Re-doing the Baseball Hall of Fame: Some of these things are not like the others....
Eligible Candidates – Candidates to be eligible must meet the following requirements:
A. A baseball player must have been active as a player in the major leagues at some time during a period beginning fifteen (15) years before and ending five (5) years prior to election.
B. Player must have played in each of ten (10) major league championship seasons, some part of which must have been within the period described in 3(A).
C. Player shall have ceased to be an active player in the major leagues at least five (5) calendar years preceding the election but may be otherwise connected with baseball.
D. In case of the death of an active player or a player who has been retired for less than five (5) full years, a candidate who is otherwise eligible shall be eligible in the next regular election held at least six (6) months after the date of death or after the end of the five (5) year period, whichever occurs first.
E. Any player on Baseball's ineligible list shall not be an eligible candidate.
So, these are basically players that have played at least 10 seasons in the majors and began their career no earlier than 29 years before the election date. In addition...
A: ...a ballot listing in alphabetical order eligible candidates who (1) received a vote on a minimum of five percent (5%) of the ballots cast in the preceding election or (2) are eligible for the first time and are nominated by any two of the six members of the BBWAA Screening Committee.
B. Electors may vote for as few as zero (0) and as many as 10 eligible candidates deemed worthy of election. Write-in votes are not permitted.
C. Any candidate receiving votes on seventy-five percent (75%) of the ballots cast shall be elected to membership in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
There is a second path to the Hall, which is via the Eras Committees, formerly known as the Veterans Committee, which operates under the following conditions:
The Era Committees consider retired major league players no longer eligible for election by the Baseball Writers' Association of America, along with managers, umpires and executives.
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As within any endeavor in which elections take place, arguments can be taken up amongst the electors and the general rabble of fandom as to who belongs and who doesn't. And, as a member of said "rabble", that is what I aim to do here, using a moderate statistical analysis and a reimagining of what makes a HOFer.
Many of those in the Hall are dead no brainers...people whose offensive numbers and/or pitching stats are just too hard to ignore or set aside. You know, the obvious players, like Aaron, Mays, Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, Maddux, Koufax, Gibson, Spahn, Mantle, Musial and Williams. The ones who had never in doubt HOF careers.
But there are many players in the Hall whose membership could be called into question and many who aren't there that perhaps should be. Those are the ones I will be perusing here.
This endeavor can be complicated. Some guys are largely "in" because of their fielding prowess, which is not as easy to quantify. Relief pitchers, in general, have been given short shrift because they often don't have gaudy win/loss records. Most of the relievers in the hall, if not all, are closers with a pile of saves to their credit.
I decided to look into players only, not executives, managers or umpires. I also eliminated players to remove who played the majority of their careers in the Dead Ball Era (DBE) as the statistical comparisons are hard to weigh versus the modern era. A few players played extensively in both eras and many of them had statistics that, on average, didn't change much, so they might get a bit of a look. Some of the players I would like to add, however, are "dead ballers" whose statistics compare favorably with already enshrined players from their era.
With one possible exception, to be detailed later, I decided to leave those elected from the Negro Leagues out of this survey, as well. I firmly believe that the Negro Leagues were an equal to the MLB in every aspect, but the statistical information on many of these players is not as complete as Major League records and so I will take it on faith that the very best of that great league are in the HOF on merit and just leave it at that. After all, I'm not questioning the eligibility of virulent racists like Ty Cobb or Cap Anson, either. At the time they were elected, it was a different era in terms of societal norms, and they were elected based on their play. Today, many players are excluded based on cheating scandal (PEDs) or just general unlikeability (Curt Schilling), as this falls within acceptable societal norms of this era of BBWAA members. All of that is fine by me.
In addition, on May 13, 2025, as I was in the middle of writing this piece, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred lifted the lifetime bans of Pete Rose, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and 19 others, making them all eligible for Hall Induction. So, I will be taking a look at some of those careers in conjunction with the "who should be there" side of this piece.
Also, there is another notable problem, that I like to think of as the "Yankees" effect, in which there are many players who seem to be elected based on them being name players of a given franchise during a greatness or dynastic era for that team. For example, four of the eight regulars and two of the 5 starting pitchers on the 1927 Yankees are in the HOF.
And the two pitchers, Waite Hoyt and Herb Pennock gained a lot by playing on those superb offensive teams. Hoyt's winning percentage as a Yankee was 61.6% versus his career percentage of 56.6%. His career record when not pitching in pinstripes was 80-84, in fact. Similarly, Pennock was 79-72 in his career everywhere but New York. As a Yankee, he was 162-90. That is a winning percentage in the Bronx of 64.3% versus 52.3 % elsewhere. In consideration that neither pitcher threw to an ERA that was statistically better in a significant way in New York than elsewhere, it tells me they were winning a lot with a Yankees team that was outscoring it's opponents by a wide margin. In fact, that '27 Yankees team had a massive run differential of +2.3 runs per game over their opponents.
One final note before I delve completely into this...middle infielders before the 1970s tended to be small guys who lacked power. There weren't many 20+ homerun guys playing short or second in the big leagues during it's more classic era. The stats to look at for these guys were OBP, runs scored, hits and RBIs. Some of the stat lines are neat...guys with 8 HR and 103 RBIs in a season, stuff of that nature. It makes for some interesting imagining of what watching a game was like back then.
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Some of these guys are not like the others....
Lloyd Waner aka Little Poison.
Lloyd (Little Poison) was a Veteran's Committee vote in for 1967. He was a small centerfielder, played a lengthy career (18 seasons) who was a plus defender, and hit for good average, but that was about all there was. He didn't have speed (5 SB and 5 CS per season), power or even particularly a good eye for his size, averaging only 34 walks per season, meaning he had a paltry OBP for a guy whose career average was .316. In large part, I believe that he is in the HOF mostly based on amassing 2459 career hits, averaging exactly 200 hits per 162 games (today's season length) and averaging 98 runs scored per the same 162 games. But his WAR is only 2.4 per season and while he played until age 39, in his last seven seasons in the majors he basically played only 3 seasons worth of games.
Paul (Big Poison) Waner, his brother, was only 3 lbs heavier than his "little" brother and his career stats are much more worthy of his induction on the regular BBWAA ballot of 1952, which was 8 years after his last season as a semi-regular player and seven years after his final game and plate appearance as a Yankee on April 26, 1945.
Red Ruffing
Ruffing is the first one I am looking at who grabs the benefits of playing for the Yankees. He was voted in in 1967, 20 years after his final game in a BBWAA runoff election (whatever that was). It seems somewhat difficult to question a guy's credentials when he had 273 career wins. But he also had 223 career losses, meaning, on average, he only won eleven games out of every 20 decisions. The funny thing about Ruffing is that he had such a long career that he had time to dilute his stats, both in the beginning and in the end of his career.
Ruffing is largely in the HOF based on his numbers while pitching for the Yankees, and to be entirely fair, he was a much better pitcher while playing for them. In fact, his credentials wouldn't even be called into question if his entire career had just been his 15 seasons in New York. He went 231 - 124 in pinstripes, but it wasn't just his benefitting from a great offense bailing him out. His ERA for 15 seasons in New York was 3.47, a full third of a run per nine innings lower than his overall career average INCLUDING those years. In his 7 years pitching for the Red Sox to start his career, his ERA was 4.61, and he posted a 6.11 ERA in the final 9 starts of his career with the Chicago White Sox.
That said, a HOFer should be judged by overall career numbers and Ruffing's were not very strong. His career K to Walk ratio is a low 1.28 to 1, his career ERA is 3.80, career WHIP is a relatively high 1.341 and his winning percentage was .548. Add to that an average WAR of 3.2, a number that he only surpassed in 7 of his 23 seasons. Ruffing is in the Hall and the argument could be made for him, but I think he wasn't great enough to be included.
Rabbit Maranville
Walter James Vincent "Rabbit" Maranville had a very lengthy career, reflective of the times, when players stayed in as long as they could because pay for major league players was not very high. He started in the DBE in 1912, played until 1933, did not play in 1934 and returned for one final season in 1935. His first 9 and final 6 seasons were with the NL's Boston Braves. Sandwiched in between those stints were 4 seasons in Pittsburgh, one each in Chicago (Cubs) and Brooklyn and two with the St. Louis Cardinals. So, he accumulated stats and played enough seasons at shortstop to still hold the career record for Putouts at that position. He was inducted in the Hall in 1954, 19 years after the end of his playing career, by way of the BBWAA ballot.
Rabbit was more a rabbit of triples than he was of steals, having 177 career 3 baggers and seasons of 15 (twice), 13 (twice) and 10 (3x) while averaging only 13 steals in 20 attempts per season. His other notable offensive achievement was walks, giving him a career OBP of .318, which added 60 points to his quite pedestrian career batting average of .258. Basically, Maranville was a plus defender and a stats accumulator due to career length, but the stats accumulated were not worthy of induction.
Ray Schalk
So far, Schalk's inclusion in the Hall of Fame (he was voted in by the Veteran's Committee in 1955) is the biggest mystery to me in this group. He played 8 seasons in the DBE and 10 seasons after that, but his hitting stats didn't move an inch with the livelier ball, so I decided to include him in this list. He played almost his entire career as a member of the White Sox, except for a final season as a New York Giant in 1929. This meant that he was one of the untainted players on the scandalous 1919 Black Sox squad, who threw the Series for the payday that notorious skinflint owner of the Sox, Charles Comiskey, was NOT giving them.
