2009 Ballot
Roberto Alomar
Will Clark
David Cone
Barry Larkin
Edgar Martinez
Fred McGriff
Willie Randolph

2010 Ballot
Roberto Alomar
Albert Belle
Will Clark
Amdre Dawson
Barry Larkin
Edgar Martinez
Don Mattingly

I used to love Will Clark. But why all the Love? What is the argument that he is really a HOFer?

Beyond being one of the 20 best first basemen in baseball history?

Quickly, in a pitcher's park, in a pitcher-friendly era (1986-1992), he twice had a slugging under .450, and only 3 times had an on base under .360. He was an excellent defensive first baseman. During this time, he was always in the top few hitters in the National League.

When he moved to the AL in 94, his quality didn't go down...his quantity did. He still ended up with better career numbers, and more games and plate appearances than Kirby Puckett who was a first ballot selection.

He's not an inner circle guy, but he was a fantastic player, and better than guys who should be in the Hall.

If your going to Bump him for the "Pitchers" Era of 86-92 then dont you have to gig him for 93-2000. He had good numbers 93 on but less then 86-92. And 93 on people where putting up gigantic historic numbers and he didnt.

Granted his Defense was a huge plus. And we can be fairly confident he wasnt using roids

Tangent....And Puckett should not be the baseline for a hall of fame. I feel bad for the guy. Eventual HOFer ok I could see it and all of you smarter then me could defend it well.....but first ballot? Please. If he coulda stayed healthy 3-5 more season then maybe a first ballot was in order. Puckett = In/ Clark =In I just dont find compelling.

Roberto Alomar
Albert Belle
Will Clark
Andre Dawson
Barry Larkin
Fred Lynn
Edgar Martinez
Fred McGriff

I did do that...which is why I didn't call him one of the best hitters in the American league from 94-on. He was frequently hurt.




Puckett was an example. He played in less games and he had less plate appearances than Will Clark, and he was a first ballot Hall of Famer.



I'll walk you through it...Will Clark's inability to stay in the lineup when he was in his 30's is an argument non-starter because he maintained a high-level of production despite of it, and he still managed to play more than someone we put in on the first ballot.

Clark has to meet the standards of our Hall of Fame, which compared to Puckett, he does quite well.

As an aside, I've found that most of the arguments coming from non-voting people in the thread are because they aren't making the disconnect between SoSH and Cooperstown. They share a name (Hall of Fame) but we've set up 100 rounds of voting to get our standards, and they have too. That doesn't mean we must share..standards.

Regarding where we go from here, a survivor vote would be easy and fun, and here’s how it could work:

1. Divide our inductees up by position.
2. Most weeks, we vote out the worst player at each position. We’d vote out several pitchers, and we might need to vote out two at a particular position in some weeks in order to even out the pool.

There’d be a few simple things to work out in advance, such as whether we combine relievers and starters.

When you get a chance, URI, could you provide the rationale for "pitcher friendly" with regards to the years 1986-1992? I think I know what you're getting at, but I rarely see the term "pitcher-friendly" used for periods after like 1969.

The All time norm for a National League team is 4.44 runs per game.

For the years Clark was in the NL (and a few years after)...
1986: 4.18
1987: 4.52
1988: 3.88
1989: 3.94
1990: 4.20
1991: 4.10
1992: 3.88
1993: 4.49
1994: 4.62
1995: 4.63
1996: 4.68

In a historical context, the 86-93 time period was pitcher friendly. Especially when compared to the 93-04 era.

2010 Ballot
Roberto Alomar
Albert Belle
Edgar Martinez

2010
Roberto Alomar
Barry Larkin
Edgar Martinez
Albert Belle

Focussing on the "pitcher's park" portion of URI's comment, here are the hitter's park factors for Candlestick (per bb-ref) during the years in question (100 is neutral, below that favors the pitcher):
1986: 95
1987: 95
1988: 96
1989: 97
1990: 96
1991: 97
1992: 94

Perhaps this figure will help. It shows runs scored per season by American League teams since 1900:

Well ... okay, that's the story with runs scored. However, there are an awful lot of things that happen to create runs. For instance, a fairly high percentage of runs scored during the 1920's and 30's (particularly the latter) were a result of shoddy defense - since teams became fairly indifferent to defense in selecting their lineups during the interwar era. Other periods have had peaks and valleys created somewhat artificially through increased non-contact events (walks and strikeouts).

