Flood played a roll, but to say that without Curt Flood there would be no Marvin Miller isn't true in my opinion.

In 1974, Miller encouraged two pitchers Andy Messersmith of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Dave McNally of the Baltimore Orioles to play out the succeeding year without signing a contract. After the year had elapsed, both players filed a grievance arbitration. The ensuing Seitz decision declared that both players had fulfilled their contractual obligations and had no further legal ties to their ballclubs. This effectively eradicated the reserve clause and ushered in free agency.

If I recall, Simmons was eventually traded for Darrell Porter. Porter was on the Royals in '80 and I think he was the AL All Star Catcher. So, when they were traded for each other, I just assumed that Porter was the better player because of that darn all-star logo. Simmons could never get it over Bench so he doesn't have the pretty all-star logo cards that would etch in my mind and make me think of him in mythic term as an 8 year old.

Edit - I didn't realize this but I just read that Simmons wasn't traded for Porter. I should have known because I said above that Porter was with KC. He was with Milwaukee early in his career. I knew that he was his replacement and always thought that he was an upgrade.

Bench and Gary Carter carried the day for Topps All Stars (going from memory here).

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Veterans
 

I'm still holding out hopeless hope for the VetCom to realize that if Phil Rizzuto deserves to be there - than Dom Dimaggio needs to be there more.

Ken Harrelson wins the Frick Broadcaster's award. As a kid, I always found his 1971 Topps card hysterical! And someone please tell me, that this Jeter rookie card is worth $140,000!!

Good grief. That's worse than the Baines selection. Talk about rewarding longevity over talent.

There is a Dave Parker documentary coming up on MLB t.v. I think tomorrow night. Check your local listings.

I know I always set his cards aside when I was opening packs in the 70's...very surprised to see he got the fewest votes in this poll.

Chris, Ken Harrelson is only being HONORED with the Broadcaster's award. Most of those honorees never played the game, but he did of course. He is NOT being INDUCTED into the actual Hall of Fame.

Keith Hernandez snubbed again. He is the most underrated player in MLB history.

Possibly one of the reasons for the snub, along with Dave Parker, was their part in the 1985 Pittsburgh drug trials. I guess you had to have stats like Tim Raines to get around that.

OT - I was looking at Hernandez's fielding record and saw he won 11 straight Gold Gloves (very impressive...hadn't remembered he won that many), and then looked at more recent 1b gg winners. Can someone explain to me how Eric Hosmer can win GG's in the American league, and one in 2017, then come to the Padres in 2018 and have almost identical fielding stats as 2017 (and slightly better than the Rizzo and Freeman (they tied for the 2018 GG) and not win in 2018? What?...do they just put names in a hat? LOL

Rafael Palmeiro won the AL 1st Baseman Gold Glove Award in 1999 playing 28 games at 1B and 128 as a DH.

Right. But it's still rewarding longevity. Harrelson is absolutely awful and always has been.

He has no case. A 1B with no power who hit under .300? Would you vote for John Olerud, who was better offensively and 98% defensively? Of course not.

You don't have to be great, just colorful...just like Jerry Coleman.

Can we at least aim for not being the worst in the sport your entire career?

He has a GREAT case. A five time All Star, a batting champion, an MVP, eleven Gold Gloves, and ist baseman for two different World Championship teams. A little known fact, but he also is the single season and all-time leader in Game Winning RBIs, which is no longer tracked.

With respect to advanced sabermetrics (i.e., JAWS, WAR), the only retired first baseman that ranks higher than him not in the HOF (other than PED users Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGuire) is Todd Helton and that is almost a dead heat. Of the 21 first basemen in the HOF, Hernandez ranks higher than Hank Greenberg, George Sisler, Harmon Killebrew, Jake Beckley, Tony Perez, Orlando Cepeda, Frank Chance. Jim Bottomley, and High Pockets Kelly.

Also, with respect to WAR, Defensive WAR is always being tweaked and as it stands right now, Hernandez gets virtually no credit for his defense. Anyone who watched him play knows his defense saved a lot of runs over the years. It’s possible his WAR will increase as improvements are made to the defensive calculations.

More anecdotally, I watched most of the Mets games from 1983-1987 and I always considered him the most valuable Met based on the eye test.

As for Olerud, he is borderline and I wouldn’t vote for him but there are many worse players in the HOF then him.

Do you think Hernandez was better than Don Mattingly? Mattingly has 9 gold gloves to his 11, 6 all star games to his 5, matches him with an MVP but retired in less seasons with almost the same amount of hits, more homers, more rbi's, a higher OPS, more total bases and a higher batting average while playing for worse teams. At his peak he crushed Hernandez in every way and Mattingly is not in the HOF.

JAWS
Keith Hernandez First Base (19th):
60.4 career WAR / 41.3 7yr-peak WAR / 50.8 JAWS
Don Mattingly First Base (39th):
42.4 career WAR / 35.7 7yr-peak WAR / 39.1 JAWS
Average HOF 1B (out of 21):
66.8 career WAR / 42.7 7yr-peak WAR / 54.8 JAWS

Keith Hernandez was clearly better than Don Mattingly using advanced metrics. Actually, even at their peaks Hernandez was better. His WAR7 (taking only the players top 7 seasons) has Hernandez ahead 41.3 to 35.7. Even if you break it down further, Mattingly only had 4 seasons of 5 or more WAR which is All Star level, 7.2, 6.5, 6.3, 5.1. Hernandez had 5 seasons, 7.6, 6.7, 6.3, 5.5, 5.1. So, even Mattingly's best seasons are at best a push with Hernandez's best seasons. Mattingly is worthy of HOF in my opinion, but I would put Hernandez in first.

