Eric F. Savage

Greatness in sports is an evergreen source of fun, research and debate for most fans, and the recent election of (IMO) borderline third baseman Scott Rolen to baseball’s hall of fame has sparked predictably lively discussions.

In my previous post I mentioned that I wanted a tiered Hall of Fame, so I’ve decided to start one. Bill Simmons did something similar a while back with his Hall of Fame Pyramid for Basketball, but I think I’d like mine to be more inclusive than just 96 players. Here are my rules:

1. The player must be retired for 5 years, which is the same as the official baseball hall of fame.
2. The player must have appeared in 1,000 games, or pitched in at least 200 games (this is currently about 3,700 players)
3. Players who are selected are placed in Tier 1, the Hall of Stars. The target is about 10%. Players who are borderline may be deferred and will be re-evaluated in the future.
4. For every 3 spots in tier 1, a spot will open in tier 2, the Hall of Fame. New tiers will be created with this ratio. This means based on currently eligible players that there will be 6 tiers.

I don’t have any magic numbers like 500 Home Runs or 300 Wins, although I’ll be surprised if anyone who hit those marks doesn’t at least make Tier 1. I am going to make non-scientific affordances to players who lost time to injury or military service.

Whenever I have time, I’m going to pick 10 players at random and research if they should be accepted.

Howie Fox (1944-1954) – Not Accepted. A very average starting pitcher who spent most of his career with the Cincinnati Reds.

Erv Palica (1947-1956) – Not Accepted. A slightly below average utility pitcher who spent most of his career with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Johnny Lanning (1936-1947) – Not Accepted. A slightly above average utility pitcher who played for the Boston Bees (Braves) and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Mark Sweeney (1995-2008) – Not Accepted. A below average utility fielder and frequent pinch hitter who played for a number of teams.

Greg Minton (1975-1990) – Not Accepted. An above average relief pitcher who played for the San Francisco Giants and California Angels. 1-time All star. Notable achievement: 269¹?₃ consecutive innings without giving up a home run.

Dick Radatz (1962-1969) – Deferred. An above average relief pitcher/closer who had several great years for the Red Sox at the beginning of his career, becoming the first pitcher in history to have consecutive 20-save seasons, but struggled after that. Member of the Red Sox Hall of Fame.

Frank Francisco (2004-2014) – Not Accepted. A slightly above average relief pitcher who played for the Texas Rangers and several other teams.

George Kell (1943-1957) – Accepted. A 10x All Star contact-hitting, excellent-fielding third baseman who played for a number of teams. Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983.

Greg Vaughn (1989-2003) – Deferred. A power-hitting left fielder and 4-time All Star who played for the Milwaukee Brewers and other teams. Probably not going to be accepted, he was an average fielder with a lot of strikeouts, but I’m not sure yet where the line is so we’ll revisit.

Cookie Lavagetto (1934-1941, 1946-1947) – Deferred. A 4-time All Star infielder with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Pittsburgh pirates. An average fielder and average hitter, though above average for his position. He missed 4 full seasons to WWII service, which probably wouldn’t have made a big difference, but we’ll come back to Cookie again.

I posted a hypothetical hall of fame ballot way back in 2007 and decided to do this year’s version before they announce the result. There are 28 players on the list, half of them for the first time.

Scott Rolen – Almost
Todd Helton – No
Billy Wagner – No
Andruw Jones – No
Gary Sheffield – No
Alex Rodriguez – Yes
Jeff Kent – Almost
Manny Ramirez – Yes
Omar Vizquel – No
Andy Pettitte – No
Jimmy Rollins – No
Bobby Abreu – No
Mark Buehrle – No
Torii Hunter – No
Carlos Beltrán – Almost
John Lackey – No
Jered Weaver – No
Jacoby Ellsbury – No
Matt Cain – No
Jhonny Peralta – No
Jayson Werth – No
J.J. Hardy – No
Mike Napoli – No
Bronson Arroyo – No
R.A. Dickey – No
Francisco Rodríguez – No
Andre Ethier – No
Huston Street – No

Also, Fred McGriff was elected by one of the committees this year. To me McGriff represents possibly the best example of the “small hall” versus “big hall” points of view. The small hall thinks admission should be only for those whose greatness is beyond a shadow of a doubt, wheras the large hall thinks admission is a good capstone for a career full of solid contributions. There have been a little over 20,000 players to play major league baseball, and 270 are in the Hall of Fame, so about 1.35%, though if you filter out the number who only played a few games or even a single season, we’re probably in the 2-3% range. The small hall crowd thinks this should probably be closer to 1%, the large hall is probably more like 5%.

If forced to choose, I would probably land on the small hall side. I look at players like McGriff and Andrew Jones and think they were fantastic players that I would have loved to have on my team, but am I going to reminisce about how dominant they were? No. I’d actually like to see a tiered system where it’s not all or nothing, but we can give these players a more visible place in history while also recognizing those we felt we were lucky to see play, but that’s a post for another day.

The Yeses

As mentioned in 2007, steroids is still a factor, and in 16 years little progress has been made in how to handle that. My only two votes on this years ballots both had suspensions for PEDs late in a career that would have been automatic HoF status up to that point, but they will likely never get in from the writers’ voting as a result of the suspensions.

The Almosts

• Carlos Beltrán might make it eventually after a long and solid career, but is likely in the penalty box for the Astros cheating scandal, so we’ll think about him next year.
• Scott Rolen and Jeff Kent were great all-around players but I’d put them in the same tier as McGrifff.
• Todd Helton played half his games in a hitter’s wonderland and put together a few great seasons and a few good ones, but not enough to make the cut for me.