If you peel away all of the other things besides hitting the ball in the run-scoring equation and look at the league Contact Values (CV), which are the linear-weighted run value of each unit of contact, here is what the leagues look like:



Here are the averages for the distinct periods:


So the peaks and valleys from the R/G chart that Stupendous Man put up pretty much disappear when you filter out everything but the contact aspect of the game. You do see identifiable shifts during expansion, during WW2 and with the DH rule in the American League, but except for identifiable causes such as these, there is only slight variation from the period average from 1921-1992. In other words, the hitting environment didn't change from 1921-1992.

So what happened from 1986-1992 to cause run-scoring to dip? The biggest factor appears to be defense.
From WW2 to the early 1980's, teams consistently averaged about 65 defensive runs allowed per season (calculated as the linear weight of fielding errors). For some reason, that began declining in the 1980's to the current 50 defensive runs per game average. Here is the chart for the critical period:



I have no idea what caused the changes in defense. Perhaps it was the general replacement of the old turf during that period. Perhaps it was the influx of Latin American players. Perhaps it was scoring changes. At any rate, the run-scoring drop in the period 1986-1992 appears to have been largely due to lower defensive runs per season and had little to do with batting.

You must put a lot of effort into this, so I hate to dismiss it off-handedly, but this just doesn't pass the logic test. Walks and strikeouts are part of the hitting environment, and they are interrelated with the other stuff that happens in the batter's box. To claim that the hitting environment "didn't change" from 1921 to 1992 is not credible.

Secondly, "the story with runs scored" is that that is the story. If runs scored are higher because of shoddy defense, or walks, or whatever, then you have to be a more productive hitter to help your teams win more games. If runs scored decreases, because of defense or new ballparks or whatever, then the same production is more valuable, in terms of winning games. To determine value you have to express a player's offense in terms of wins, and to do that you must adjust for run scoring.

Of course walks and strikeouts are part of the equation and I did say that. I also have the numbers for non-contact runs, which I'll post a bit later when I have some time. The percentage of contact vs non-contact events is also important, and I'll post that too. This was particularly interesting during the inter-war era, since pitchers still were in "endurance mode" and there were relatively few strikeout pitchers until just before WW2, so most of the successful pitchers of that era were low-contact junkball types. The fact that 1930's hitters weren't really more successful at hitting pitchers in their era than hitters of today is very interesting, don't you think. It tells us an awful lot about pitching.

The orignial point was that Clark hit in a "pitcher-friendly" environment. I pulled together the numbers, looked at that, and disproved the point. Non-contact values didn't change during that time either, so the run drop was almost exclusively defense. Essentially, the hitting environment for batters remained unchanged from 1921 to 1992. Walks and strikeouts always have value, and at certain times strikeouts have been a bigger part of team defense than others. Normally, though, high strikeout eras are also high-walk eras as well. I still don't know what percentage of a walk or a strikeout gets credited to the pitcher or to the batter, so it's difficult to assess whether or not the high strikeout eras represent tougher pitchers to hit, or batters who are undisciplined. In any era, there are guys who walk more than others, and strikeout more than others.

I'm not sure that I understand your second point. A single in 2004 had the same run value as a single in 1914 or 1937. Runs are scored by teams, not by individuals, and wins are scored by teams as well. The notion that a player has to be more productive in low-run environments just isn't true. Hitters do what they do, teams score runs and teams win or lose ballgames. I am assuming from your last statement that you are an adherent of Win Shares, and consider them the end-all measure of a player's worth. We have touched on this earlier in this discussion, but although I find Win Shares interesting, and useful, they are far from an exact science and still something of a novelty stat in my books.

I just don't think you're driving at the right point. Maybe "low-run era" is more appropriate than "pitcher friendly," but I think what people mean is that if runs scored per game drops, the environment is "friendlier" to pitchers because it makes them look better, and hitters look worse. I don't understand why you insist that "contact value," and not runs, is the way to measure this.