Schalk's basic contribution is that he was likely the top fielding catcher of his era. He did draw plenty of walks, as a career OBP of .340 that was 87 points higher than his measly .253 career batting average (lowest of any inducted Hall of Famer) would attest. He had some speed, averaging 16 stolen bases per 162 games over his career, and I've already mentioned his defense. And that was about it. He had no power, with 11 career homers, of which 7 came in the 10 years he played with the livelier ball. His high-water mark for RBIs was 60 in 1922 and he never hit higher than .282 in a single season, the mark he set in that fateful year of 1919. And lastly, a usual factor that comes into play with low RBI guys who have good OBP stats and a little speed is that they scored runs in numbers that look like a lot of RBI totals for other greats. In other words, not knocking them in but by being knocked in by others. Not here, however. Schalk averaged just 55 RBIs and 53 runs scored per 162 games across his career.
My guess is that he received a lot of praise from HOF pitchers who either threw to him or coveted his skills as a battery mate from afar and that is what swayed the Veteran's Committee. It also makes me wonder if there was a bit of sympathy for the team, as other potentially HOF worthy players on that squad, Joe Jackson and Eddie Cicotte, ended up banned for life and not eligible. At least until now. Red Faber and Eddie Collins were the only others from that notable team in the HOF.
Ted Lyons
Ted Lyons actually pitched to Ray Schalk for his first six seasons in the majors, starting his career with the 1922 White Sox, with whom he also finished his career with in 1946 at the ripe old age of 45. He was also managed for a time by Schalk, after the latter retired as a player. Lyons played a total of 21 seasons with the club, with a 3-year break for military service from 1943-1945. The story of his career was mostly as a second or third starter on a team that was decent at the beginning of his career, steadily declined to a ridiculous 49-102-1 mark in 1932 (somehow, they still finished ahead of Boston in the AL that season!) and then steadily climbed back into respectability in the mid to late 30s and early 40s.
Between 1925 and 1930, he had three out of six seasons in which he won 20 games. He also pitched in relief in nearly a fifth of his 594 career appearances, but starting in 1935 until the end of his career, he was almost exclusively a starter, getting the nod in 3rd or 4th starter territory, around 23 times a season. Apparently, this was helpful. In the 8 seasons preceding his military service, he went 98-69, which is a winning percentage of .586, much better than his career percentage of .531. He had six winning seasons in that stretch while having only 6 other winning records during the other 11 seasons he played.
I think, basically, that Lyons was stoic, but I think he ran out of steam after the first 7 full seasons of his career, in which he averaged 30 starts, 22 complete games AND 10 relief appearances a year. Truly a sign of the times. Twice in that stretch, in 1927 and 1930, he led the league in innings pitched. He had three 20+ win seasons but also two 20+ loss seasons in his career, and ultimately, his .531 career winning percentage should not have gotten him in the Hall.
Eppa Rixey
Looking at Rixey's career, it could be argued that he was the most hard luck pitcher in major league history. He pitched 21 seasons in the majors with a very respectable career ERA of 3.15, and yet somehow only managed a career winning percentage of .515, with a 266-251 won loss record. I figured, okay, he must have played on a bunch of horrible teams in his career. But that was not the case. Only over the last five seasons of his career, when he was pitching far less frequently, was he a part of a pretty bad team, a Cincinnati Reds squad that averaged only 60 wins a season during Rixey's final career years.
In Rixey's first eight seasons, he was with the Philadelphia Phillies, and he had only two winning seasons, 1916 (the outlier, with a 22-10 record) and 1913. His penultimate season in Philly was the last season of the DBE and his remarkable Phillies' ERA of 2.83 only managed to net him an 87-103 record. He must have lost a lot of 2-1 and 3-2 games in the City of Brotherly Love.
I tried to be fair to Rixey, noting his won-loss record as juxtaposed against his good ERA, but what ultimately convinced me that he doesn't belong in the Hall is a look at the career numbers of other pitchers who reside around him with a career ERA at or very near to 3.15. There are ten pitchers I looked at. Three are currently active, Max Scherzer (who has a good chance to make the Hall), Gerrit Cole and Blake Snell. Scherzer and Cole have both each won 65% of their starts. Snell has won 57% of his, which would put him at 295-222 with an equal number of decisions as Rixey. Greg Maddux, the only current HOFer on the list of ten, won 61% of his decisions and amassed 355 career wins versus only 227 losses. The other 6 pitchers, none of whom are in the Hall, won at least 57% of their starts, including Silver King (his entire career in the DBE) and Urban Shocker, who was in the league at the same time as Rixey. All of the ten meet the threshold ten-year career guideline.
What all of this ultimately tells me is that Rixey's induction is largely one of longevity over every other consideration. I certainly would place Urban Shocker and his 187-117 record in 13 seasons in the Hall over Rixey, especially considering the late start of Shocker's career (at age 25) and untimely end, as he died from complications from pneumonia at 37 as an active player.
Bill Mazeroski
There are two factors that put Mazeroski in the Hall of Fame. First, and most legitimate, he was a great fielding second baseman, perhaps one of the best of all time. He led the league in putouts 5 times, assists 9 times, double plays for 8 consecutive years, 1960-1967 and he is also the career leader in that stat among second basemen. He also is the career leader in the new age fielding stat, Total Fielding Runs Above Average.
The second factor is a single home run, notably the 1960 World Series ending "Homer in the gloaming". This was the solo shot that Maz hit in the bottom of the 9th with no outs and no one on, ending a World Series that the Pirates probably should not have won, being outscored by the Yankees 55-27 in the 7 games. Only one other player, Joe Carter of the Toronto Blue Jays, has ended a World Series on a walk-off homerun.
While fielding is very obviously an important factor in baseball, it is less quantifiable statistically and thus tends to be given short shrift in HOF voting. I feel that it is fantastic that the great fielders are included on the merits of that skill, but there have been many great fielders that were also great offensive players in any of a number of different ways that are not your standard "numbers" categories of HRs, RBIs, and average. Stats such as OBP, steals, runs scored, etcetera. Mazeroski largely had none of that. He had very pedestrian career offensive numbers in ALL of the categories. Plus, his career average WAR, which takes into consideration defense, was 1.82. Factoring his career games played extrapolates into a little over 13 1/2 full seasons worth of games and averaging his total WAR by that number still only brings the yearly average up to 2.29.
Contrast him with another super defender Hall of Famer, Ozzie Smith. Smith is arguably the best defensive shortstop of all time, but he also added, on average, 37 steals in 46 attempts, 67 walks and 79 runs scored per season. All of this while being within striking distance of Mazeroski's yearly average of 64 RBIs (Smith averaged 50) and having a career average OBP of .337 compared with Maz's .299.
George Kell
Kell was a Vet Committee inductee in 1983, 26 years after his last season in 1957, and I'm not sure exactly what those voters were seeing. He did have some positives of note, having a career batting average of .306 and OBP of .367. He was a plus defender, led the league in hits twice and won the batting title in 1949, hitting .343 with a record for fewest strike outs in a season in which one won the batting title, a mere 13. Kell was actually noted for not getting struck out and amassed more than twice as many walks (621) than Ks (287) for his career.
But there are notable negatives. Kell averaged only 120 games played per season, meaning he was either not durable or that his own teams didn't find him irresistible as an everyday player. He played the two infield power positions, first and third, throughout his career but had very little power. His season high for homeruns was only 12, in 1953, fifteen percent of his career total of 78. He wasn't tall, at 5'9", but his playing weight of 175 lbs suggests a guy who was probably pretty strong. And he averaged only 58 RBIs and runs scored per season throughout his career.
Basically, George Kell had 4 really great mid-career years, 1947 and 1949-1951 (he only played in 92 games in 1948 due to injuries) and 1950 was the high-water mark, with 8 HR and 101 RBIs, a .340 average and leading the league in ABs, hits and doubles. Other than that, he was basically a good to very good hitter for average and a pretty good fielder and that was basically all there was to his career.
Rick Ferrell
Ferrell was, quite literally, a cannon behind the plate.
Catcher numbers, offensively, are always a little skewed, because even in the old Iron Horse days of baseball, a catcher rarely caught more than about 70% of a team's games in a season. Ferrell caught just over 100 games a season and his one great attribute was throwing out runners attempting to steal. He is only at number 110 on the all-time list (Ray Schalk was better, for example), but his stats are comparable to modern day greats like Bench and Pudge Rodriguez. As these are percentage differences, as well, the top 6 off all time stand out far above the rest, but once you get to number 7 (Ray Meuller), he is only about 7.5 percentage points higher than Ferrell was all the way down in 110th.
Essentially, Ferrell's only real offensive contribution was like Kell's...plenty of walks and very few strikeouts. So many walks, in fact, that his .378 career OBP was almost one hundred points higher than his career average of .281. As a catcher, like with Schalk, he didn't normally play a lot of games in a season, his career high being 140 out of 154, which also coincided with his career high RBI total for a season, with 77. Ferrell averaged about 105 games per year, so he is a good one with whom to look at 162 game averages for comparison purposes. And those are pretty paltry averages...the .281 average, two homers and 63 RBIs, only 59 runs scored per season, even with that gaudy OBP, and about 145 hits per year. The Veteran's Committee took 37 years to induct him in 1984, and they probably shouldn't have bothered.
Rube Marquard
Marquard is the first guy on my list whose career predominance came during the DBE. Rube played 18 seasons in the majors, starting in 1908. Marquard had a strange career, one that was clearly marked by the transition to the more offensive game starting in 1920.
Basically, Rube Marquard had 3 great seasons, 1911-1913 and one almost great season, 1917. The latter season was not his best, record wise, but he finished 19-12 with a 2.55 ERA on a pretty mediocre 70-81 Brooklyn Robins squad. In the other seasons, he was largely benefitting from playing on a New York Giants team that won 3 straight National League titles but couldn't win a World Series. Those four seasons in total accounted for 92 of his wins, 45% of his career total of 201.
