A lot of blood and pages have been spilled discussing whether certain borderline players deserve induction to the hall of fame. This league is not like that. Instead I want to focus on the good to great players who were rudely given the heave-ho after only one year of eligibility. There are some great players out there who failed to even get 5% of the hall of fame vote in their first year of eligibility and were removed from the ballot after one year of eligibility. And, sure, most of them weren't hall of fame players to begin with, but they deserved better.
This league will only deal with position players who were snubbed. To judge each player's quality, we will be using
Baseball Reference's all time WAR leaderboard. It isn't perfect, but it gives a good snapshot of how good each player was during their career. I'm going to make the cutoff for selecting your players at 35 WAR. Any player who has reached hall of fame eligibility, was voted on by the BBWAA, and did not receive enough votes to stay on the ballot past one year is available for selection. I trust you guys to be able to search the list and make your selections.
When you select your player, go through the list and find the Hall of Famer with the closest WAR. The rest of your team will consist of teammates of these two players,
no twisting. You must choose at least 10 teammates of each player and the ballpark must be one your snub played in. Standard alignment. $100M cap. No AAA, no clones, no DH, no trades, no injuries. Hopefully we get a nice mix of players here. I'll make my selection 12th.
**Note that I probably wasn't clear enough originally. Only snubs who were removed from the ballot after one year are eligible. I was not aware that rules were different in the past and that players used to be kept on the ballots even after receiving less than 5% of the vote.**
Owner/Players
1. dodgebob (Darryl Strawberry, Roger Bresnahan)
2. jfranco77 - (Amos Otis, Rabbit Marranville)
3. soxfanj1995 (Reggie Smith, Willie McCovey)
4. kriz (Brett Butler, Larry Doby)
5. midknight (Lenny Dykstra, Chuck Klein)
6. toddcommish (Matt Williams, Frank Chance)
7. professorjon (Kenny Lofton, Ryne Sandberg)
8. Got_Worms (Ellis Burks, Nellie Fox)
9. specsman (Willie Randolph, Duke Snider)
10. cpmitchno1 (Bert Campaneris, Joe Sewell)
11. yargespd1 (John Olerud, Joe Gordon)
12. flyingman (Jose Cruz, Max Carey)
13. carpetbagger (Bobby Veach, John McGraw)
14. go_pre (Sal Bando, Zack Wheat)
15. rickysdad44 (David Justice, Hack Wilson)
16. kyleb63 (Robin Ventura, Bill Dickey)
17. dcmatcheck (Al Oliver, Hugh Duffy)
18. thebubbaq (Darrel Porter, Phil Rizzuto)
19. dskantor (Gene Tenace, Jim Rice)
20. skean (Mark Belanger, Hack Wilson)
21. tkcronin (Norm Cash, Kirby Puckett)
22. tdoak (Ron Cey, Joe Tinker)
23. pugs (Julio Franco, Hughie Jennings)
24. wahoo54 (Bobby Grich, Harry Heilmann)
flyingman; tdoak; tkcronin; skean; dskantor; thebubbaq; dcmatcheck; kyleb63; rickysdad44; go_pre; carpetbagger; yargespd1; cpmitchno1; specsman; Got_Worms; professorjon; toddcommish; midknight; kriz; soxfanj1995; jfranco77; dodgebob; pugs; wahoo54
1/10/2013 1:38 PM (edited)