Your top 3 non HOFers

[Peter_Spaeth]

No Rose, no steroid dudes, no guys not yet eligible.

Who are your top 3 post war non HOFers? Not meant to be a thread about who SHOULD be in, as I think it's already overstuffed.

The numbers probably won't bear me out, but my picks would be Hodges, Oliva and Garvey.

[The-Cardfather]

I would Agree with Gil Hodges. But I would add Tim Raines & Keith Hernandez to my list.

[JustinD]

Hey Pete,

Not starting a debate, but if Rose, Jackson and the "steroid era" guys are out I have no one that fits that bill.

I still think entrance requirements based on character and not accomplishment make the HOF a joke.

Just a personal opinion.

...and I agree. It's overstuffed with plenty of borderline homer fan picks already.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by JustinD

Hey Pete,

Not starting a debate, but if Rose, Jackson and the "steroid era" guys are out I have no one that fits that bill.

I still think entrance requirements based on character and not accomplishment make the HOF a joke.

Just a personal opinion.

...and I agree. It's overstuffed with plenty of borderline homer fan picks already.

Again, and apologies if it was not clear, not asking who should be in or out. Just to identify top players who are not in.

[pokerplyr80]

Hodges, Mattingly, and Edgar Martinez.

[mrmopar]

I'll go with a Dodger theme of Garvey, Hodges, Daubert and W. Davis. I know 3 was the request, but felt I couldn't exclude 1 here.

[sago]

Albert Belle, Keith Hernandez, and Ted Simmons.

[Canofcorn]

Mattingly, Trammel, Bagwell

[Vintagevault13]

Dale Murphy, Fred McGriff, Alan Trammel


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[aconte]

Dale Murphy, Larry Bowa, Steve Garvey

[midmo]

Gil Hodges, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy

[bobsbbcards]

Jim McCormick, Bill Dahlen, and Lou Whitaker

[rats60]

Bagwell
Raines
Trammell

[nat]

Reasons are more interesting than just names. Let's hear the arguments for these guys.

I'm going to exclude Bagwell and Raines, because I think it's very very likely that they get in in the next year (Raines) or two (Bagwell). Schilling and a couple other guys currently on the ballot get omitted for similar reasons.

Don't hold me to these picks as the very best, but here are a few:

Lou Whittaker. Lou's trouble is that he did everything well and nothing outstanding. He had good power (20 HR range in the 1980s), was a good fielder (+15 dWAR, although some of that he gets just for playing second base, but he also won a few gold gloves), he walked more than he struck out. He was an above-average batter all but one year of his career, even playing a defense-first position. 75 wins above replacement (basically, if you replaced him with a AAA guy you'd expect to win 75 fewer games over the course of his career) and 42 wins above average, both well above what it usually takes to get into the hall of fame.

Kevin Brown. I know that this one will be unpopular, but Brown really was a great player, it's just that no one was paying attention. From 1992 to 2001 (the heart of his career) he had a 3.00 ERA over 2166 innings. From 1996 to 1998, his best seasons, he had a 2.33 ERA over 717 innings. Good for a 172 ERA+ (Basically just ERA once you control for the parks where he played, and compared to average; higher is better.) By comparison from 1964 to 1966 Koufax had a 176 ERA+ in 881 innings. So his peak was not quite as good as Koufax's, that's nothing to be ashamed of. 68 WAR/ 40 WAA for him.

Got to run, I'll come up with a third later.

[Peter_Spaeth]

I assume steroid suspicion has kept Bagwell out, no? Otherwise he seems pretty obvious.

My reasoning on Hodges Oliva and Garvey is that they were each pretty dominant players for a decade or close to it, although they didn't quite put together the big career numbers. I guess Mattingly fits that bill too.

[bn2cardz]

Originally Posted by nat

Reasons are more interesting than just names. Let's hear the arguments for these guys.

I'm going to exclude Bagwell and Raines, because I think it's very very likely that they get in in the next year (Raines) or two (Bagwell). Schilling and a couple other guys currently on the ballot get omitted for similar reasons.