The object of hitting isn't to have the best batting average or the most walks or the highest contact value, it's to create runs. And if runs scored per games drops, it takes fewer doubles, walks and home runs to win games. So if Clark creates 100 runs in a league that averages 4.5 runs per team per game, it's more valuable (given the same number of outs used) than if he creates 100 runs in a league that averages 5 runs per team per game. The run value of his acts doesn't change, but the win value does. That's true regardless of the reason for the drop in run-scoring.


I don't know that Win Shares the stat has anything to do with this issue or my thinking on it, nor do I think that Win Shares are the end-all measure of a player, though I do think it frames the question in the right way. The ideal measure of any player is his contribution to winning games; this would be true if the stat had never existed.

I'm sure URI will post the official update shortly, but Alomar, Larkin and Edgar are in.

TrapperAB (where you been, dude?) prevents Larkin from being a unanimous pick.

Other totals (18 ballots):

11 - 61.1% Andre Dawson
10 - 55.6% Will Clark
10 - 55.6% Albert Belle
07 - 38.9% Fred McGriff
07 - 38.9% David Cone
04 - 22.0% Willie Randolph
04 - 22.2% Don Mattingly
03 - 16.7% Fred Lynn
02 - 11.1% Robin Ventura
01 - 05.6% Dan Quisenberry
01 - 05.6% Lee Smith
01 - 05.6% Tom Henke

I don't think you are understanding what I am trying to say. First of all Contact Value is an expressed in runs, it's just an isolation of runs (or theoretical runs) scored through contact. At this level, there are also non-contact runs, speed runs, pitching residual runs and defensive runs all of which together comprise runs scored. But that's not the main issue ...

You are making one fundamentally flawed assumption in your discussion - that there exists a mythical hitting environment that affects hitters and pitchers. In fact it's the other way around - the variations in run-scoring during the years 1921-1992 were created by the hitters and pitchers. Take a look at Henry Aaron. He came up in the 1950's and played into the 1970's. His numbers were essentially the same throughout. Run scoring was high in the 1950's, it dipped down in the 1960's, and then picked back up in the 1970's. Henry Aaron was not affected by those run-scoring fluctuations. Willie Mays wasn't affected by them. Red Schoendienst wasn't affected by them. Marv Throneberry wasn't affected by them. Sandy Koufax wasn't affected by them. Warren Spahn wasn't affected by them. Jim Bunning wasn't affected by them. These guys had normal career paths that transcended "run environment."

The players created the run environment, not the other way around.

Take a look at the 1950's in the National League on my CV chart. For some reason, Contact Value (and run-scoring in general) increased in the NL during the middle and late 1950's, but did not do so in the A.L. - they stayed at average levels. Why did this occur? It occurred because the N.L. integrated the game earlier than the A.L., and they had Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, Roy Campanella, Henry Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Ernie Banks and Frank Robinson. The A.L. had Larry Doby, Elston Howard and Luis Aparicio. The N.L. wasn't an easier "hitting environment" - they just had better players and better teams.

Likewise, the hitting environment didn't suddenly get worse in the 1960's. In fact, contact value barely dipped at all - except for 1968. What happened was that a handful of dominant pitchers came into the league or hit their peaks right around that time frame, including Sam McDowell, Juan Marichal, Koufax, Drysdale, Jim Maloney, Denny McLain, Mickey Lolich, etc. Teams were composed differently too - with many light-hitting defensive specialists on the rosters. Again, the environment did not change the players, the players changed the environment.

So back to your point, a player and his hits are not more important in one year or another. The player has a normal career path that he goes through in his career and he plays as well as the baseball gods allow. The baseball gods do not intervene from season to season to make it harder or easier across the board to pitch, or hit, or play the field. Each player's career fluctuates as it will, and run-scoring occurs as the natural sum of every player's and every team's fluctuations.

This is not what I'm saying. I'm not at all saying it was harder to hit in years that featured low run scoring. I have no idea whether that's true or not.