Yes, I think Hernandez was better. Hernandez's career WAR was 60.4 while Mattingly's was 42.4. Hernandez's WAR in his best seven consecutive years was 41.3 while Mattingly's was 35.7. Hernandez's WAR in his best season was 7.6 while Mattingly's was 7.2. As far as some of the raw numbers, those were due to a favorable ballpark and league for offense.

I don't really care about WAR. Hernandez had a longer career without injury. Mattingly put up higher numbers in a shorter career and there's no way you'll ever convince me the prototype for Albert Pujols wasn't better than Keith Hernandez.

I'm not really sure how you come up with Albert Pujols for a comparison to Mattingly. Pujols had an OPS+ of 170 his 1st 11 years in St. Louis. Mattingly's best season was 161, 9% lower than Pujols average. Mattingly's career OPS+ is only 127 which is actually worse than Keith Hernandez's career OPS+ of 128. Hernandez was a slightly better hitter, a better fielder and was able to play MLB longer. Hernandez was clearly better than Mattingly.

Without using WAR what tells you Hernandez was better than Mattingly? Mattingly's peak was 200 hits a year (three years in a row), 40 plus doubles a year, 30 plus homers, 100 rbi's and hitting 320 and above while doing it. That's where the Pujols comparison comes in. Mattingly put up an OPS over 900 four years in a row. Hernandez had an OPS over 900 twice in his entire career. There is no reason to believe Mattingly wouldn't have kept doing what he was doing if not for his injury. He was a beast.

Let's be brutally honest - Gold Glove defense at 1B doesn't mean a heckuva lot. It's BY FAR the easiest position on the diamond. Yes, Hernandez was probably the best ever but he doesn't lap the field in that regard.

So that leaves us 5-time All-Star, MVP, batting champion. That's a good career. It's not a HOF career. We're talking a guy who played a premium offensive position but delivered mediocre - at best - power. Of all players who've played at least 1000 games at 1B since the live ball era started, Hernandez ranks 79th in home runs. That puts him in the company of guys like Walt Dropo and Pete O'Brien. No, home runs aren't everything, but they are super-important. When you play a power position like 1B, and you're trying to make a case for the Hall, your career high in homers better be more than 18 during a juiced ball year.


Hernandez gets a lot of credit in WAR and the like because, well, most of his cohorts at 1B weren't that good. That era is littered with guys hitting .260 with 7 homers. And, even then, his top WAR is 7.6, the year he won the MVP. And that's well below normal MVP standards. Dave Winfield was far more deserving that year, to boot.

At the end of the day, at 1B, you gotta do one of two things - hit for a high average or hit with power. Hernandez didn't do either one (for his career). .296/13/83 every 162. That's just not great.

He has no case for the Hall.

IMO Hernandez was much better than just mediocre offensively. To me, "mediocre" would be an average hitter who bats in the .250 - .280 range throughout his career.

Not only was Hernandez a .296 career hitter, he also had 6 seasons over .300, with his top 3 seasons at .344 ; .321 ; .311 -- those numbers are solidly above-average. I'd even say that's much better than the average player.

Note that I said mediocre power, not mediocre offensively.

Hernandez was a better hitter. OPS+ tells us that. You use choose to use raw stats that ignore Mattingly's home park was very hitter friendly. The stats you use are worthless unless you put them in context of the field they were performed on. Baseball is the only sport where the field of play isn't constant, so you cannot use raw stats to compare players. Stats say Hernandez was a better hitter. Defensive stats say Hernandez was a better fielder. Better hitter plus better fielder means he was the better player. No need to use WAR when the other stats point to the same result.

Parker was considered the best player in baseball or in the conversation from 1977-79. When was Edgar ever in that conversation? And Parker has one of the top arms of any right fielder ever. Up there with Evans and Clemente. I saw him throw out a guy on a ball hit to right field. He had a cannon. I have no problem with putting either in. Parker gets docked for his coke years or his numbers would crush Edgar’s. I know he doesn’t deserve any sympathy for that but it still exists in reality.

I agree. Dome was overshadowed during his career and most of this life because of this brother Joe. How fair is that? I'ma little bias when it comes to Dom being from Massachusetts, but he also lost time from serving in the Navy.

If we add every guy who ever played that's better than Rizzuto, we'll end up with hundreds of guys that don't belong in the Hall, Dom Dimaggio among them.

Scooter was the wildly popular, wacky voice of the Yankees for seemingly 100 years. Without question, that was a (I would say HUGE) part of the reasoning for his enshrinement, player statistics aside.

To me there's two schools of thought on players like Rizzuto and Reese being in the HOF. One is there overall numbers are not there. The other is that they were playing a tough position during a tough era when sliding hard in to the shortstop was the norm, and they were still there helping their teams get to the World Series almost every year. With that said, and with the Vet Committee voters voting them in, then why wouldn't they in turn vote in Bert Campaneris and Dave Concepcion? Different era, but same circumstances in my book.

Because neither of them played in New York? :confused:

I'm sorry but strictly looking at OPS+ does not tell you who is a better player. Hernandez's OPS+ is 1 point higher than Mattingly's too. I would say that differential is negligible and not a standard for who was better.

It should also go without saying that Mattingly appeared on this ballot at all while Hernandez did not.

Absolutely NO question Lou Whitaker belongs in the Hall. One of the best 2nd basemen of his generation.

Has a better lifetime WAR than Derek Jeter:)

Agreed, plus Hernandez was a key member of two separate World Championship teams.

I've come to the conclusion that we're all champions for one player or another, and probably not going to change anyone's minds. Can't help but think about how the kids in 50's New York went back and forth as to who was better Willie, Mickey or the Duke.