MLB '24 Regular Season Thread

Son of a bitch.
It’s HALL OF FAME dammit.
It’s not Hall Of Pretty good.
Don’t get me wrong. I like Votto. I like Helton.
I don’t know that either one gets in the Hall Of Fame.
We’ve watered it down so much.
You hit .290 over a decade?
You go to a (1) World Series( and got swept) and hit .316 over your career?
That’s HALL OF FAME?!?!
Again. I like them both. I don’t think either one of them SHOULD get in.

 

Why is Votto better?
Not arguing….just curious

 

I don't know your feelings on WAR, but Votto is 14th for first basemen and Helton is 18th. In 150 years, is it wrong to think the top 20 at a position should be in the Hall?

 

Has an MVP, and a runner-up finish
Has a higher WAR in 200 fewer games
Has a better OPS+ 144 to 133
In a nine-year stretch he led his league in on-base percentage seven times; the two he didn't was one were he was at .459 and missed by .001 to Harper and the other was hurt and played just 62 games

 

Honest question.
Do both/either guy get in the HALL OF FAME above Keith Hernandez and/or Fred McGriff?

 

Helton got in this year.

 

I'm the wrong guy to judge on that because I'm a "big hall" guy. I'd put both of them in. Hernandez is easily a top 30 first baseman, probably top 25. McGriff is tougher -- he might be the last borderline guy among that position. I would have liked to see the timeline where he doesn't get screwed by the strike and retires with like 508 home runs and how the voters would have handled him. He's closer to Helton though.

I think Votto is above Hernandez but they are close enough I wouldn't argue that the postseason success and his fielding give him the nod.

 

You do know that one of them just got inducted, right?


As for the rest of your post, I got to say I pretty much agree with you. I wonder about Helton myself, though I didn't raise much of an outrage about it.
He's been mentioned in the past couple of pages, and I hate to put his name in this manner, but Harold Baines is definitely the flashpoint of "should they/shouldn't they get in" debates.
For years, as much as I wanted to say they should get in, I always thought Dale Murphy and Don Mattingly fell just a hairline short of deserving. At one point, each guy was among the very best players in the game, and you thought they were easily on their way to HOF careers, but for whatever reason their peaks didn't last long enough, and the career numbers didn't warrant it.
Now? Whenever their names come up, I think to myself "If Baines is in there..."
And I do hate bringing up Baines' name in these discussions, because he did have a solid career, was a good dude from everything I heard or read, and any team would have liked having him on the roster. But I never considered him an elite player, and he never reached any of those counting barriers, so I just don't think he's deserving and believe he got in because Tony La Russa wanted to get in one of his boys.

 

Speaking as someone who watched Joey Votto in my team's division, he is a Hall of Famer in my estimation.

He will likely be one of the first modern-style Hall of Famers if he makes it. One of the first to be embraced by analytics. Someone who walked a ton, hit for power, hit for average and he had a good glove, albeit at the least valued defensive position.

I suppose an argument can be made that he didn't sustain it long enough, but that's going to come up with a lot of players from the 2010s. Bottom line is that front offices decided their careers were over before other eras decided some of their 30-something players were. Prior to the era where front offices got far more judicious about handing out contracts to older players, some guys played their way back into some semblance of production (many others didn't). Nowadays, they rarely get a chance.

I mean, shit, I'm playing a 1987 season on my dice baseball game I play. I had totally forgotten that a 36-year-old Rick Burleson played for the Orioles. The Braves had 42-year-old Graig Nettles, 37-year-old Ted Simmons and Ken Griffey Sr. and a 32-year-old Gary Roenicke platooning or playing regularly. Granted, those Braves sucked out loud and all but maybe Griffey were not justifying their continued presence at the MLB level, but these days? None of them would get a sniff of a MLB roster.

I don't think Votto is necessarily the greatest example of what I'm talking about. However, where the point is valid is going to be when comparisons are made. It's more ruthless era for older players than perhaps any in MLB history thanks to (mostly wise) front office analytics and the desire by a lot of clubs - Votto's Reds being one of them - to clear salary on a seemingly half-decade cycle.

The 2010s players and beyond are going to present some fascinating HOF cases ... and most of them, great though they might have been, are going to suffer in historical comparisons. Hopefully, the baseball experts parse all of this when the time comes.

 

The 2029 Class is alone will have Miggy (obviously a lock), Votto, Grienke, Bumgarner, Wainwright and Nelson Cruz as first-timers. If the voters decided not go Pujolis-Molina as a first-year tandem, then Yadier will be in his second year with this group.

 

I’m going to miss this meaningless squabbling once the generation that really cares about the HALL OF FAME is gone.

 

Absolutely, no question.