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Originally Posted by Yastrzemski Sports
Offensively, they are almost identical as shown in their ops+ with Baines having a slight edge. I found it an interesting comparison when he was described as having “ extremely poor” stats for HOF and Beltran seems like a lock. I do give credit to Beltran for his defense. But I don’t think 3 gg ever put a player over the top for induction.
Baines had 1 top 10 finish in the MVP voting. Beltran had 2. So neither one was dominating their leagues in the era they played. I don’t think you can make an argument for or against one and not the other. You can show me WAR and black ink to “prove” that one was superior to the other but they were very similar players - offensively.
Baines has become the poster boy for bad HOF inductees. My argument is only that he’s a pretty good pick, that he had a very nice career and is getting a bad rap. Put him in and Beltran too.
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Agree that offensively similar, but defensively, it's not "3 gold gloves" that is the advantage, it's "20 years of good to great defense, compared to zero or negative defensive value for Baines".
And 300 steals is nothing to sniff at, either.
I look at it this way, if you're building a tower for each player based on their HOF qualifications, you give them both a similar sized "hitting" block.
The difference is that then Baines is done. All he did was hit. If you give Beltran a block for defense and a block for baserunning, his tower is substantially taller than Baines, even if the two additional blocks aren't as big.
In terms of WAR, I'd guess Baines and Beltran's offensive WAR (minus baserunning) is probably similar enough. Baines would have somewhat negative baserunning and defense. Meanwhile, Beltran would have positive baserunning and defense.
Now, whether either tower reaches HOF levels or not is another debate....but it's hard to argue that Beltran's isn't the better case.