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Luis Sojo should be in the Hall too. If I had a ring for every letter in my name I'd be a "postseason stud" too.
They have the same ERA+ in almost the same number of innings. A few more IPs of Moyer.
Push comes to shove, if I'm the manager for a season, I take Morris. Still, there ain't much difference between them, results-wise.
And no, much as I like him, Jamie Moyer shouldn't get into the Hall without a ticket.
Yep, Moyer would sail in immediately, like Sutton and Gaylord Perry and Phil Niekro.
Wait - what?
Baines would also have hit .303 lifetime instead of .289, in that case. Seven hits doesn't sound like much, but it gives him more .300 seasons and it turns some of his .300 seasons into .320 seasons. IOW he'd have been a better player.
Moyer has had an amazing career. It's interesting to see some of these HOF speculations: there are guys like Chase Utley about whom you say "if he kept this up for another 12 years," and you realize it's total speculation. There are the Johnny Damons and Andy Pettittes, where you say "if he keeps this up five more years" and you realize how hard that's going to be, but what a HOVG career he's put in. And then there's Moyer: "if he keeps this up another five years" and you realize sure, but he'll have been collecting AARP discounts for quite a while at that point.
Low 80s in his 40s won't be nearly as impressive as when he's throwing low 40s in his 80s.
First, he's not getting to 300 wins. It would take him a minimum of three years to get the necessary 42 wins, and at his age, and in the last year of his contract, any misstep could spell the end. He hasn't exactly impressed recently, and it wouldn't be shocking for a 47-49 year old pitcher to just lose it completely. He did receive 42 wins over his last three years, but he was (A) younger, (B) better for some of that stretch, and (C) under a multi-year contract for some of that stretch.
Second, he wouldn't be voted into the Hall of Fame even if he got to 300. I'm not talking about what "should" happen, but what "will" happen. He's not going in. Not in this lifetime, not in the next. Nor should he.
You're right. That's why nobody has the idea that Jamie Moyer is a Hall of Famer.
More to the point, the comparison with Morris actually works very well, except that Moyer's 3900 innings were harder to come by than Morris's 3900 innings, because starters in Morris's day pitched deeper into games, and Morris was pitching in a lower run environment. Also, wins are Morris's calling card, but Moyer already has him beat.
I highly doubt that Moyer will get to 300 either, but (adjusting the ages) all of the above could have been said about Moyer in 2000, in 2004, and in all sorts of other seasons.
Second, he wouldn't be voted into the Hall of Fame even if he got to 300. I'm not talking about what "should" happen, but what "will" happen. He's not going in. Not in this lifetime, not in the next. Nor should he.
If he gets to 300 wins, he will eventually go in to the Hall. It'll take years of waiting and campaigning, and very possibly the involvement of the VC, but he would get in (and be a very uninspiring pick). Whether or not he would deserve to, however, is a different question.
***because he's never going to get to 300 wins, which would afford him his only possibility
If you believe in a value-only Hall of Fame, as Ray clearly does, then no.
If you don't mind Hall of Fame inclusion for a player so singular that he could do something no other player could, in this case a hypoethical Moyer playing consistently and effectively into his 50s, then sure. I'm more of the latter type, which is why the HoF induction of a Moyer who threw into his 50s (with or without the 300 wins) wouldn't offend me.
"As Ray clearly does." Also, as the HOF voting block clearly does.
Did you support Julio Franco, then? He played until he was close to 50 (over 50, according to some beliefs as to what his true age is).
Or, a broader question: What other "players so singular" have you supported?
Yes, but I see a distinction because of the lack of historical comps of a pitcher pitching well, in the majors, at ages 47-49.
Moyer is not exactly a Barry Bonds type.
He didn't play regularly to that age, in the way that this mythical Moyer would (which, it should go without saying, I don't think will happen). So no, I don't support Franco.
I don't know that there have been that many (at least who weren't also Hall of Famers on value as well). But I do believe that Lou Brock was a no-brainer choice for the HoF, which I doubt you do.
