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The Baseball Hall of Fame Thread


LethalStriker

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40 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

 

Is "Captain Class" *puke* going to invite the Yankee Stadium security guard he had fired for having the nerve to say good morning to him as he entered the building to his induction ceremony? Actually given what a scuzzy lowlife the original "Captain Class" Joe D was he is certainly worthy of the moniker.

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Barry Bonds

Roger Clemens

Todd Helton

Derek Jeter

Andruw Jones

Manny Ramirez

Gary Sheffield

Billy Wagner

Larry Walker

 

I've got one spot open and while Schilling probably has the numbers, I can't put him on my ballot.  I'd think being a Nazi sympathizer would fall under the morals clause.  Jeff Kent has the most HR at second base in history, a very shiny triple slash line and an MVP award but even with all that he's well below the average career WAR, 7 year peak WAR and JAWS scores for the average Hall of Fame second baseman.  

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8 minutes ago, gatling said:

Barry Bonds

Roger Clemens

Todd Helton

Derek Jeter

Andruw Jones

Manny Ramirez

Gary Sheffield

Billy Wagner

Larry Walker

 

I've got one spot open and while Schilling probably has the numbers, I can't put him on my ballot.  I'd think being a Nazi sympathizer would fall under the morals clause.  Jeff Kent has the most HR at second base in history, a very shiny triple slash line and an MVP award but even with all that he's well below the average career WAR, 7 year peak WAR and JAWS scores for the average Hall of Fame second baseman.  

While I personally think that Jones, Helton, and Manny are really weak choices, let's discuss Jeff Kent for a bit. Kent is really an enigma, when he played he exuded "superstar" vibes as a slugging 2nd baseman in an era when he really had no viable competition. However, when we look at advanced metrics we see that Mr. Kent wasn't really all that and a bag of chips. Rather he was a good player at a position that was bereft of good players for most of his career. Once he moved to first he didn't seem nearly so special and as you point out, when we look at JAWS, he really wasn't anything special, he just seemed that way due to lack of any viable competition. I'm having a hard time thinking of another player who had the benefit of a near vacuum to perform in. I guess you could make a case for Tony Oliva and Rico Carty, both of whom seemed a lot better than they actually were due to a lack of real competition.  

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8 minutes ago, OSJ said:

While I personally think that Jones, Helton, and Manny are really weak choices, let's discuss Jeff Kent for a bit. Kent is really an enigma, when he played he exuded "superstar" vibes as a slugging 2nd baseman in an era when he really had no viable competition. However, when we look at advanced metrics we see that Mr. Kent wasn't really all that and a bag of chips. Rather he was a good player at a position that was bereft of good players for most of his career. Once he moved to first he didn't seem nearly so special and as you point out, when we look at JAWS, he really wasn't anything special, he just seemed that way due to lack of any viable competition. I'm having a hard time thinking of another player who had the benefit of a near vacuum to perform in. I guess you could make a case for Tony Oliva and Rico Carty, both of whom seemed a lot better than they actually were due to a lack of real competition.  

I'm just here to dispute the Manny slander.  Manny was a great offensive player, who got better when the lights were brightest.  Manny's biggest strengths are the intangibles.  Baseball is a sport where people fail more than they succeed, and you're never surprised when someone fails in a big spot.  I never felt that way about Manny.  If Manny didn't get a hit when the stakes were highest, I was always surprised.  Other than Barry Bonds at his juiced up peak, Manny is the only other player I would stop anytime I was flipping channels and he was due up to bat.  Base-Out Runs Added (RE24) is a stat that tracks the difference in run expectancy (RE) between the start of the play and the end of the play. It takes into account the number of outs, base runners, and the opposing pitcher he's 14th all time.  That's higher than players such as Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Rickey Henderson.  An average RE24 is 0, an excellent RE24 is about 45, in 1999 Manny Ramirez had a 75.6.  Mike Trout, who we can all agree is on an all-time great pace, his best RE24 is a 72.88(For what it's worth, Barry Bonds has 3 seasons over 100 and 4 of the top 10 RE24 seasons all-time.  Never forget Barry Bonds is the best baseball player of any of our lifetimes).  We all know that Manny was a great hitter, but his ability to rise to the occasion is what makes him a special, hall of fame player.  

