Will a Colorado Rockie EVER be Elected to the Hall of Fame?

[nat]

A. Jones for the hall is probably a no-go, but he's got an interesting case. By the best way we have for measuring defensive performance, Jones is far and away the greatest defensive outfielder of all time. (Paul Blair and Willie Mays are essentially tied for second, and Jones has about a 33% lead on them.)

There are reasons to be skeptical of this. The way the system works is that it breaks the field down into zones and assigns levels of credit for plays made in each zone, depending on how often someone playing your position makes a play in that zone. (You also lose credit if you fail to make a play in a zone that you should be expected to make given the position that you were playing.) Some people speculate that Jones was able to range out into LF and RF and make spectacular plays that his fellow outfielders would have made anyway. (They were spectacular for Jones because CF to RF can be a long way to go, they would be easy for the RF because he's already right there.) I don't know if this holds water, but it's one criticism of Jones' defensive performance.

Another problem is that we didn't have this zone-based measure of defense for most of baseball history. We did have less accurate ways of measuring defense; but, knowing that they are less accurate, when comparing players across eras we regress the less accurate stats towards average. This means that truly unusual performances (both positive and negative) get overlooked. So Jones might not be as far ahead of everyone else as it looks like he is.

If Jones really was as good defensively as our best defensive stats say that he was, he's well qualified for the hall. If the worries I raised above are on point, then he's a more iffy candidate. (At least on the merits. I agree he won't actually get in.)