MLB HOF debate thread

Biggio and Bagwell should get in.

Biggio will because of 3,000.

I'm not sure Bagwell will, and it's a shame. I'd love to have seen the numbers he'd have put up if he hadn't spent his best years in the Astrodome.

 

Craig Biggio is ten times the player Wade Boggs ever dreamed of being

 

Frank Thomas is only 13 HR from 500 and when he reaches that mark he'll join Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Jimmy Foxx, Ted Williams, and Mel Ott as the only players with both 500 HR and a batting average over .300 (Thomas could literally go 0 for his first 100 AB in 2007 and still be over .300 for his career).

 

If not for the positive drug test, Palmeiro was going in the Hall of Fame. And he was never as good as Bagwell in his prime.

 

If Jim Rice isn't in the Hall as one of the most feared hitters in the 70s, then Bagwell and Thomas shouldn't make it either.

 

If you want to assume Thomas and Bagwell were clean, they're Hall of Fame locks.

 

I am sick of this whole Jim Rice argument. I do not see him getting into the Hall of Fame anytime soon. Granted he was a feared hitter, but he doesn't have the stats to get into the Hall. Bagwell? Come on people! Jeff Bagwell couldn't hold the jock strap of half of the first basemen in the Hall. Biggio should be a shoe in because of the hits as well as the hit by pitches. Andre Dawson has a case more than Rice, IMO.

 

I'm hoping I missed the sarcasm font. So Bagwell and Rice don't have the numbers, but Biggio should get partly based on the number of times he was hit by a pitch? That makes a ton of sense.

 

Name Batted Threw Inducted
Cap Anson R R 1939
Jake Beckley L L 1971
Jim Bottomley L L 1974
Dan Brouthers L L 1945
Orlando Cepeda R R 1999
Frank Chance R R 1946
Roger Connor L L 1976
Jimmie Foxx R R 1951
Lou Gehrig L L 1939
Hank Greenberg R R 1956
George Kelly R R 1973
Harmon Killebrew R R 1984
Buck Leonard L L 1972
Willie McCovey L L 1986
Johnny Mize L R 1981
Eddie Murray B R 2003
Tony Perez R R 2000
George Sisler L L 1939
Mule Suttles R R 2006
Ben Taylor L 2006
Bill Terry L L 1954

You're right. He's only better than about nine of the first baseman already in the Hall. :

 

Yeah...the sarcasm was there, but no other player has the magnet power for a baseball as Biggio. But all sarcasm aside, Biggio deserves to be in. Rice and Bags can get into the Hall of very good, but not the Hall of Fame. What do people think about Omar Vizquel? The only reason why he may get in is the gold gloves.

 

Omar's a toughie. It's really, really, really, really hard to justify Ozzie and Maz being in if Vizquel isn't going to get in, too.

He's the exact same caliber defender as those two -- just as flashy as Ozzie, but without the pregame backflip or overwhelming fan support -- and a better hitter, a key cog to all those very good-to-great Indians teams in the mid-1990s.

 

Except one of the points in Oz's favor was the postseason moments of greatness. He also won a World Series, which Vizquel never did. Had Ozzie never won the title, he would not have been the lock he was, IMO.