The case against him is that he caught fewer games than Buster Posey, who retired young and missed a bunch of time to injury. The last 5 years of Mauer's career he was basically Doug Mientkiewicz. He's certainly not the worst selection, but I was surprised to see that level of support.
Batting average is such a strange thing to go by at this point. Is Harmon Killebrew a Hall of Famer for you? Sure, he hit a lot more homers and had a higher career OPS+ than Helton, but the rest of the counting stats point to Helton being the better overall player.
Molina also sexually harassed a batboy with autism? And has a history of assaulting his wife?
You definitely have to make allowances for catchers. Like Mauer, Johnny Bench only made it to 35. Gary Carter was a pretty bad player after he turned 33, although he hung around for a while. Ted Simmons was about the same. Irod's hitting declined a lot after hitting 33. There really aren't too many Fisks who are effective into their late 30s, and most of those that continued to play past 35 or so, like Fisk and Berra, played a lot of outfield or first base too. Posey was out of baseball at age 34, so presumably he gets the same treatment.
Iirc catchers end up having major hip issues (and usually end up getting hip surgery) after they retire.
I don't think either of these guys is even close if you look at the just the on field stuff. Yea Vizquel is an asshole, but he's also not a hall of fame player.
He should be, but he won't be. There's always* an asshole voter.
I think he got close enough (five votes shy) that, based on history, he should get over the hump next year. I don't think the incoming class is quite good enough to cost him votes. Ichiro is a lock. CC and Pedroia are the next best and they might not quite get enough support to get in in their first year. That should allow Wagner to get in.
He did get smeared by a Grade A jackass. But he wasn't an altogether great dude either. He was a complicated guy. We all are.
The postseason W-L record for his teams doesn't really feel like a reflection on Mauer himself. but I do agree with your assessment here. I'm sure I watched several dozen games over the years that Joe Mauer played in, and I'm sure I was conscious of what he was doing in the moment, but I can't come up with a single memory of something he did. Still -- 3 batting titles while catching is something unique.
Belated reply to this, but Jason Varitek had 1269 hits and 190 homers as a catcher.
Tell that to a Yankee fan arguing that Berra is the GOAT and not Bench (though it's not a TERRIBLE argument) or that Dumbo and Munson should have been no-doubt about it first ballot HOFers.
Right but Cobb is cited as a canonical example of a total raging asshole who's in the Hall of Fame, when his rep is like 80% due to Al Stump (the ghostwriter of his autobiography, who made up most of the lies and whom he couldn't stop from publishing before he died in 1961), 5% each to Ken Burns' Baseball documentary, Field of Dreams' offhand joke, and the 1994 Tommy Lee Jones movie "Cobb" for each echoing some of the lies, and 5% for "Cobb, like many men of his era, liked to get in fights and got into them regularly, without regard for any particular bigotry". There's not really an argument that he was more of a bad dude than average men of his era, and in fact a lot to suggest that he was a pretty great dude overall.
I agree wholeheartedly with your post.
I've always hated the "Omar vs. Ozzie" debate. They sound like similar players until you dig deeper. Ozzie had a 90 wRC+ to Omar's 83. That's a pretty big gap when talking about middle infielders if you ask me... and that's before you consider how offense was at SS over Ozzie's career versus Omar's. Ozzie has -117 rBat while Omar has -244. Then you account for baserunning and Ozzie had 176 more stolen bases... while getting caught 19 fewer times. Not only was Ozzie a far superior base stealer, but he was also much better at taking extra bases (53% to Omar's 42%). Ozzie has +80 baserunning runs while Omar comes out at -1.
I think part of the problem with Evans is that his peak came late in his career. His age 29-35 seasons were way better than what he produced in the rest of his 20s. It probably set a narrative about what kind of player he was even as he was having really good seasons. There was an expectation that he was starting hot and would drop off. He also walked a lot in an era where that wasn't highly valued and played good right field defense when right field is where you stuck the guys who couldn't move.
JAWS has Posada 19th, well below the HoF averages for catchers, and the only few guys with a lower JAWS than Posada that are in are guys who played 70+ years ago. He was a very good hitting catcher who's teams won a lot and a so-so defender. He doesn't seem like a particularly strong candidate.
Dewey is a really interesting candidate. He falls slightly below average in terms of JAWS and WAR for Right Fielders, and he imo, is a lot better than a lot of the people that have been put in by the veterans committee. What's interesting about the advanced metrics is that they seem to think his fielding and his 8 gold gloves, are overrated and he wasn't really that good in right field. But they also think that his hitting is particularly underrated, and that brings his career WAR up to 67.2, far higher than guys like Tony Oliva, Gil Hodges, Harold Baines, etc. that have gotten in.
I wrote this in last year's Hall of Fame thread about Evans -
That's kind of funny because the Hall is full of players - Earl Combs, Waite Hoyt, Herb Pennock, Red Ruffing - who are in because they had the good sense to play with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
Yeah, for sure (and you forgot Rizzuto, perhaps the most egregious example of all).
He was a bit after Ruth and Gehrig.
Catfish Hunter and Tony Perez perhaps have a similar issue?
I don't know about the whole first ballot thing. When the name is on the ballot writers should vote on whether the player belongs in the Hall or not. The only reason a plyaer should be excluded (if the voter thinks he should make it) is that he thinks 10 other players in the ballot should go in instead of him. They can vote up to 10, they should vote up to 10.
Not to be a bugaboo in this thread, but the misinformation out there about Ortiz has always bothered me. To be clear:
If I understand correctly he was on a list that came even before the Mitchell report.
Yes. As a part of the 2002 CBA, MLB and MLBPA agreed to drug testing. As a way to prove that a testing program was needed, there was a single league-wide test. If a certain percentage of players turned up positive, that would trigger the full program to begin the next season. The test was supposed to be entirely anonymous (just numbers, no names or ways to match name to sample), yet somehow there was a list of 100 or so players that tested positive. Ortiz is one of the few names that leaked as allegedly being on that list, as was Manny.
Not saying anything about Manny. Loved him as a player, loved his swing, loved Manny being Manny. My youngest daughter was about 3-4 years old and even she recognized Manny when he popped up on screen.
And yet, Shaughnessy to this day continues at every opportunity he gets to express his faux-outrage that Manfred "pardoned" Ortiz for "testing positive for PEDs". Shank literally refuses to acknowledge the basic facts of the case, none of which are in any dispute; usually, he outright lies about Ortiz's "positive test".
Also C- Why on a list of 104 names is Ortiz pretty much the only name that was ever actually leaked
"The Game" by Jon Pessah does a pretty good deep dive into the entire Selig-Fehr era and on this subject.
