In the first 30-40 years of Baseball (1876-about 1915) defense was looked at with higher regard than offense. Hence we see a great deal of early Ballplayers who were considered the best players of their time by those who SAW them play and you can not equate that to stats.
In the 1890's for example if a player touched a baseball and did not record an out it went down as an error. That meant that the BEST Shortstops always led the league in erros for a while. Try translating that to stats by todays standards.
By contemporary accounts, the greatest all around player of the 19th century was Ned Williamson. People would look at his stats today and think it was a travesty that he was in. But if the Hall of Fame had started 30 years earlier, he would have been in its innagural class. Likewise, Bobby Wallace, Ray Schalk, Rabbit Maranville and Johnny Evers among others are not in the Hall for things you can simply evaluate on a piece of paper.
I always thought it was ironic that people will use Defense to keep you out of the Hall of Fame (Babe Herman, Pete Browning, and Edgar Martinez) but they will rarely use defense to justify your merits unless you are Ozzie Smith.
Rhys
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