Three names, Hall of Fame, yay or nay?

To the three original names on the post. As much as I like all three, it's no, no, no..
If Palmiero doesn't get in with 3,000 hits, and he was no shoe-in prior to the steroids issue, neither of those three sniff Cooperstown without a paid ticket.

 

Junkie, do you ever read Baseball America? I do. Religiously.

Guess what stats rarely show up in their evaluations? RBI. R.

Guess what stats do, like clockwork? OBP. SLG.

Almost every player evaluation gives the player's performance in the form of this line: .300/.400/.500.

 

Your argument is that the Hall of Fame should be based on what the least knowledgable fan knows about the game? Instead of actual useful tools of measuring who the most productive players were?

 

So your reply to any salient point is: "NERD!!11!!"

 

Here is a link to a list of MLB teams this year, ranked by OPS:

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/batting/sort/OPS/order/true

Look how closely OPS tracks to runs scored.

The one glaring exception is Tampa Bay, which is middle of the pack in OPS but way up there in runs scored.

Why? Because Tampa Bay leads baseball in stolen bases - and is second in steal percentage.

 

You do. For teams. That's the object of the game.

But the question is, how are those runs produced? What kind of players do you want to assemble to optimize the amount of runs scored by a lineup, over the course of a season?

The stat that tracks most closely to runs scored seems to be OPS.

 

Because runs can't be directly attributable to a single player's contributions.

 

I checked. SLG. was on Topps baseball cards beginning in 1981. So it's not some new-fangled laptop stat.

And even if it were, who cares? Our understanding of the game has deepened as we have become more analytical about studying it - a direct result, I would add, of the end of the reserve clause and the increase in player salaries.

 

Accurate. But pointless.

Although in 1954, Branch Rickey wrote an article talking about how he used something very, very similar to OPS. He just used Isolated Power (SLG minus BA) rather than SLG.

 

I don't care if Barry Bonds ate babies for breakfast while shooting up steroids for lunch and dinner, he's a Hall of Famer.

Barry Bonds was a prick. Barry Bonds was a user. Barry Bonds was also one of the 10 best position players to ever set foot on a baseball field BEFORE he ever picked up a syringe. McGwire and Sosa may not have been Hall of Famers without juice. Bonds would have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer had he retired in 1999.

 

I'd guess slugging pct. was on baseballl cards long before 1981. It was certainly a recognzed stat long before that.
OPS is much more recent but it's simply adding two easily calculated real stats (OBP and Slg.). It is not one of the many, many contrived sabermetric stats that supposedly predict future performance.

I will never, however, discount the value of RBI and runs scored. It is, after all, how you win games.

 

You said repeatedly that the "average fan" doesn't know what SLG is, let alone OPS.

Topps thought that the average 10-year-old would know what SLG was. In 1980.

You make a good point, though. We should also ignore DNA research from the 1990s, because, well, it's "new."

OPS isn't a new number anyway. I can tell you Mickey Mantle's OPS in a keystroke. And Cap Anson's.

Also, top five MLB players this year, runs scored:
(1) M. Teixeira
(2) B. Phillips
(3) C. Crawford
(4) K. Youkilis
(5) M. Prado

In OPS:
(1) M. Cabrera
(2) J. Morneau
(3) J. Hamilton
(4) J. Votto
(5) K. Youkilis

Which list looks more frightening to YOU?