Which players are in the baseball HOF who don't deserve to be?

Don Sutton, Phil Niekro and Gaylord Perry were strictly compliers.
Maybe Perry gets in based on two Cy Youngs, but none of these guys were ever feared.

 

Whoops.

 

Contrary to popular opinion, being "feared" is not listed among the criteria for Hall of Fame induction. And Perry had some pretty damn fine seasons, in addition to so-called compiling 314 wins. No problem with him being in.

 

I should have wrote dominant instead of feared. Perry and Niekro threw a lot of innings on a lot of bad teams.
Perry is the best of the three, but that doesn't make him an all-time great.

 

What is this "compiler" shit?

So Pete Rose was a shitty player? I guess he is the greatest "compiler" of them all?

 

Cy Young is only in the Hall because he stuck around long enough to rack up 511 wins. Fucking compiler.

 

Lloyd Waner (rumor has it, some Veterans Committee members thought they were voting for his brother, no-doubt Hall of Famer Paul)

And yes, a bunch of Frankie Frisch's old Giants/Cardinals buddies — Jim Bottomley, George Kelly (though he did have a cool nickname — "High Pockets"), Jesse Haines, Freddie Lindstrom, Chick Hafey, Ross Youngs, Rube Marquard (who got in largely because he was a compelling figure in "The Glory of Their Times")

Ray Schalk probably got in because he was one of the few clean members of the Black Sox

 

Here's how we solve this issue:

Get the stat guys involved. Have standards set in each old-school stat category - 3K hits, 500 HRs, 300 wins, etc - add some new ones - .875 OPS, 1.20 WHIP, etc. - and figure a points formula. Player X reaches point minimum, they're in. They don't, they're out. That way you eliminate the "they were a good teammate," or "they played in a major market their entire career" BS.

 

No, that's not the answer.

 

Yeah that's it, make baseball more like the LPGA ...

 

JoePo's (can we call him JoePo a la JoePa?) is on the right strike, but I think he misses a few points.

1. You're not using new stats against old players. The VORPies (I believe that's Jon Heyman's dismissive term) also are using stats that compare players to their contemporaries, like ERA+ and OPS+.

2. The discussion about walks has come not because players value them more, or being taught to take a walk happens from day one of Little League. The discussion of walks by some GMs and managers comes BECAUSE it's such a hard skill to master. It's hard in part because the strike zone changes based on what the ump had for dinner last night. Plus, patience at the plate is difficult to learn. Interestingly, some of the best players at drawing a walk also strike out a lot.

I'm thinking, locally, of Jim Thome, who strikes out more than 100-plus times per year but is also always among his team's leaders in walks. That's because when he swings, it's only one speed -- power -- and because he's so careful sometimes about taking pitches he gets rung up on borderline calls.

At the earliest levels, you still have a philosophy that you should swing at everything because you "learn to hit," which to me seems profound stupid. Perhaps I have some bias because my own son, before he retired from baseball at the ripe old age of 9, probably had zero hits his final year of baseball, but he was still on base as much as most of his team's big hitters because he didn't swing at bad pitches.