Stone: Why I’m feeling (slightly) better about Edgar Martinez’s Hall of Fame chances

As environmentalist turned professional homer, Paul Hawken Harrelson, once noted…“Baseball is connected ... no one thing can change by itself.”

Posnanski goes on to say that he doesn’t think Martinez will make it, and I don’t either—not the first time around. But articles like this by prominent national writers like Posnanski could begin to change the perception of Martinez as just a DH with good numbers. He’s a DH with great numbers—brilliant numbers, ones that I sense will be illuminated more brightly than I had previously imagined by the legion of great baseball thinkers that populate the writing world these days..

Some work for newspapers, and some are the 10-year members of the Baseball Writers Association of America who will make the ultimate call on Martinez. Many are not; they’re the so-called citizen-journalists and bloggers who are changing our world (the world of journalism; my world) so dramatically. I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve learned a whole bunch by opening my mind and realizing that there are newer, and better, ways to evaluate performance than the ones I adhered to, stubbornly, for so long. I’m not the only one. This statistical and analytical revolution, of sorts, should aid candidates like Martinez as it slowly takes hold and filters into the mainstream, as is already happening.

The Mariners are preparing a packet of information on Martinez’s credentials to send to national writers and potential Hall of Fame voters. It all helps. I’m more convinced now than I used to be that Edgar Martinez will, indeed, one day be voted into the Hall of Fame. And that day might be sooner than we had dared hope