But here's the other big difference between the two of us Ray. I don't have a problem with a guy such as yourself who believes in voting on the Hall of Fame based entirely on value.
And the Hall often uses flawed interpretations of value - like raw win totals, or saves, or RBI - which opens things up for a guy like Moyer (and Rice, and Sutter), were he to make it to 300.
I don't have a "problem" with you supporting players for the HOF based on uniqueness rather than value. I'm just pointing out that, contrary to what you implied, this is not how the BBWAA approaches the issue. (EDIT: Well, perhaps you didn't imply exactly that, but you seemed to imply that my view is some fringe view.)
But I don't think that even you approach the issue in the way that you claim. You are unable to identify even a single player who you have supported on the basis of uniqueness alone. Brock is a weak HOFer - but not a selection based on "uniqueness."
2.) If for some reason he does, he is 100% guaranteed to be admitted to the Hall of Fame. Not immediately, of course. Not for a long while. Probably VC if anything. But it is simply inconceivable that he will be excluded. And I laugh at ANYONE dumb enough to think that he would be: that is the supremely foolhardy act of substituting one's personal value judgment for that of the voters. And the same voters that put Bruce Sutter and Jim Rice in the Hall will gladly put in a guy who got to 300 wins by managing to pitch effectively past the age of 50. That's the sort of inspiring narrative that cannot be fought, cannot be emotionally gainsaid. It's politics. And anyone who would consider the likelihood of a notional Moyer candidacy absent the emotional "old guy guts it out" component that the HOF voters would be considering (indeed, would be privileging)...well, that's shoddy analysis right there.
3.) He wouldn't deserve to be a HOF'er under this scenario (IMO), but that's utterly beside the point. The voters will feel otherwise, and that's the only vote that matters. Sentimentality would triumph and I can't honestly say that this would be the worst thing in the world.
I didn't imply anything Ray about the BBWAA. I said that I could support a POV that Moyer would be a deserving Hall of Famer based on being able to do something no one else in big league history could - play effectively and regularly into his 50s.
But I also don't believe the BBWAA (which of course, is made of up of hundreds of people with differing views on what a Hall of Famer) has ever viewed the Hall of Fame as strictly a measure of value (as the support of players such as Sutter, Dizzy Dean, Koufax, Jim Rice and Blyleven illustrate to different degrees), and certaintly not to the extent you do.
But I also don't believe the BBWAA (which of course, is made of up of hundreds of people with differing views on what a Hall of Famer) has ever viewed the Hall of Fame as strictly a measure of value (as the support of players such as Sutter, Dizzy Dean, Koufax, Jim Rice and Blyleven illustrate to different degrees), and certaintly not to the extent you do.
Everyone nominally agrees that "value" should determine a HoFer, but the differing ideas of what constitutes "value" are often so far apart that it's hard to imagine that people are even talking about the same concept. The MSM and the SABR / HoM crowd may agree on the obvious choices, but once you get into the marginal candidates it's like a Biblical argument between Pat Robertson and Jeremiah Wright. The writers have selected candidates who have virtually no support among the EqA / WAR oriented, and it'll be a long, long time before many of the top HoM votegetters ever see their plaques in Cooperstown. It's kind of disingenuous to ignore this clear distinction.
1) Warren Spahn - 363
2) Steve Carlton - 329
3) Ed Plank - 326
4) Tom Glavine - 305
5) Lefty Grove - 300
6) Randy Johnson - 300
7) Tommy John - 288
8) Jim Kaat - 283
9) Eppa Rixey - 266
10) Jamie Moyer - 258
11-6 billion) everyone else
And #20 has it right, if he gets to 300 and pitches in 2013, he's 100% getting in.
Well, I was talking BBWAA; I agree that under some future construct of the VC, he may well go in.
300 wins is not enough, and just pitching to age 50 is not enough. It's very hard for me to even consider a player with one All-Star selection and absolutely no black ink.