Don't hold me to these picks as the very best, but here are a few:

Lou Whittaker. Lou's trouble is that he did everything well and nothing outstanding. He had good power (20 HR range in the 1980s), was a good fielder (+15 dWAR, although some of that he gets just for playing second base, but he also won a few gold gloves), he walked more than he struck out. He was an above-average batter all but one year of his career, even playing a defense-first position. 75 wins above replacement (basically, if you replaced him with a AAA guy you'd expect to win 75 fewer games over the course of his career) and 42 wins above average, both well above what it usually takes to get into the hall of fame.

Kevin Brown. I know that this one will be unpopular, but Brown really was a great player, it's just that no one was paying attention. From 1992 to 2001 (the heart of his career) he had a 3.00 ERA over 2166 innings. From 1996 to 1998, his best seasons, he had a 2.33 ERA over 717 innings. Good for a 172 ERA+ (Basically just ERA once you control for the parks where he played, and compared to average; higher is better.) By comparison from 1964 to 1966 Koufax had a 176 ERA+ in 881 innings. So his peak was not quite as good as Koufax's, that's nothing to be ashamed of. 68 WAR/ 40 WAA for him.

Got to run, I'll come up with a third later.

Kevin Brown was listed in the Mitchel Report.

[gnpaden]

Fred McGriff, Kenny Lofton and Tony Oliva.

[stlcardsfan]

Here are three guys that played for the Cardinals for quite a bit of their career. I am sure almost every team could come up with three players that they think should be in.

Jim Edmonds - nearly identical career batting numbers to Duke Snider, and a great fielder.

Ted Simmons - would be in if a guy named Johnny Bench wasn't playing at the same time.

Lee Smith - dominant closer of his time with a ton of saves. I know closers don't get much love in HOF though.

[bravos4evr]

However, I still feel like a pitcher who went 22-10 had a better year than a guy who went 9-13, regardless of advanced metrics. I suspect the two pitchers in question would agree. I'm not saying the former is the better pitcher in vacuo...just that he had a better year.

hmm, in 2010 Felix Hernandez had an ERA of 2.27 over 249 innings and yet only had a record of 13-12 (yet he won the Cy Young that year)

The league leaders in wins were CC Sabathia 21-7 with a 3.18 ERA , Lester at 19-9 with a 3.25 ERA and David Price with a 19-6 record and 2.72 ERA.

Felix had an ERA nearly half a pt better than the nearest win leader yet he had a mediocre record. why? he played for a bad team.

pitcher wins really have very little merit anymore. a guy can throw 8 scoreless , have a 4-0 lead, and the pen can come in and blow it, then the team walk off in the btm of the inning and the guy who blew it gets the win!

[bnorth]

Tony Oliva and Fred McGriff.

[talkinbaseball]

Hodges,Mattingly & Thurman.

[Brianruns10]

Hodges, Adcock & Minoso for me.

[Hot Springs Bathers]

Hodges, Mattingly and Dahlen but I also agree that numbers are not everything so Minoso, O'Neil and Maris would be great with me. Actually so many great names have been listed that I think many of us could be happy with.

Unlike others I do feel that character is a very important factor in the Hall selections. There is no way to correct the errors of the past but it separates the Baseball Hall of Fame from the Pro Football Hall of Fame which in my opinion is fine but the lack of character in many of their selections reflects the win at all costs attitude that has damaged the league and has had a profound negative effect on college football and the current problems facing the NCAA.

[nat]

Dahlen is a good pick. Most of the guys who the vet's committee has considered in the past few years are underwhelming, but Dahlen deserves election.

Allen had a short career for a hall of famer. 7300 plate appearances just isn't that many. He's at 58 WAR, which is right around the point that players start being serious hall of fame candidates (acknowledging that Frisch and friends from the old vet's committee put in lots of guys with lower totals). He's probably more valuable than those 58 WAR would indicate, however, since he squeezed them into a short time span. (Since winning the pennant requires above-average performance, concentrated great performance is more valuable to a team than is consistent good performance.) Given the hall's standards, he wouldn't a bad choice, although I'm sort of the fence about him.

Walker was better. Only 700 more plate appearances, but 14 additional WAR. Basically, if you took Dick Allen's career, and stuck on Babe Ruth's best season, you'd have Walker's career. (At least in terms of total value, of course Walker never had a single season in which he put up 14 WAR.) It's easy to penalize players too strongly for having played in Colorado, and I think that voters often do. Home-road splits are useful, but they have their limitations. One is that, on average, everybody performs better than expected at home. So you don't want to adjust for Colorado by just doubling a player's road numbers, that would be an unfair penalty to the Rockie. OPS+ is already adjusted for park, and Walker's career total is 141. The same as Alex Rodriguez, Andrew McCutchen, and David Ortiz. Imagine a guy who hit like David Ortiz and was a great fielder, that's Walker.

