Quote:
Originally Posted by D. Bergin
People really need to get over the Harold Baines thing. Especially if you're a traditional stats, WAR is over-rated type of fan. He's in. He's not getting kicked out. 
He was THE figurehead of a certain position in baseball for almost 10 years (regardless of whether or not you like the DH), until Edgar Martinez came along.
Call him a compiler if you want (hasn't ever been a penalty for getting into the HOF), but he's also 34th All-Time in RBI's (1628). Everybody in front of him and for a ways behind him, is either in the HOF, waiting to get in the HOF, or a scandal/steroid guy.
Also: 47th in Hits (2866), same situation as above, though he is much closer to the likes of Johnny Damon and Vada Pinson right behind him.
43rd Total Bases (4604), closest non-scandal/non-future guy to him is Fred McGriff 11 spaces back (who I would put in, in a second, if it were up to me).
I might not have put Baines in, but I'm not sure why so many people are so upset about it. It's not like he bet on baseball or kicked your grandmother down the stairs.  |
He is much worse than this suggests because of his poor rate stats. The sheer number of RF's better than him (that also didn't have to play 1,600 more games at DH to get their raw values up) who are not in and have no realistic chance of getting in make it look like a terrible selection. The Hall typically does not reward compilers who still failed to hit the biggest milestones. 22 years to collect 2,800 hits is not exactly HOF impressive.
He's 34th in RBI's - and had 100 in a season only 3 times, maxing out at 113. Two of those 3 years his OPS+ was below 120.
He's 47th in Hits - with a batting average of .289 which is not terrible or anything but has never been considered Hall worthy itself. Again, especially for a player who actually took the field less than half the time.
He's 43rd in total bases - with a .465 slugging as a primary DH and an OPS+ of 121, which is again good but not a HOF positive.
He didn't hit the 'auto-induct' compiler milestones (300 wins, 3,000 hits, 500 dingers), he didn't produce at anything approaching a HOF rate, especially for his position as a pure offense player at the easiest position in the game.
It is further made worse by the stink of open corruption oozing from his election. It is not a credit that his former manager and owner were 2 of the votes for him and advocating on the committee. If you need your friends to have votes and lobby for you to gain admittance after maxing out at 6% of the vote before this, you probably aren't a real HOFer. It looks like the Frisch committee all over again. People tend to not like corrupt choices.
If it wasn't for the corruption, he'd be seen more as a Sutter/Rizzuto type of weak choice who doesn't really belong, but that's the system. The corruption puts it into the bigger deal category for a lot of people.