I don't think the BBWAA will consider him at all. Pitching 4700+ innings to a 111 ERA+ isn't getting Tommy John close to the HOF, and he is certainly the most qualified length candidate available. By the time Moyer is even eligible, the bar for HOF pitcher will be much higher. I think Moyer has to break 5000 innings to even have a glimmer of hope. That seems highly unlikely, seeing as 4 of his last six seasons have been below league-average ERA, and he hasn't broken 200 innings since 2006. There isn't far to fall.
Did you support Julio Franco, then? He played until he was close to 50 (over 50, according to some beliefs as to what his true age is).
Franco isn't a great comparison. He missed practically three years (1 PA in the majors from 1998-2000), and after that he was a part-time player. Moyer has been a full-time and reasonably durable (25+ starts, 23 in the strike year) starter from 1993 to 2009.
Both might merit some sort of lifetime achievement award. Neither one really belongs in the HOF.
Don't let Lederer hear you say that.
As for Tommy John, do you think he would be in the Hall already if he got those extra 12 wins? I sure do. If a pitcher gets to 300 wins (which Moyer still has a very small chance to do), he'll eventually get into the Hall of Fame.
Maybe, but probably not. Then again, I am the resident automatic number skeptic here.
I wrote this post with my tongue slightly in cheek and I actually think that it is an interesting litmus test for the whole "300 wins is an automatic ticket to the hall" notion.
Howie made a good point about Hall of Famers with 300 wins not getting in on the first ballot. You are right... guys like Sutton and Perry took a few attempts and no doubt Moyer would as well. But he would eventually get in.
I personally don't think Jamie Moyer is a Hall of Famer. I think he has had a terrific career, especially for a guy who was sent to the minors in the early 1990s and looked like his career was over. He was one of the reasons I was rooting for the Phillies in the 2008 World Series because I like to see solid veterans get World Series rings.
I would be interested to see what you all think of my analysis on Bert Blyleven and some of the games that he got a no decision or a tough luck loss over his career that is essentially keeping him from the Hall.
I swear I am not just trying to get traffic to my blog. There is some smart baseball analysis going on this message board (nobody has called Jeter a homosexual yet) and I am curious of what some of your takes are
http://sullybaseball.blogspot.com/2009/01/bert-blyleven-13-wins-short.html
Either way, thanks for reading my post. I trust you saw it wasn't 100% serious.
And let's play ball!
Sully
Give us time.
Probably Sutton's five-year wait, remarkable for a guy who got a quarter way to 400 wins.
Mickey Welch waited 80 years. His induction speech was awful.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
How is it that on the nit-pickiest board in creation, no one notes that the Unit has been docked 3 wins -- or did he pitch right-handed in them?
You've already indicated that you believe the writers vote based on their perception of value. Haven't the writers consistently shown (based on both regular season awards and HOF voting) that one of the things that they value most is wins?
This. Blyleven has a great "value" case and has been largely ignored until recently. The writers love the story of 300 wins. It may be illogical but it's there.
I just think it's a shame that a) Moyer won't pitch effectively until he's 50 and b) therefore won't win 300 games. So it's a moot point.
Who are the existing members of the 300-win club that don't belong in the Hall of Fame on merit?
I don't know. I can't think of any. The sheer number of innings required for a pitcher to accumulate 300 wins (and the minimum level of performance required to hold a rotation spot) practically ensures that a pitcher who reaches that win threshold would accumulate sufficient career value in most "above replacement" metrics. Of course, there's also a peak vs. career argument to be made
I'm with SoSH U here that there isn't this huge pool of BBWAA voters who would vote against a 299-win Jaime Moyer but will feel compelled to vote for a 300-win Jaime Moyer. Don Sutton, who is probably the least deserving 300-game winner, at least among modern 300-game winners, was elected to the Hall of Merit on his first try but had to wait for his 5th ballot to be elected by the BBWAA. The same is true of Early Wynn (elected earlier to Hall of Merit than Hall of Fame) if you think he's worse than Sutton.
Would Jaime Moyer get more votes with 300 wins than he would with 295 wins? Yes, but, then again, if you use wins as a measure of value (and BBWAA voters clearly do), a pitcher with 300 wins is more valuable than a pitcher with 295 wins simply because 300>295, not because 300 is a pretty round number.
