Posted by Jtpsops on 2/12/2012 12:25:00 AM (view original):
I admit I'm no expert on the issue, but wasn't Curt Flood the driving force behind FA?  Simply being the first one would not, in and of itself, note any kind of accomplishment on Hunter's part.

Posted by SpotSell on 2/12/2012 10:37:00 AM (view original):

Posted by smeric on 2/11/2012 9:01:00 PM (view original):
I don't care what anyone says, a HOF without the all-time hits leader is ridiculous.

Its called the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Infamy.  If you would like to start a Hall of Infamy, ok, I am on board.

I took my son to Cooperstown this past summer and was surprised to see so much Pete Rose stuff exhibited.  Aside from the bronze plaque, he has more things on display than a majority of those actually enshrined.  He is being honored already.

Posted by 1899_spiders on 2/12/2012 12:15:00 PM (view original):
Ooh, speaking of money pitchers, I'm tossing Chief Bender out too. Ha!

Hunter is the poster boy of why won-loss records are a team-dependent stat that is unreliable to rate pitchers. He never had a dominant season, and outside that five-year peak, he was a very 'meh' pitcher. Heck, in 1973, he was basically average, if one is willing to look beyond the weak won-loss stat.

Finally, he had a medium length career with a 105 ERA+. And that's despite have some of the best career defensive support in history. This is a pitcher whose overall performance looks very average. The best I could give him is a spot in the Hall of Very Good, and he wouldn't be one of the top pitchers there.

Hunter was one of the most highly regarded pitchers of his day, because at his best he won a lot of games, and several times he was the best pitcher on a championship team. His case is extremely team dependent, and to put him in my personal Hall, I'd need an outdated approach to evaluating players. I couldn't possibly bring myself to do that.

If anyone else has more players to add, I'd love to see them. I can't imagine the trimming is complete yet. Any cast out will be disputed - some more than others - but the point is to drop players that anyone can give a good reason why they should be removed from the Hall. Those reasons may be contentious, but if they are rational, they are considered legit.

In the Catfish Hunter case, his rejection usually comes from stat monkeys like myself. More traditional people tend to support him. It's basically the same dispute that occurs when arguing whether Jack Morris should be in the Hall. Indeed, Morris tends to rank pretty close to Hunter in personal lists I've seen, and the two currently sit at 82 (Morris) and 84 (Hunter) on Baseball-Reference's Elo Rater. I have them neck and neck.

Point is, I have certainly read enough on message boards and heard enough to know that I am not alone in my position on Hunter, and also that there are many who oppose my view. And I hope we can stick to those kinds of players when each of us decides who we would like to see gone. A vote for Andre Dawson, for example, is fine, but one for Hank Aaron is just trolling.

Glad to see some discussion on who should be in the Hall. As for Rose, I would only ban him for life if I had concrete evidence that he was throwing games. Otherwise, I would just suspend him while baseball investigates the situation. Rose claims he only bet to win, and unless the league could come up with strong evidence to the contrary, I would reinstate him. How long baseball should get to do that investigation is a more difficult issue, and I don't have an answer. And I won't keep anyone out because of PED use. It doesn't bother me.

Here are my top eligible players not in the Hall for each position:

C Ted Simmons
1B Jeff Bagwell.
2B Bobby Grich. He said in an interview that he had become aware of the push for him from the sabermetric community.
3B Sal Bando. Actually Edgar Martinez, but that's only because I don't rank DHs, and instead put them at the closest position.
SS Alan Trammell. Or Bill Dahlen. Makes no difference to me.
LF Tim Raines
CF Jimmy Wynn. I think he has an argument for the Hall, though he's not slam dunk. I know someone who used to work for the Astros. He told Wynn what I had said about that. Wynn disagrees with me.
RF Larry Walker. Even with the Coor's Field effect considered.
P Kevin Brown.

I know the comments make the list a pain to read. But there it is. Feel free to call me an idiot, and respond with your replacement for my stupid choices.

Posted by Jtpsops on 2/10/2012 9:05:00 PM (view original):
I think the HOF has changed a lot over the years. Guys we might kick out now based on stats were probably voted in for much different reasons (character, durability, contributions to franchise/MLB).  It's hard to throw guys out looking back, not knowing all the reasons they were voted in at the time. I think we can only really comment on guys who we've seen get voted in and have been able to actually hear/see some reasoning and arguments around.

Posted by Jtpsops on 2/13/2012 3:09:00 PM (view original):
I think Halladay is a recent comparison to what you described. If he's up 6-0, he'll just start laying them over and making the hitters put it in play. If it ends up 6-4, he'll bear down again.

Right, but the conversation was about a guy like Catfish Hunter who they are saying had his numbers don't reflect how good he was because he changed his approach when he had a big lead. 

I'm not saying Halladay doesn't change his approach, but he's putting up dominant numbers, and I would say his default MO is to pitch to contact, because he's dominant pitching in the strike zone.  It's only in the last few years that he's become a particularly high K rate guy.

Posted by AlCheez on 2/14/2012 1:05:00 PM (view original):

Right, but the conversation was about a guy like Catfish Hunter who they are saying had his numbers don't reflect how good he was because he changed his approach when he had a big lead. 

I'm not saying Halladay doesn't change his approach, but he's putting up dominant numbers, and I would say his default MO is to pitch to contact, because he's dominant pitching in the strike zone.  It's only in the last few years that he's become a particularly high K rate guy.