(And an aside, because I was looking at the OPS+ leader board. Mike Trout is currently 9th, all time. One point ahead of Ty Cobb. Sure it'll go down before he retires, but any time an active player is beating Ty Cobb at something you need to note it.)

[nat]

Since it keeps coming up (especially in my posts), maybe a brief explanation of Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is in order.

The idea is to quantify how much value a player produced, in a way that allows you to compare players across teams and across eras. If the player hadn't been playing, there would have been an open roster spot on his team, which would probably have been filled by some guy from AAA. The performance of that AAA guy is the "replacement" from the stat's name. So WAR tries to calculate how many wins a player would generate for a random team (the randomness is necessary to allow cross-team comparisons), beyond what would be produced by the kind of AAA player that every organization has hanging around.

They do this by finding the "run expectancy" of every event that the player takes part in. Because baseball keeps very good records we know, for example, how many runs, on average, are scored after a player hits a single (or a double, or steals a base, or gets caught stealing, or strikes out, or etc.) That number is the run expectancy for the event. The last time I saw a table setting these out (which was a few years ago, so the numbers in this post are a bit out of date) the run expectancy of a single was about 0.3. The run expectancy of a home run is 1.4. (It's greater than one because there are often players on base when a home run is hit.) We do this with defensive plays too (although it's a bit more complicated with defense). Adding all of those up gives us how many runs the player would have been expected to produce, had he been playing for a random team. We then subtract the number of runs our replacement player (the guy from AAA) would have been expected to produce. That leaves us with the player's net contribution to scoring and preventing runs. Then we divide those numbers by the number of runs scored (or prevented) that it takes, on average, to win a ball game. And the resulting number is the player's WAR.

Edit: Here's a rough guide for what's a good/bad WAR total. Major league average players produce about 2 WAR in a full season. Bench players might get 0.5 to 1. The league MVP usually has around 8 (although there's lots of variation on this). Mike Trout has been averaging about 9 per year. The best season from a position player was Ruth's 1923, which was worth 14. The highest season WAR total ever was Tim Keefe's 1883, which was worth 20 WAR, because he pitched more than 600 innings that year. The best post-1920 pitching season was Dwight Gooden's 1985, worth 13 WAR. It usually takes about 60 WAR to make you a serious hall of fame candidate, although plenty of guys have gotten in with less than that, and a few with higher totals have been left out. Babe Ruth has the all-time career record, with 183 WAR. Cy Young, Walter Johnson, and Barry Bonds are next, with figures in the 160 range.

[midwaylandscaping]

Hall wouldn't be hurt by adding these 3:

Dale Murphy, Gil Hodges, Dwight Evans

[hoebob69]

Jim Edmonds,Fred Mcgriff and David Justice. Loved those guys growing up!

[Touch'EmAll]

Roger Maris and Bo Jackson - were these two not famous?

[KingFisk]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

No Rose, no steroid dudes, no guys not yet eligible.

Who are your top 3 post war non HOFers? Not meant to be a thread about who SHOULD be in, as I think it's already overstuffed.

The numbers probably won't bear me out, but my picks would be Hodges, Oliva and Garvey.

Larry Walker, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell. Honorable mentions to Lou Whitaker, Kenny Lofton, and Bobby Grich. Leaving out Bagwell because he is only not in yet because of the steroid whispers, I think.

[Neal]

Trammel, Whitaker, Tim Raines

[almostdone]

I'll go from the "who I like to collect" point of view. Two could be in the debate of HOFer and one has become a personal favorite of mine for not only his accomplishments on the field but also the life he has led, and is still living, off the field.
Minnie Minoso
Gil Hodges
Carl Erskine

Dre

[irv]

Originally Posted by almostdone

I'll go from the "who I like to collect" point of view. Two could be in the debate of HOFer and one has become a personal favorite of mine for not only his accomplishments on the field but also the life he has led, and is still living, off the field.
Minnie Minoso
Gil Hodges
Carl Erskine

Dre

Couldn't agree more!

