Baseball Hall of Fame Golden Era vote set for Dec. 5 ...

[Anthony S.]

Originally Posted by Batter67up

Go to Wikipedia and look at Gil Hodges stats. He has belonged in the Hall for a long time with his Dodger teammates. Not even considering his World Series title with the Mets in 69.

Hodges is 70th all-time in Homers (370). By the end of next year, he'll be more like 73rd or 74th.

He's 115th in RBI's (1274).

He's 306th in hits (1921).

.273 lifetime batting average.

So we know it's not his cumulative stats that would get him into the Hall of Fame.

He had a very strong run between 1949 and 1957 that included seven 100 rbi seasons and six 30 homerun seasons. 1958 and 1959 were decent. He did nothing after that (and nothing before 1949).

However, during that very strong run (or during his entire career for that matter) he never led the National League in a single statistical category other than games played (twice) and strikeouts (once).

His highest MVP finish was 7th (1957). He finished 8th another year (1950), and 10th in 1954. So he had three top 10 MVP voting years over his entire career in what was at the time an 8 team National League. That's pretty underwhelming for a guy trying to rely on the short, but great peak method of getting into the Hall of Fame.

By comparison, his HOF teammate Pee Wee Reese finished in the top 10 in MVP voting 8 times. HOF teammate Duke Snider never won it, but finished 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 8th, 9th and 10th. HOF teammate Jackie Robinson won the MVP twice. HOF teammate Roy Campanella won the MVP three times. Non-HOF teammate Don Newcombe won it once. Non-HOF teammate Carl Furillo finished higher in the MVP balloting (6th in 1949) than Hodges ever did.