Marquard's career ERA of 3.08 LOOKS great until you consider that everyone who pitched in the DBE had an ERA that looks great now. From the start of Marquard's career until the end of the DBE in 1919, his ERA was 2.70. That ranked him behind 99 other pitchers for that exact same era. His career winning percentage was a paltry .530 and he only had one season ERA that was below his career average after 1920, when the livelier ball (along with the removal of scuffed, damaged or dirty balls from play) increased offense. In addition, while Marquard had 8 winning seasons he also had 7 losing seasons, as well, including a 5-13 record in 1909 and a 12-22 mark for 1914. Both were somewhat inexplicable, as his ERA for those two seasons was quite respectable and his New York Giants team was respectably good in both years. Baseball....who could explain it?
Red Faber
Faber is much like Marquard above. He pitched a little later, so that only six of his 20 seasons, all with the Chicago White Sox, were in the DBE. And there was a difference in the numbers, at least in terms of ERA, as he only had one season in the DBE, the cursed 1919 year, in which his season ERA was higher than his career mark. He did make the adjustment well, initially, as 1920 and 1921 were two of the three really good seasons he had in his career. In 1914, he was 24-14 and had records of 23-13 and 25-15 respectively in '20 and '21. 1922 was also a twenty-win season, but also a 17-loss season.
Basically, Red Faber was a little above average as a pitcher, with a good career ERA (3.15), but a winning percentage of just .543. His average season won-loss record is 13-11 and even if you remove his first and his last two seasons, in which he was mostly a reliever (although he did have 19 starts as a rookie in 1914), that yearly average record only improves to 14-11. That is simply not enough wins per season or a good enough record to be HOF worthy.
Last two items to make my point...if you add hits given up + walks + hit batters and divide by total batters faced, you get what I would call the pitcher's version of OBP and Faber's was .352. And his total career strikeout to walk ratio is 1.21 to 1. Add those to the overall won-loss record and I feel like Faber was a little too ordinary to be enshrined.
Travis Jackson
Travis Jackson was a true oddity of his era, a middle infielder of the 20s and 30s with some actual power and ability to drive in runs. He had two seasons with 90+ RBIs and, in 1934, a comeback year after two largely lost injury seasons, he had perhaps his best season, with 16 homers, 101 RBIs and 75 runs scored. Jackson made his majors debut at the young age of 18, but his first true season was a year later, in 1923. He seemed to be injury prone, as he only played four seasons in which he appeared in at least 90% of his team's games. In his full seasons (the eleven seasons out of 13 between 1924 and 1936) he averaged only 132 out of 154 games per year.
His career was relatively short for the era, and his offensive stats were not overwhelming. In addition, he wasn't a particularly good defender. In fact, in 1924, when he played 151 games, he had 50 errors and a .937 fielding percentage. Jackson's average offensive year lined up as follows: A .291 average and a .337 OBP, 9.6 HRs, 66 RBIs and 60 runs scored. If you take out the two injury seasons of 1932-33, the averages bump up to .293/11 HR/73 RBIs and 75 runs scored. Good, maybe even very good for the era, but Hall of Fame worthy? I think not.
Jim Kaat
Jim Kaat had a loooooooong career in the majors, beginning with 2 starts for the 1959 Washington Senators and ending in 1983 with 24 relief appearances for the St. Louis Cardinals. His first full season was 1961 and he remained a starter for the next 18 years before closing out his career with 5 seasons primarily spent as a reliever. That is 25 full or partial seasons, so Kaat definitely accumulated stats, enough, apparently, to make the "Golden Days Era" committee think he was a suitable HOFer when electing him in 2022. If they are to extend that courtesy to Kaat and others, why not grace Tommy John with enshrinement, as well?
In all of that time, however, Kaat only had 5 seasons that you could even refer to as Very Good, record wise. His career ERA was a pretty respectable 3.45, but he did pitch most of his best years in the pitching dominant era that led to the lowering of the mound by 5 inches in 1969. All of his best record years were when he pitched to an ERA lower than that career mark. In the 18 years in which Kaat was primarily a starter, his average record was 14-12, his overall career winning percentage was only .544 and he only managed 283 wins in 25 years.
The point of all of this is that Kaat had many, many seasons that didn't pass the "Paul Byrd" test. For those who don't remember Paul Byrd, he was the quintessential 4th starter journeyman who pitched from 1995-2009. He was a guy no one loved but that every team needs...the dude that gives you 25 to 30 starts, wins about half of them despite a career ERA number that starts with a 4. Paul Byrd had a lot of seasons that looked like 12-11, 9-10, 14-12, etc.
My point here is that Jim Kaat also had a lot of those "Paul Byrd" seasons, as well. He just pitched for an inordinately long time. If you took Byrd's 6 seasons in which he was primarily a full-time starter and extrapolated out his won-loss record to 18 seasons (Kaat's starter years) his record would have been 216-180 and his winning percentage would have been almost identical to Kaat's .544. I guess that what I have to say about Jim Kaat is that longevity is both a blessing and a curse, but it is not the sole reason why a player should be voted into the Hall of Fame.
Brooks Robinson
Ok, so this one will probably get some blowback, but honestly, what do we all remember Brooks Robinson for? His defense in the 1970 World Series. That's it, basically, although he won the MVP of that series just as much for his batting, hitting .429 with 2 doubles, 2 HRs and 6 RBIs.
Robinson is in the Hall primarily because of his defense, as he was a 16-time gold glove winner and he also won the 1964 AL MVP. To be fair, on the notion of his offensive game, Robinson played in a pitching rich era, but his career average was only .267, with a career OBP of .322 and his season averages would be 15 HR, 76 RBIs and 69 runs scored. Add in that he was playing in a "power" position as a third baseman.
Ok, so these are all offensive numbers, and he was a defensive wiz, but WAR takes into consideration a player's value in all aspects of the game, including fielding. Despite his great defense, Robinson's average WAR per season was 3.4. Overall, I don't have any super strong arguments against Robinson, but the case for his enshrinement is not that strong, either. His offensive numbers decidedly make the case for better offensive players, such as Dale Murphy, Albert Belle or Paul O'Neill to be enshrined. And if that is the case, with the optics of all of those diving stops in the 1970 World Series aside. should Brooks Robinson really be in the Hall?
Harold Peter Henry "Pee Wee" Reese
Yes, first of all, Pee Wee had a name! He also had a pretty good career, but not really a HoF worthy one.
Pee Wee Reese gets the "playing on a team during an era of greatness" boost, as the Brooklyn Dodgers, during the length of Reese's career, was one of the best teams in the major leagues, with 7 World Series appearances and one series win over the Yankees in 1955. Reese was also cited for his support of Jackie Robinson as one of the reasons for his selection by the Veterans Committee in 1984.
All of that said, Reese was considered a very good fielder and had 232 career stolen bases, an average of 15 per year during his 16-year career. Obviously, as a middle infielder of this era, he had no power and was not expected to have any, averaging 8 HR and 55 RBI per season, but he did score an average of 84 runs per season. Surprisingly, he struck out 55 times per season, also. Not a huge amount by today's standards, but during that era, it was relatively high for a light hitting infielder. He added 76 walks per season, however, which is why his career OBP, at .366, is nearly 100 points higher than his career .269 batting average.
Mostly, it is that average, combined with the lack of offensive production in other areas, particularly RBIs, that I call into question. In an era of gaudy offensive numbers, batting .269 for a career is not so great. In addition, Reese did have some good WAR seasons, but even with his good defense taken into account, his yearly average WAR was only 3.8, which is good, but not great. In particular, also, was that his first two seasons and his last two seasons really hurt his overall career numbers.
Phil Rizzuto
The Scooter is another perfect example of the "Good player on a Great team" Hall of Fame push, as the Yankees of his career (1941-1956) played in 11 World Series, winning 9 of them. Despite the Murderer's Row moniker given to the Ruth/Gehrig Yankees, THIS was the most dominant era in Yankee's history. And Rizzuto, while a fine player, definitively benefitted by his association with that dominance.
Rizzuto's career was relatively short for the era. There was some small question of the actual year of his birth, but it has since been confirmed that he was born in 1917. With that in mind, we know that Rizzuto didn't make his majors debut until he was 24, in 1941. He played 2 seasons, lost the next 3 to WW2 service and returned in 1946 at the ripe old age of 29. He had to play until he was 39 in order to get in just 13 years in the majors, and in the last two years he only played in 112 games (out of a possible 308) after a disastrous 1954 season in which he only batted .195 with 2 homers, 15 RBIs and 47 runs scored.
Defense and walks aside, there is just no "there" there. If you take out those last two seasons and average his offensive stats, he hit 3 HR with 50 RBIs, scored 77 runs (his best overall offensive stat), walked 57 times, struck out 34 times and stole 13 bases per season. His career batting average was .273 and his average season WAR was 3.18. He only topped a WAR of 5.0 twice, one of those in 1950, when he miraculously was the AL MVP, largely because he batted .324 that season and scored 125 runs. If you remove that .324 average from the rest of his career, his career average falls to .266, by the way.
Yeah, Scooter, we love you but....
Robin Roberts
For six seasons, 1950-1955, Robin Roberts was, arguably, the best pitcher in baseball. The problem is that those seasons all fell within his first 8 years in the majors and he played a subsequent eleven seasons after that in which he was, frankly, not particularly even above average.
During those six seasons, Roberts was 138 - 78, a .638 winning percentage. However, for the remaining 13 seasons of his career, he was 148 - 167, a .469 percentage. His overall career percentage was .538. Largely, I believe Roberts is here as an accumulator, his 19 seasons culminating in 286 career wins in a game in which 300 career wins is the standard for being an automatic HoF entrant. His career ERA was 3.41.
