My take on everyone on the ballot, as I wrote it on my baseball blog last week:
ROBERTO ALOMAR---Should have gone in on the first ballot last year.
I said why when he didn't make it (http://catbirdinthenosebleedseats.blogspot.com/2010/01/alomar-snub-calm-down-and-say-bull.html - broken link), and I haven't had any reason to change my mind. My best guess is that the greatest second baseman ever to play the game who wasn't named Joe Morgan is going in this time around. But I've learned never to underestimate the potential for vapour lock among the voting writers. Not that Alomar's was the first such disgrace by any measure. (It took Joe DiMaggio four years to be elected to the Hall of Fame; it took Willie Mays two.) But anyone who says the Hirschbeck incident didn't loom large enough (when Alomar's final three sad seasons didn't) is probably full of it, which tells you how much they
listened to John Hirschbeck himself (http://catbirdinthenosebleedseats.blogspot.com/2009/11/dont-even-think-about-it-alomar-belongs.html - broken link).
CARLOS BAERGA---Everyone remembers when he looked for all the world to see like a Hall of Famer in the making, namely: those first few of Cleveland seasons. As a matter of fact, a lot of people remember when he looked like he had the chance to become Roberto Alomar's only real competition as the game's best second baseman. There were few sights sadder in the 1990s than seeing Baerga proving that looks weren't everything so far as that went. For all his talent he peaked too soon and had a long, sad slide downward. Nowhere near a Hall of Famer.
JEFF BAGWELL---He, too, should be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. (By the Bill James measurements for meeting Hall of Fame standards and rating on the Hall of Fame batting monitor, Bagwell's a slightly above average Hall of Famer.) So why do I think he'll be told, more or less, to wait his turn, too? About the only real knock on Bagwell is that his bat made him look like a better all-around first baseman than he really was. (Defencively, he was about average. Maybe a tick either way.)
HAROLD BAINES---Take a very, very close look. Then ask yourself how Baines could be considered a Hall of Famer when he pulls up shorter than anyone likes to remember. He was one hell of a hitter for a long enough time, but he never quite crossed the line from good to great.
BERT BLYLEVEN---I'll say it again: he's a career value Hall of Famer. He may not have been a no-questions-asked dominator (even if he had the third most monstrous curve ball of the post-World War II era, behind Sandy Koufax and Dwight Gooden), but he was most likely hurt by his home parks (even one additional season in a neutral or pitcher's park would have shoved him into the 300-win club) . . . and he was quietly deadly in the postseason. Think of him as a parallel Don Sutton---he kind of snuck up on you with how great he actually was.
BRET BOONE---Not even close; three Hall of Fame-caliber seasons in a fourteen-year career isn't even Harold Baines.
KEVIN BROWN---Might have finished off with a Hall of Fame career if he hadn't been a little too ornery for his own good and injured a little too often for his own good. He was a great pitcher for quite a few seasons---he dealt with a few too many injuries during his tenure with the Dodgers---and I'd bet to this day about half the people who read the damn thing and knew Brown well enough still can't figure out how the hell he ended up named in the Mitchell Report. (He was ornery before he was a suspect, and he was also posting ERAs under three before he was a suspect.) Unfortunately, this is the memory most people have of him: he was murdered when the Yankees handed him the ball to start Game Seven, 2004 American League Championship Series.
JOHN FRANCO---A great pitcher who wasn't strictly a three-and-done closer, but short enough of a Hall of Famer.
JUAN GONZALEZ---Thanks to Jose Canseco, Juan Gone's credibility has been compromised to a small extent. Barring any unexpected revelation from sources more credible and less self-serving than Canseco, I think Gonzalez on his own merit pulls up just short and almost borderline as a Hall of Famer. Some might argue that his stats were inflated otherwise by yummy home parks, but Gonzalez was a dangerous hitter for a long enough time and does have a pair of MVPs for his trouble. Had he been a better defencive player (he was mediocre at best, alas), his Hall of Fame case might be stronger.
