Who are your Inner Circle Hall of Famers?

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by Seven

Mantle had one of the best seasons of his career in 1955, and fell victim to the voters valuing catchers more. I digress though, we didn't have the numbers back then that we do today.

On the subject of Gehrig because I've seen his name brought about a few times, to me he's inner circle, I don't know how anyone could disagree. The consensus greatest first basemen ever, if he didn't contract ALS he would've been a lock for 3000 Hits and 500 Home runs. Gehrig is believed to have started showing symptoms of it in 1938, which diminished his performance. Obviously by 1939 he was out of the league due to his illness. I'd wager that a healthy Gehrig would've probably continued to churn out 30 home run seasons well into his late 30's. He was in good shape and took care of his body. I think we can speculate that Gehrig would've hit in the ballpark of 600 homers for his career and had at least 3100 hits had he not tragically passed away.

Yeah, Mantle's WAR (9.5) was more than double Yogi's (4.5) in '55. Although some people do think WAR doesn't fully account for a catcher's contribution:
http://www.thehypertexts.com/Basebal...e%20season.htm
And couldn't agree with you more about Gehrig. Definitely inner circle. A top 10 player of all-time probably. Guy averaged ~8.5 WAR per 162 games and had the most RBIs in a season for an American Leaguer after all.