Robin Roberts' career average WAR is 3.93, but notably, while he surpassed a WAR of 5 in all of the six super seasons, he did not surpass his career average in any season outside of those six except for 1958, when he 17-14 with a 3.24 ERA and a WAR of 4.5. His average season record was only 15-13 for his entire career. In eleven seasons from 1956 to the end of his career in 1966, he had 6 seasons with an ERA over 4.00. Since Roberts had the super 6 seasons, we could call these the "sorrowful six", including a 10-22 campaign in 1957 and a 1-10 season in 1961.
Jay Hanna "Dizzy" Dean
Dean's career was like Robin Roberts' career, in miniature. He played in 12 seasons, but honestly, he really had a 9-season career, having started 1 game each in 1930 (first career start), 1941 and, after a 5-year absence, one more start in 1947. On top of that, he only made 42 appearances in 3 seasons between 1938 - 1940. So, Dean only meets the 10-year threshold on a technicality to begin with. And frankly, I would eliminate him for that alone. He made 317 career appearances, 230 of them starts, but 272 of those appearances and 195 of those starts were packed into just 6 seasons, 1932 - 1937.
The thing was, he was, admittedly, great for 3 of those six seasons. And he won at a remarkable pace, with a 150 - 83 career record (a .643 winning percentage) and also had 30 career saves. But, in 1937, he was hit in the foot while pitching in the All-Star game and ended up with a broken toe. As often happens, Dean tried to come back too soon, and as also often happens, the altered stride changed his pitching motion, leading to an arm injury that he never fully recovered from. This led to his decline in appearances, although he remained pretty effective when he pitched, until 1940, when he had a 3-3 record and an ERA over 5.
As an aside, the one game he pitched in 1947 happened because Dean, who was the announcer for the moribund St. Louis Browns, had said during a game broadcast that he bet he could outpitch 9 of the 10 guys on the Browns' staff. After the player's wives complained, Browns' management, always trying to drum up attendance for the decidedly second tier team, took Dean up on his bet, starting him in the season finale against the Chicago White Sox. And it was that larger-than-life personality that he exuded that I believed pushed voters to elect him to the Hall.
Ultimately, Dean was a great pitcher, but simply for too short of a period of time. And if you want to question that notion, I decided to look up pitchers with a won-loss record, number of wins and innings pitched that were similar to Dean's numbers, which, to remind you, were 150-83 (.643) and 1967 innings pitched. None of these players, by the way, are in the Hall of Fame, although David Price hasn't officially retired, but he hasn't pitched since 2022 and likely won't be elected. Price finished at 157-82 (.656) with 2143 IP. Dick McBride pitched 6 seasons in the 1870s, with a 149-78 record (also .656) and 2081 IP. Johnny Allen pitched contemporaneously with Dean, finishing with a 142 - 75 record (.654) and 1950 IP from 1932 - 1944. If anyone has a DIRECT comparison to Dean, Allen would be the one. Ray Kremer meets the 10-year guideline, although, like Dean, he pitched very little in his last year, making only 7 appearances during his final season, 1933. Kremer finished at 143 - 85 (.627) with 1954 IP. Larry Corcoran was another DBE hurler whose 8-year career ended in 1887 with a 177-89 (.665) record and 2392 IP. Lastly, there are two more contemporary examples. Jered Weaver was 150 - 98 (.604) in twelve seasons with 2067 IP and Johan Santana was 139 - 78 (.640) with 2025 IP in the same number of seasons. Now, Santana IS a Hall of Famer...in the Venezuelan Baseball Hall of Fame. He is also the first Met to ever pitch a no -hitter.
So, I hope you can see where I am going here. I don't think any of the examples above are deserving of Hall of Fame entry and I don't think Dizzy Dean belongs there, either.
Nellie Fox
Once again, we are back to the argument over whether an offensive non-entity should be afforded entry into the Hall largely based on defense alone. And once again, as with Mazeroski, Pee Wee Reese, Rizzuto and Waner, the WAR number tells the tale. I have already made the argument against those four players, and to some extent, Brooks Robinson, based on average WAR and ALL five of those players had an average WAR much higher than Nellie Fox's average of 2.38 per year.
Fox was an elite defender and a very durable player, averaging 154 games played per season from 1951 - 1962, all but the last two of those years during the era of the 154 game MLB season. So, he was there with that great glove, every day. But he was also a classic eighth hitter. Fox's career average was .288, scoring 67 runs, knocking in 42 RBIs, taking 38 walks with a .348 OBP per season. He had very little speed, as well. Even his contemporaries who were most full of praise for Fox spoke mostly about how hard he worked and how durable he was, notably not referring to his talent, but at Fox's greatness as a grinder. Maybe if there were a Hall of Fame for great defensive 8th hitters, he would top the list. But he really doesn't belong in Cooperstown.
Jack Morris and/or Bert Blyleven
Obviously, this author has no power to change the Hall of Fame, but in consideration of this exercise, I put Blyleven and Morris together because they might represent a tipping point. In other words, one gets eliminated and the other stays put, something like that.
Both pitched at approximately the same time, and they likely faced off against each other dozens of times, as both of them spent most of their respective careers pitching in the same AL Central division, Blyleven in two stints with the Twins and Morris mostly with Detroit, although he had a season each in Minnesota and Cleveland, as well.
They both won over 200 games, although both also pitched many seasons, eighteen for Morris and twenty-two for Blyleven. The most obvious difference between the two of them lies in winning percentage and ERA. Morris was the game winner, with 254 victories against 186 losses, a .577 winning percentage. He averaged a 14-10 record for each season with a relatively high ERA, just a touch under 4 at 3.90.
Blyleven was the Eppa Rixey of his era. His career ERA was a very respectable 3.31. But, in 22 seasons, he "only" won 287 games (13 per season) versus 250 losses (11 per season), a percentage of .534. And yet, he never really played on any bad teams, with most of his seasons being spent in contention for the playoffs until at least early September. So, it is a bit puzzling that with his low ERA and the quality of his team's play would only net him 13 wins per year.
Morris had 6 standout years dispersed throughout his 18 seasons, the last two of them basically being the second or third best starter of two consecutive World Series winners, the 1991 Minnesota Twins and the 1992 Toronto Blue Jays. In 1991 with the Twins, Scott Erickson was the ace and he and Kevin Trapani both had a better season than Morris. And that 1991 season was the only year out of the last 6 seasons of Morris' career in which his ERA (3.43 that year) was below 4. He only had 3 seasons in his first 12 in which his ERA was above 4. In 1992 in Toronto, Morris had a stellar 21-6 record, but both Jimmy Key (3.53 ERA) and Juan Guzman (2.64 ERA) had ERAs much lower than Morris' 4.04.
Just as one final comparison note...Dave Stieb, who was a short time team-mate of Morris' with Toronto, pitched a shorter career, but had a similar career winning percentage (.562) and a career ERA a full half of a run lower than Morris'. Despite this, and winning 176 games, he is nowhere near the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. However, he has been honored by being a member of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, so he does have that.
Red Schoendienst
Red Schoendienst was a bit of an ironman in his first thirteen major leagues seasons, starting in 1945. He averaged 143 games played per year during that time. His final 6 seasons were largely as a player-coach, playing just 2.3 seasons worth of games in that time. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis during the winter after the 1958 season and missed almost all of 1959 but returned to play following a partial lung removal! Combine that with his service in WW2 which preceded his career, and you certainly could not call into question his courage.
Schoendienst still played in the era when middle infielders didn't hit for much power. He was one of the better defensive second basemen in the league during his career, after playing his rookie season as the Cardinals' left fielder. Strangely, he was traded mid-career during the period of time when he was having his best offensive seasons. During 1952 through 1954, Schoendienst batted over .300 each season, the first three times in his career. He then had a season in which he hit .268 and was traded in midseason twice in two consecutive years, first to the NY Giants in 1956 and then from there to the Milwaukee Braves in 1957, where he was a part of their two pennants and one World Series title, again batting over .300 each of those two seasons. From that point on, he was a part time player the rest of his career, although he did bat .300 in 1961/62 in 263 total at bats.
There were two strange statistical anomalies I noticed within Schoendienst's career numbers. First, twenty-six of his career total of 89 stolen bases occurred in his rookie season. He had twelve more in his 2nd year and after that, he never surpassed 9 in any one season, averaging just 5 per year. Second, Schoendienst hit almost half (41) of his career total of 84 home runs in just three seasons, fifteen each in 1953 and 1957 and eleven in 1955. For the entire rest of his career, he never hit more than 7 in any other season, averaging 5 a year.
Ultimately, however, even Red's good defense didn't add up to a high WAR average per season. Schoendienst had an average season that shook out like this, after eliminating his two seasons where he basically did not play....a .289 batting average with a .337 OBP, 5 homers, 45 RBI, 72 runs scored, 5 stolen bases with 36 walks and 20 strike outs. All of this shook out to an average seasonal WAR of 2.68, which is simply not good enough for the Hall, despite what the Veteran's Committee said in 1989.
Chick Hafey
Charles James "Chick" Hafey must certainly be the least well-known Hall of Famer in existence. I've been a baseball fan my whole life and, while not encyclopedic, I have a decent knowledge of many of the big and not so big historic names of the game. That said, I had never heard of Hafey until I started researching players for this post. Taking a dive into his numbers, I think I understand why.
Hafey had a 13-year major league career, from 1924 - 1935 and then 1937 after not playing in 1936. In an era in which an MLB season was 154 games, he never played more than 144 games in a season, and he averaged only 99 games played per year. That is an equivalent of 8.31 full 154 game seasons played. Now, if you divide his numbers by those 8.31 seasons, the look good on average, but divide them by the 13 actual years you get an average line of .317 average, 12 HRs, 64 RBIs and 60 runs scored with a WAR of 2.52. Also notable is that Chick Hafey was very inconsistent. Of his career 164 home runs, 81.7% of them (134) were hit in just 6 of his 13 seasons, 1927-1931 and 1934 and 68.1% of his career total of 833 RBIs were hit in the same seasons. Basically, he had three really great years in a row, 1928-1930, sandwiched by two pretty good years and one decent outlier year, 1934. And the rest of his career, he was essentially a non-entity. If you don't want to take my word for it, I will identify one Bill James, who knows a lot more about baseball than I do and has listed Hafey as one of ten examples of Hall of Fame inductees who do not deserve the honor.