Here is the concept - if the average team scores 700 runs in a season, and Will Clark creates 100 runs, he has generated 16.6 percent of an average team's runs. If he puts up the exact same numbers, creating 100 runs, in a league where the average team scores 800 runs, he's generated 12.5 percent of an average team's offense. That's an important difference, and that's all that you are accounting for when you adjust for league.

When doing this analysis, it doesn't matter why run scoring is different. It could be balls, bats, defense, parks, Henry Aaron, or the gravitational pull of Venus. I don't claim to say what, if anything, is affecting hitters. What you know, what you can measure, is that in one year, the player's performance was somewhat more valuable than in the other year. It's got nothing to do with me thinking that it was "harder" or "easier" -- that's an opinion but it doesn't even have to enter into the discussion.

I'm not saying that Will Clark would have had better numbers if he'd played in the 1990s -- I don't know. When people put stats into context, they are not (or at least I am not) saying anything about what the player would have done in a different year/league/park. It's about what the player did do, and about how far that went toward the business of winning games.

Ok ... so I guess the essense of the differences in our points boils down to this. You are saying that the 100 runs he creates are more valuable if his team (or the league) scores fewer runs. My point is that those 100 runs created are 100 runs created regardless of what anyone else does. If his team scores fewer runs that doesn't make him more valuable, it just makes everyone else less valuable. It's a small distinction, but a very important one.

On the subject of Will Clark, let's take an in-depth look at his career:


Clark was essentially a line-drive hitter with above-average walk rates and modest HR power for a first baseman. He was also remarkably consistent over his career, with a BA always around .300 and an OPS in the .800s. His overall run production was also consistent and very good, with most seasons near or above .150 BRC/PA.

There are two things that hurt Clark.

The first is that he really didn't have much of a peak and really only two great seasons from a run production standpoint, 1988 and 1989. The fact that he only had two 100+ BRC seasons was partially related to the fact that he had trouble staying on the field for 150+ games in a season. In fact he only managed 600 PAs once during his last eight seasons. To put this in perspective, two excellent comps for Clark - Mark Grace and Don Mattingly each had four seasons with over 100 BRCs.

The other thing that hurts Clark is that for some reason, when everyone else started hitting the ball harder in the mid 1990's, Clark did not. Compare his rate numbers in the above list to the averages for the leagues in which he played during his career:


+ Moved to the American league in 1994.

Clark pretty consistently hit at the league average in singles and triples and above the league averages in doubles and home runs up until 1992. In that context he was a very good hitter. However, as the league averages increased through the 1990's, Clark's rates stayed the same, so by the mid-90's he was pretty much doing everything at the league average rate. Hitting at league average rates in everything does not, of course make Clark only an average hitter, since most hitters are above average in some rates, but below average in others, and he maintained above average walk rates too.

If someone cares to look at his home/road splits while with the Giants, there might be something to the park factor thing early in his career, but my guess would be that it wasn't much of a factor. Clark was a line drive hitter, and I suspect that when he got into one, it went out just about anywhere, but HRs really weren't his game. His HR rate did not improve when he moved to Texas.

All things considered, I think Clark was a fine ballplayer in every regard, but I don't think there was enough peak or really even enough playing time to justify selecting him based on a .303 BA and .880 OPS with half of his career in a true hitters era. I really only think he was "Will the Thrill" for maybe four or five seasons in the late 1980's. Afterwards, he seemed to fall into a splendid above-averageness due in part to injuries for the last decade of his career.

The 2011 ballot is up, with Sammy Sosa and Mike Hampton omitted because both are under contract for 2007.

This is the last regular year of balloting, since the only people that are eligible for 2012 are Bill Mueller, Tim Worrell, and Tim Salmon.

After a week from Sunday, the schedule will be:
1. A few weeks off to take a deep breath and look at the HOF we wrought.
2. A return, which will be to give a few days discussion of the current eligibles.
3. The beginning of the HOF Knockout Tournament, which is the LoBC survivor thing.
4. Chug the ole Budweiser.

2011 BALLOT

Andre Dawson
Will Clark
John Franco
Jeff Bagwell
Rafael Palmeiro

Edit: Really surprised that Dale Murphy waltzed in and Andre Dawson isn't getting in.

