Santo strikes out again! (HOF veterans)

I'm sure I could convince youo sg if I could tell you Hodges' PECOTA, but I have no fucking idea what PECOTA (or EQA for that matter) is.

 

Name these two non-HOF third basemen:

a. 15 seasons; .287 BA; .811 OPS; 116 OPS+; 282 HR; 1,141 RBI; 2,143 hits; 1,104 runs; 105 SB; 1,017 strikeouts; 7-time All-Star; 5-time Gold Glove. 1 World Series title (had 2 HR, 6 RBI in that series).

b. 15 seasons; .277 BA; .806 OPS; 125 OPS+; 342 HR; 1,331 RBI; 2,254 hits; 1,038 runs; 35 SB; 1,343 strikeouts; 9-time All-Star; 5-time Gold Glove. 0 World Series titles.


Edit: a. was an MVP once. b. was not.

I include strikeouts because they are a completely wasted at bat, which does nothing but hurt your team.

Who is the better player? Are they pretty much even?

 

Santo was a better hitter than several Hall of Fame third basemen, and he won five Gold Gloves.

He was not a first-ballot Hall of Famer. But he is a Hall of Famer.

 

A is either Ken Boyer or Joe Torre; judgin by the Gold Gloves I'll go with Boyer. And B is obviously Santo. I don't think either one of them should be in unless you really want to value their defense, because their offensive numbers don't particularly jump out.

 

a. is Boyer. And he was good, but not even in the Hall discussion. Because he didn't play for the Cubs.

 

Not quite.

Because the Hall of Fame's standards have been so convoluted and flat-out nonsensical over the years, the "he's better than X Hall of Famer" is a very weak argument.

 

Do any of the Santo supporters really look at his numbers and think "that's a Hall of Fame player right there"? Or do you place more weight on the anecdotes of people saying that he was as important to those Cubs teams as anyone and everything else? Because those are nice numbers, but don't exactly scream for enshrinement.

 

You don't have a PECOTA button on your calculator?

EQA basically tries to equalize offensive contribution through the eras to make a sort of baseline to compare players. It's not perfect, but it's generally more accurate than just looking at raw stats.

Boyer is a decent candidate, but he doesn't have the peak years of Santo either. He is the Hodges of 3B - his best EQA was .307, and he normally ranged between .292 and .307 for about nine years. Decent, but I think Santo is the clearly better player.

Fielding stats, Boyer has a slight edge to Santo, but neither guy was Brooks Robinson out there. For what it's worth, Hodges defensive stats are about league average for most of his years.

 

I can think of at least two other instances in which we've exchanged hundreds of words on this very topic. I do not wish to have another.

I'll just say this remains one of the rare times we simply don't agree on a baseball issue, and that I'm still not convinced that a combination of statistics and common sense leaves Santo's career anywhere below Hall of Fame status.

 

Spnited doesn't believe in your fancy, shmancy calculators.

What's wrong with the abacus, asshole?

 

I think it's the same sentiment that got a lot of people up in arms over the Buck O'Neil non-selection in '06. The fact is, there should be an "ambassadors" category in the Hall of Fame -- and while I do think the Buck O'Neil Lifetime Achievement Award was absolutely the perfect solution, it's not the same as getting a plaque in the gallery and people are still pissed at the "slight." So they still want to squeeze not-quite-Hall-of-Fame-players-but-lovable-guys like O'Neil and Santo and Pesky into the Hall anyway.

Unless the Hall of Fame changes that, I don't think you can vote in Santo on sentiment alone.

 

Fighting ... urges ... to argue ...