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My hypothetical ballot

Jeter

Bonds

Clemens

Walker

Jones

Rolen

Ramirez

Wagner

Sheffield

Sosa

 

All of Schilling, Pettitte, Kent, Helton, and even Abreu all merit deeper thought from me. But these 10 I already know I’m a yes on. Abreu will fall off the ballot this year, and I get that one more then Berkman last year

 

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2 hours ago, OSJ said:

While I personally think that Jones, Helton, and Manny are really weak choices, let's discuss Jeff Kent for a bit. Kent is really an enigma, when he played he exuded "superstar" vibes as a slugging 2nd baseman in an era when he really had no viable competition. However, when we look at advanced metrics we see that Mr. Kent wasn't really all that and a bag of chips. Rather he was a good player at a position that was bereft of good players for most of his career. Once he moved to first he didn't seem nearly so special and as you point out, when we look at JAWS, he really wasn't anything special, he just seemed that way due to lack of any viable competition. I'm having a hard time thinking of another player who had the benefit of a near vacuum to perform in. I guess you could make a case for Tony Oliva and Rico Carty, both of whom seemed a lot better than they actually were due to a lack of real competition.  

I don't see Manny as a weak candidate at all as @supremebve laid out an excellent case for him already.  I wouldn't call Jones or Helton weak choices either, but I definitely understand people considering them borderline choices  unless you're an extremely small hall type of guy(which I don't think you are).  Neither were on my ballot last year(Jones would have been eleventh)  but with four guys from my ballot getting in last year that opened up room for Helton, Jones, and Wagner.  Helton is above the 7 year peak for the average HOF first baseman and less than one point of JAWS from the average--and as Jay Jaffe mentions here Helton ranks top 15 in JAWS for first baseman and had a top 10 peak.  I think much like Larry Walker, many actual voters hold Coors Field against Helton.  If memory serves you were a Fred McGriff supporter and his career OPS+ of 134 just ranks ahead of Helton's 133 mark(McGriff has the slight edge in wRC+ as well at 134 to 132)--but Helton brought much more defensive value.  He's not a slam dunk candidate and I don't think he comes close to getting in this year, but with a less crowded field I think his percentage climbs.  While Helton has more longevity to go with his great peak, Jones as a candidate for me is mostly about his peak and his defensive prowess.  From 1998 to 2006 the only two players to average more WAR than Jones were ARod and Barry Bonds.  He dropped off quickly after that, but that peak puts him as the highest ranking human center fielder not currently in the Hall of Fame--I'm mostly sure the guy with the actual best peak not in the Hall of Fame yet, Mike Trout, is some sort of demi-god.  He posted more defensive runs saved than any other outfielder, 51 more than Willie Mays--even though Mays played in almost 800 more games.  

I also just realized I somehow missed Scott Rolen on the ballot, he easily makes the cut for me and would rank ahead of Wagner, Helton, Jones.

Edited by gatling
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Andruw Jones is a no-brainer. He was off the charts defensively and could hit a little bit. 

Helton, on the other hand, is a no. Outside of Coors, he hit .287 and averaged 20 homers every 162.  No, just no. 

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3 hours ago, Tabe said:

Andruw Jones is a no-brainer. He was off the charts defensively and could hit a little bit. 

Helton, on the other hand, is a no. Outside of Coors, he hit .287 and averaged 20 homers every 162.  No, just no. 

You know that Braves fandom runs in my veins; but the thing with Jones is we have to look at that eight years of sublime play balanced by his last six years where he basically just showed up  to get a paycheck. If there has ever been a guy who played himself out of the HOF by late career laziness it would be Jones. 