Dawson: 8 Gold Gloves, 8 All-Star Games, 1 MVP, 3 times Top-2 in MVP voting

Dawson: 109.8 WARP3
Murphy: 91.6 WARP3

Dawson: 294 FRAR
Murphy: 252 FRAR

Dawson: 314 SBs, 109 CS, 74%
Murphy: 161 SBs, 68 CS, 70%

Edit II: removed Walker

2011 Ballot:
Kevin Brown (the pitcher, not the catcher)
David Cone
Don Mattingley
John Olerud
Willie Randolph
Larry Walker

Edit: Added Brown, Walker and Olerud.

2011 Ballot
Jeff Bagwell
Albert Belle
Kevin Brown
Will Clark
David Cone
Hawk Dawson
Don Mattingly
Fred McGriff
Willie Randolph
Lee Smith



I was one who sang Dawson's praises aeons ago in this thread. One problem is that we had a lot of new voters who plopped themselves in without reading through the prior discussion, so they're relying largely on preconceived notions. I can't fault them 100% because 50+ pages is a shitload of reading (not to mention the previous 3 threads we've had). However, they really are essential reading for gaining proper perspective.

Dawson played in the greatest defensive outfield I've ever seen (with Warren Cromartie & Ellis Valentine) in cavernous Olympic Stadium. Those who haven't voted for him either (A) didn't see him play at his peak, or (B ) don't value defensive contributions enough to sway their vote. It's frustrating because, taken in combination with his offense, his field work very clearly puts him over the top IMO.

The point about Murphy is a compelling and lopsided comparison, but I think some here will use the "two wrongs don't make a right" defense in keeping Dawson off their ballot.

EDIT - Deleted Larry Walker, added Kevin Brown

Well ... I think Murphy and Dawson aren't comparable in the sense that Murphy was elected more on his peak value, while the selection of Dawson would be based on his cumulative value. Murphy would be more of a comp to a guy like Puckett or Kirk Gibson who had shorter careers, while you are more comparing Dawson to Winfield, Evans and Rice.

While we are doing comps, I wanted to mention why I left Bagwell off the ballot. As with Alomar, I may be the only one voting against him, but although I loved Jeff Bagwell, I am still not sure of what the standards are for selection of guys like Bagwell, Alomar and Belle are relative to their peers. Clearly the post-1992 numbers are inflated in much the same way as the numbers from the 1930's guys were inflated in comparison to their deadball counterparts. One of the reasons we go through exercises like this are that we believe that there are far too many guys from the 1930's in the HoF and weeding them out seems to restore some sense of historical balance. It seems that we may be repeating that mistake here.

Until we have a better set of standards to compare players, I'm not sure if Bagwell is in. His numbers look good, but 20 years from now how is he going to fit into the group of his 1B peers when compared with McGwire, McGriff, Ortiz, Pujols, Helton, Giambi, Palmeiro, Thome, Howard, Teixeira, Sweeney, Morneau, Delgado, etc? I'm just not sure.

2011 Ballot
Jeff Bagwell
Albert Belle
Kevin Brown
Will Clark
Andre Dawson
Don Mattingly
Willie Randolph

Except for Pujols (who could very well turn out to be the best 1B of all-time) Bagwell is a level above those other guys, IMO. Great hitter, great defender, good baserunner. I agree that there seem to be quite a bit of 1B boppers in the current era, but guys like Mike Sweeney and Mark Teixeira really shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as Bagwell.

2011 Ballot
Jeff Bagwell
Albert Belle
Kevin Brown
Will Clark
Andre Dawson
Don Mattingly
Fred McGriff
Rafael Palmeiro
Willie Randolph
Robin Ventura

Kevin Brown? Yes, Kevin Brown, and not even as a thank you for crapping the bed in Game 7. Brown was a great pitcher for many years, and his (1) DERA of 3.74 over 3,256 career innings and (2) career WARP3 of 105.9 put him over the top. If he had had another 300 innings at that level, he’d be a slam dunk. Here’s a link to the first of the series of charts that 67YAZ put together earlier in this thread comparing DERA to career IP; if you were to put Brown on it, he'd compare favorably to a bunch whom we've voted in.

