Brief Rehashings Of Candidates And Other Stuff
I’ve gone on about the Hall of Fame candidates and their credentials (or lack thereof) in a previous blog—-How About Some Baseline Criteria For Hall Of Fame Eligibility?—-but there are some things that need mentioning about the upcoming results.
- Cal Ripken is kind of degrading the process by saying he’s going to vote for a non-candidate like Brady Anderson—-Ripken Supports Anderson. Brady Anderson is not even anywhere close to being a legit part of a Hall of Fame conversation. Voting for one’s buddies based on nothing more than that is kind of insulting to the institution of the HOF. For someone like Ripken, who prided himself on his work ethic and honor, it’s a sham. Ripken’s reputation is taking a beating with the allegations of selfishness from such respected baseball men as Davey Johnson and the new Braves GM Frank Wren. Now this is making him seem even more interested in Cal Ripken’s views than the reality of Brady Anderson’s accomplishments (which are strongly suspected to have been aided by PEDs). He was Ripken’s friend. So? Is that a HOF criteria now?
- Do two wrongs make a right? There are two arguments for Tim Raines’s candidacy for the HOF: 1) he was as good a player as Lou Brock was and Brock is in the Hall, so Raines should also be in; or 2) Brock really doesn’t belong in the Hall other than setting the stolen base record and getting 3,000 hits, so putting Raines in based on Brock’s accomplishments isn’t a valid reason for enshrinement. If I had a vote, I wouldn’t vote for Raines.
- Jim Rice belongs in the HOF—-Rice Belongs—-and I’m beginning to be swayed about Bert Blyleven. The more I look at his numbers, the more I see that he was a dominating pitcher who was stuck on some bad teams.
- One note about the Giants-Patriots game tonight. It seems to me that the Giants are being peer-pressured into going all out to win this meaningless (to them) game. It’s going to be on the air over four different channels simultaneously and the players are being inundated with the "history" and "ESPN Classic" ****. If any of their star players get hurt in losing tonight (and they are going to lose—-42-10 is my guess), they’re going to be sorry next week in Tampa Bay, which is a winnable game for them.
princeofny
The better more valid argument with Raines is that he had a .385 OBP as a leadoff hitter (tablesetter as you put in your last comment) which was 42 percentage points higher than that of Brock’s (.343). And Raines’ OPS+ was 123 vs. Brock’s 109. I don’t know that he should necessarily be in the Hall but that is much more important then the fact that they both stole a lot of bases. And speaking of SB’s…Brock had more but was safe 75% of the time, while Raines was safe 84% of the time. Clearly in Raines’ favor by a large margin.
And Ripken voting for Brady Anderson is a joke, obviously, and who actually had the same OPS+ as Lou Brock
http://statisticianmagician.mlblogs.com/
My thunder was stolen, I was going to mention the same stats plus more. When comparing stats notice that what Raines did was in 1460 fewer ABs (mostly due to walks); Brock struck out nearly 1000 times more than he walked, Raines walked 364 more times than struck out; Brock was a bad outfielder, he had 142 assists to 196 errors, Raines was 134/54. Raines wasn’t a great OF but he didn’t hurt his team.
It wouldn’t be the biggest injustice if Raines got in, but he was really far better than Brock. This is becoming the “Hall of Really Good” instead of the “Hall of Fame”.
Andre Dawson should be in as well, I don’t see it happening this year. But just in case it does I’m waiting on my rant against Hall voters until the announcement.
http://mikemac.mlblogs.com