR by modern BBWAA HOF 1B standards, as I suspect he will be, neither RBI nor "I seem to recall he was a clutch hitter" is gonna get him in. Those, for whatever probably-never-even-thought-out reason, are the stats the voters care about. (Well, and defense/baserunning, but Tex isn't a runner and, as is being acknowledged in the Keith Hernandez thread, 1B defense is not a big HOF voting factor.)
If you told me to list all the 50+ HR hitters, I would NEVER have picked him.
"He played for the Braves."
"Aaron?"
"No."
"Matthews."
"Nope."
"Uh. Galarraga?"
"Wrong."
"Murphy?"
"Keep trying."
"...Aaron?"
Not sure I agree with that. Everybody was singing his praises defensively. Also, the true defensive "greats" have made it -- Maranville, Aparicio, Ozzie, Brooks, Maz -- mostly by the BBWAA. Being washed up "early" and the LA debacle certainly interrupted that narrative so it's certainly possible the HoF narrative didn't last long enough (e.g. Mattingly, Murphy). It depends a lot on how they perceive career length. Yeah, he declined at a young age but he also had the 8th most PA in history through age 30 and currently has as many career PA as Edgar Martinez. If, like Santo, the silly voters go by age, not PA and in-season durability, then Andruw probably doesn't have a chance. But as HoF goes, I _think_ it's better to be an HoFer early then fade than it is to start out slow and have a great 30s (which is rare anyway of course).
I'm not sure what to say about RBI and the HoF. Yeah, if you take away the correlation with hits and HR ... but that's kinda silly as those things tend to be heavily wrapped up in each other that you can't really pick one over the other I don't think. Almost everybody with over 1500 RBI is in just like almost everybody with over 400 HR is in and just like almost everybody with over 2700 (or so) hits is in. It's not like we've got many test cases of guys with the RBI and not the HR or with the HR and not the RBI, etc. Possibles:
Perez -- seemingly the most obvious RBI case
Dawson -- "total" package in some sense, nearly 1600 RBI certainly didn't hurt
Winfield -- 3000 hits is the most likely reason he was 1st ballot, otherwise he's a 400 HR, lots of RBI candidate who makes it slowly
Baines -- the closest we have to an ideal test: not 3000 hits, not 400 HR, over 1500 RBI
B Williams -- Winfield without 3000 hits, took him a while (not quite 1500 RBI)
Parker -- see below for something that really surprised me
Kingman -- 400 "empty" HRs
The sillyball era has probably killed off 1500 RBI as a major milestone (Delgado, McGriff, Bagwell and surprise! Kent) and it clearly was never as important as 3000 hits or 500 HR. And it could be that things like 100 RBI seasons are more important. But I don't believe it plays no role in those borderline cases.
The surprise:
Parker 290/339/471, 121 OPS+, 2712 hits, 339 HR, 526 2B, 10200 PA
Baines 289/356/465, 121 OPS+, 2866 hits, 384 HR, 488 2B, 11100 PA
I never thought of Baines as being in the same class as a hitter as Parker but they're pretty identical and Baines maybe a bit better (OBP). Certainly the young Parker wins on defense and peak.
It's not just that though. His wasn't a Blyleven like struggle to get elected, he debuted at 50% and there's virtually nothing but RBI to propel his case (2700 hits). But Perez is also almost identical to Parker and Baines as a hitter -- picking up 12 wins on Baines from positional adjustment -- so it's not immediately clear there's a difference other than being on an all-time great team.
Most serious baseball fans know that Aaron's the all-time leader, but like Voxter said, there's not much awareness of the actual total. I also doubt that many fans -- even Primates -- could correctly name the top 10 guys in career RBI, much less their totals. (Meanwhile, reciting the members of the pre-steroid 500-homer club is as easy as ABC.)
This also seems like a good thread to discuss the following: If the Yankees have nine "possible" Hall-of-Famers (in other words, setting the bar at the Pettitte/Teixeira level), can any other clubs get close to that?