If Jaime Moyer pitches reasonably well into his early 50s, I think THAT'S what will garner him Hall-of-Fame consideration, the fact that he was "the best old pitcher ever" or something like that. And he'll get more of that if he wins 300 games than if he only wins 290, but it will be a difference of degree (in the same way that a 280-win Moyer will get more consideration than a 270-win Moyer), not of kind.
While probably true, this also describes the general view for the last decade of his career.
And that's my point. The automatic milestones we point to are actually milestones that are damn near impossible to achieve without a Hall of Fame worthy career. But no one, outside Dial, for example, believes that Dave Kingman would have been inducted into the Hall of Fame if he had reached 500 home runs, because everyone knew he wasn't a Hall of Fame caliber player. At the time he retired, everyone with 400 homers was in the Hall, and Kong only lasted one ballot.
I don't know if a 300-win Moyer would be inducted, because as Kiko notes, what makes Moyer interesting is the age at which he continues to pitch, not the volume of wins he's racked up or the quality along the way.
But the aforementioned Tommy John. I don't know. 300 wins surely would have helped his case, as there are no doubt a few writers who would automatically wave some guys into the Hall with that number. But enough to turn a marginal candidate into a Cooperstown lock? I see no reason to believe that, and simply pointing to all the guys who are already in with that magic number doesn't really give any indication, because all of those guys deserve to be in.
If Moyer gets 300 wins, he's in. Period.
Yes, but plenty of pitchers have pitched well in their mid-30s, late-30s, and early 40s but Moyer is now treading on virgin soil (Jack Quinn had 8 wins after turning 47).
I'm not "convinced" he won't do it, just think it's unlikely.
How many pitchers won 42+ games between 2004-06? 17
How many of THOSE guys also won 42+ from 2007-09?
one (1)
Johan Santana
Ok, 25 pitchers won 42 games between 2001-03, and 8 of those won 42+ from 2004-06.
So ignoring his age, his DIPs ERA etc., I'd say Moyer's odds of winning 42+ from 2010-2012 is between 6% and 32%
Then consider his age
How many pitchers have won 42+ games after age 46? NONE
Of course the odds of that happening are 1:1000.
I could see this article if he was coming off 2 or 3 great years. but, he's put up 5-ish ERAs 2 of the last 3 seasons. I can't think he's got much left.
Nothing would have happened. 58 extra homers weren't going to be enough to move Kingman up from the 3 votes he received to the 300-plus he would have needed.
A 300-win Moyer means that he's accumulated another 3 seasons or so of roughly league average pitching. Under such circumstances, his career value would probably be within the range that normally draws consideration for the HOF by the BBWAA. When combined with that magic number of 300, you would probably see a variety of cases made based both on the career totals, and based on the ages at which he accumulated the bulk of those totals.
But the aforementioned Tommy John. I don't know. 300 wins surely would have helped his case, as there are no doubt a few writers who would automatically wave some guys into the Hall with that number. But enough to turn a marginal candidate into a Cooperstown lock?
Those extra 12 wins would do a lot to change his perception among the BBWAA, and gives them a story to push (in addition to the surgery). Even without those extra wins, he managed to stay on the ballot for the full 15 years, with a very percentage floating around the 25% mark.
I agree with this. Kingman only provided homers - no average, no baserunning, no defense, and a personality that didn't exactly call for a sympathy vote. If he'd hit those extra homers, he might have been able to hang around on the ballot for a second year, but there was no way that the BBWAA would have put him in.
But that's still a far cry from 75 percent. He might have made it, and those 12 wins (particularly if obtained in the same amount of time) probably would have made him a more deserving candidate. But if he had to scratch and claw his way over the finish line, who knows? It's not like Don Sutton's candidacy wasn't met with some resistance, and he won 300 games and two dozen more.
We just have no way of really knowing how meaningful these milestone numbers are. Do they help? No question. Are they enough to turn a non-HoFer into one? I seriously, seriously doubt it.