Larry Walker is intriguing but we can only vote for 10.

Regarding Murphy vs. Dawson, I voted for both but it’s basically a career vs. peak value argument. Murphy had 4 seasons above 9.5 WARP3, while Dawson had only 1.

Question to consider when we regroup for the survivor voting: should we include greats who are still active, such as Clemens, Pujols, Manny, A-Rod, etc.? I don't see why not.

Yeah, Tudor, I'm buying in on the Kevin Brown thing and amending my ballot to reflect that.

I agree that Walker is intriguing, but we just let Ellis Burks fade into SoSH HoF oblivion without a single vote and Walker was just as big a Coors benefactor as Burks was. I'm not ready to vote for Walker until someone proves to me that he was HoF caliber at sea-level.

Jeff Bagwell
Andre Dawson

Awesome sales job by you and Tudor, VAL.

Now I can just replace Walker with KBrown. Ba-da-bing, Ba-da-boom.

Upon further review, I'm also going to erase Walker from my ballot. I knew he had a heavy H/R split, but 200 OPS points is a bit too heavy to ignore. There are other outfielders more deserving who aren't in (Belle, maybe Rice, ect...).

2011 Ballot
Jeff Bagwell
Albert Belle
Kevin Brown
Will Clark
David Cone
Hawk Dawson
Don Mattingly
Rafeal Palmeiro
Willie Randolph
Larry Walker

I've come around on Willie, but I can't shake the notion that Brett Butler was a more productive offensive player and a defensive equal to Randolph, relative to position.

I've also warmed to Mattingly, though Clark is more deserving.


And for Raffy? He played at a HoF level relative to era, in my opinion. If he juiced for the whole thing (or for the best parts), then let that be so noted.

Man, I always Kevin Brown. Not that I know him personally, but I hated his presence and demeanor on the field. But the man could pitch, and was at one time the highest paid player in baseball. This got me thinking about...

Highest Paid Players & SoSH HoF status
Alex Rodriguez, 2001-present: almost surefire HoFer by any measure
Kevin Brown, 2000: looking good on this ballot
Albert Belle, 1997 & 1999: has been competitive in his run, definitely hurt by short career not by production during career
Gary Sheffield, 1998: I would guess he'd be in by our standards
Cecil Fielder, 1996-1998: He doesn't need our praise, he's got plenty of cash
Bobby Bonilla, 1992-1994: Bust.
Jose Conseco, 1991: Pass.
Robin Yount, 1990: Easy HoFer
Orel Hershiser, 1989: By a hair over Frank Viola, barely considered here
Ozzie Smith, 1988: In rather easily
Mike Schmidt, 1985 & 1987: HoFer by every measure
George Foster, 1986: Not much considered here
Dave Winfield, 1981: Easy HoF
Nolan Ryan 1979: Minimal controversy HoF
Catfish Hunter, 1975: For my money, our worst pitching selection
Hank Aaron, 1972: HoFer's HoFer
Willie Mays, 1966: HoFer
Ted Williams, 1949: HoFer
Babe Ruth, 1927-1930: HoFer

I cobbled together this list from a couple sources, and it is obviously incomplete. It is almost also in total contrast to this list:

2011 Ballot
Jeff Bagwell
Kevin Brown
Will Clark
David Cone
Fred McGriff
Willie Randolph

2011 Ballot
Jeff Bagwell
Albert Belle
Will Clark
Andre Dawson
Fred McGriff
Rafael Palmeiro
Larry Walker

2011 Ballot
Jeff Bagwell
Tom Henke
Fred McGriff
Larry Walker

2011 Ballot
Jeff Bagwell
Albert Belle
Kevin Brown
Will Clark
Don Mattingly
Rafael Palmeiro
Robin Ventura

I never thought I'd find myself voting for Kevin Brown (or Mattingly or Clark, for that matter). But the numbers are there.

I'm gonna leave this open for another day to get some more votes.