MARQUIS GRISSOM---He was a better player than you probably remember him being. Or was he? I'm having a very difficult time accepting that an early-in-the-order man with a lifetime .318 on-base percentage was a better player than he's remembered to have been, though he was a terrific defencive outfielder and could turn a ball game into a track meet when he did reach base. (One thing that probably hurt him was how weak he was at drawing walks.) Solid player but not even close to a Hall of Famer. Not even in the same time zone, really.
LENNY HARRIS---Baseball's all-time pinch hit leader got to become a great pinch hitter because he wasn't really good enough to do anything else regularly. And most of his pinch hits were singles that didn't really mean all that much to his teams in the big picture. (Did you know: his lifetime slugging percentage is .349.) It was a dirty job and somebody had to do it, but even Manny Mota and Smoky Burgess had better slugging percentages and were good for producing about a hundred runs per 162 games.
BOBBY HIGGINSON---I can think of only one reason why he's on the ballot: it's been five or more years since he retired. And while he was once the best player on some of the worst teams ever to wear Detroit Tigers uniforms, that's about the best you can say for him.
CHARLES JOHNSON---Brilliant defencive catcher. Could do a little bit of everything when right. Did not enough of it to make a Hall of Fame case.
BARRY LARKIN---I'd vote for him even though I don't think he'll get in for another couple of years. He was probably overshadowed badly enough by Cal Ripken and Alex Rodriguez, but Larkin was the best all-around shortstop you barely heard of in his time and place. (He was also the first shortstop to hang up a 30-30 season, incidentally.)
AL LEITER---He probably got overworked out of a Hall of Fame performance, but Leiter was a terrific pitcher---good enough to pitch for three World Series winners, in fact---especially when he was healthy. He once earned Sandy Koufax's friendship and personal tutelage when Koufax told him quietly, at a Mets spring camp, "You should be better," and Leiter replied honestly, without flinching, "I know."
EDGAR MARTINEZ---I know he's just about the greatest designated hitter who ever swung the bat. And that's just about all I know. He was only a serviceable defencive third baseman and couldn't hack it when he was tried at first base, but his bat was just too valuable. On the Jamesian measures Martinez as a hitter shakes out as an average Hall of Famer. The DH bias probably keeps him from getting in for a good while, though I could be wrong about that, too.
TINO MARTINEZ---As valuable as he was to quite a few Yankee championship teams, Martinez actually wasn't quite as great as he's sometimes remembered to have been. He was a fine defencive first baseman and a solid enough hitter who had a couple of big enough seasons, but he actually had a modest postseason career: his postseason on-base percentage was 23 points below his regular-season mark, and he batted 38 points lower in the postseason than he did in the regular season. This isn't necessarily a mark against a player---quite a few Hall of Famers didn't hit in the postseason the way they did in the regular campaign---but Tino Martinez is well enough short of the Hall of Fame's zip code.
DON MATTINGLY---His back ended up keeping him from solidifying the Hall of Fame career he looked to be posting in those first few Yankee seasons, but there were reasons why he earned the nickname Donnie Baseball.
FRED McGRIFF---What's probably killing the Crime Dog most as a Hall of Fame candidate isn't that he fell short enough of five hundred bombs but that he wasn't even close to being as good a hitter in late-inning pressure or when the games were close as he was when it wasn't the late innings or the games were within less than four runs. I'm on the fence with McGriff, but I could always be persuaded one way or the other.
MARK McGWIRE---He'll get in sooner or later. There's just too much evidence in favour of the argument that McGwire didn't need actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances to do the things he did at the plate, and that they probably didn't do a damn thing for him other than just what he says, help him recover quicker from injuries. There may be a swell of keeping him from getting in until maybe his final year of eligibility, and McGwire himself has said that coming clean was more important to him than making the Hall of Fame, but I think he gets there in due course. One huge point in his favour: McGwire didn't spend his years in exile protesting that he was baseball's wronged man.
RAUL MONDESI---Talented, troubled, troublesome. Good hitter, good outfielder, a few 30-30 seasons, terrific arm, but didn't keep himself together well enough to get to within an ocean's length of the Hall of Fame. Essentially, he had Roberto Clemente's tools but nowhere near Roberto Clemente's drive and togetherness, though he sure did seem more comfortable in the field than at the plate and to know how to get a standing O whenever he hit one of his patented bellybust slides in the outfield . . .
