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Neyer on the HOF
markj111
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Monday, July 30, 2007
Updated: July 31, 11:31 AM ET
In 2008, there's Raines and nobody else
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By Rob Neyer
ESPN.com
Yesterday in Cooperstown was, by all accounts, wonderful. But what about today? Do we take time to enjoy the moment?
Nope. As a wise movie character once said, "The moment's over."
So let's start thinking about the next moment. The Hall of Fame's Web site lists, for 2008 and Beyond, "a partial list of players who are eligible for consideration for the Hall of Fame by the baseball writers in coming years." The list for 2008 is long, perhaps absurdly so: 14 players, only one of whom looks to me like a player who deserves one of those oddly inaccurate plaques in Cooperstown.
Tim Raines has Hall of Fame credentials, but he's unlikely to be voted in on the first ballot.
Tim Raines is absurdly qualified for the Hall of Fame. He was good enough to play in the majors when he was 21, and when he was 41, and he played long enough to collect 2,605 hits. He stole 808 bases and was caught stealing only 146 times. Generally, we (fans, writers, Martians) overestimate the impact of the running game, but when you steal that many bases with that kind of success rate, you're adding an impressively large number of runs to the ledger. Raines routinely posted on-base percentages among the best in the National League, and during the 1980s he ranked -- with Mike Schmidt and Dale Murphy -- among the three best players in the league.
Unfortunately for Raines, all those things don't particularly impress the great majority of the voters, and so he's not going to come close to election next year. Much has been written about Raines' qualifications, and much more will be written when the results are announced next winter; Raines will become the cause celebre of sabermetricians who have given up trying to get Bert Blyleven and Ron Santo into the Hall.
So if not Raines, who? Nobody. I could simply list the other 13 names, but I'm hoping that some of you are too young to vividly remember all of them. So instead, below are capsule summaries of the other players eligible for consideration …
• Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs in 1996 … but he hit only 160 homers during the rest of his career, and finished with 1,661 hits.
• Andy Benes won 18 games in 1996 … but didn't win more than 15 in any other season, and was an All-Star only once.
• Delino DeShields stole 463 bases, which sure seems like a lot … but that's just 45th best in major league history, and anyway DeShields was never an All-Star.
• Shawon Dunston played in the majors until he was almost 40 … but his most impressive statistical accomplishment was hitting 37 doubles one season.
• Chuck Finley won 200 games, more than Dizzy Dean and Sandy Koufax … but in 17 seasons his only Cy Young support consisted of one fifth-place vote (in 1990).
• Travis Fryman finished with 1,776 hits … but that's Hall-worthy only if you think the voters should give extra credit -- a lot of extra credit -- for numbers that remind us of the American Revolution.
• David Justice once was Rookie of the Year, and he hit 40 homers in one season and 41 in another … but he hit more than 30 just once more and finished with only 305.
• Chuck Knoblauch was a Rookie of the Year, he started four All-Star Games, he won a Gold Glove and he scored more than 100 runs in six seasons … but he's most famous for his inability to throw the ball to first base, and was 34 when he played his last game in the majors.
• Mike Morgan was so good that he pitched in the majors until he was almost 43, but he also managed to lose 186 games while winning 141.
• Robb Nen averaged 41 saves per season from 1998 through 2002 … but he didn't pitch at all after 2002 because of severe shoulder problems, and at the moment his 314 career saves rank just 15th on the all-time list.
• Greg Swindell won 18 games in his first full season in the majors … but he never won even 14 in another season, and finished his career with seven saves.
• Randy Velarde once led the American League in singles … but that really is the nicest thing one can say about Velarde's long career.
• Mark Wohlers saved 97 games over the course of three seasons … but saved only 22 games in the rest of his career, and we might reasonably wonder why he's on this list at all.
So there are your 14 candidates, and I'm fairly certain that only Raines will be named on at least 5 percent of the ballots, and thus appear again in 2009.
And it's not just 2008 that might see nobody elected by the BBWAA. By my count, from 2009 through 2012 there are only five viable candidates: Rickey Henderson (automatic), Roberto Alomar (underappreciated, but the Gold Gloves should be enough), Barry Larkin (underappreciated, probably will suffer the same fate as Alan Trammell), Jeff Bagwell (probably will make it, though steroid suspicions and relatively brief career could hurt him) and Rafael Palmeiro (apparently lying to Congress is going to cost him a lot of votes).
All of which leaves the door wide open for the holdovers, particularly Goose Gossage and Jim Rice. Like it or not, both are virtually guaranteed election, because a significant number of voters simply don't like to turn in ballots with too many blank lines. And suddenly Gossage and Rice are going to start looking better than they did last year, even though their numbers haven't changed one bit.
Rob Neyer writes for ESPN Insider and regularly updates his blog for ESPN.com. You can reach him via rob.neyer@dig.com. His most recent book, "Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders," is available everywhere.
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