Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Hall of Famers?

Please take a look at these statistics for two, unidentified ballplayers.  Each played in the same era, with nine years of their respective careers overlapping.


Player A
Player B
Career:


Seasons
14
18
At Bats
6,503
7,030
Hits
1,730
1,921
Runs
971
1,105
Home Runs
374
370
RBI
1,159
1,274
Batting Average
0.266
0.273
OPS
0.848
0.846
Average/162 Games:


At Bats
572
550
Hits
152
150
Runs
85
86
Home Runs
33
29
RBI
102
100
Batting Average
0.266
0.273
OPS
0.848
0.846

Remarkably similar, wouldn't you say?  

A couple of more bits of info.  Player A was a six time All-Star.  Player B was an eight time All Star. Player A led his league in HR and RBI once.  Player B never led his league in either category.  Neither ever won an MVP Award, although both of them received MVP votes in multiple seasons.

When Baseball-Reference.com lists the "Similarity Scores" for other players with these two, they are deemed to be similar to each other and to such players as Jack Clark, Boog Powell, Willie Horton, George Foster, Frank Howard, and Greg Luzinski,  All pretty good ball players but none of them Hall of Famers.  Nor, I might add, are any of the other "similar" players whom I didn't bother to list here.

So, my question to you is - if you were a Hall of Fame voter, which guy would you choose to vote a place in Cooperstown's Hallowed Hall?  Player A? Player B? Both? Neither?

For my own part, I have no great emotional stake in this one way or another, and I don't normally get fired up over who is or is not in any particular Hall of Fame.  If a guy gets in, good for him, and if he doesn't, I don't lose sleep over it.  As for the two guys above, I'd have no issue with either of them being enshrined, but at the same time I say that there must be a reason why the experts, the HOF voters, have been continually passed them over, year after year.

Anyway, what do you think?

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