This was, frankly, a very deflating post to read. Especially coming from you, Joe.
All day I see these kinds of opinions espoused on baseball Twitter (just today I had to defend Jorge Posada's case), and '_____ doesn't feel like a Hall of Famer to me' is one of my absolute least favorite pseudo-arguments out there.
Not least of all because of how it is brandished like a holy cudgel by the kinds of people who refuse to reference anything but counting stats and vibes (and for whom counting stats can be disregarded as compilation if the vibes don't concur).
There are many reasons why I hate that 'argument', but most of all because it refuses to allow for a reality in which people find players compelling for completely perplexing reasons. You, as a Djokovic fan, should understand this. Sometimes people just love the Tim Duncans of the world (I'm talking about demeanor not stats)
They like the players who are borderline as candidates but have personalities that don't lend themselves to a feeling of stardom. I hate the Cardinals. I loved Scott Rolen. I was very happy that he made it in, in spite of accusations of not being compelling enough. I watched every Cardinals game that came on just to watch him. I knew many other 3rd basemen who did the same. He was a HOF player to us, and he deserved his moment.
He deserved to be discovered the way that I discovered Hoyt Wilhelm and Billy Herman in my copy of 'Baseball's Hall of Fame: Cooperstown--Where the Legends Live Forever', where I found players who became favorites who I had no hope of ever seeing.
The men in that book were Hall of Famers to me because they were in that book. I never questioned if they should be. I read about them, and picked favorites from rows of long-dead ballplayers.
There will be kids and adults who in reading material like that 100 years from now will fall in love with Kent, or Beltran, or Jones. 'They don't feel like Hall of Famers to Me' is an argument of the present, and doesn't account for the love of discovery, or the reality that no one will be alive to even tell people walking the Hall of Fame whether a player of the 90's or 2000's deserves to be there because they 'didn't feel like a HOFer when I watched them'.
I get that you would rather have Murph in over any of them. Diminishing them in favor of your argument is, I think, ironically, an argument against joy.
The great thing about the Hall of Fame is not uniformity of agreement (see: Babe Ruth's voting totals), but the diversity of the odd, fascinating, baffling individuals who were once great at this very, very silly game, and the joy of finding some especially unique member who only you seem to have any love for.
In arguing against them in this way, you are arguing against a future someone's 'A Most Improbable Love' -- which is sad, because I thought that was a beautiful piece that understood the contradiction.
The contradiction is the essence of the Hall, where someone can fall in love with the deserving and the 'undeserving' in equal measure, irrespective of what someone might have said about that player during that era.
The hall is badly named, because fame was never really the prerequisite. Whatever combination of skill and luck is enough to get you in is the real prerequisite.
Time passes, and the Hall holds onto to the names.
The fans provide the awe, even when the awe has long expired.
What a lovely reply. Murphy is my all time favorite player. Andruw is the greatest player I ever got to follow for an entire career as a true fan of the game. I had a HOF book much like the one you mentioned when I was in middle school. I know all those old timers because of that book. I’m glad they got in because it continues the story.
It also counts toward Whitaker’s fame case that he was half of an all-time great double-play combination, with a good case as the best ever. Very few combos have been as good; none has been as good for as long.
Jones wasn’t as good as Kenny Lofton. When Lofton got less than 5% his one year on the ballot, and then never considered by a Veteran’s Committee… why would I care who gets elected after that?
(Jones may deserve to be in the Hall, but Lofton does, too. I can’t believe only one Indian from those incredible mid to late 90s teams is in the Hall of Fame.)
I wonder what Kent's stats were for the 132 times he batted after a BB intentional walk? My AI tool does not have the answer. Did he make the opposing pitchers pay?
The Hall of Fame is an oddity. In the end, probably our most favorite and debated listicle. (For my part in this year's thing, I would have voted for Beltran and Jones but not for Kent, who I don't think was even the standout of the committee choices.)
There are intense arguments about who should or should not be in. Everyone has their pet snub, and some of us (including me) have several. Everyone has people they think shouldn't even be borderline that are in. (An absurd percentage of that 2nd category were voted in by small committees) Some people just want tiny version of what the Hall is. Some want it to be bigger.
It is amazing the passion of the opinions of baseball fans that keep this debate going and keep comments on every article dealing with it plentiful, unlike any other Hall of Fame in any other category. Some want to compare WAR. Some want to compare fame. Some guys favor longevity. Some favor peak. Some want to compare eras directly. Some feel that if a guy was one of the top two at their position in their era, it shouldn't matter that the 5th best guy of a different era who is not in has more career WAR.
I may not agree with you. In fact, even of we start out with a couple of cases we agree with, if we keep talking we will find a case where we are equally passionate on opposite sides. It is what keeps this never ending argument, and the Hall itself, alive. A seemingly timeless never ending passion for the game and it's history.