Exactly. Would 7 more career HR get McGriff (~21% voted for selection) so many more votes? 500 HR has been the real milestone like 300 wins and 3000 hits*. We'll have to leave aside McGwire because this is a steroid associated non-vote, and also Palmeiro starting next year.
*Actually, everyone with 2774 or more hits that is eligible is in the HOF. Which raises another point; the voters don't love round numbers as much as we might suspect. Sutton didn't squeak into 300 wins; he has 324.
"3000 strikeouts" appears to be an automatic number for induction unless you're Blyleven, although to be completely fair, it's looking like he'll get in by the skin of his teeth.
Except Harold Baines.
Alternatively, you could give Kingman "just" four home runs extra per season over his entire career, which doesn't sound like much. But it gives him a 50-HR season and three more above 40, plus another two HR titles – his HOF case gets much better because he would have been a superior player.
Personally, there's room in my Hall for players like Moyer (if he pitched into his 50s and got 300 wins), Mazeroski, and Ichiro.
And as for making Jack Morris an HOFer, it would be consistent with Sutton in and Lolich out, big game pitcher with a few big years not lasting long enough compared to the durable non-ace.
Personally, there's room in my Hall for players like Moyer (if he pitched into his 50s and got 300 wins), Mazeroski, and Ichiro.
I think Moyer would need around 5000 innings before I'd seriously consider him, mainly because he was basically a league average pitcher over his career, never putting together anything reasonably resembling a CY season, 1 AS selection, and no black ink. No black ink is particularly damning; a HOF who never was the best at anything at all over his career needs some serious help.
I think Maz is a really lousy candidate because I think his defense is overrated; I don't consider him the Ozzie Smith of 2B or the Keith Hernandez of 1B. By age 31, he was still a pretty mediocre offensive player, but not winning the GG anymore, and that's an award with serious bias toward the incumbent. After that season, he was probably replacement level. That's a painfully short career, and we're talking about a player that never put up a positive offensive season... it's one thing to recognize great defensive players that don't dominate offensively, but when they're bad offensive players, that's a hard sell.
Ichiro is in a totally different league. He's not only a quite capable offensive player (not elite, but very good), but a superlative defensive player (9 seasons, 9 GG), and an excellent base stealer. The only possible knock on him is whether he's been in the majors long enough; give him Japanese league credit (which I don't) and he's in easily right now. 4-5 more full seasons and he's in solely on ML numbers. The only argument I'd have against Ichiro is the "hit by a truck tomorrow" argument.
You must have missed the previous Ichiro threads. If there was only that argument, they would have been a lot shorter.
He hit 35 homers his last season and still nobody wanted him the next year.
Also, he was clubhouse poison. He moved around a lot, and nearly every one of his teams got worse with him on it. Making him the anti-Joe-Morgan, in yet another way.
I thought the "hit by a bus" argument implied that the player has *already* accumulated enough value to be inducted. So, e.g., Pedro is in right now. But you say you think Ichiro needs 4-5 more full seasons (if we're considering just MLB performance), which seems inconsistent with that.
Lets try the "stabbed by a prostitute" argument. If Ichiro dies from being stabbed by a prostitute tomorrow, he doesn't get in to the HoF.
He played in a very low run environment- both due to the era he played and the parks he played in - IF Kingman had played the bulk of his career in Fenway or Wrigley, he would still have been a 115 OPS+ hitter, brutal fielder and clubhouse cancer- b7t he likely cleared a .250 career batting average and may have hit 500 HRS -
and in THAT CASE he likely would have received Tommy John level support or higher
Fun with small sample sizes. Dave Kingman's game was absolutely perfectly suited to Fenway Park. His offensive game was hitting massively high fly balls to left field. In his career, which consisted of a whopping 84 PAs, he hit .276/.345/.816 in Fenway Park with 13 HR in those 84 PAs. If that's representative of what he could have done as a full-career Red Sock, he could probably have hit 700 HRs (extrapolating his Fenway rate out to his 3,680 home PAs would give him 570 HRs at home) and been a deserving Hall-of-Famer.
