ON the Hall of Fame

[thegreycat]

You know, it's been a curious journey for me as a baseball fan the last ten years. I used to mock the sabremetrics people, largely based on reading the unctuous Rob Neyer. Then, frankly, I was wrong again and again and again while the statheads were right. The turning point came after the Barry Zito signing, when I said something like, "Hey he's a

Comments

[ploaf]

What do you think of Dawson? I, of course, think he should be in. He has a case (especially since Rice is in), but I cannot remove my personal bias of loving him when I was kid from the equation.

Which brings me to the next question: how old do you think the average BBWA voter is? I ask this because of my own bias. We are getting older and that means more writers our age are voting on guys who they grew up watching. Maybe some of these guys are players from before they could fully grasp the methods of evaluating a player based on performance rather than fan appreciation.

Another really interesting topic is going to start next season with the eligibility of guys like Roberto Alomar; guys who played their best while our generation was beginning to understand the subtleties of how the game worked and, therefore, beginning to grasp how to evaluate players with more accuracy.

Then there's the Edgar Martinez debate. Oy. This is just getting interesting.

[ploaf]

I'm on the fence with Dawson. I think he has a better case than Rice. Something to consider with Dawson is that he lost time to three different strike-shortened seasons - he lost around 50 games (I forget the exact number) in '81 when he was having maybe his best all-around year, and then he lost time in '94 and '95, admittedly at the tail-end of his career, but he still would have added to his totals. I think if you take away those lost games he's closer to 2,900 hits and closer to a shoe-in. And there's all those gold gloves to consider. The low OBP prevents him from being one of the all-time greats, but clearly there is a place in the Hall for these second-tier kind of guys

[thegreycat]

that was me, btw

[ploaf]

Schilling is a tough call. Looking at his numbers, he's got a low win total I know doesn't mean everything (I'd make an exception for Pedro Martinez who has almost identical wins), but is still something the Hall voters look at. However, he's K's are over 3000. His ERA is nothing outstanding. It's pretty good, particularly considering the era in which he was pitching his best. His walk numbers are pretty good. And while he does have 3 20+ win seasons, he only topped 10 wins 10 times over the course of 20 seasons (including those 3 20+ win seasons). That's 10 wins every other season

[thegreycat]

There's a few things about Morris and Schilling that make me think Schill is in a different, and slightly better category. One is that Morris pitched 16 of his 18 seasons for winning teams, with only the 1989 and 1990 Tigers qualifying as crummy squads. Here's another stat from sabremetricsland that I think is important - Morris has a career ERA+ of 105, meaning he was barely better than an average pitcher over the course of his career. I don't think that tells the whole story at all, because Morris was a horse who played in three different decades and was an integral part of three world championship teams (and stunk up a fourth, the '93 Blue Jays). Overall he was 7-4 with a 3.80 ERA in the postseason, with amazing showings in the '84 and '91 World Series, thrown in with some stinkers (the '87 ALCS, the '92 WS

[ploaf]

That's the kind of analysis I didn't do. And that's the stuff that makes you look at Schilling and think, "yeah, he does belong there." His K/BB ratio is, as you mentioned, outstanding. When he was with the Dbacks, I would've rather faced Randy Johnson than Curt Schilling. That was Schilling at his most devastating, I think. Of course, I didn't really have the pleasure of watching him with the Phils.

As for the return from surgeries...I'm never sure what to make of that. I mean, surgeries are supposed to make you better. That's their function. On the other hand, a lot of guys struggle after them. Schilling's resiliance is certainly something to his credit, but figuring to what extent is tricky.

It funny; it might turn out that what hurts Schilling is his time in the spotlight (Boston) overshadowing his career highlights (his most dominant years were in Philly and Arizona). And it's particularly odd considering his big game performances.