If you count Thome, the Phillies could have up to 8, maybe, if you're very optimistic. In descending order of likelihood based on BBWAA voting trends and assuming reasonable declines: Halladay, Thome, [huge gap] Howard, Papelbon, Utley, Hamels, Lee, Rollins. Honorable mention to Juan Pierre if he somehow gets to 3,000 hits (but without that milestone he doesn't have a chance).
I follow the Tigers, and I see one near-lock (Cabrera), one "on track" (Verlander), and one with a decent chance (Fielder), but I can't see anyone else ever getting the call. I suppose Austin Jackson is young enough that if keeps playing at his 2012 level for 10 years, he'd be a candidate, but 4 months of HOF-caliber play isn't much to hang your hat on.
Cano doesn't have Carew's on base ability (though that actually plays in favor of him in terms of hits to some extend) but does have way more power. as he is already at almost double of Carew's career HR, he has a ok shot at 300 HR, with something close to 3000 hits that seems like a pretty strong case for a 2B, historically not a super strong offensive position. (of course, Carew played in a much weaker offensive era, so from a OPS+ perspective he's a significantly better player, but BBWAA doesn't seem to take in era context quite as strongly as preceieved, and the last couple of years has actually seen offensive numbers starting to fall down somewhat) then again, Carew played about half his career as a 1B . if Cano even plays NEXT season as a 2B (which there's no indication that he wouldn't). he's already passed Carew significantly in terms of times as a 2B.
Though Cano seemingly having figured out at least to some extend how to get on base a bit more consistenly in the last few years probably help his sustainability.
As for Teixeria, he needs something of a second peak obviously, but at least it's within the realm of imagination, he'll probably endup with borderline stats, though more likely on the outside end than in, but who knows.
Jones is a weird werid case to be sure.
Pitchers, sorted by WAA:
in a scary way. every time i turn on the tv, there's another albert highlight. since his first HR of the year, he has hit more than anyone else in baseball. he's batting .289 now. this is a guy who was basically in mendoza land until june 1.
Winning the AL East or making the playoffs every year (or nearly so) should distinguish this group from Santo's Cubs. Until other teams start do better in the three-tiered playoff system (or is it 4 with the play-in game?), it wouldn't seem appropriate to punish the most successful team in the HoF vote just because they don't win "enough" World Series.
I think that's true, otherwise Joe Carter and his 10 seasons of 100+ RBIs wouldn't have been one-and-done on the HoF ballot.
Not that I think Carter's a HoF-er, mind you -- that along with his WS winning RBI are pretty much the start and end of his HoF argument.
If that's how many he hits, by the time Tex is on the ballot 500 homers won't be the automatic ticket it used to be. There will be plenty of precedent for keeping a 500 HR guy out. A lot of that will be steroids related, but my guess is we'll have a few players who hit 500, don't have the taint, and fall short. Quite possibly the current 3-4 hitters on the White Sox.
*i.e. at some point counting stats will still overwhelm of course -- I think Thome will get in easily enough -- so I mean more in that 500-550 HR but not a lot of other obvious value range.
Being just below the shiny round number, McGriff should have gone the sympathy route. It worked like a charm for Mr. 493-1,995!
Though that guy would admit he just got lucky.
I agree that you won't find many (or any) voters that would admit to putting the in/out line at exactly seven homers. But the subconscious effect of that big juicy 500 probably would have won McGriff more votes on his first ballot, and you never know how it might have snowballed from there. If he's at 33% instead of 20%, it makes it that much easier to creep up towards 50%, and then he might become the next random beneficiary of a Rice/Morris style campaign.
There's a good chance we end up with Dunn : 500 HR :: Kingman : 400 HR .
At the moment, BB Ref WAR sees them pretty much the same way (slight edge to Kong, though Dunn will probably finish ahead if he sticks to DHing and avoids another 2011).
Dunn had passed Kingman, but he gave it all back in 2011.
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