http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/news...f1utvju92wsadk

9× All-Star (1951–1954, 1957, 1959–1960²)
3× Gold Glove Award (1957, 1959, 1960)
3× AL stolen base leader (1951–1953)
Chicago White Sox #9 retired

MLB stats, awards, and achievements[edit]
Years Games PA AB Runs Hits 2B 3B HR RBI SB BB SO OBP SLG BA Fld%
17 1,835 7,712 6,579 1,136 1,963 336 83 186 1,023 205 814 584 .389 .459 .298 .971
All-Star: 1951–1954, 1957, 1959 (2 games), 1960 (2 games)
Gold Glove: 1957 (Outfield), 1959 (AL-Outfield), 1960 (AL-Outfield)
AL leader in hits (1960)
AL leader in doubles (1957)
AL leader in triples (1951, 1954, 1956)
AL leader in sacrifice flies (1960, 1961)
AL leader in stolen bases (1951–1953)
AL leader in times on base and total bases (1954)
Chicago White Sox All-Century Team (2000)

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2...e-hall-of-fame

[jason.1969]

Legends from when I was a kid - Thurman Munson, JR Richard, Steve Garvey, Dave Parker.

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[KingFisk]

Would love to get Bill Gregory's thoughts on Larry Walker if he had a minute to spare. I always thought he was unfairly dinged for the Coors effect and his injury issues. I don't think there were too many more complete players than Walker. I am sure there are some good analyses online but always enjoy seeing our resident expert opine.

[glynparson]

Garvey
Madlock
Raines

[Rookiemonster]

fred mcgrif
Larry Doyle
Jim Katt

[David W]

Originally Posted by Rookiemonster

fred mcgrif
Larry Doyle
Jim Katt

Fred McGriff and Harold Baines would be Hall of Famers by hitting magic milestones of 500 HR for McGriff and 3000 hits and 400 HR for Baines were it not for the players strikes.

1981, 1994-95 for Baines

1994-95 for McGriff

Baines had his debut in 1980, then the strike in 81 cost him half the season.
He missed good time due to the strike of 94 and another 20 games in 95 after it was settled. He ended up 134 its away from 3000 and 12 HR from 400.

McGriff ended with 493 HR, and was on a tear in 94, hitting 34 in 113 games, he surely would have had another 7.

[Dewey]

First two came to mind quickly: Hodges and Garvey. Then I read first post and saw both names there. Great minds .

I'll add Alan Trammell for my #3. Now to read the thread!

Edit - Like the Larry Walker add. What a player when healthy.

[Batter67up]

Gil Hodges

He should be in but Ted Williams kept him out, as head of the Veterans Committee in 90's Williams kept him out. Ted hosted the vote at his house and Hodges needed one more vote. Campanella who was at the hospital because of his health called Williams and said that he voted for Hodges. Williams told Campanella that unless he was there in person he wasn't counting his vote and hung up. Hodges didn't make it in thanks to Williams who had something personal against Hodges. Ted definitely lives up to his reputation of being an A Hole.

PS: Campy died shortly after that because of his 40 years of being paralized. I guess that wasn't an excuse for not being there in person.

[the 'stache]

Really interesting topic, Peter, and one that I'll have a lot to say about later this evening. If I didn't need to get some sleep before my doctor's appointment this afternoon, I'd delve into my spreadsheets now.

While I'll give serious thought to the second and third player, one stands out to me, immediately. And his name is set in stone.

1. Dick Allen.

I don't care if he had an adversarial relationship with the press, or that he was a below-average fielder. He's one of the truly elite power hitters in the history of the game, and barring knowledge of some unknown tidbit that's excluded him from induction, I would have to say his exclusion from Cooperstown is one of the great oversights in Major League history.

For his career, he had an OPS + of 156. To put that in historical context, first, looking at all Major League hitters from 1901 to present, with more that 4,000 or more career at bats, Allen's OPS + is the 17th highest. 17th out of 1,072 batters who qualified. His career OPS + is the same as Frank Thomas and Willie Mays; it's one point higher than the career mark of Hank Aaron, Joe DiMaggio and Mel Ott.

