Baseball Hall of Fame Vote

[Irwin Fletcher]

Originally Posted by abothebear

"My point is that no one considers Finley or Reuschel to be HOFers and rightfully so. Why all the love for Morris?"

Because it isn't the Hall of Statistics.

That may be true, but I'm not aware of any other way to evaluate a player's performance and, just as importantly, compare a player's performance to that of his peers.

[Kenny Cole]

I would suggest that watching the person play is another, better, way. Doesn't work for the old timers, obviously, but having watched a person play and having access to the player's stats is better than simply crunching the numbers IMO.

[mr2686]

Kenny, you said a mouth full. You can't just crunch numbers and get the full story of a player. I think some of the new analytics have been great for the game and have helped further discussion, but they've also been bad in that they over analyze things. Example, the adjusted stats based on home ball park. Does that really tell you that a home run that a player hit in ball park A, would not have been out of ball park B? I mean, if you it the ball 380ft it's gonna go out of most parks (this does not include Coors field for obvious reasons). I think Hodges was hurt the most by this type of stat (although it sure doesn't seem to have hurt Snider).
Now, to another point. There are no right or wrong answers to any of this...that's what makes baseball great. The ability to have two people argue over their favorite players, or even two random players, and try to convince each other who was a better player. These types of questions and arguements have been going on for as long as baseball has been around. From Ruth vs Gehrig, to Mantle vs Mays vs Snider, to Rizzuto vs Reese, and now Larkin vs Trammel. It makes you want to learn more about your player so that you have more of an arguement...and in the process, you learn more about baseball in general. Great sport.

[yanks12025]

Going by stats Jackie Robinson shouldn't be in the hall of fame. He just had basic stats. I know he didnt start his career till 28 and is the first black player in mlb.

[FrankWakefield]

And to add to what Mike just said about Mr. Hodges, from the first person accounts I've heard, Mr. Hodges was a kind gentleman.

[doug.goodman]

This seems like a fitting link...

http://keitholbermann.mlblogs.com/20...g-herman-long/

Doug