Brock
Mazeroski
Nolan Ryan
Ozzie Smith
Dizzy Dean
Catfish Hunter
Richie Ashburn
I'm not saying that none of these players deserved to make it but I think all of them were elected based on their fame, not on their value. Obviously sometimes these things go together (i.e. players become famous because of their value) but I think for these guys that's not really it -- it's not that people misapprehended their value so much as it is that they were just plain famous.
Add Bruce Sutter.
When you hit 35 HRs and still end up with an OPS+ of 90 (and a raw OPS of .686), you're doing something horribly wrong.
Dizzy Dean
Waite Hoyt
Lou Boudreau
Phil Rizzuto
George Kell
Richie Ashburn
Don Drysdale
The media has already told you that you can't sit back and wait for the home run. You need to manufacture runs - sac bunt, hit and run, steal bases, that kind of thing.
So clearly Kingman's problem was that he needed to hit fewer home runs, and bunt and steal more.
My argument, not the only possible argument. I remember that thread. I don't give credit for non-major-league play, outside of war credit. So my only argument against Ichiro is "hasn't done enough yet to be a HOFer."
I thought the "hit by a bus" argument implied that the player has *already* accumulated enough value to be inducted. So, e.g., Pedro is in right now. But you say you think Ichiro needs 4-5 more full seasons (if we're considering just MLB performance), which seems inconsistent with that.
I'm coming from the other direction, but it's the same concept.
I'm saying if Ichiro were to be hit by a bus tomorrow, he would not have accumulated enough career value even with his very good but non-spectacular (by HOF standard) peak to merit induction.
4-5 more full seasons gives him a long enough career where he's in the 13-14 season range, which not only meets the 10 year rule, but passes it by a significant margin. Ichiro is the type of player that jams a tremendous amount of value in an individual season because he's very durable; he averages over 158 games per season. Get him into the 2100+ games range and that's enough of a body of work where the short career argument goes away.
I believe Ichiro is the sort of player that will age very, very well. Obviously, if 4-5 more seasons seriously hurt his career numbers, then I might feel differently.
well stop it then, plus you partly right and partly wrong
there have been a sizeable # of BBWAA voters who have (pre "steroid era")see certain milestones, 300 wins, 500 Hrs, 3000 hits, as justification in and of itself to vote for someone, just as there have been sizeable #s of voters who have said, I don't care if so and so gets ____ HRs/HITs he's not good enough
I've said that repeatedly, Shock, though I used punctuation, so I can see how that might have thrown you.
Fantastic.
Dizzy Dean is a poor man's Sandy Koufax (shorter peak, shorter career, same career ERA+). If you're completely a peak voter, you could make a justification for a pitcher that goes 1/2/2 in MVP voting. It's pretty much just line drawing; we're talking about a pitchers who had multi-season runs where they were clearly the most dominant pitcher in the sport, and both 1967 innings and 2324 are really short careers. I think if you're going to accept deficient careers (which both have) then it's much closer than most people think between Koufax and Dean.
You know how to not get so tired? Take a breath now and again.
Actually, for much of his career Kingman was a decent baserunner, not great but decent, well above the Reimer/Cust line.
If Kingman had the homers and was AVERAGE at everything else, he'd be a HOFer/HOMer or damn close
Kingamn's problem was :
HR Power: great
Baserunning: ok
Bunting: ok (believe it or not)
Everything else: below average to well below average (and I mean everything else)
Kingman was "bad" (below average for a MLB player) at the following:
Taking walks
Fielding groundballs
Fielding flyballs
Fielding balls thrown to him
Throwing with accuracy
Getting along with teammates
Getting along with the media
Getting along with women in the media
Listening to coaches
etc
and yet, he received MVP votes in 5 separate years, best years by OPS+
146, 132, 131, 128, 128,
When he first came up, he was actually pretty fast.
Bunting: ok (believe it or not)
He was an excellent bunter. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it, because it's a fact that defies any and all explanation, but Kingman was an excellent bunter.
