Adrian Beltre: Hall of Famer?

I think he still has a decent chance.

 

But he didn't. And I'm not sure he really was better than Beltre. Both had injury issues. Rolen missed huge chunks of time and then broke down completely. Beltre often had stuff he played through, particularly shoulder issues that limited his power.

 

Beltre went to the Mariners in 2005. Maybe switching leagues was part of it. I thought that was also when he started having the shoulder problems that slowed him off and on for years, too, but I'm not sure.

 

Scott Rolen was better than Adrian Beltre. Adrian Beltre has had a better career than Scott Rolen.

 

And that's where the voters comes in. If you vote for Rolen, don't you have to vote for Beltre? And since Beltre is going to have the counting numbers superior to Rolen, I'd had to believe there are a majority of voters would vote for him after not voting for Rolen.

 

He may not get there in three years, but with essentially three years left on his contract to get him through age 37, if you were conservative and gave him exactly 100 hits for the next three years, he'd tie Chipper at 2,726 for fifth among third basemen.

And if he can average 141 in that span, he'd pass Brooks Robinson for fourth all time

 

Rolen has about 5 seasons where you could pencil him in everyday to a lineup. Beltre has about 10.

If a player misses 30-40-50-60 games every season, I would hold that against them somewhat when you look at HOF.

 

Beltre and Michael Young are on virtually parallel career paths. Taking position and power out of the mix, Young is becoming a strong HOF candidate.

 

I don't think he can really hack it at 2B anymore. His defense has gone from marginal to horrible with age. His bat was very good for a middle infielder and might still be okay there, but his defense would be so bad that he would really be hurting whoever penciled him in there. He will probably get an offer of a bench job from someone and if guys get hurt or under perform and he has a bounce back season maybe he picks up 150 hits or so - but that is very much a best case scenario for him. It sure isn't going to happen four times to get him to 3,000 or even 2-3 times to get him close enough to limp the rest of the way.

He has had a nice career and if the Rangers have a team Hall of Fame he probably deserves to be in it. Cooperstown is way out of his reach now though.