Baseball Hall of Fame Vote

[rdixon1208]

Originally Posted by packs

I think Edgar is a definite HOFer. He's an old school player. He's not the kind of guy where you can just look at his stats. If you saw him play then you know how good he was.

Sometimes you have to point to stats to make a case for a guy's career. Other times you "just know." I don't think voters ever looked at stats when they were deciding who got in and who didn't in the old days. They just "knew" if you were a HOFer, which might explain how seemingly marginal guys like Ted Lyons, Rabbit Maranville, Ray Schalk and Jesse Haines et al were voted in. It's hard to tell looking at their stats. But what if we saw them play? How would we feel?

When a guy keeps a single from turning into a double because of his defensive ability it doesn't show up in the stat sheet. If you do that enough times over a long enough period of time you may be remembered as a guy that outplayed his stats. But Edgar Martinez was only a hitter. His stats tell the whole story....Not a HOFer.