Helton is the Rockies version of Yaz. We already have Yaz bringing down the cred of the HOF, we certainly don't need Helton to help. His inflated stats at Coors do not impress me. (Yeah, I can hear the Rockies fans wail "If you keep out Walker and Helton, no Rockies will ever get in!") My answer to that is quite simply "Get better players!" 

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29 minutes ago, OSJ said:

You know that Braves fandom runs in my veins; but the thing with Jones is we have to look at that eight years of sublime play balanced by his last six years where he basically just showed up  to get a paycheck. If there has ever been a guy who played himself out of the HOF by late career laziness it would be Jones. 

Helton is the Rockies version of Yaz. We already have Yaz bringing down the cred of the HOF, we certainly don't need Helton to help. His inflated stats at Coors do not impress me. (Yeah, I can hear the Rockies fans wail "If you keep out Walker and Helton, no Rockies will ever get in!") My answer to that is quite simply "Get better players!" 

Yaz also played longer and has 3400 hits 1800 RBI's and 450 home runs in an era when offense wasn't nearly as cheap as it is now. Helton's numbers are okay, I suppose but when you play in the steroid era, IN COORS FUCKING FIELD, they better be much better to get a HOF vote.

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22 minutes ago, Kuetsar said:

Yaz also played longer and has 3400 hits 1800 RBI's and 450 home runs in an era when offense wasn't nearly as cheap as it is now. Helton's numbers are okay, I suppose but when you play in the steroid era, IN COORS FUCKING FIELD, they better be much better to get a HOF vote.

Yaz played forever and perhaps is the poster boy for empty stats. Offense may not have been as cheap, but Fenway certainly was and to say that Yaz really put up HOF numbers is to ignore the reality of what those numbers actually mean. Yaz was an okay player who hung around forever, he doesn't belong in the HOF 3400 hits or not.

The very idea of Todd Helton in the HOF is a joke. The only way he should get in is by buying a ticket.

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1 hour ago, OSJ said:

You know that Braves fandom runs in my veins; but the thing with Jones is we have to look at that eight years of sublime play balanced by his last six years where he basically just showed up  to get a paycheck. If there has ever been a guy who played himself out of the HOF by late career laziness it would be Jones. 

Helton is the Rockies version of Yaz. We already have Yaz bringing down the cred of the HOF, we certainly don't need Helton to help. His inflated stats at Coors do not impress me. (Yeah, I can hear the Rockies fans wail "If you keep out Walker and Helton, no Rockies will ever get in!") My answer to that is quite simply "Get better players!" 

Larry Walker is by fWAR the best Right Fielder of the last half century. If having a legitimate argument for best player at your position over a 50 year stretch isn’t good enough to make the hall and the only real argument of substance against him is “Well, home/road splits” then yeah, I don’t buy your get better players argument at all. 

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Dan, I love that your opening salvo tries to sidetrack the biggest argument against Walker, that being the H/R splits. We've been down this road before and it is pretty damn clear that Walker was amazing at Coors and just okay everywhere else. Yes, he was a fine, fine right fielder but are you really going to make a statement that he merits comparison with Hank Aaron? Look, I saw Hank Aaron play and I saw Walker's whole career and Hank Aaron he wasn't. 

When H/R splits are so grotesquely out of whack (Walker, Rice, etc.) it really merits closer investigation of just what we are actually looking at. Chuck Klein was a fine player who happened to play in a stadium the size of a child's sandbox and thus managed to accumulate 300 HRs (when that meant something) and was a 30/30 man. Had he played anywhere else he likely would have finished his career with something like 230 HRs and be pretty much forgotten. As it is, he's in the HOF. 

I'll admit that Walker is one of those guys like Vern Stephens that I lose sleep over. There are powerful arguments in his favor as you've pointed out and there are simply damning methods of analyzing his performance. Where does the truth lie? I watched Walker's whole career and not once did I say to myself "There's a HOFr!". I always thought of him as a fine player of the Dwight Evans caliber, the kind of guy that you build your outfield around and have batting in a key spot, but not necessarily a HOFr. 

When I look at the totality of his performance he looks like a HOFr. When I break down H/R performance, not so much.

