Vlad.....Best Active OF HOF'er?

To me Jorge Posada is one of those guys will hang around on the ballot for a long time, getting a token number of votes, but he'll never get in. Like Steve Garvey.

 

The average position has about 20 HOFers. Catchers right now are underrepped at 16.

Depending on which metric you use, Jorge Posada is between 15th and 25th all-time in career value for catchers. He gets docked a little for never having a dominant peak, and boosted a little for being part of a dynastic team.

He's borderline. Could go either way, imo, and not be wrong.

 

Not that anyone is debating it, but even beyond the numbers Vlad has the "wow" factor to get in. That's what I like in my HOFers. He's a beast who will swing at damn near anything, smash balls that bounce in the dirt, and still hit for average.

Mcgriff has no "wow" factor. Except "Wow, that's a sweet hat" or "Wow. My little league team does need defensive help."

 

The only "wow" factor I remember with Crime Dog was after the 1993 trade to the Braves where he hit 19 homers in eight weeks.

McGriff's peak actually coincided with the 1994 strike (1.012 OPS), which is too bad. Those missed games might've been just enough to push him over the top. (A lot of players were having career years in 1994, to be fair.)

 

Baron, there is a significant difference between not wanting to deal with the big-market media and pressure and being afraid of it. The former is reasonable. The latter is more of a criticism, one that isn't really supported by the article you linked.

Rick, Posada is not a Hall of Famer. Just because you think more catchers should go is not a good reason to put him in. There are no quotas involved. No position has to have a certain number of players in.

 

Why shouldn't the positional representation be roughly equal?

It's possible that there just haven't been that many valuable catchers. But it seems more likely that many voters don't really understand how defensive position influences offense value.

 

Players must be judged on individual merit, not a quota for each position. Posada is not a Hall of Famer on merit.

 

Posada's offensive numbers and his part of the Yankees championship success make him a borderline candidate.

 

From nj.com...

With the hit, Posada joins Johnny Bench, Gary Carter, Carlton Fisk and Ivan Rodriguez as the only catchers in Major League Baseball history to hit 250 homers, 350 doubles and record 1,000 RBI.

Piazza needed six more doubles.

 

That's impossible. How could you possibly judge the merits of a player without comparing him to others of the same position?

 

Catcher is underrepped? What does that mean? You believe there must be equal distribution of HOF players at each position?

You can use every metric every invented and a few that will be invented in the next few years and Jorge Posada is still not a Hall of Fame player.

 

How about Posada > Carter.