Taking walks
But here's where his mule-headedness looms. In his first couple of full seasons in the majors (1972-73), Kingman drew walks at a pretty decent rate. But following that, as became more and more determined to not give a crap about anything in the world except how far he could hit his HRs, his walk rate cratered.
Ichiro is at 50.7 CHONE WAR after 9 seasons. Every eligible player over 57.1 with the exception of Bando/Bell (where people don't like the 1970s 3B positional adjustment) is in the HOM, and just being over 50 WAR gives a player a pretty solid chance of making it into either hall. The HOF has a number of misses over 60 WAR, but these are typically the saber darlings. Ichiro after one more typical season will be very close to the "everyone is in line" by career value, and his main argument is as a prime candidate, not a career candidate. WAR gives him +10 for fielding range per year on average, which I buy, but I guess some systems may dock him a few wins. One or two (if you are more conservative with the defensive value) typical Ichiro seasons should be enough to put him above every eligible position player not in the HOM and in a group with the HOF outliers on career value alone. A strong career argument after 10-11 seasons is very impressive.
Which is the problem in the "if he only played his entire career at Fenway," school of thought. Even if he had been fortunate enough to land a gig in his dream ballpark, chances are he would have been shipped out long before it had any meaningful impact on his overall numbers.
Eesh.
Even with the Mets Kingman would occasionally "deke" a bunt down the line to draw the 3B in.
Then either hit a HR, K or pop-up.
It's REALLY not going to be pretty if he ever gets into the Hall of Merit.
He finished 26th in the 2010 voting.
Welch does have the distinction of having the most "voting points" among pitchers, with 18,537 since the first election in 1898 (but he'll never catch Hugh Duffy or George Van Haltren, with over 26,000 pts apiece and still not in - though Duffy has the 4th-most 2010 voting pts of those not elected).
Galvin and Wynn met a bit of resistance, but Welch is the only eligible member of the 300-win club not to get elected.
But the 2 guys next closest - Bobby Mathews 297 and Tommy John 288 - never came close.
Lets try the "stabbed by a prostitute" argument. If Ichiro dies from being stabbed by a prostitute tomorrow, he doesn't get in to the HoF.
Why would being stabbed to death by a prostitute be any less tragic than being hit by a bus?
You mean runs over replacement, right? I do not think there's any level of defense that provides +10 wins per season, unless replacement level is "me with my wrists and ankles tied together." I don't particularly like WAR because I think it overvalues defense relative to offense, but I agree that it's a fine coarse measure. Obviously, if you think WAR overvalues defense, a player whose defense is a large part of the argument is going to be overvalued.
The best comparison is probably Andre Dawson. Ichiro has an inferior peak, worse career OPS+, and a shorter career. Dawson also played a lot more CF than Ichiro. Since I consider Dawson to be a pretty marginal HOFer (not unworthy, but very close to the in/out line), that leaves some work for Ichiro. The superior running is not enough to close the gap.
I can't think of too many HOF players that I agree with that don't either have a monstrous peak (multiple legitimate MVP-class seasons) or some career milestones. If you have both, you're a no-brainer. If you have neither, I'll almost always leave you out. I am a small-hall guy.
I think technically Griffey's going to beat him as Griffey is virtually certain to play before Moyer pitches even though the Phillies play before the Mariners. So Moyer will actually be the 17th (unless I missed somebody else).
Omar Vizquel will probably get there ahead of him as well.
It's kind of implicit that's he's visiting the prostitute when it happens. And probably does something odd to piss off said prostitute.
That's going to garner little sympathy factor.
Well, Figueroa and Gaudin are both RH and don't have a 270 win (after this season, potentially) resume, which I think counts for a bit. The question, IMO, would seem to be whether Moyer will be willing to go be someone's Wakefield, given that he was ostensibly considering retirement in the wake of the initial trade to Philly. Come to think of it, what he probably needs to get a shot at 300 is to arrange a Wakefield-like deal with the Phils, who could do a lot worse than having him around at the back end of the rotation as long as he's around his performance level over the last few years.
Less tragic - maybe you got a bargain beforehand, so....
depends on the quality of the service, I guess
The NA is not recognized as a major league.
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