Maz
All the dissin' on Maz indicates that great defensive players get no love when it comes to the hof. His range factor was nearly a point above the leage average for his career. He won lots of games with his glove -- which, for reasons I don't fully understand, gets very little credit here. As the Rangers have repeatedly proven, you still lose when you score 10 runs and the other side scores 11.
No one is saying Ozzie Smith doesn't belong, but lots of people on this forum, most of whom I suspect never saw Maz play, have no issue with Ozzie but feel differently about Maz. I haven't sat down and put a pencil to it, but I suspect that Ozzie's numbers, in the context of the time he played, aren't much, if any, better than Maz's.
Ozzie is a great example of the recency/primacy concept. Voters saw him play, whereas most of them didn't see Maz play. They were blown away by Ozzie's defense, whereas Maz's defense was much less important because most of the voters never saw it. Ozzie wasn't much of a hitter in a hitter's era, but his qualifications for the HOF have yet to be questioned here. Maz, who was every bit the fielder Ozzie was,and probably as good a hitter in the context of his time, gets no love at all. Go figure.
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