Nominations for the Hall Of Commons - let's play.
 

Here's a fun holiday experiment
There are lots of great players who never reached Hall of Fame Worthiness. They just did their job and pleased the fans, but went unrecognized after their career. Guys like Joe Rudi or Ron Fairly

So let's start taking nominations for the HALL OF COMMONS

The only qualification is they could never have received more than five votes in any official Hall Of Fame balloting.

You'll need to do some research for nominations but it's available on line.

When we have enough nominations we'll start a poll and we can vote on the inaugural class for the Hall Of Commons.

If those are your requirements, then start with Shoeless Joe Jackson. He received 2 votes in 1936 and 2 votes in 1946. Those were the only two times he received votes for the Hall of Fame.

I like the name "Hall of Non-Hall of Famers"

Brian

Hal McRae.

Ken Holtzman.

Babe Herman

I always liked Brandon Webb. Won the Cy Young and then finished second two years in a row. Threw four innings the next season and then never pitched again.

Lance Berkman (and yet Harold Baines is in)

Chet Lemon.

George Hendrick.

Willie Randolph
Eric Davis
Cesar Cedeno
Jim Wynn
Reggie Smith
Gene Tenace
Boog Powell
Rick Reuschel
Jerry Koosman
Andy Messersmith
Mike Cuellar
Denny McLain
Bill Freehan
Sam McDowell

Jerry Koosman

Willie Randolph 1st came to mind. 66 WAR and only 5 votes his 1st year, and then off the ballot.

There's guys IN the Hall of Fame right now who were on the same ballot, that Randolph destroys in THAT metric anyways.

Dave "King Kong" Kingman

Brian Downing is another guy who's been treated well by modern day analytics. Same year as Randolph. 2 Votes and off.

Davey Lopes

Bobby Grich has 71.1 WAR and 2.6% of the votes in his only time on the ballot. Look at Derek Jeter with 71.3 WAR in 4,400 more PAs and people were upset he didn't get 100% of the votes. Larkin and Trammell are in with lower WAR. Trammell in particular had a lot of career overlap with Grich. You also have to bring up Lou Whitaker when you mention Trammell.

Lefty O'Doul.

Yeah, just a couple of weeks ago we had a long discussion of Grich. He seems to be a lightning rod for people who don't like WAR. Lots of divergent viewpoints, but I think most agreed he was not likely to make the Hall despite his WAR which obviously would qualify him if you valued the metric.

Thought of Grich, but he didn't qualify under the conditions of the original post.

Willie Wilson
Steve Finley

Hall of Commons
 

Bill Madlock? Al Oliver?

Trent King

Tip O'Neil

Neither qualify

Jose Rijo

Ross Barnes
Jim Creighton
Fred Dunlap

There’s a lot of 19th century guys who didn’t reach 5 vote. those who hit certain milestones or were believed to have invented X or innovated Y got put in early on, and then it’s been almost completely ignored ever since without any serious honest look. The majority of deserving players who never got a real look are in the 19th century.

Jason Kendall is ranked 21st All-Time at catcher via JAWS. 2 votes and out in 2016.

Jimmy Sheckard

A brief blurb from his bio:

In his 17-year career, Sheckard hit .274, with 56 home runs, 813 RBI, 1296 runs, 354 doubles, 136 triples, and 465 stolen bases in 2122 games played. In 1911, he set the single season record for walks with 147 before it was broken by Babe Ruth in 1920. He is one of only four players in the modern era (1900-present) to hold this record along with Ruth, Jack Crooks, and Barry Bonds. Sheckard is also the all-time leader among left fielders in assists, with 243.

Plus he has one of the coolest T206 cards in my opinion!

Brian Giles was overshadowed by a bunch of guys that were definitely on PEDs during his era...though I've never heard a whisper about him.

.291 career hitter, .400 career OBP, .502 career slugging = .902 career OPS, 137 OPS+

Was a bit of a late bloomer, costing him some counting stats.

0 votes for the HOF in 2015.

Frank Howard would be perfect, but he got six votes his first and only year

I like to ask people that think they know sports what native San Diegan won (6) HR crowns in the major leagues. The answer these sports aficionados usually give is Ted Williams. I mean that would seem like a good answer. The answer is the response to this thread:

Gavvy Cravath

Cecil Cooper - A player whom the term "Professional Hitter" might have been invented for. Lifetime .300 hitter, a couple of RBI and Doubles Titles. Even threw in a couple of Gold Gloves.

I was surprised to see he didn't get a single vote. You would have thought a Milwaukee area voter might have thrown him a bone or two. :eek:

Jason Giambi immediately came to mind, ~50 WAR, but he has 6 votes, so nope!

Three from the Big Red Machine...

George Foster
Dave Concepcion
Ken Griffey

I'll throw a knuckleball in here with Charlie Hough.

Fred, great factoid. Gavvy is a good choice here!

Willie Horton
Joe Adcock

I hate to be the gatekeeper of the thread ;)..........but....none of them qualify here.

Who am I kidding.....I love to be the gatekeeper of the thread!

A horrible 1st Baseman, but an absolute hitting machine in his prime. Would have guessed he got more votes.

I have to admit I don't fully understand the prompt. Is it guys who are not hall of fame caliber but just below it? If it's just "well-liked common players" that could be almost anybody...

Best players in your opinion who never received more then 5 votes in HOF voting.

I read the initial post too fast I guess. I was thinking it said 5% of the votes, which is why I mentioned that he got 2.6%.

My favorite ballplayer growing up was Moose Skowron. I am not conversant in Sabrmetrics and the like but I maintain he was a pretty good ballplayer. I concede he ought not to be in the HOF conversation but it still pisses off my inner eight-year-old that he never received a single vote.

His game-used 1957 cap.

I was slow to fully embrace WAR, but then I noticed so few cases where I disagreed with it. Many of them were 19th century outfielders getting poor defensive ratings. It seems now that a lot of people who don't like it, just point to some outliers they disagree with, but a lot of them have explanations.

Someone on Twitter yesterday mentioned Brendan Ryan being rated higher than Paul Konerko one season as their reason it made no sense, but all they showed was offensive stats. Of course a lot of people agreed. Ryan was a well above average defensive shortstop. Konerko was a well below average defensive first baseman, who had a very mediocre season by his own standards at the plate. WAR helps show the massive defensive value difference between an elite shortstop and a below average first baseman. There's also some value taken from base running, which again was a huge advantage to Ryan.

I see very few surprises with the stat now, though I'll mention I use Baseball-Reference (bWAR) and not Fangraphs (fWAR), because I've seen a lot with Fangraphs WAR numbers that I don't like.

Cecil Travis. It says on Google he never appeared on BBWAA ballots. I don't know about any eras ballots.

A big issue I have with FanGraphs WAR is that they’ve gone all-in on catcher framing as being about The Most Important Baseball Thing Ever.

Tim Wakefield

Eddie Yost. Unless the gatekeeper says he got votes. I couldn't find him on a ballot. The Walking Man.

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Vince “the other, other” Dimaggio

Earl Battey

From Wikipedia: Richard Kendall of the Society for American Baseball Research devised an unscientific study that ranked Battey as the seventh most dominating fielding catcher in major league history.