Next year's Hall of Fame Class

My mistake, he did indeed.

 

No big deal, I can't get into a fight with some one with your name/picture (best show ever). I thought I might have been wrong at first, but I was pretty sure so I looked it up.

 

baseball-reference.com rules.

Bagwell: 449 HR, 1,529 RBI, 202 SB, .297 AVG, Rookie of the Year, one MVP, finished second and third in voting two other times, in top-10 three other times.

Dawson: 438 HR, 1,591 RBI, 314 SB, .279 AVG, Rookie of the Year, one MVP, finished second twice, seventh another time.

Bagwell was a 1B, Dawson was an OF. Bagwell played 15 seasons (the last severly truncated by injury), Dawson played 21 seasons, four of which featured fewer than 100 games played.

In what was in effect three fewer seasons, Bagwell had comparable power numbers, but fewer steals.

Close call.

 

Also take into account that Dawson played half his career in Olympic Stadium, which wrecked his knees and robbed him of most of his speed.

 

Someone asked how you vote for Don Mattingly? I know Hall of Fame voters who do vote for him - largely (well, I think only) because they are Yankee fans (or biased to that effect).

As far as next year, Gossage gets in. Maybe Blyleven. He's one of those guys who played a long time and put up good numbers in compilation, but when he played you thought of his as a good, solid pitcher, but not a Hall of Famer. Kind of like Don Sutton, although he was able to stick around and win 300.

Tim Raines to me is borderline, but probably just south of it. I wonder if his drug problem will hurt his votes (although I remember the day he came back from suspension he had a monster day). Interesting (or maybe not) is that he was the last player to wear a helmet without ear flaps.

Roberto Alomar should be in the Hall of Fame. He was a premier second baseman in both hitting and fielding for a decade. Of course, that spitting incident likely will come back up and perhaps push him back a few years.

 

And Bagwell played in a different era, for the most part, an era with more home runs. You know after typing that, I noticed Dawson's best HR year was 1987 - the year of the home run. I'm rethinking if he's a Hall of Famer or not. (And I don't think writers really care about OBP.)

 

Wait, a whole page on Fred McGriff and no Tom Emanski reference?

 

Of course, you're comparing a fourth-place, last-place team and a sixth-place, last-place team, but ...

 

You're thinking of when he sat out the first month of the '87 season b/c of collussion. No one signed him to a deal as a free agent so he re-signed with the Expos May 1 and just destroyed the Mets at Shea that afternoon.

My favorite season ever.

 

...Yes, and of course that sixth place last place team had five more wins than the fourth place last place team.