Quote:
Originally Posted by rats60
I'd call 48 HRs and 121 RBIs .334 AVE pretty dominant. He's finished 2nd and 3rd in MVP voting plus 2 other top 10 finishes. He's had 8 seasons of 5.0+ WAR (All-Star level). Among 3rd basemen, he's 6th in JAWs, 7th in WAR. A couple more good years and he'll pass up Chipper Jones in those areas. Unless he is tied to steroids, I think he makes the HOF.
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After that "dominant year", he didn't get a single MVP vote, not one, for another six years.
In fact, let's look at his year by year OPS around that "dominant year" of 2004, shall we?
2001 .720 (his fourth year in baseball)
2002 .729
2003 .714
2004 1.017
2005 .716
2006 .792
2007 .802
2008 .784
2009 .683
He had one truly great season in his first eleven. One. Now, in the last five, he's been one of the best third basemen in the game. But should he get in, and somebody like Don Mattingly does not get in, with the difference being that Beltre played a bunch more average to below average years that Mattingly didn't have?
And let's talk about that "dominant" season, shall we? He had 376 total bases. Between 2000 and 2005, know how many batters had more in a single season? Thirteen!
I generated a report for most total bases in a season, between the years 2000 and 2005, a nice little six year period. Minimum of 500 at bats for my report, so it wouldn't be twenty pages long.
Know how many players on that list had a higher OPS than Beltre's 1.017 in that six year period? Thirty! His was only the thirty-first best season between 2000 and 2005.
What about those 121 RBIs? How many better RBI totals were there in those six years?
Fifty-six! Fifty-six hitters managed 122 or more RBIs between 2000 and 2005.
So, why am I bringing all of this up? He really wasn't that dominant. Those numbers in 1967 would have been other worldly. But in an era where the baseball flew out of the park at near unprecedented rates, Beltre's season was merely very, very good. And remember, he didn't come anywhere near replicating it at any time in the eight seasons sandwiched around that 2004 season.
He has to have at least three more great seasons for me to consider him a Hall of Famer, because right now, he just doesn't excite me as a candidate. Funny to me that, outside of the one big season, he never really became a star until he went to Boston, and then to Texas, two teams famous for their use of "helpful substances".