While historical context is always great fun to look at, I think a more accurate measurement would be the same metric compared against his peer group; those men who played within the same era Allen did. Dick Allen played between 1963 and 1977. Fifteen years. I looked at all Major League players with over 2,000 at bats between 1963 and 1977. Allen's 156 OPS + is the third-highest over that period of time; only Mickey Mantle (OPS + of 159) and Frank Robinson (OPS + of 157) had a higher mark. Ans, Mantle barely qualified, only having 2,206 at bats.

When you look at the names of those who fall on the list under Allen: Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey, Willie Mays, Reggie Jackson, Willie Stargell, Roberto Clemente, Frank Howard, Harmon Killebrew, Mike Schmidt....and more Hall of Famers follow them...how can Allen not be inducted? From '63 to '71, he had a 160 OPS + in the National League. He moved to the American League in 1972, and played for the Chicago White Sox. Seeing a bunch of pitchers he'd never faced, Allen destroyed the ball, putting up a career best 199 OPS +, winning the A.L. MVP in the process. He led the league with a 1.029 OPS. How much did he dominate the A.L.? The second-best OPS was Carton Fisk's .909, 120 points lower.

Originally Posted by KingFisk

Would love to get Bill Gregory's thoughts on Larry Walker if he had a minute to spare. I always thought he was unfairly dinged for the Coors effect and his injury issues. I don't think there were too many more complete players than Walker. I am sure there are some good analyses online but always enjoy seeing our resident expert opine.

Hi Carl. I'll break his numbers down in depth tonight, but the short answer is I think Walker was a fantastic player, and while his numbers clearly did benefit from playing at Coors Field (and there was some real variance in his home-road splits from one year to another), he was still a real offensive threat on the road, too. People forget he was an MVP candidate before he ever left Montreal. He hit .322 with a .981 OPS his last year with the Expos.

Larry Walker was a great all around baseball player. The man won seven Gold Gloves, hit 383 home runs, stole 230 bases, and hit .313 for his career.

[jason.1969]

It would be fun to create a poll of all players named here. I'd propose 85%+ as the entry criteria (and suspect nobody would make it).

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[jason.1969]

The challenge is what value to ascribe to the advanced stats vs conventional ones. Do they turn our understanding of the game upside-down, just nudge it a little, or merely add noise?

I like the advanced stats for helping contextualize things like RBI totals in 1930 or hitters at Coors vs Astrodome. I also like some of the "new" measures like WAR for attempting imperfectly to quantify the total value of a player.

However, I still feel like a pitcher who went 22-10 had a better year than a guy who went 9-13, regardless of advanced metrics. I suspect the two pitchers in question would agree. I'm not saying the former is the better pitcher in vacuo...just that he had a better year.

By extension, I would say Gil Hodges and Steve Garvey also had better careers than nearly everyone regarded as equal or slightly better by the advanced measures.

To the extent the HOF is generally associated with great careers, I would look at Wins and RBIs as much more important than anything you need a calculator for.

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[quinnsryche]

Garvey
Parker
Simmons

[jason.1969]

There's a reason for that!

[jason.1969]

Thanks for the WAR tutorial. I also see OPS Plus mentioned a lot. Is there an easy explanation of the Plus?

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[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by jason.1969

Thanks for the WAR tutorial. I also see OPS Plus mentioned a lot. Is there an easy explanation of the Plus?

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anytime you see "+" added to a stat it signals that the stat has been park and league adjusted. Because of the DH and wild variability in park dimensions, ball travel...etc the + tries to compare all players as evenly as possible. OPS+ basically tells us that player's offensive production including park effects and puts it on a 100 based scale (100 being avg) as opposed to OPS which uses the more familiar batting avg type scale based around .300

it's a baseball reference stat, I prefer using wOBA or wRC+ from fangraphs but YMMV

[ajquigs]

Keith Hernandez, Minnie Minoso, and Gil Hodges for me.

I know that managerial careers as brief as Gil's aren't considered by voters, and I admit it would be a small factor, but to me it is a relevant part of his resume.

[bravos4evr]

oh, forgot this one:

Braves Broadcast legend Skip Caray should be in the hall. Guy was THE voice of the team . He made the doldrums of the 70's and 80's bearable and the 90's teams a delight.

[FourStrikes]

Bert Blyleven, Jim Kaat & Tommy John

longevity, yes, but each also played for a few crappy teams.

overall stat numbers (W/L/K's) = longevity, perhaps - but 280+ wins
is still 280+ MLB wins...

.

[jason.1969]

Blyleven is already in!

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