Hall of Fame: My fictional vote

It's that time of the year again. The list of candidates in the ballot for the Hall of Fame class of 2008 has just been released, and the long-tenured members of the BBWAA are hard at work (or maybe not) figuring out their ballots. And, even though they don't count, common fans like yours truly show an equal amount of passion and dedication to the subject. Watching and evaluating careers to figure out the best of the best is a subject I've always found fascinating, and the result is this post, where I'll pick players who, IMO, deserve to be inducted in Cooperstown's hallowed halls. The list of available players is found here.

For those who don't know, I'll explain my rating methods. I'm a huge fan of OPS+ as an elegant but accurate measure of evaluating hitting performance. I make adjustments when necessary, and consider different baselines depending on position. For defense, anything before the advent of play-by-play fielding metrics is probably best evaluated by reputation, and I certainly take a good look at that. For pitching, I look at runs allowed (both earned and unearned), with a look at how he was helped by the defenses behind him. All this creates a "value added" view of what constitutes a Hall of Famer, which I'm willing to bend for special cases (Lou Brock makes a terrible HOF choice according to this view, but having retired with both the single-season and career records for stolen bases counts for a lot).

So, without any further ado, the lucky ones, in alphabetic order:


BERT BLYLEVEN: Sabermetrically-oriented fans have rallied to his cause for a long time, and the bandwagon has been picking up steam for a while. The best and most passionate efforts belong to Rich Lederer of baseballanalytsts.com, and I'll refer to him for a more in-depth look. A bumper crop of pitching during the Seventies seems to have spoiled writers, who now come to expect the 300 wins which he lacks, but he clears pretty much every other HOF hurdle you can think of: Almost 5000 innings pitched, 3701 strikeouts, 60 shutouts (both tops among non-HOFers), and an ERA+ of 118 which is pretty good for such a long career.

DAVID CONCEPCION: To understand his case, you need to understand the context. Shortstop has always been a critical and hard to fill position in the diamond, and fielding it superbly is so valuable that it can be, by itself, a ticket to the Hall (think of Dave Bancroft, Phil Rizzuto, Luis Aparicio or Ozzie Smith). Besides, the Seventies and Eighties saw the adoption of artificial turf in many parks, specially in the NL where Concepcion played, and of course his own home turf was artificial. This environment made possible that "hitters" of the quality of Enzo Hernandez or the inmortal Mario Mendoza to get regular playing time as shortstops. In such a place, where a capable fielding shortstop who wasn't completely terrible with the bat was worth his weight in gold, Concepcion delivered roughly average hitting performance (a roughly average 88 OPS+, with extra baserunning value), while consistently crossing this threshold during his peak years. And both reputation and quantitative analysis put him among the all-time greats at defending his position. There are many reasons why the Big Red Machine was as good as it was, but one that isn't stated often enough is that they had the best fielder and one of the best hitters available at what is considered by some the game's toughest position.

GOOSE GOSSAGE: Once upon a time, relief aces didn't just appear to nail the last three outs of a game with a three-run or lower difference. Once upon a time, the top reliever went out to put out fires whenever they appeared, sometimes as early as the second inning, and stayed in until the situation was safe. And the quintessential example of this paradigm is Gossage. Between 1977 and 1985 he produced what is probably the highest peak for a relief pitcher ever, and few other firemen match his career total of over 1800 innings pitched. His performance declined quite a bit after his peak passed, but he remained valuable until the end. Quite honestly, I find his absence from the Hall confounding, and I hope that his high vote total from last year means he will make the final push this time.

MARK MCGWIRE: With a career 162 OPS+ and a number of absolutely monstrous seasons (his 70-homer effort first among them, of course), there is no doubt that his career is that of a Hall of Famer. The question is how much of that (if any) is owed to performance enhancing drugs. This is a question that has yet to be answered, and may never be. In this question, more than any other relating to the Hall right now, personal opinion and gut feeling counts for a lot. And my opinion is that, while it may be likely that he used PEDs, they were pretty close to being a rising tide lifting all boats. Since he rose further than most, he gets this paragraph.

DALE MURPHY: While Jim Rice and Andre Dawson have gotten most of the attention among backlog outfielder, I sincerely believe that Murphy has the superior case. He was one of the best players in baseball during the mid-Eighties, combining OPS+es in the 140s and 150s at centerfield with excellent defense and durability in a run that produced two MVP awards. He declined quickly and hardly, but he played his way into my personal Hall during his remarkably high peak.

TIM RAINES: The highlight among the new eligibles, and probably the best player in the ballot. To illustrate this, let's compare his career stats to those of a no-brainer HOFer that played a similar position at around the same time, Tony Gwynn. Take away about 400 of Gwynn's singles, and replace them with the same number of walks and stolen bases, and the result is very similar to Raines' line. As for peak, he's got plenty: years of batting averages over .3oo, OBPs over .400, occasional power and 70 stolen bases with a historically good success rate. While this is the profile of one of the all-time great leadoff hitters, the feeling is that he might have trouble attracting the attention of voters. Maybe this is because he didn't get the big counting numbers, maybe it's because he spent his best years in the relative obscurity of Montreal, but my guess is that's because his career overlapped almost perfectly with that of a similar but clearly superior player. But then again, if Rickey Henderson is the litmus test of who becomes a Hall of Famer, then we need to kick about 90% of its occupants out. Passing on Raines would be one of the biggest gaffes the BBWAA could make.

ALAN TRAMMELL: Just like Raines might be overlooked for not being Rickey, Trammell is probably passed on for not being Cal Ripken. The difficulties in finding good offense from shortstops continued throughout the Eighties, but a threesome of players proved an exception to the rule, hence becoming extremely valuable. And Trammell is the last player of this group still outside the Cooperstown halls. This value is reflected on his peak; when you take into account position and defensive skill, it is about as high as McGwire's. However, even back then, he suffered of somewhat of an appreciation problem (the 1987 AL MVP award was blatantly stolen from him), which has carried over to his HOF voting performance, but make no mistake, this is a player who easily clears the established borderlines.