JACK MORRIS---Genuinely great pitchers do
not pitch just to the scoreboard. That's probably the biggest barrier between Morris and Cooperstown, but it's a barrier profound enough.
DALE MURPHY---If all you need is character, Murphy would have been a Hall of Famer already. He, too, got robbed of an absolute Hall of Fame career by injuries.
JOHN OLERUD---Famous for wearing a batting helmet even in the field, following recovery from a brain aneurysm. Solid hitter, solid first baseman, one of the best in the business in his time, and they probably still think the Mets made a big mistake in not trying to re-sign him for 2000, but while he was one of the most underrated players of his time he's not even close to a Hall of Famer.
RAFAEL PALMEIRO---He was the Bert Blyleven of position players, sneaking up on you when you weren't looking, until that one positive steroid test (after he finger-wagged his denial before the House Committee on Sending Swell Messages to Kids)---just days after he nailed his 3,00th career base hit (he already had 500+ bombs and 1800+ runs batted in)---blew his reputation to smithereens.
The problem is: Palmeiro
really may have turned up positive for stanozolol by way of a tainted vitamin B12 ingestion. The problem further is: Palmeiro tested negative in 2003; he tested negative again almost a month after the positive test that would smash his reputation to bits---a negative test he took a fortnight before the positive was disclosed. And it gets better: Palmeiro passed a polygraph test that indicated he'd offered no responses "indicative of deception." Even the House Committee on Sending Swell Messages to Kids concluded there was nothing to tie Palmeiro to actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances before Palmeiro appeared before it.
That probably won't help him reach the Hall of Fame on his first try this year. But it probably will help clear his way in due course. He will probably prove the absolute most quiet superstar to make it to Cooperstown if he gets in. And, unlike a lot of instances of debatable wrongdoing,
it actually does seem as though the closer you look at Palmeiro, the
less wrong there is to see. Something else of which to make note: Palmeiro spent the bulk of his career playing for bad teams; he was particularly lethal in the middle innings of games and very capable in late inning pressure situations, but just what good is it when nobody else around you steps up or keeps the other guys from stepping higher in those situations?
Until that certain issue decimated his reputation, Rafael Palmeiro looked like he was going to be Ernie Banks without the extroverted personality---a bona-fide Hall of Famer who'd been sentenced unconscionably to performing most of his career for teams that didn't necessarily deserve him. He actually did get to two postseasons in a twenty-year career (Banks never did), and he performed decently enough when he got there, but those teams---the 1996-97 Orioles, who would not have gotten there without him in the first place---didn't get past the League Championship Series in each instance, and it wasn't even close to his fault that they didn't.
Do you know or remember: Rafael Palmeiro finished his career with
more walks than strikeouts? He struck out 100+ times only once; he walked 100+ times thrice; he finished his career with five more walks than strikeouts overall; and only
once in his career (1997, when the difference was 42+ strikeouts) did he ever strike out twelve or more times more than he walked. His final lifetime average per 162 games was exactly the same---77 walks, 77 strikeouts.
DAVE PARKER---Almost, but not quite. Invaluable in the clubhouse once he got his act together, though.
TIM RAINES---I'm just going to repeat what I wrote last year: Don't knock the Rock.
You may wish to murder me for this, but Allen Barra (in
Clearing the Bases) was absolutely right: Raines's fifteen best seasons shake out as being
better than the fifteen best of a should-be Hall of Famer who was practically his match, a switch-hitter with a little power who extorted his way on base and hit early in the lineup.
The player is Pete Rose.
Citing
Total Baseball's estimate of the fifteen best seasons by Rose and Raines, Barra shook them out thus: it took Rose 204 more games to reach base 34 more times a season than Raines in the career shakeout, and to produce 9.3 more runs a season.
Quote:
That Rose had to play in 204 more games to do that convinces me that Raines was, perhaps, more skilled than Rose in the art of producing runs. The question is, does Rose's durability automatically make him more valuable? After all, he did accumulate more total runs.
