Baseball Player Comparison

Do you mean 2000? He wasn't in the majors in 1990.

 

Yes. Dates are hard.

 

The key to me is dominant at position which tilts the balance to player B.

Player A is compared to a bigger pool because of the position he played.

If Player A does get in it opens up debate to a long list of marginal HOFers

 

Player A is never getting in.

 

For those who haven't checked the numbers or figured it out - Player A is Jim Edmonds and Player B is Johnny Bench.

Normally I wouldn't dream of comparing those 2 but I was struck by the similarities in numbers. Maybe if Edmonds had spent his whole career with the Angels then more people would consider him Hall worthy. I admit to cherry picking some stats but they were the stats many sabermetricly inclined folks normally base their comparisons on.

Again - normally I wouldn't be making the argument for Edmonds and the Hall of Fame but I'm guessing someone will and the comparisons to people people like Bench or Jim Rice or Andre Dawson will be used to further Edmonds' case.

 

I think the experiment was interesting in that 4 people voted for player A while only 2 voted for player B (and I'm guessing both of those votes knew who they were voting for).

 

Bench probably did have a better peak, which is the reason he's considered more of a HOFer (besides the obvious reason that he played on great teams).

But Edmonds' 2000-2004 is going to be criminally underrated by some, unless they are just discounting it for possible PED reasons.

 

Mike Williams, mediocre relief pitcher, was a two-time All-Star because somebody from the Pirates had to be picked.

 

Scott Cooper has more All-Star games to his name than Kirk Gibson.

 

Joe Girardi made the All-Star team by not having any plans for his days off.

 

This exercise drew me to the top 500 HR list - some interesting names just below the magic 500 :

Andruw Jones - 401 - who knew

 

Baseball Reference has Andruw Jones as Jim Edmonds most similar player