2011

Jeff Bagwell
Kevin Brown
Will Clark
David Cone
Andre Dawson
Fred McGriff
Larry Walker
Willie Randolph
Rafael Palmeiro

I don't think Cone is getting enough love.. Perhaps I am putting to much weight on his post-season greatness. To me he is pretty comparable to Schilling with his borderline career numbers and great postseason performance.

2011-

Jeff Bagwell
Kevin Brown
Will Clark
David Cone
Andre Dawson
Fred Lynn
Fred McGriff
Rafael Palmeiro

John Olerud is an interesting guy- I'm not voting for him this round, but his defense was probably the best of his generation at that position, career EqA of 309, 115 WARP3 (89 for Mattingly, 107 for Clark). Damn good baseball player.

edit- thx scotiansox

2011
Jeff Bagwell
Albert Belle
Kevin Brown
Rafael Palmeiro

Didn't ever think Brown was that good when he was playing but the numbers are hard to argue against.
Same thing with Palmeiro. His career WARP3 of 137.8 along with a nice peak from '91-'98 puts him in ahead of McGriff and Clark.

Since I posted my challenge for someone to prove that Larry Walker was an HoF-caliber player at sea level, there have been three votes for him without comment as to why he was on the ballot, one from Major Dad (sigh), and two from new guys. I can forgive our Scotian fan for voting for a fellow Canadian but would challenge both him and McClusky to provide us with some rationale that might help sway other voters in his direction. This is, afterall, a discussion sight and I would welcome a good analysis of his career that might make me vote for him, because I truly liked Larry Walker.

I feel the same way about Palmeiro, who has also appeared on a few ballots with very little discussion except for swany's little blurb on his WARP. Palmeiro put up some good cumulative numbers in a total hitter's era, playing his entire career in hitter-friendly ballparks, yet he only had four AS appearances. This tells me that although his WARP was good, his Wins Above Really Good Players was either not very good or that he was undervalued. Even discounting the fact that he most likely trained for most of his career using illegal PED's, I do not see him as being a clear-cut HOFer. If someone feels differently, please discuss.

The thing that made this thread great was the discussion. Since we've entered the realm of players we saw play, there has been much less discussion, with people apparently voting from their gut instincts.

I don't think Palmeiro is an inner-circle type (even putting aside the PED issue, which I have), and I'll concede that he didn't really "feel" like a HOFer for much of his career, but he seems pretty comfortably in by our collective standards. What he lacked in season-by-season dominance he made up for with consistent very-goodness over a very long time. Some points in his favor:

- Career WARP3 of 130+. You need to go back to Foxx to find a first basemen with more.
- 375+ win shares. Have we ever excluded someone above that threshold?
- The Linear Weights system likes him too --- 35 batter-fielder wins, which puts him essentially even with Eddie Murray, McGwire, and Keith Hernandez.
- And, to answer any allegation that he was a "mere accumulator" (which the linear weights system controls for somewhat), his rates (OPS+, win shares per plate appearace, WARP3 per plate appearance, RC/27), while not eye-popping, are certainly consistent with other "long career" hall-of-famers.
- And it's not like he had no great seasons: three seasons above 30 win shares, four seasons above 10 WARP3 (as part of a 1991-99 run in which he averaged well over 9 WARP3 per season.)

I have a slight bias in favor of "peak value" guys over "long career" guys, but I think sometimes we take it a little far, almost holding a long, productive career against certain players. There are off-the-field reasons not to vote for Palmeiro (as he will learn when goes one-and-done on the "real" HOF ballot), but I can't see stats-based argument against him.

Well fair enough; to be honest I don't feel good voting for Palmerio. My gut always told me that he didn't belong in the hall of fame. People acted like I was crazy when I expressed this opinion but the reaction that made me dig deeper, I'm not the biggest fan of having a long and above average career to make the hall. I want the kind of guys you will tell your kids about, I love players with high peaks, even if they're short. Palmerio still gets in for me though, on counting numbers.... I hate to admit it but it really is that simple. To be honest, I would like to be convinced not to vote for him.