Dave Bancroft
Bancroft goes along with Hafey, as they were both somewhat controversially enshrined by the Veteran's Committee in 1971. At the time, former teammates of both, Bill Terry and Frankie Frisch, were on that committee and ushered in several of their former teammates into the Hall who, while a case could be made for them, probably didn't really belong.
Dave Bancroft played a 16-year career, 4 years of which were spent as the player-manager of the Boston Braves from 1924-1927. He was known as one of the better shortstops of his era, defensively, and as befits a middle infielder of the time, he displayed zero power, hitting an average of 2 HRs per season in his career. Across his career, Bancroft averaged 120 games per 154 game season, but from 1922 - 1930, he only had three seasons out of 8 where he exceeded that average, and in only 6 of his 16 seasons did he play enough to be considered a full-time starter.
Bancroft's offensive season averages really tell the tale, however. He had a .279 batting average, 2 homers, 37 RBIs, 65 runs scored, 52 walks (leading to an .355 OBP) and 9 stolen bases per year. Early in his career, Bancroft had 3 really great years in a row, 1920-22, with the championship winning Giants teams of that era. Those three seasons produced WAR scores of 6.2, 7.5 and 6.8. In addition, as player-manager for the Boston Braves in 1925, his WAR score was 4.9. All of that aside, his average season WAR was 3.08, which is not such a great score considering his known defensive prowess at a high WAR score defensive position.
Freddie Lindstrom
Lindstrom is another entrant from the Terry/Frisch Veteran's Committee. He started young, playing his rookie season in 1924 when he was just 18 years old, and his career was only 13 seasons long. And, to boot, he only really played 7 full seasons, in terms of playing at least 130 games in the era's 154-game season. Add up his total career games and divide by 154, and he played 9.34 season's worth of games in total.
Lindstrom actually had some outstanding offensive seasons relevant to the era in which he played. From 1926-1932, he played 6 full seasons (in 1931, he missed half of the season) in which he AVERAGED hitting for a .323 average with 14 HRs, 88 RBIs, 101 runs scored and 11 bases stolen. That stretch included two seasons with a remarkable 231 hits each. While these numbers are undoubtably HoF worthy, the problem was the other 7 seasons of his career.
In those other 7 seasons, Lindstrom had a batting average of .290, averaged 3 home runs, 36 RBI and 41 runs scored per season, Additionally, in those seasons, Lindstrom had a grand total of 17 out of his career 84 stolen bases, 20.2 % of his total. All of that lowered his career season averages to a .311 batting average, a .351 OBP (both respectable) with 8 HRs, 60 RBIs, 69 runs scored, 6 stolen bases with 27 walks and 21 strikeouts. In 1928 and 1930, Lindstrom produced to the tune of a 6.8 and 6.9 WAR, respectively, but had no other seasons during his career with a WAR above 3.9 and his career average was 2.369. And that says it all, I think.
Harry Hooper
Harry Hooper is the last player I will submit for potential Hall of Fame removal. Hooper's career was bisected by the end of the DBE and he did show a marked improvement in power post 1919. Fifty-two of his career total of 75 home runs came after then, which marked the last 6 years of his career. Hooper was durable, as he played an average of 136 games per season, and after his rookie season, in which he only played in 81 games, he only played in less than 126 games in a season once, in 1921, when he played 108.
In addition to added power, the changes in baseball that ended the DBE also improved Hooper's batting average, as well. Before 1920, he batted above .300 only once, in 1911. Starting then, he batted above .300 for 4 of his final 6 seasons as a ballplayer. Two of his 3 seasons when he scored more than 100 runs also occurred during this time. He also hit his high-water mark in RBIs, knocking in 80 in 1922.
Hooper's average offensive year wasn't terrible, especially denoting that he was a top of the order type. A .281 average and .368 OBP, 4 HR, 48 RBI, 84 runs scored, 67 walks and 22 stolen bases. What lets down his overall status is the exact opposite of what lets down most of the players here, which is defense. Despite the decent batting numbers, his average WAR per season is identical to Bancroft's above, 3.08. As an example of this, the aforementioned 1922 season was his best year, offensively, but only netted him a seasonal WAR of 3.5. And ultimately, this is what I believe should leave us to leave him out.
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During my research for this post, there were many players I also found that, while I initially thought were questionable as HoFers, after further study of the stats, I ultimately decided were deserving of their place in Cooperstown.
Take, for instance, Waite Hoyt, who did get the "playing for the Yankees" boost in the won-loss column, but also ultimately shined while in pinstripes. Five times in 9 years in the Bronx, Hoyt pitched to an ERA below his career average of 3.59. What that netted him was, with the backing of their offense, seven of his 9 seasons in which he amassed his most wins, the exceptions being a 15-win season with the Pirates in 1934 and a 13-win campaign in 1931, pitching for both the Tigers and Athletics.
Luke Appling had quite a lengthy career and played a lot of games for a guy known by the nickname "Old Aches and Pains", and, at first, it was the length of his career that had me thinking that maybe his stats were not so Hall worthy. As befits a middle infielder of his era, he didn't hit for much power, although he had good enough speed for 44o doubles, 102 triples and 179 stolen bases in his 21-year career. Appling's walk to strikeout ratio was a nifty 2.46 to 1, as well. And he was consistent throughout his career, batting a healthy .301 with a whopping .439 OBP in his age 42 season in 1949.
Ross Youngs is one of a few players in the Hall whose life was tragically cut short during their playing career. He did, in fact, meet the 10-year career threshold, playing from 1917 - 1926 before passing in October of 1927. I believe he is in based on his numbers, and more specifically, what his numbers might have been had he played the length of career that many of his peers of the era played. Youngs stole 153 bases and batted for a career average of .322, with an OBP of .399, amassed over 200 hits in a season twice, drove in 100+ RBIs in a season and had only one clunker of a full season, in 1925. In 1926, the year he fell ill, he was back to form, batting a robust .306 with 114 hits in 95 games that season.
In the case of Robin Yount, my initial issue was that his average WAR was not so high at 3.325. But what eventually sold me was that this average number was done in by the first three seasons, when he was acclimating to the majors, and the last three when he was having eroding skills as he was getting into his late 30s. In the 14 years between those groups of three seasons, he was a steady numbers man, offensively, especially when he found his power stroke, starting in 1980. Mostly, with Yount, however, was that he had so many different skills that he excelled in...stolen bases, power, hitting for average, OBP, defense at two positions, shortstop and outfield, particularly center field. Maybe he was an accumulator, but that isn't always a bad thing.
The very best thing about Burleigh Grimes was that the fans of Brooklyn pronounced his name as "Boiley", which always cracks me up! But seriously, folks..."Boiley" had an HoF worthy career marred by a few off seasons. He pitched 19 years, from 1916 - 1934 and only had 4 clunkers in terms of ERA and only three seasons with bad records, most notably his second season, 1917. He matched his career average ERA that year, a not too shabby 3.53, but amassed a 3-16 record with a horrendous Pirates team that finished at 51-103. Grimes' 270 - 212 career record represents a .560 winning percentage. But if you cut out his first 2 years (1916, with only 5 starts and that terrible 1917 season) and the last three years when he wasn't starting much and getting older, you get a 252 - 170 record (a much more respectable .597 percentage) for the bulk of his career, a 14 season stretch in which he had only 3 seasons with a losing record.
Tony Oliva was waylaid a bit by knee injuries, leading to an end of career stint as a DH for his last 4 seasons. Despite being a somewhat poor fielder in the minors, Oliva did eventually win a Gold Glove and was considered an above average fielder throughout his career. But where the meat was, as they say, was in his offensive game. Oliva played in what is sometimes termed the "2nd dead ball era" and yet managed some of the best numbers of his era, winning three AL batting titles. Part of my original reluctance about Oliva was in that his career was relatively short, with two of his fifteen seasons just being late season call-ups, missing almost all of 1972 with injuries and then only playing 67 games in his final year, 1976. In terms of the number of appearances, Tony Oliva played only the equivalent of 10.3 full major league seasons. He drove home over 90 runs in 5 of those years and scored over 90 runs in five different years, as well. Oliva had seven seasons batting over .300, his high-water mark being .337 in 1971. Oliva also added 220 career home runs, hitting 22 or more in, you guessed it, five seasons. 1964, which was probably his best overall offensive season, was also his high-water mark for home runs with 32 dingers.
Max Carey was first noticed in my scrutiny because he was only a .285 career hitter and then he was eliminated as a possible subject for removal because of stolen bases. Carey was, in essence, the Rickey Henderson of the 1910s and 20s, swiping an average of 41 bases per year, amassing a career total of 738 steals, to this day number 9 on the all-time list. He was number 4 at the time of his retirement, behind only Billy Hamilton, Ty Cobb and Arlie Latham. When Eddie Collins retired one year after Carey in 1930, he was also ahead of him by 3 stolen bases. While Carey's career batting average was .285, he had eight full seasons in which he batted .295 or above. In addition, he averaged 58 walks and 86 runs scored per season. In he stays.
Heinie Manush had surprisingly little power for a 6' 1", 200 lb outfielder, especially in an era of sluggers like Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Chuck Klein, Mel Ott and Earl Averill. His career season high was 14 home runs, done twice, in 1926, when he was 14th in the majors and again in 1932, which put him tied for 25th in the league. What Manush DID do was to absolutely rake and get on base. He was a career .330 hitter with an OBP of .377 and he had six seasons in which he scored 95 or more runs (five seasons over 100) and he had over 100 RBIs twice. one of those was in his monster 1932 season, with 14 HRs, 116 RBIs and 121 runs scored and a .342 average. And that is the key...Heinie Manush accounted for 1.23 runs produced PER game in his career, and thus will remain, likely for all-time, the ONLY Heinie in the HoF! Home runs be damned!