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I knew that I'd troll Jeff into the conversation with my dis of Manny, but I'll stand by it. When you lead off with your opening shot lauding a player for "intangibles" you aren't setting yourself up very well for a good argument. Baseball is not about "intangibles" it is about statistics. Unlike most sports, nearly everything in baseball can be measured and analyzed so that we can see the truth surrounding a given player. I get that Manny was perhaps Jeff's favorite player, I understand that completely. When I was a little kid, my favorite players were the Braves Holy Trinity of Aaron, Mathews, and Adcock. Okay, reality check; Bazooka Joe Adcock does not belong in the same discussion with Aaron and Mathews, both of whom were legit 1st ballot HOFrs. Joe was a big, slow white dude with an atomic bat in the Gil Hodges mode and exciting to hear about on the radio or read about in the papers. I'm not going to be foolish and suggest that just because eight year-old me thought he was something special that he was a HOFr. 

My later favorites (other than Barry Bonds who has been numero uno since his Pirate days), were Eddie Murray and Matt Williams. One was a no questions asked HOFr, the other pretty much played his way out of the HOF by a hard-nosed style that resulted in nagging injuries that didn't put him on the DL as much as they impeded his performance. One went about his business in a workmanlike style, the other played every inning of every game as though it was the ninth inning of Game 7 in the WS. Two very different players, but I certainly loved watching both. I'm not about to make the argument that Matt Williams belongs in the HOF, he was an exciting player and up until his last few seasons, he was a joy to watch, but he he's not a HOFr. Neither is Manny. In Manny's case his horrendous  performance at all aspects of the game other than hitting are more than enough to quash any talk of his induction.

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Now here's one for Yankees fans: Whatever happened to Roger Maris? From 1960-1964 the man was a holy terror with the bat. After 1964, he pretty much fell off a cliff, what happened? No, it wasn't that he was getting old, the dude was thirty in 1964, thirty... That's supposed to be your prime as a hitter, look at his contemporary Frank Robinson or Willie Mays, hell even Mantle bag legs and all was a major threat in 1964. What the hell became of Maris? Was it the chain-smoking in the dugout? Or something else?

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The story you always hear is that the pressure of reaching 61 did him in. I don't know whether the numbers support that or not, but that's the narrative. I read a Maris bio a few years ago, but honestly the only I remember about it was the author used the phrase "pull hitter" a million times. . . .

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34 minutes ago, Kuetsar said:

The story you always hear is that the pressure of reaching 61 did him in. I don't know whether the numbers support that or not, but that's the narrative. I read a Maris bio a few years ago, but honestly the only I remember about it was the author used the phrase "pull hitter" a million times. . . .

The story about the pressure to reach 61 is obviously just that, a story. Maris and Mantle had their duel in 1961, Maris was still a holy terror with the bat (and defensively, I might add) through the 1964 season. If the line is PTSD from the HR chase, okay, but in no way was he apparently affected by it after the season was over. (Yeah, during the season he was chain-smoking and literally losing his hair because of the pressure to beat the Babe's record after he'd left Mantle in the dust.) Thing is, once the season was over it was back to business as usual for the next three years. He didn't fall off a cliff until he went to the Cards and that hardly seemed a bad move for his hitting. Look at what Cepeda did there, (also a dead pull hitter, though with considerably more power). 

Edited by OSJ
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Well, at the very least, 1967 Busch Stadium had a deeper right-center (386 ft.) and right field (330 ft.) vs. 1966 Yankee Stadium’s equivalents (367 & 296). That’ll give someone with “power but not awesome power” more deep flyouts.

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Its the guys that are great and then fall of a cliff that make it hard to do a fair assessment of the 'roid guys. I don't think Mcgwire is a HOFer with or without the gas, but he wouldn't even be mentioned if he hadn't taken them. Who's to say that Bonds or Clemens wouldn't have broken down. HOF careers? Probably, but neither would be on the all time list like they are now.  My Ballot:

Bonds

Clemens 

Ramirez

Sheffield

Jeter

 

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