Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim65
Koufax career is very unique in the way it ended. The 4 years of dominance were still very fresh in voters minds when he was elected in his first year. If you flip his career and put those 4 dominant years at the beginning and his bad years at the end, he doesn't sniff the HOF and is the pitchers version of Don Mattingly.
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Mattingly's legacy may be a bigger testament to Yankee lore than any of his legendary predecessors there (which is obviously saying something).
A very good lefty line-drive .300 hitter with gap pop and a shortened career. Whose splits show that Yankee Stadium turned plenty of doubles into short porch homers (he likely wouldn't reached 200 lifetime HRs playing anywhere else).
Sure he was one of the best few hitters in the league for a few years, but even then his numbers didn't dominate anywhere near like Koufax's prime did. The fact that many people consider him an "almost" HOF guy, and that he got 28% of the vote at first, is pretty unreal.
Playing for the Yankees turned him from being Magglio Ordonez into one of the most memorable baseball names of a generation. When I get reincarnated into a top baseball prospect, I'm holding out for pinstripes
07-20-2020, 02:41 AM
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