Billy Herman was probably the closest person on the "almost" list to being on the gone list. Probably what finally convinced me was Herman's career batting average of .304 and OBP of .367. Plus, he scored over 100 runs in 5 seasons during his career and was a consistent run scorer, averaging 76 runs scored per season. Where he wasn't consistent was on defense. In years he was good, he was really good, but mixed in were seasons in which his defense was a failing. The funny thing is that Herman would combine his offensive and defensive WAR numbers in such a way, by having good offense years when his defense was down and vice versa, that his overall WAR consistently averaged 3.66, except for a three year stretch between 1935-1937 when both were clicking and Herman had an average WAR score of 6.57.
Earle Combs is my final "almost" entrant. Yes, he was a benefactor of the first great Yankees era of the mid 20s to mid 30s and he had a relatively short career, for the time, of 12 seasons. Plus, Combs made a late start to his career, as he was age 25 in his first season and wasn't a full-time player until the following year. But for all of that, the man could hit lights out and was a run scoring machine. Combs was the guy that Ruth, Gehrig and Lazzeri were driving in during those years, although over the length of his career, Combs finished a respectable 4th in RBIs for the team, as well, behind those other three. From 1925 - 1932, Earle Combs never played less than 89% of the Yankees games in a given season and during that time he never scored less than 113 runs in any year, scoring a whopping 84% of his career runs in those 8 seasons. Add all of that to Combs' career average of .325 and OBP of .397 and we see that he made some hay while the sun shone.
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.....and some of these guys ARE like the others but have not joined them....yet!
Dale Murphy
I am going to start the potential better inductees with an old favorite of my teen years, Dale Murphy. The "Murph" is largely excluded, I believe, because of his .265 career batting average. And yeah, that kind of looks ugly, although he would fit right in with the "boom or bust" offensive players of today.
Murphy is 61st on the career MLB home run list with 398. Four hundred career homers is sort of a benchmark and, for all intents and purposes, 398 career homers IS 400 career homers. I am quite sure that at least twice in his career, a long fly ball off Murphy's bat died on the track in the cavernous Astrodome that would have been a homer in any other park of the day. And yes, I am aware that there were probably a few that went out in Atlanta's "Launching Pad" that might have been outs in other places, but we play the hand we are dealt.
There are only 10 players who rank above Murphy in career homeruns who are not in the Hall, excluding, of course, the steroid tainted players and those who are currently active and thus, ineligible. You might meet a few of those guys further down this list.
From 1980 to 1987, Dale Murphy was one of the pre-eminent power hitters in baseball. During that 8-year run, he averaged 33 HRs, 96 RBIs, 16 stolen bases and 100 runs scored per season. And that INCLUDES the 1981 season when he missed 58 games due to injury. He also batted .284 during that stretch, nearly 20 points above his career average.
After 1987, Murphy did have a significant drop-off in terms of production, and in particular, batting average. Not counting his last two years, in which he batted a cumulative .153 in only a total of 112 plate appearances, Murphy batted .226, .228, .245 and .252 respectively from 1988 - 1991. He still had power and production, however, belting out 86 homers in those 4 years and averaging 81 RBIs in that stretch, as well. All in all, I feel that there is a very solid case for Dale Murphy being in the HoF someday, mainly by virtue of being one of the most feared hitters in baseball over a significant length of time.
George Foster
George Foster took a few years to get his career into gear, Foster was strictly a late season call-up during his first two seasons in San Francisco, before being traded mid-season in his third year, 1971, to Cincinnati. He started most of that season in centerfield after an injury to Bob Tolan. Then Foster was back to being a part-time platoon player from 1972-1974, even spending most of 1973 in Triple A. He broke through at last in 1975, platooning with Dan Driessen in left field to start the season before winning the job outright. George Foster had finally "arrived" in the majors at the ripe old age of 26.
At that point, Foster began to show his HoF potential, starting a string of 11 seasons, 1975-1985, first with the Reds and then with the Mets, in which he averaged 28 HR and 97 RBI per season. By today's standards (and also those of the era that ended about 10 years before his career started) those numbers are not so gaudy. But in the context of the 1970s and 80s era in which he played, that was massive production. Foster's masterpiece 1977 season (52 HR, 149 RBIs with a .320 batting average) also garnered him the MVP award.
In addition, the anomaly of that 52-homer season placed him smack in the middle of the longest 50+ homer season drought in the majors since the end of the DBE. The last player to hit 50 in the majors before him was Willie Mays in 1965 and the next one after him was Cecil Fielder in 1990. That was a 24-season streak in which George Foster was the ONLY major leaguer to hit 50 home runs in a season! The longest previous streak had been 9 years, between 1938 when Jimmy Foxx (50) and Hank Greenberg (58) both had 50 plus and the 1947 season when Johnny Mize and Ralph Kiner both reached 51.
On a side note, by the way, both Kiner and Mize are IN the HoF with VERY similar career numbers to Foster's. The only drawback of his game that I can see is that he did strikeout with some frequency, with a more than 2 to 1 K to Walk ratio. That said, George Foster still belongs in the Hall of Fame. Let's get this done, Eras Committee.
Bobby Bonds
No, not PED freak Barry Bonds, but his father Bobby. Bobby Bonds did not have the greatest career average, .268, but it was dragged down a bit by his final two seasons, in which he batted a paltry .208 in 394 at bats in the 2 years combined. Bobby Bonds was the prototype FOR Barry Bonds, both playing style wise and, of course, genetically. He combined speed and power, with 332 homeruns and 461 stolen bases in 14 seasons. He only drove in 100+ RBIs in two seasons but also had two more with 90+ and he scored 100 or more runs in 6 seasons (including 5 straight years, 1969-1973) and he added another 4 seasons more with 90+ runs scored. In other words, he was a player who made an offense go.
Bonds' career OBP was .353, a full .85 points above his career batting average, drawing 914 walks in his career. The one offensive drawback Bonds had was strikeouts, with his career total of 1757 nearly giving him a 2 to 1 ratio on the negative side of things and likely being a large contributor to his batting average not being higher.
Bonds had 4 seasons, his first, his last two and one injury year, in which he played between 45 and 99 games, so his equivalency score was just under 12 seasons worth of games played in 14 total seasons, which is not an overly long career. Dividing his totals by those twelve years gives him averages of 28 HRs, 104 Runs scored, 85 RBIs and 38 stolen bases per season. I say, forgive him the .268 average and the rest of the numbers finally put a Bonds we can ALL get behind in the HoF.
Kenny Lofton
Although they had some career overlap, Kenny Lofton was the best heir in waiting to Rickey Henderson's crown as the best leadoff hitter in the game during his time. Like Bobby Bonds, Lofton was beset by a bit of an injury bug, and while never missing a large amount of time, he had 6 seasons (out of his 17 in the majors) in which he played 75% or less of his team's games. Lofton played 2103 career games, equal to almost exactly thirteen 162 game seasons.
Lofton's 622 career stolen bases combined with his .299 career batting average and .372 career OBP should put him in the Hall on their own. But if you take Kenny Lofton's numbers and divide them down into those 13 seasons worth of games, he averages 10 HRs, 118 runs scored, 60 RBIs and 48 bases stolen per each 162-game season.
I feel that Lofton will likely end up in the HoF in the not-too-distant future, but that will be at the hands of the Eras Committee, as Lofton did not receive enough votes in his first year eligible to remain on the regular ballot. He deserves a spot in Cooperstown and if you don't believe me, I will quote the Wikipedia article about him: "Lofton falling off the BBWAA ballot after one year despite his career statistics, accolades, and relatively clean reputation during the steroid era has often been considered by baseball fans as one of the most egregious Hall of Fame exclusions in history, and has been used as an example of criticism towards the election process."
Bobby Abreu
One of the problems with playing in the modern era is that with nearly twice as many teams than were around in earlier eras, really good players can toil in relative obscurity and suffer a bit as they are being compared to nearly twice as many players. Bobby Abreu is a good example of that. Not that Abreu's teams were obscure, as he played his entire career in 4 of the top 9 metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S.....New York, Los Angeles, Houston and Philadelphia.
But Abreu was often the second or third banana on those teams once he was an established major leaguer after his early two years in Houston. With the Phillies, it was Ryan Howard, Cole Hamels, Scott Rolen, Chase Utley and then Abreu. With his three years as a Yankee, it was Jeter and A-Rod, obviously, and Mussina, Pettite and Mariano Rivera. With the Angels, first it was Vladimir Guerrero and then it was Mike Trout and Albert Pujols. By that time, Abreu was down to his last two seasons and was a part-time player, first with the 2012 Dodgers and then, after a year off, with his final season as a NY Met.
Abreu as a player was a plus defender, with a gold glove in 2005. Abreu played an equivalent of fifteen 162 game seasons in his 18 years as a major leaguer, with 2013 spent out of the majors. Offensively, he was a moderate power hitter, averaging 19 HRs per 162 games. Abreu also hit 574 doubles (38 per year average) and had a career slugging percentage of .475 to go with the OBP of .395 (thanks, 1476 walks!) and the BA of .291. In addition, he had speed, to the tune of 400 career stolen bases and 59 triples. Abreu is also one of only seven players ever to record at least 900 career extra-base hits and steal at least 400 bases, one of only thirteen to have had more than one 30-30 season.
And, lastly, Bobby Abreu's 60.2 career WAR puts him at 19th all time for a right fielder. Average, speed, a discerning batting eye and decent power over a lengthy career. It is time for Bobby Abreu.
