After a one-year hiatus, Graham Womack has returned to his 50
Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame project, and I have once again decided
to contribute. One twist is that, this year, he had to trim his list down to
just the 25 Best Players. I might still name a Top 50 to match years past, but
for now, I’ll just go over my ballot for the top 25 and save the rest for
another day. Once I do that, it shouldn’t be too difficult to whittle that down
to my 10-person Hall list for 2016.
My methodology for my ballot was pretty straightforward. I used
my past years’ ballots as starting points, saw how many openings I had, then
decided what changes I needed. The top spots were easy to decide, and the only
really difficult choices came down to the last four or five slots. As usual, I
noted on Graham’s ballot that I’d vote for all of my choices for the real Hall
of Fame, as all 25 easily clear the standards set forth by Cooperstown (as I’ve
shown in the past, usually, the top 50 or so players not in the Hall are
still as
good as the median Hall of Famer, if not better, as the Hall includes far
more than just the Willie Mayses as Babe Ruths of the game).
Since my last
ballot on this matter, four players have gotten the call: Greg Maddux, Tom
Glavine, Frank Thomas, and Joe Torre. That means I’ll need to cut at least 21
players to get to the appropriate number. How many newcomers do I have to
account for? Certainly Ken Griffey, Jr., as there’s clearly no argument against
him. Also Jim Edmonds; I can’t see any argument that he isn’t on of the 50 Best
players not inducted yet, although we’ll need to see if he makes the top 25.
I’m not sure I’d add Trevor Hoffman or Billy Wagner to the list, but they’d be
in the conversation. My uncertainty stems more from how to treat the general
position of relief pitcher (if we decided we need to elect some eligible
reliever to Cooperstown right now,
Hoffman and Wagner would be my choices 1 and 1A). So at least two of our open
slots are filled.
Next, I need to whittle my rough, ~48-person list down to
just 25. This seems like it might be a difficult task, but it winds up being
easier than you might think. While the ballot itself never requires ranking, it
would be a lie to say that I don’t consider some players on my list stronger
candidates than others. I’ll start with the more “obvious” choices, as they
generally take less explanation to get through.
I’ll start with the easiest pick: Ken Griffey Jr. makes his
debut on the ballot, and he’d polling at 100% on early ballots. I don’t think
it’s too crazy to say I’d put him on my list.
Mike Piazza, Jeff Bagwell, and Tim Raines are all in
position to be elected at well, as all have above 75% of early support so far.
I don’t think all will make it this
year(Tim Raines has trended downward a little too much, but he’ll be in prime
position for next year), but it seems clear a majority of people now agree that
they’re deserving. They seem like rather self-explanatory choices.
I may as well move on to Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens next.
Regardless of your thoughts on whether they should make the Hall of Fame, the
list is titled in a pretty self-explanatory manner: “Best Players Not in the
Hall of Fame”. I just don’t see any way you can argue that list shouldn’t
include Bonds and Clemens. They’re arguably the best hitter and pitcher of
all-time, respectively. As I’ve written before, though, I think that they
should be in the Hall as well.
Similar story with Pete Rose. Different situation, but the
end result is the same. Can’t see a good reason to keep the all-time hits
leader off the list. Joe Jackson falls into the same situation; he doesn’t have
the most hits of all-time, but he was still pretty fantastic.
I’ve written about Curt Schilling and Mike Mussina a lot
already (here’s
one such example), and I feel they’re obvious choices. While they may not
be on Randy Johnson or Greg Maddux’s level, they’re clearly among the top 8
pitchers of their generation (I’d argue top six personally, but I don’t see any
way you could drop them below top eight), and as Matt
Snyder of CBS Sports points out, most generations account for a dozen or
more starters.
Speaking of undervalued starters, I’d argue that Kevin Brown
is the next step below Glavine and Smoltz (who I’d argue are choices seven and
eight), and I’m not sure there’s a better starter not in the Hall or still on
the ballot.
I write about Edgar Martinez and Larry Walker every year for
my ballots, since they’ve hung around so long. Here’s last
year’s ballot, if you’d like an argument. I’m just over halfway full on my
ballot.
Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker should have been in a while
ago, and people have written about their cases for years. Trammell’s still on
the ballot, while Whitaker’s one-and-done is frequently cited as one of the
great injustices of Hall voting. And while we’re on the topic of “middle
infielders who were overlooked because they did everything well”, Bobby Grich
has perhaps become the poster boy for this cause. There’s another one, leaving
ten spaces.
