No one has mentioned it, but since the 2013 vote, they dropped Tony Mullane from the ballot. That was a ballot that had three get elected, Hank O'Day, Jacob Ruppert and Deacon White.
Dahlen will be elected this year. He got ten votes last time and that was with almost everyone voting for O'Day, Ruppert and White. Since voters had a maximum of four votes, those three took up 70% of the votes, leaving a maximum of 20 to be split among everyone else and Dahlen fell two votes short. With all the SABR advancement in figuring out the value of players to his team, Dahlen has jumped to the top of the charts as one of the best players of his era.
His career WAR is 75.2, which is higher than Johnny Bench, Reggie Jackson, Luke Appling and Barry Larkin(to add a couple SS in there).
WAR is a cumulative stat, so the more you play the higher it should be. I don't think anyone here would argue against Derek Jeter going in on the first ballot.
Jeter 2747 games, 71.8 WAR
Dahlen 2444 games, 75.2 WAR
That means that Dahlen was more valuable to his team than Jeter was to his. Since WAR is huge now in Hall of Fame talk, if Dahlen doesn't go in, then you have a continuation of a mistake that has been made since they put in the big group of players in the early 40's, because that's when Dahlen should have been elected.
All signs point to him going in this year though. He is recognized as the best position player not in, who played during the first 90 years of MLB, plus he is better than a lot of those players already in from that time span. He is the top returning vote-getter and just missed last time due to a numbers crunch.
The other one who should get in is Doc Adams. How his contribution to the game has been overlooked all these years is beyond me, but he has huge support from the SABR community. They named his their most overlooked legend last year and that helped push him to the new ballot. Adams should have been elected during the first ceremonies in 1939, but much of the credit he deserved wrongly went to others. If you don't think Adams should be in, then you don't know enough about him.
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10-06-2015, 08:59 AM
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