Who's Who and Who's Not (HOF)

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Posted By: Greg Ecklund

Santo's performance in the context of the era he played in is actually quite good - almost his entire career was in an era with relatively low batting averages and power numbers compared to today.

Players cannot be evaluated based solely on stats, but no context for them - hitting .300 with 30 Home Runs and 100 RBI's has different meaning if it happened in the 1930's rather than the 60's or 70's.

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Posted By: dennis

during the mid 60's and early 70's bill freehan was the BEST CATCHER IN THE A.L.--he was an all star selection every year from 1964 thru 1973. does he have a case for the hall? http://www.baseball-reference.com/f/freehbi01.shtml his stats say NO. But,if you are the best of your era,should you be denied.

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Posted By: jay behrens

He was the best in the AL, but the NL had many catchers that were better. Bench springs to mind right away, as does Torre. Best in the league doesn't cut it. Yuo need to be the best in all of baseball. Freehan doesn't make that cut.

Jay

I saw weird stuff in that place last night. Weird, strange, sick, twisted, eerie, godless, evil stuff. And I want in.

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Posted By: runscott

It was published in 1974 and has a list in the back of all the HOF'ers at that time. I think if you look at that list you will notice a vast difference in quality from what you would see in today's HOF. Not only is the HOF now watered down, but we justify letting in additional players based on the marginal players that have been let in since '74.

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Posted By: Paul

There's a very good book (I think it may be the Bill James' Politics of Glory) that explains that the Hall of Fame has always had losers -- not just since 1974. The 1945 class, with Tinker, Evers, Chance, and a bunch of others, was awful. Roger Bresnahan was selected very early on. I believe 1971 was another weak class, with guys like Dave Bancroft and Rube Marquard. I agree there have been some abysmal selections since 1974 -- Rick Ferrell, Travis Jackson, Red Schoendienst, Phil Rizzuto -- but Bill James is right. It's always been this way.

By the way, Bob Caruthers played 10 years, not 9, so he is eligible for the Hall. In his final year, he did not pitch, so you have to look in the hitters' section of the Baseball Encyclopedia to find his 10th year.

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Posted By: Brian H (misunderestimated)

Almost all of the earlier inductees you question probably don't belong but personally I would defend Bresnahan and Chance. Here's why:

Bresnahan was probably the best major league Catcher between Buck Ewing and Gabby Hartnett. It was a very demanding position and he could hit some too. His relative (to his time and position) Runs Created are among the highest ever -- they were the highest ever as of few years ago but Piazza or IROD may have passed him seince.

Chance had one MVP calliber season and several where he would have been the NLs All-Star at 1B (I think STATs gives him 6 retroactive All-Star appearances in addition to an MVP). Additionally he was a hell of a manager for the CUBS -- he won their only two World Series to date('07 and '08_ and his '06 team won a record 116 games (in a 155 game season) before folding against the Chisox in the World Series. His career numbers are a bit weak (he didn't play that long and he was injury prone) but his contributions as a player-mnager during the Cubs glory days warrant induction. He also stole 401 bases back when every base counted. In his nearly 8 seasons managing the Cubs his winning pct. was .664 -- hence his being called the "Peerless Leader." To put that in some perspective: Joe McCarthy's career percentage (the best ever) was just .615. Chance ranks 5th all-time in career winning percentage:
1) Joe McCarthy* .615
2) Jim Mutrie .611
3) Charlie Comiskey* .608
4) Frank Selee* .598
5) Billy Southworth .597
6) Frank Chance* .593
(McGraw is 7th).

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Posted By: runscott

but the list I saw was fairly impressive. So I guess I would say that, despite a few sub-great players in the pre-1974 list, the percentage of such players looked to me to be much smaller than it is now.

I would think that it wouldn't be too difficult to compare a current list, grouped by position, to one from 1974. If such a current list is available, I would be happy to provide the 1974 list from the "Bible".

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

It seems to me that a fair measure of a player's performance are those values which are expressed as a percentage (ie. batting average, slugging pct., ERA, etc.). This is an indicator of significant achievement without necessarilly much longevity.

So, employing the Kofax rule of approximately six seasons are sufficient to prove exemplary performance, it seems reasonable to include in the hall all players who achieved a batting average of >.340 and a ERA of <2.30.

The players who match this criteria include:

Joe Wood
Orval Overall
Will White
Ed Reulbach
Lefty O'Doul
Dave Orr
Pete Browning

Why not include them? Is Early Wynn a better pitcher, or Luke Appling a better hitter than any of these?