Johnny Damon HOF?

Raines and Belle are the only ones out of the above group who deserve it, IMO.

Other top '90s outfielders? Griffey and Bonds are locks (regardless of how long it takes Bonds, he'll get in.) Manny should be a lock. Gwynn and Henderson are already in.

Impossible to know how Sosa will fare in HOF voting.

Andruw Jones has a case; so does Edmonds.

Lofton has no shot. Who else is left? Canseco, Anderson, Mondesi, O'Neill, Carter, Justice, Grissom, White, Van Slyke, Bichette ... laughable.

 

No, but I'm big on the idea that a Hall of Famer should have been viewed by his peers as dominant at his position.

I am a Small Hall guy.

 

Jones has a good case. Would he get in without 10 consecutive Gold Gloves? Doubtful, even though his numbers are decent. He put himself in good company with his defense.

 

Jones probably has no shot at the Hall because; a) no outfielder has ever made the Hall primarily for his defense and b) by the time he hits the ballot the voters image of him will be far more the fat journeyman than the dominating defender with the good bat he was in his 20s. Whether thats the right judgement is another question. Jones had a terrific peak/prime where that all time great glove and well above average bat (very good, if not great for a CFer) made him one of the best players in baseball. Its a shame he didn't take care of himself and add a few more of those kinds of years on, but if his value had been all bat in those years (and added up the same) he would have a much beter shot with the voters.

I think Jim Edmonds did himself a disservice by retiring.

Being just short of 400 and 2000 will hurt his case even more. one season and he would have gotten there (only 7 HR and 50 hits needed).

400/2000 would at least have been something, but 1950/393 is absolutely nothing.

He would deserve to get in, but with those numbers I can't see it.

 

Just based on upcoming elections — through 2016 — candidates are:

2013 Bonds, Sosa, Lofton and Finley
2014 Luis Gonzalez and Moises Alou
2015 Sheffield and Brian Giles
2016 Griffey, Edmonds, Garrett Anderson

Steroids are going to play a factor for about half of them. Is is possible that Griffey is the only one in by 2020? What does that say for the era when only one OF in his prime is a Hall of Famer?

I don't necessarily count Gwynn and Henderson in that group, just because they were on the downside of their careers in the 90s.

 

I did a quick search — based on WAR of OF from 1990 to the present and based on the baseline set by Bernie Williams 10 percent on the ballot —

Williams is 13 in that timeframe with 47.3 WAR. Directly above him outside the top 10 is Damon and Ichiro. Abreu is 10th and Sosa is 9th. Bonds is 1st and Griffey is second. Manny is fifth. Lofton is sixth.

 

I would take another look at Gwynn's numbers in the 90s if I were you.

 

I was talking agewise, not skill wise. Gwynn essentially played the entire decade of the 80s.

 

But he also played the entire decade of the '90s and won four of his eight batting titles then. Which is why I included him in the category as a "'90s outfielder".

 

Philosophically, I think most people believe this to be true, but I don't think it's actually the way we tend to think about players given some time after they're gone.

We're far more likely to remember the glory days, the "highlight reel" if you will, than the final memories we have of a player.

I know this is a poor example, but Willie Mays had a pretty dramatic and highly public end to his career -- falling down in the outfield during the World Series. Except no one really thinks of him like that, because he had so many other positive moments that people do remember.

Now, Andruw Jones' legacy is going to have to overcome several years of "falling down", which could prove to be very difficult for his HOF chances.

Let's also not discount -- to coin a phrase -- the Baseball-Reference Effect, which I would define as "when you want to know something about a player you never saw, the first thing you do is pull up his page on Baseball-Reference.com". And in five years, in 10 years, in 20 years, Andruw Jones' page is going to look pretty damn impressive to the many future baseball fans who weren't paying serious attention to his decline in the second half of the last decade. They're going to see a center fielder in the exclusive defensive pantheon of Mays, Speaker, Jones LLC, and a guy with a powerful (if inconsistent) bat for a decade.

Obviously, most of those fans won't have Hall of Fame votes. But assuming some SOPA bullshit doesn't pass between now and then, they will be helping to steer the discussion online. And they won't be thinking too much about the fat guy in the Dodgers uniform with a hole in his swing. They'll be thinking about the Braves' stud who dove for every ball in sight ... and caught them all.

 

If he gets in, he'll have the worst arm of a HOF OF.

 

Nope, that honor goes to Goose Goslin ... kind of the Manny Ramirez of his day. (I didn't include the excerpt about his zebra-colored bat, but read on for that story. )

http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=1213&pid=5326