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john/z28jdHome runs to me are important too but i cant make them 80 percent of a guys ranking and rate everything else so low.If he played a more important position than first base then i would say he deserves all the praise he got and his 4 seasons of home run hitting are great but his total impact of the game over his career doesnt warrant elite player status.
Bill James in a 2000 book has him ranked 31st all-time among players which isnt a bad ranking for the time BUT i dont think James couldve foreseen him having a horrible season like he did and then retiring because he was done as a player.
I rank McGwire as the 3rd best home run hitter ever, but Dave Kingman also makes the top 10 list for that and i dont have Kingman in the top 100 players of all-time,so it has to even out somewhere.McGwire wouldnt rank on any other list because hes a one tool player [except a 3-4 year stretch where he was a decent glove at first,not glod glove but not bad]
I still dont remember a point in time where he was underrated.This is the same guy that made 3 straight all-star game appearances where he hit a combined .223 over that stretch.You cant do that without being overrated. Guys put up stretches similar to his 4 year home run binge but instead of hitting 245 home runs,they might hit 160 with alot more singles,doubles,runs scored and the same rbi total.
Like i pointed out without that 4 year stretch he doesnt make it past the first year of hall of fame ballots,and the sad part is he couldve hit 140 homers over that stretch[35 a year] added 35 singles 70 doubles[because he only hit 90 over that 4 year stretch] and kept all the other numbers exactly the same and he wouldnt be a hall of famer.He would probably get about 50 percent of the votes tops going by similar players.
So that shows the only thing that pushes him from being remembered as a very good ballplayer,to a top level hall of famer,is him hitting the ball over the fence instead of off it.He scored exactly half of his career runs off homeruns.The only way to do that is swinging all or nothing and being a clog on the base paths.I mean even Cecil Fielder was able to score runs once he had to run bases,and he was 450 lbs