Actually, the question is a great deal more complex than that. First of all, although he played alongside some fine hitters in Gary Carter and Andre Dawson, Raines had nothing like the career-long quality of teammates that was afforded Pete Rose. Rose played nearly all his best years on the Reds with teammates such as Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, and Dave Concepcion, and on the Phillies, he batted in front of Mike Schmidt and Greg Luzinski. Given Raines's greater home run total and far superior speed, I think if he batted in front of the same hitters Rose had, he would have produced not only more runs but signficantly more runs per season---and remember that's in 200 fewer games. Second, think of how many fewer outs Raines would have used up to produce those runs, and how many more runs those outs would have produced spread around the lineup.
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This isn't even beginning to consider the point that Raines probably hung up an uncounted extra parcel of runs by his more consistent ability to go first to third or second and even first to home on base hits, an ability Rose didn't always have despite his reputation as diving Charlie Hustle.
The Rock's big problem is that he didn't leave a glaring statistical benchmark by which to judge him, not even the 200-hit season. On the other hand . . . so what of it? Do you think a decade of 200-hit seasons equals an automatic, no-questions-asked great hitter? Then why would you consider as mediocre hitters one Hall of Famer who had six measly 200-hit seasons; a second Hall of Famer who had three such seasons; a pair of Hall of Famers who had exactly one such season; and another pair who had exactly no such seasons? Now, tell me you plan to argue that Pete Rose was a greater hitter than Stan Musial (the six), Babe Ruth (the three), Willie Mays (one), Frank Robinson (one, too), Ted Williams (never), or Mickey Mantle (neither did he).
Better, still, tell me why you would think Pete Rose was a better hitter than a guy who was his near-equal skill-set player but, over their fifteen best seasons each, reached base more often, used less outs to get there (ponder, too, that Raines was so good at wringing out walks he wouldn't have put up three thousand hits even without losing so much time to cocaine addiction---to which he copped and sought treatment
on his own---and lupus), hit with a little more power, produced quite a few more runs, and had hugely superior speed?
"Simply put," Barra concluded, "all the indications are that under the same conditions and in the same situations, Tim Raines would have produced at least as many and probably more runs than Pete Rose. That's not going to make him as hot an item on the autograph circuit as Pete Rose, but it ought to be good enough to get Tim Raines a plaque at Cooperstown."
Indeed. But you don't have to make him a might-have-been case. What was should be enough.
And, just for the record, I bet you didn't realise that Tim Raines also reached base more and scored more runs than Tony Gwynn.
KIRK RUETER---Woody (memory check: his resemblance to the
Toy Story character earned him the nickname) was a nice guy and a fine pitcher. He won more than he lost but he wasn't a Hall of Famer on the best day of his life. See Bobby Higginson, sort of.
BENITO SANTIAGO---Had a shotgun for a throwing arm behind the plate at his best. Managed to get twenty years out of his often-compromised body. Solid but not Cooperstown solid.
LEE SMITH---I'm still on the fence with Smith. I don't really know whether he was Hall of Fame material, but I don't really know that he isn't, either. He was as good as it got in his prime and often better. If I'm missing something that would secure him as a no-questions-asked Hall of Famer, I'm willing to be persuaded all the way into the camp.
On the other hand, here's a stat that
might be causing him a little trouble: lifetime, he has a .299 batting average against him on balls in play. This may or may not be as much an effect of his defenders, but that ain't The Mariano (.263). It also isn't Bruce Sutter (.262), Trevor Hoffman (.266), or Goose Gossage (.277).
B.J. SURHOFF---Had a good career. Retired five years and on the ballot. That's all, folks.
ALAN TRAMMELL---I'm still where I was last year: unconvinced that he's a Hall of Famer, unconvinced that he isn't. But if he isn't the greatest shortstop in baseball history, he's no questions asked the greatest shortstop in the history of the Tigers.
P.S.: I DON'T KNOW JUST WHAT THIS MEANS, BUT I'll SAY IT ANYWAY---Eight of the players on this year's ballot put in time (or served sentence, depending on your point of view) with the Orioles: Roberto Alomar, Harold Baines, Kevin Brown, Charles Johnson, Rafael Palmeiro, Tim Raines, Lee Smith, and B.J. Surhoff.