Edgar Martinez - Hall of Famer?

One of the most underrated and valuable players of his generation.
Played on a slew of crummy teams, with little fanfare, and in pitchers parks.
OPS'd over 1.000 five different times.
Career .418 on base percentage.
Walked 100+ times four straight years from 1995 to 98.
Walked more times than he struck out career.
.312 hitter lifetime.
He doesn't have the counting stats and played under 250 innings in the field after 1994 but grades superbly everywhere else.
There's been far more talk of getting a pretender like Bernie Willaims in the HOF than Edgar.

 

Hall of Very Good.

Only 2 top-10 MVP finishes. Didn't even reach 2,500 hits. Barely cracked 300 HRs. No speed. Almost never played defense. Never even played in a World Series.

And Bernie Williams doesn't belong, either.

 

I'm glad someone finally has brought up this subject on this board. Was wondering when someone would. And yes, if he asks nicely, he can enter with a paid admission.

 

If he could of had more than 300 total ABs from ages 24-26, and more like 1500, he would have the numbers. But for whatever reason, he could not crack the mighty M lineup when he was 24, 25 or 26. That's what keeps him out of the hall.

So, no.

 

For me, the biggest knock against Martinez isn't the fact that he was a DH, but the fact that he didn't accomplish much in his 20s. He had pretty good rate stats, but not very good career totals. At age 31 he had only 62 career home runs and 268 RBI. From age 32 on, he was a beast, but he was playing catch up, and, although he was really good up until age 41, he just didn't accomplish enough overall compared to many of his contemporaries. I don't think being a career outfielder would help his chances much. Look at Larry Walker...he was a similar hitter to Edgar, and has gold glove fielding and good baserunning value to go along with it. How can you choose Martinez and not choose Walker? Jim Edmonds is another guy who is pretty similar as a hitter, and has a ton of gold gloves in center field, and I doubt he will make it in.

In a way, he was like the position player version of Randy Johnson, in the way they both did almost all of their HOF performance after age 30. Johnson was historically good from that point on. Martinez was really good, but not quite historically good. He would need to have had a better peak in order to be a peak value HOFer.

 

Very nicely argued.
Any support for your statement?

 

Gehrig's post serves as good reasoning. Also, he was woodwork, never a top player of his era.

 

This is what the board needs: Hall of Fame discussions. #ThingsNobodyHasEverSaid

Yes, like that ALCS team in 1995, and that AL West champion in 1997, and that ALCS team in 2000, and that 116-win team in 2001, and those 93-win teams in 2002 and 2003.

Yeah, nobody noticed him all the way to seven All-Star games, five Silver Slugger awards and two batting titles.

O RLYZ? Edgar has received at least 32.9% of the vote in each of his three years on the ballot. Bernie got less than 10% this year in his first year on the ballot.

Weak-ass fanboi sauce. Next.

 

My problem with gehrig's arguement is that it wasn't Martinez's fault the Ms weren't willing to give him the chance. It's not like Edgar was playing every day at the major league level and sucking -- he was hitting .350 in the minors while Seattle played garbage instead of him.

I don't think it's fair to hold that against him.

 

Could of?

 

He probably likes Brock Lesnar, too.

 

But it's what happened.