Jeff Bagwell and Fred McGriff - HoFers?

I was thinking about this earlier tonight and these polls often generate some interesting points of view.

What say you?

 

Only if Tom Emanski is on the veterans' committee.

 

Not with those numers in that era.

 

Neither pass my litmus test. They were never considered one of the game's best at their position.

 

Neither before Dale Murphy, dammit.

 

I think Bagwell has a significantly better case than McGriff.

Bagwell finished his career with a much higher batting average (.297 to McGriff's .284) and on-base percentage (.408 to .377). Bagwell also scored 1,517 runs, well ahead of McGriff's 1,349, even though McGriff played four more seasons.

McGriff's only sizeable edge is in home runs, 493 to 449, but he also did not do as many things well as Bagwell. McGriff was a mediocre fielder at best and very slow on the basepaths. Bagwell was a better defender and a very real threat to steal bases. He had 202 steals for his career, including 30-30 seasons in 1997 and 1999.

Bagwell also played nine of his 15 seasons in the Astrodome, which hurt his power numbers. He still had two of his three seasons with over 40 homers before Houston moved to Minute Maid Park in 2000.

McGriff was a very good player for a very long time, but was he ever considered a great player during his career? He never finished higher than fourth in the MVP voting. Bagwell won one MVP award, finished second once and third once.

I think Bagwell should get in and McGriff should just miss.

 

Bagwell, maybe. McGriff, no. In the end, probably no on both.

 

And now that Buck said that, I can't the image out of my head that Craig Biggio, in his young days as a catcher, firing the ball back to Bob Knepper faster than the pitcher was tossing softballs to the plate.

Some memories are beyond logic.

(Oh yeah ... maybe Bagwell, can't see McGriff in Cooperstown)

 

No way Bags gets in. He's this generation's Jim Rice.
Omar Vizquel has a better case then either of these gents IMHO, but even he'll be a stretch.

 

Might be a little too soon to assess Bags' chances, considering that his name is probably about to get dragged through the steroid mud with Pettite and Clemens.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080525&content_id=2772712&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

 

How so?

Vizquel actually has a much better case than I think anybody realizes.

He's similar to Concepcion, in that he was maybe the sixth-best player on some very good teams (which means not a lot of All-Star bids and never in the running for an MVP), but he was better in every way than his fellow Venezuelan. Compares very favorably to Aparacio. Six of his 10 "most comparable batters" on B-R are Hall of Famers (Aparicio, Ozzie, Maranville, Fox, Schoendienst and Reese.) ... I wish Omar had more steals, but he does have 2,600 hits -- could finish with close to 2,800 -- and except for steals, he's got Ozzie beat in every offensive category. The 11 Gold Gloves will make his strongest case; like his keystone mate Alomar, he was the best at his position defensively for a decade.

He was spectacular for a while, and very good for a long, long time. He might be the last of his breed (the no-hit, great-field shortstop) to make it in, now that we're in the era of Ripken and Jeter and A-Rod, but there's a lot of precedent for an Omar Vizquel to be a Hall of Famer.

I think Vizquel makes it, and I don't necessarily think it will be a borderline call, either.

 

The only "easily" part is the 3,000 hits. Look at the rest of his numbers. His OPS+ was only like 15-18 percent above league average. And he may have played catcher, second base and the outfield, but he was no better than slightly above-average at any of those positions. If not for the 3,000, he'd be lucky to make it to 50 percent his first year.