Larry Walker, I really think he is borderline, and like statistical analysis, and objective review (for the record, in the real world I am required to be very objective) but I also think that we should consider the type of player/person the guy was, to a smaller extent. If you could really root for a guy, its enough to push a guy on the fence in, or knock a guy on the fence out (this might not be a popular opinion on this site, but I don't see anything wrong with this).

Larry Walker had drastic home/road splits, yes. Was all this split all the Coors effect? What about 2005 in STL and 1993/1994 in MTL where he was a much better hitter at home than on the road. Regardless of location, he put up a career 140 OPS+, which is park adjusted. If the thought is that he took MORE advantage of Coors than a typical player, then you should group him with Boggs instead of taking away points for how he adapted. His ISO jumped when he went to the Rockies, but at this point he was still a kid who had huge improvement the year before. If take the years bounding his time in Colorado he was stil a VERY good player, with neither year being in his peak.

I also believe that Larry Walker had significant defensive value. Perhaps Dewey is comparable. Dewey (who also has significant splits and wouldn’t be HoF based on road numbers alone) had a longer career. I am not convinced that the difference in Walkers numbers were entirely the Coors influence. Dewey has him in Career WARP3 by a bit, but I'm not a big longevity guy.

Perhaps it is me being a fanboy. I don't have time to build an in depth statistical argument for sea level Larry Walker. He is on the fence (I can't argue that he's anything more) and I am giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Ditto to these comments. Obviously it's tempting to want to ignore Walker's Coors Field numbers because it would simplify things. If you do that then Walker's slash stats look a lot like Trot Nixon's, and that doesn't bode well for his Hall of Fame qualifications. But if you look at Walker's career semi-closely, it becomes clear (at least to me) that he wasn't a "product" of Coors Field, any more than great beer is a product of the Coors Brewing Company.

Walker was, for one, a great player outside of Coors. He wasn't consistently great, partly because of injuries, but he posted some terrific years in Montreal, and in road stats during his Colorado days ('97, '01). When he went to the Cardinals in 2004 he remained productive. He wasn't, like Dante Bichette and others, unable to adjust to a sea-level environment. If you are going to hold him to his "road" numbers alone, he compares favorably to selections like Ryne Sandberg and Dale Murphy.

But it's unfair to judge them just on their road splits, and it's unfair to Walker. It doesn't make sense to me to put up a "sea-level" case for Walker, because Walker didn't always play at sea level -- he played where he played, and people should judge him on that (within context, of course).

While everyone looking at Walker's home/road splits is probably focusing on the road side, take a gander at his home numbers for '98-'99. Over the course of two seasons at home, he hit about .440. I know Denver is mighty high, but nobody else over there is putting up 4-fricken-40 batting averages over the course of 550 plate apps. This (and other just slightly less spectacular seasons) is why Walker's adjusted numbers are still so good despite playing in Coors. You could play on the moon and if you've got a team of .440 hitters you're going to win a few games.

Walker was a great hitter, great at adjustments, and a complete ballplayer. Along with success both at altitude and at sea level, he was a beast against LHP as well as RHP. He was an excellent baserunner and fielder. He was a little less great at staying on the field; this matters more to some than others. To me, he's a good choice.

One other quick point. Seeing some of his road splits really does surprise me though. Pitchers always talk about how the ball acts different when it is pitched at Coors. I'm not sure if it's been studied, but I wouldn't be surprised if playing at Coors regularly hurts a batters ability to hit on the road.

Coupled with the fact that they play a majority of their road games at Candlestick/SBC, Qualcomm/Petco, the BOB, and Dodger Stadium.

It's fairly easy to tell the difference between truly great hitters such as Helton/Walker and decent hitters who really only look great because of Coors such as Burks/Castilla/Bichette/Galarraga especially when you look at Equivalent Average.

Walker
.290
.275
.337
.318
.329
.271
.329
.316
.296
.344

Helton
.248
.275
.283
.328
.324
.318
.339
.344
.326
.297

-------------------------
Bichette
.277
.270
.283
.269
.259
.264
.260

Castilla
.222
.271
.265
.267
.271
.276
.239

Burks
.314
.260
.307
.279
.258

Galarraga
.313
.288
.254
.281
.290