Urban Shocker
Urbain Jacques Shockcor, better known as Urban Shocker, had an unfortunately short life, cut short by a heart condition that was exacerbated by a bout of pneumonia, leading to his death in 1928 at the age of 37. This was the same year of his last MLB season, although he was not active at the time of his death, having been released by the Yankees in midseason.
Shocker's career got off to a bit of a slow start, pitching limited innings with the Yankees in 1916 and '17, and also in 1918 after being traded to the St. Louis Browns. So, by the time Shocker was a full-fledged starter in 1919, he was already 28 years old, having been 25 in his rookie season. Therefore, when he was released by the Yankees in 1928, there is a good chance his career might have been over even if he had remained among the living.
All of this having been said, Urban Shocker did meet the minimum career length of at least ten years for Hall induction. And he was very, very good over his relatively short career, with a 187-117 record (a .615 winning percentage) and a career 3.17 ERA, with the bulk of his innings coming AFTER the DBE ended and most ERAs climbed. After finishing his first two seasons in St. Louis, 1918-1919, with a rather pedestrian combined 19-16 record, Shocker had four straight 20 plus win seasons, compiling a 91-51 record as the Browns' ace in one of that moribund franchise's better eras. After a 16-13 year in 1924, he was traded from the Browns back to the Yankees. In 1925 for the Yanks, he was 12-12 (Shocker never had a losing record in any season) and then went 19-11 and 18-6 in his final two full seasons, getting a 1927 World Series ring in the bargain a year before his untimely death.
Bob Caruthers
Bob Caruthers was a busy, busy man back in the very earliest days of major league baseball. Caruthers had 310 career starts and 340 total pitching appearances in which accumulated an otherworldly 218 - 99 record (a .687 winning percentage, which is 5th on the all-time list, just ahead of Pedro Martinez). In addition, he also played 705 career games in the outfield, all of this occurring over the span of a scant 10 MLB seasons. In fact, Caruthers' very last season, 1893, is what got him to the 10-season Hall eligibility threshold but was the only season in which he didn't pitch. Most likely because he had staggered to a 2-10 record with a 5.84 ERA in 101.2 innings in 1892. Caruthers' arm was probably toast by then, as he had 288 complete games in 300 starts in the previous 8 seasons. It was truly a different game back then.
In addition to Bob Caruthers' stellar pitching (1.16 career WHIP and 2.83 career ERA to go with that gaudy record), he also batted .282 with an OBP of .391, 152 stolen bases in the 622 career games he played after that stat began to be tallied in 1886. In addition, he had 508 runs scored, including a staggering 102 runs (with 73 RBIs, too) in just 98 games in 1887. While Caruthers' hitting was good, it certainly wasn't Hall of Fame worthy, but that one extra season as just an outfielder gave him the ten-year tenure (see what I did there?) that should put him in the Hall based on his pitching prowess.
Harry Stovey
Harry Stovey was a playing contemporary of Bob Caruthers, starting his career in 1880 and finishing in 1893, as well. Considering the size of the league at the time, they probably knew each other's game quite well and had many pitcher/batter confrontations.
The best considerations of Stovey's status as a should be Hall of Famer fall in several places. First, he stole a whopping 509 bases, despite that stat only being tallied AFTER the first 6 seasons of his 14-year career. Who knows how many he actually stole? And while Stovey's defensive WAR was below average, his offensive numbers meant that in 8 of his seasons, he had an outstanding overall WAR above 4.5.
Stovey also had the type of power that was really more of a speed statistic in his day, hitting 122 career homers (in the DBE!), many of which were likely of the "inside the park" variety as he also had the speed to amass 174 career triples, as well. In an era when the average season length was only 119 games (look under the heading 19th Century Major League Baseball schedule - Wikipedia) Stovey never scored fewer that 110 runs per season for the nine seasons from 1883 - 1891. He averaged 106 runs and 65 RBIs per season for his career while batting .281 with a .361 OBP.
Norm Cash
Norm Cash was one of the better sluggers from what is known as the "second dead ball era" of baseball, usually identified as 1964-1972 and sometimes expanded out from 1963-1976. Cash played the equivalent of just over 13 seasons worth of games in a 17-year career most of it directly in the middle of this era.
Like many major leaguers, Cash didn't really get a full season worth of games until his third year and had one (sometimes there are more) season at the end of his career in which he played sparingly. Cash bookended the time in between those first two seasons and his last, when he was a full-time player (1960-1973), with a season on each end in which he played exactly 121 games, first at age 25 in 1960 and then at age 38 in 1973.
During those 14 seasons, Cash averaged 26 HRs, 77 RBIs and 72 Runs scored, with a slash line of .272/.374/.488. His WAR wasn't always high, with an average 3.86 score bolstered by an insane 10.2 WAR season in 1961, in which he hit.361 with 41 HR, 132 RBI and 119 runs scored. Cash's WAR value was diminished by playing almost his entire career at first base, a low score positional WAR position, despite the fact that his defense was considered to be a plus.
During the years of Cash's career, 1958-1974, only eight players hit more home runs and of those 8, only Frank Howard (perhaps more about him later) is not a Hall of Famer. Cash was also 18th and 19th respectively over that period of time in runs scored and RBIs.
Bob Johnson
There have been 5 Bob Johnsons who played major league baseball, but the one we are talking about here was the first and by far, the best Bob Johnson to play the game.
This Bob Johnson was a left fielder who played for the Philadelphia A's from 1933 - 1942 before a season with the Washington Senators and two with the Red Sox to close out his career. Johnson was a stalwart, playing the equivalent of 12.09 seasons (of 154 games each) in his 13-year big league career. In fact, his only season with Washington was the only season he ever played in which he didn't appear in at least 89% of his team's games for the year.
The only thing I can think of to explain why (Robert Lee) Bob Johnson is not already a Hall of Famer is that he has literally been forgotten about. Possibly because of his very pedestrian name, maybe. And also, because the A's teams he played for tended to be near the bottom of the standings. Johnson's numbers, to put it bluntly, are outstanding! Johnson had 2051 hits, 288 homers, drove in 1283 and scored 1239 runs in his career. He also had a positive walk to strikeout ratio, with 1075 walks and only 851 Ks in his career. Lastly, his slash line was .296/.393/.506 for his career.
Bob Johnson's average season reads like this: 22 homers, 95 runs, 99 RBIs and 158 hits, with a 4.37 WAR. In fact, his lowest season WAR ever was still a very solid 3.1, in his last year. He was solidly productive every year of his career, down to the last, when Johnson batted .280 with 12 HR, 74 RBIs and 71 runs scored in 1945 for Boston in 143 games (92% of his team's games) at age 39. Seems kind of like a no brainer to me.
Tim Hudson
It is funny just how quickly we can forget pretty great players not terribly long after their playing career is over. Tim Hudson is a great example of that, as it has only been 10 years since Hudson's career ended after the 2015 season with a very respectable 222-133 record (a .625 winning percentage) with a 3.49 career ERA, and yet he seems almost entirely forgotten.
In seventeen years as a starter, Hudson only had two losing seasons, the last 2 years of his career in San Francisco, when he was 9-13 (with a 3.54 ERA) and 8-9 with a more pedestrian 4.44 ERA. In his first 9 seasons, he only had one mediocre year, 2006 in Atlanta, where Hudson went 13-12 with a 4.86 ERA. Take out that season and he had 8 seasons to start his career with a .677 winning percentage (122-58) and only one season out of the 8 with an ERA above 3.53. Oddly enough, that one season produced his best record as a starter, 20-6 for the 2000 Oakland A's.
In 2008 and 2009, Hudson had some injury woes, only managing 29 starts over the 2 years, then picked back up, going 49-26 during the 2010-2012 seasons.
Of the roughly 3500 major league pitchers who have won a game, Tim Hudson is 76th all time with his 222 wins. He is also one of only 21 pitchers in league history to win at least 200 games, have at least 2,000 Ks and have a winning percentage above .600. Of those 21, fourteen are Hall of Famers. Tim Hudson needs to become number 15.
Pete Rose and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson
Yeah, those guys.
I admit that I was 100% behind Pete Rose's Hall exclusion while he was banned by MLB and, like many baseball romantics, I was 100% behind Jackson's inclusion. They were both stories of wagering and/or throwing games, but they both were so very different, and as far as the 'Black Sox' were concerned, their collectively egregious behavior was far more understandable. But now that Rose's ban has been rescinded, there is no doubt that his numbers are HoF worthy. Just say it with me.....4256 career hits. An average of 177 hits per season over a 24 (!) year career, with 13 seasons with 190+ hits. The guy truly was a machine. A no doubt, put him in certainty. Yeah, he was a jerk for most of his life, but that is not a good reason for exclusion unless your name is Curt Schilling.
The biggest difference, both as a plus and a minus for Rose versus Joe Jackson was the Rose didn't get into trouble until he had played his entire career. He had a full 24 seasons of stats to back up his statistical claim. Jackson has to be looked at keeping in mind that his career numbers could have been much higher without his banishment.
Jackson was, arguably, one of the best players in the majors when he was banned. He had been in the league for thirteen seasons (enough to meet the ten-season threshold) but he had only played 9 seasons as a full-time starter, and he was only 30 when he finished his last year, in 1920. In those 9 full time seasons, Jackson had only two with a WAR below 5 and averaged a 6.51 WAR score during that span. He also averaged 94 runs scored, 190 hits and 83 RBIs during those 9 years. His career batting average was .356 and he never hit below .300 in a full season. In addition, his career OBP is a whopping .423, tied for 21st all time with HoFer Dan Brouthers and Max Bishop. Earlier in Jackson's career, he was a speed threat, as well, racking up 177 of his career 202 stolen bases in the seven seasons between 1911-1917. And that speed also contributed to his prowess defensively in center field.
