T206 HOF Candidates

[z28jd]

Originally Posted by CMIZ5290

Agreed. Having said that, Eppa Rixey in this discussion is a joke. Record 266-251, ERA 3.18, and his strike out and walk totals are incredibly close 1,350 K's, 1,082 BB's....I'm missing something here.... Another one I dont understand is Rabbit Maranville....

Maranville was a valuable player during his day. Again, if you like using WAR, defensively he is the 7th best player ever. He is the all-time leader in putouts at shortstop and no one in baseball history has as many assists as he does. That has to count for something, and really, it isn't even close between him and Ozzie Smith in second place. He got MVP votes in eight of the seasons he played and in nine seasons he played, they didn't have MVP votes.

With Rixey, they say he got a lot of attention when Spahn broke his record for wins by an NL lefty and they figured if Spahn was so great, how is the old record holder not in the Hall of Fame.

I sometimes wonder why people assume certain players don't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame when just a few years into the process they were put in there. Isn't it possible that the original people got it right and it's just changed over time due to newer voter errors? If that is true, then that doesn't make the older votes a mistake, it makes the people voting now wrong.