HOF Future Eligibles

[Greg Sonk]

Originally Posted by bcbgcbrcb

The difference between Vlad and Killebrew, Sheffield, etc. is a .318 career batting average.

I'll assume this was directed at me since I brought them up in the same breath.

Batting average is not a stat which I believe to be very useful when compared to some others that we have at our disposal. However, I understand that many voters do, and as such, consider it relevant to the discussion. Without getting into sabermetrics, the best counter to this argument would be OBP, as we need a stat that has nothing to do with power and simply frequency of "success" at the plate. Here Vlad is then only .003 better than Killebrew and .014 worse than Sheffield. I would characterize that as very comparable. I would hope that we can avoid the walks do/don't matter argument in 2015.

Over their careers, you're talking about guys with very close OBPs and WRC+ of 136, 141, and 142, respectively. Career fWar actually has Vlad at 56.5 versus Sheffield at 62.4 and Killebrew at 66.1, which I must admit mildly surprised me, as I expected Sheffield to be slightly ahead of Killebrew rather than the reverse. Vlad's career was 6 years shorter than the other two, and all had roughly 3-4 elite (6+ fWAR) years.

I don't see a huge difference there at all.