If Joe Jackson had played another six seasons, taking him up to age 36, even taking into account a likely drop-off in production as he aged, you would still be looking at a career of something like 2500 hits, 1050+ RBIs and 1200+ runs scored. Rose is an obvious HoF choice, but I also feel that 'Shoeless' Joe merits induction, too. It would be somehow fitting to induct them together.
Rocky Colavito
For an eleven season stretch from 1956 - 1966, Rocky Colavito was one of the premier offensive power threats in the game. His 358 homers in those seasons (out of 374 total for his career) had him finishing behind only Mays, Aaron, Mantle and Frank Robinson during that same period. Colavito's career average of .266 was not that high, but his OBP was nearly 100 points higher (.359) and that is attributable mainly to the 951 walks he had in his career, which put him on the positive side of his walk to strikeout ratio, as he only K'd 880 times in 14 seasons. Colavito also averaged 100 RBIs and 84 runs scored per every season's worth of games, which was 159 for him, as the switch from the 154 to the 162 game season bisected his career.
Rocky Colavito's WAR numbers were never super high, although he averaged a WAR score of 4.34 for the eleven seasons for which he was a consistent full-time player, 1956 - 1966. Generally, although known for a powerful outfield arm with 124 career outfield assists, his WAR scores were let down a bit by his defense. Some of Colavito's best offensive WAR seasons, such as 1958 and 1964-65 were marred by some of his worst defensive WAR scores. In 1958 especially, when he hit .303, with 41 HR and 113 RBIs, added 80 runs scored and a .405 OBP and only managed an overall WAR of 6.6, which IS a very good score but could have been higher had he played even to his own average defensive capabilities for that season.
I'm not really sure why Rocky Colavito has been overlooked for the Hall of Fame, but I think it is about time to put him in Cooperstown. I make the same argument for him that I do for Dale Murphy, namely that he was one of the most feared hitters of a generation. And Colavito's generation, more than that of Murphy, included some of the all-time offensive greats.
Moises Alou
The Alou family is as big a generational name in MLB history as they come, as Moises Alou's father, Felipe, his two uncles, Matty and Jesus and his cousin Mel Rojas, Sr. all had lengthy pro baseball careers. Moises, however, outshined them all.
Moises Alou, for some unfathomable reason, received only six votes in his first year of eligibility, 2014, and was dropped from future BBWAA ballots. So, he is available to be elected by the Eras Committee, and I believe his stats should give a strong recommendation that he should be chosen for enshrinement.
Alou's career spanned from 1990-2008, but that is a bit deceiving. He played in a total of 16 games for the Pirates and Expos in 1990 and then didn't return to the majors until the 1992 season with the Expos. Alou also missed the entire 1999 season with an injury (he was somewhat prone to them throughout his career) and in his final three years in the league, 2006-2008, he amassed basically a little over one season's worth of games. So, in Moises Alou's 19-year MLB career, he was really only a full-time player for 13 seasons and his games played total is the equivalent to almost exactly twelve 162 game seasons.
Extrapolate Alou's career numbers down to twelve seasons worth of games and his totals look like this: A .303 career average, 332 HR (28 per 162 games), 1287 RBIs (107 per), 1109 runs scored (92 per) and a career OBP of .369. Moises Alou averaged 75 strikeouts and 61 walks per 162 game season, as well. That is a pretty good ratio in the modern era. His lowest average for a full season in his career was .275 in 2002, one of his overall worst offensive seasons in his first year as a Chicago Cub. Alou had over 100 RBIs in 5 seasons. He had 2134 career hits (178 per 162 games) and had two seasons scoring over 100 runs, 1998 and again in 2004. He was never a great defender, but Alou was at least above average, splitting his playing time with about two thirds of his career games in left field and the other third in right, with 99 career games played in center.
and lastly....
Andres Galarraga and Alfonso Soriano
Lastly, as we have added Dale Murphy, it is only fair to add two similar players, one whose career was starting near the end of Murphy's, Andres Galarraga, and another whose career was starting near the end of Galarraga's, Alfonso Soriano.
Andres Galarraga could be viewed as a clear-cut example of benefitting from the home park that he played in. Starting in his third season, he played 4 straight seasons (1987-90) in Montreal in which he got over 600 ABs and hit for decent power but nothing like later in his career. Those full seasons as an Expo had him average 21 homers and 89 RBIs. Pretty good numbers but not earth shattering. Then Galarraga started what should have been his prime playing days, age wise, with 4 straight seasons (his last Montreal year, a season in St. Louis and his first two seasons in Colorado) in which he averaged only 106 games played per season, or 65% of a 162-game season.
But we saw what was coming, as Galarraga hit 31 homers and drove in 85 in 1994, when he only played in 103 games at Mile High Stadium. Surprisingly, unlike when the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and played in a football stadium with a very short left field porch, Mile High was not that much of an advantage and perhaps was even less homer friendly than the Rockies' eventual home, Coors Field. Galarraga had also driven in 98 the previous year with a more pedestrian total of 22 homers. That 1994 season started a stretch of 6 years, four in Colorado and 2 in Atlanta, in which "The Big Cat" average 37 HRs and 117 RBIs, including the monstrous totals of 150 RBIs and 140 RBIs in back-to-back seasons, 1996-97. He also drove in more than 100 RBIs in 5 straight seasons during that stretch, 1995-200.
Extrapolate out Galarraga's 2257 games played, and you get just short of fourteen 162 game seasons. Average out his stats over that length and he hit .288 with an OBP of .347, with 29 homers, 102 RBIs, 86 runs scored, 167 hits and 32 doubles per. Galarraga was considered an average to slightly above average fielder, although his entire career was spent at first base or as a DH, so his WAR scores take a dent with a positional average of -8.16 for the bulk of his fourteen seasons as a full-time player.
Alfonso Soriano is a classic case of a player whose offensive value kept him in an everyday lineup in spite of his defensive woes. In fact, he led all major league second baseman in errors in each season between 2001-2006. But, despite that, he was only truly dinged in terms of WAR in 2001 and in 2005. And, in some ways, the errors were not surprising, as Soriano also only missed a total of 42 games in those 6 seasons. So the same factor that played such a part in his massive offensive stats also gave him more of an opportunity to make errors via increased chances. Soriano was also 3rd in putouts and 4th in assists for second baseman during that 6-year span.
On the other side of the game, however, Soriano was the best offensive weapon at second in the league, even with playing at a time coinciding with the careers of Jeff Kent and HoFer Craig Biggio. During that 2001-2006 span, when his defense could be cringe-worthy, Alfonso Soriano led MLB second basemen in at bats and plate appearances, was 2nd in hits, first in doubles and in homers (by 54 total, hitting 9 more HRs per season more than Jeff Kent) first again in runs scored and was second to Kent in RBIs, Soriano was, quite clearly, the best offensive weapon at second base in the league, and only trailed Alex Rodriguez and Miguel Tejada in terms of middle infield offensive prowess, as well. And Alfonso did it without PED allegations, too. In fact, A-Rod only hit 24 more homers in those 6 seasons than Soriano.
Basically put, Alfonso Soriano had 6 great offensive seasons and 6 very good seasons in a 16-year career, which was, truthfully, a 14-year career because he only played 31 games in 1999 and 2000 combined. And Soriano was productive right up through his last full season, 2013, when he hit 34 homers, drove in 101 RBIs, scored 84 runs and stole 18 bases at the age of 37. He totaled 412 homers, 481 doubles, 1152 runs score and 1159 RBIs with a career average of .270 in what extrapolates into the equivalent of just over twelve 162 game seasons. It's time to put him in the Hall!
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In the end, we all probably have guys who we think belong in the Hall and others that we think don't. It is as classic a sports talking point or argument starter as the G.O.A.T debates or prognosticating future results for a team or league.
Ultimately, I am bit old school in terms of how I view statistics and baseball is a sport that absolutely thrives on statistical analysis. And I tend to rely on stats as opposed to the analysis that many ex-players and fans like to use, the "eye test". There have been many players in every sport over the years who perform well but who fans despise and they are often denigrated using the eye test. The most egregious example I can think of is how Yankees fans felt about Alex Rodriguez.
A-Rod is, indeed, a polarizing figure, for what it's worth. I get that people don't like him. But that dislike translated into fans consistently carping about how he wasn't "clutch". That is the most ridiculous statement ever made and his numbers 100% prove that he was very "clutch". In Rodriguez's first seven Yankee seasons, he hit 268 homers and drove in 841 RBIs. He scored 748 runs and stole 124 bases, all while hitting .296. That translates to an AVERAGE season of 38 homers, 120 RBIs and 107 runs scored with 18 stolen bases. Simply put, you cannot fail to be "clutch" and average driving in 120 runs a season. It is simply impossible, unless you somehow manage to hit 120 solo homers, none of which ever tie the game or put your team in the lead. And those numbers include three seasons, 2008-2010 in which Rodriguez only averaged 133 games played per season. Maybe that was why he wasn't "clutch" enough for Yankees' fans.
And, as you read above in my entries about Brooks Robinson and Bill Mazeroski, that visceral and emotional feeling about what a person sees also effects the overall judgements about a player's career worth, and not always in the most balanced way.
My point in this rant is to trust the numbers and use them to make determinations about players. And yes, like the types of numbers you like and be prepared to defend them. I like batting stats, the basics....batting average, on base percentage, homers, RBIs, runs scored, stolen bases. Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is another stat that I like, but I do not use it like some as the end all, be all of value determination. WAR is good for determining the defensive worth of a player who puts up steady, if not spectacular, offensive numbers. It is a good combo stat of overall value, but does have its flaws, as well.
In the end, however, I believe that one should watch the games for enjoyment and to be amazed but look at the stats to judge how good a player actually is. Especially in comparison his peers of the same era.
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