A worthy HOF debate??? Lance Berkman

They aren't precise, but they aren't impossible, either. Not roughly. Again, GM's make these kind of rough projections every offseason, with every decision they make. And we fans do it in our fantasy keeper leagues.

So I guess I'm genuinely curious about why you are taking this stance. It seems out of character.

 

Any Joe Fan who's good at math can make a rough projection given a player's age and career numbers. Berkman looks a very, very long shot. But then again, nobody could've predicted when Randy Johnson was 35 that he'd be a 300-game winner, so the uncertainty works both ways.

 

Steroids will do that.

I think career paths will start to look a lot more normal from now on.

 

Because we're talking about electing a player to the Hall of Fame, not picking him for our fantasy team next year.

The Hall of Fame is about a lot more than projecting his regular-season stats for x years. That part is possible, and reasonable to discuss. (In fact, I did it in my first post on this thread.)

But if Berkman happens to pull a Mazeroski/Carter to end this Series, everything we think about him right now would be moot. None of us can project "legacy", and that's an important factor when it comes to Hall of Fame arguments. Especially when Berkman has at least three more games on the national stage next week.

A thread like this is about as useful as a thread on Joe Mauer's chances for the Hall. We can't even make an educated guess at this point in time. There's too much baseball left to be played.

 

It's impossible to know if those projections will be correct. It's impossible to know if a certain player will perform the way the average of every player who's ever played would possibly dictate.

 

Projections are always "impossible to know".

That doesn't make them worthless, by any means.

 

If I'm a team's brain trust, I'm going to go by what I know about a player having been cheek to jowl with him for years, rather than the average of a bunch of players most of which I know nothing in depth about their personal circumstances at a different point.

 

I agree with this. I mean, comparing Lance Berkman to Frank Chance is a useless exercise for more reasons than I care to get into at this time of night.

As for Berkman's HOF chances, I'm with Buckweaver: he needs at least three more years like this one to even be considered. Possible? Yes. Likely? No.

 

I have no idea what this means. Who does that?

 

I find it funny that the thread title is "A worthy Hall of Fame debate???" followed by the original poster saying that Berkman should not be in. So to answer the original question, no, it is not a worthy debate. Berkman won't sniff the Hall.

 

Just because me, the original poster, thinks he isn't likely in doesn't mean it's not worth a debate. To me it is close, much more so than some of the recent threads which is what my thread title was obviously eluding to.

 

I'm sure, for example, the Cardinals will mull the Albert Pujols they know much more than they will mull what the theoretical culmulative player will do at 37