Bill Dahlen and Jack
Glasscock are probably the last great remaining snubs from the early 20th
century. I’ve written about both before in my past “50 Best” lists, but long
story short, they were both shortstops with great gloves and good bats. Both
hit like Alan Trammell (110 and 112 OPS+, against Trammell’s 110), or just a
bit below Derek Jeter (115) while being good shortstops. That’s pretty
valuable.
I’ve written entire pieces about Kenny Lofton before,
and he definitely deserved better. I think he’s one of the better missing
players from the recent past.
Duke Snider was relatively underappreciated in his time. It
took him 11 tries on the ballot to make Cooperstown, even though it’s hard to
argue that he wasn’t one of the seven or eight best at his position of all-time
when he retired. You
know who’s career looks a lot like Sniders? Jim Edmonds, who probably won’t
even see another year on the ballot. Between Brown, Lofton, and Edmonds, we’ve
had some great one-year wonders the past few ballots.
Before the recent crush of great pitchers getting stranded
in no-man’s land, Rick Reuschel had a legitimate claim to the title of “Best
Pitcher Outside the Hall”, as well as “Most Underrated Pitcher”, something a
lot of people missed until value stats like WAR were popularized. This
article is old, but still one of my favorite for explaining why Reuschel
rates where he does.
I only have five more choices, and it’s harder and harder to
differentiate. I felt bad drawing distinctions at this level, since I was
usually making calls for such minor reasons, but I needed something to separate
some players from the pack.
My first pick was Mark McGwire. He’s right in the middle of
the pack in value on my last 50 Best ballot, but I feel like McGwire deserves
some extra credit for the 1998 season that puts him over. He’s arguably the
greatest home run hitter of all-time (no one has a better AB/HR rate), had a
fantastic batting eye, and has a huge place in the story of the game. That
feels worthy of this list.
Position was a big factor the rest of the way. For example,
I also included Graig Nettles. Again, based on my lists, he’s right there in
the pack thanks to his jack-of-all-trade status. I’ve always thought the Hall
could use more third basemen, and Nettles is probably the best eligible one on
the outside at the moment, with 68.0 bWAR and 65.7 fWAR.
My list felt a little skewed towards hitters, seeing as I’m
at a 16-6 split right now. The Hall is a little more balanced than that, so
what other hurlers could I have added? In the end, I decided that David Cone
and Luis Tiant were the best arms remaining. Cone works into what I was writing
earlier about Mussina and Schilling; maybe he is the tenth or eleventh or
twelfth best pitcher of his generation. That’s still usually good enough for
induction, so it’s not a huge issue. For Tiant, I was deciding between a lot of
choices. I liked Bret Saberhagen’s peak, and Tommy John’s longevity, but I
thought Tiant had the best combination of the two. These two are probably the
one’s I’m shakiest on; I’m a little worried I downplayed John’s sturdy
consistency too much. If I were doing it over, this is probably the space that
would be most likely to change, but for now, I think these are fine picks. I
wondered about including a closer here, but I couldn’t narrow it down between
Trevor Hoffman and Billy Wagner; outside of Hoffman’s save totals, they were
rather similar, to be honest. I wasn’t sure I could argue for either over one
of these starters, so I went with neither.
My last spot was tricky. I almost went with Ted Simmons
since I feel catchers are underrated in the Hall as well, or Buddy Bell to add
another third basemen, or Rafael Palmeiro for making two big milestones, but in
the end, I went with Dwight Evans for his well-rounded excellence. People
compare Tim Raines to Tony Gwynn all the time, and I think Dwight Evans fits
into that mold quite well. Being
a personal favorite of Bill James’ doesn’t hurt. I understand if people
quibble with this pick, as there are a lot of good players and arguments for
them right at the borderline, but I feel like this is a reasonable pick.
As a epilogue, since this will be my last post before the
Hall results are shared, I’ll include my ballot for this year’s Hall of Fame.
This is what I went with in the Baseball Blogger Alliance’s voting:
Jeff Bagwell
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Jim Edmonds
Edgar Martinez
Mike Mussina
Mike Piazza
Tim Raines
Curt Schilling
Larry Walker
I’ve written a lot about this, both today and over the years,
so I’ll keep it brief. Yes, I did not vote for Griffey, but I think every
player on my list is deserving, and all were in much more dire need of a vote
than The Kid (who’s still at 100% on the BBWAA’s early votes with under 20
hours to go). This is what happens when the Hall of Fame refuses to fix its
broken voting process, so I don’t feel too bad about the end result (especially
since, in the end, my vote isn’t the one actually getting players in or keeping
them out).
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