As an Astros fan, I love Kent and Beltran (and respect Andruw Jones as a worthy competitor for all those years), but Lance Berkman is more Hall of Fame worthy than all of them.
I did say it was just my opinion but, admittedly, I didn’t give this a lot of thought. Other than reading Joe, and some articles here and there, I don’t pay very close attention to today’s version of major league baseball anymore. However, I stand by the fact that Judge feels like a special player from a bygone era to me and I’m not even a Yankees fan.
Ohtani and Trout, despite the injuries that have derailed his career for the past several seasons, are no brainers. I hope Mookie is just having a bad season but he wasn’t great last year either. Verlander and Scherzer are first ballot guys but I tend to forget about pitchers that hang around for years and years after they have lost their effectiveness and then bounce from team to team to keep their careers going.
I agree with the overall arch of Joe's article but make no mistake--analytics and people who get so obstinate about it takes some of the joy of the HOF away. Take the case of Jack Morris. Joe and others argued on and on and on how Morris did not deserve the HOF. Many others thought he did deserve it. One of the main arguments was his high ERA. When people introduce Mike Mussina as a HOFer including Brian Kenny in his roll call on Sunday, they say "he pitched in the rugged AL East". Yet not one person has ever said that about Morris. He had to face the Murray and Ripken Orioles, the Yankees, the Red Sox, Harvey's Wallbangers Brewers and, when they faded, the Blue Jays were a powerful team. Yet no one every mentions that. I love HOF debates but after Baines, Walker and Rolen got inducted in the last few years, it's turning into the Hall of Very Good.
Dale Murphy should be in. Period. I enjoy the value of WAR and other newer metrics, but those metrics didn't exist when Murphy played and, perhaps, the game wasn't structured around those nonexistent metrics. It's like holding the Dead Ball Era against Honus Wagner. Voters should find a way to look at the game through the prism of its time.
I'm enjoying the idea that Shohei Otani, Mike Trout, Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, and Mookie Betts fall below the standards of the Hall of Fame. Some of us have spent the last decades wondering about the cases for Jack Morris or Scott Rolen. I didn't know that anyone wouldn't let Mike Trout in.
I can squint and understand an argument that some of those don't "feel" like a HOFer. They are, of course, but the feel test isn't completely foreign. Mookie, for example, is obviously overqualified and should be elected with ease as long as he stays away from the Rose path. But it takes looking at the whole of the player to see that quality. A guy with ~1900 hits and 300 homers and on the downside of the career isn't facially obvious. I mean if I only looked cursorily, I wouldn't see much to separate him from Hanley Ramirez.
Ditto the obviously overqualified Scherzer who, facially, looks like Tim Hudson, not Walter Johnson. It takes recognizing that Mad Max's 220 wins is a LOT in this era. But when I have to era adjust, I'm doing it with my head, not my heart and thus takes away from the 'feels like' test. (Chris Sale will probably be an interesting test case if I live long enough to see it. He'll end his career with about 70 bWAR but under 175 wins. That doesn't "feel" like a HOFer but is, IMHO, one anyway.)
“Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health ... what have the Romans ever done for us?"
Not a huge fan of Kent in any way, but very curious why you used the decimal point in 0.0 to list the number of intentional walks Kent received so pitchers could face Bonds. Are partial intentional walks now a thing? Or is that just to insult Kent? (Again, I don't care for Kent or Bonds, so I don't care, just seems.... meaner than a usual Joe Pos comment. Bad day?
Bobby Grich, Lou Whitaker, Willie Randolph are my main Hall of Fame pet peeves and I think it's a bias of "If they were really hall of famers they would have been Shortstops." Hit like Honus or don't get in.
In Whitaker's case, he played his entire career next to a Hall of Fame shortstop. That's a pretty good reason for him to play second (someone has to) and his offensive statistics are superb for his era.
I have no idea why, but I often conflate Honus and Hornsby. They couldn't have been more dissimilar as people and really weren't too similar on the field either despite being in the tiny group of arguably best ever middle infielders. But unless I think about it, I can easily flip flop the two.
Love ya Joe but gee whiz this lands kind of funny from the guy who spent half his adult life arguing about Jack Morris who 100% FEELS like a Hall of Famer to a lot people.
Funny thing is Andrew Jones is Dale Murphy’s most similar batter on BR. Of course Jones was in another entire universe than Murphy defensively.
Completely agree... blasphemy!
Could not agree more on WAR.
This was, frankly, a very deflating post to read. Especially coming from you, Joe.
All day I see these kinds of opinions espoused on baseball Twitter (just today I had to defend Jorge Posada's case), and '_____ doesn't feel like a Hall of Famer to me' is one of my absolute least favorite pseudo-arguments out there.
Not least of all because of how it is brandished like a holy cudgel by the kinds of people who refuse to reference anything but counting stats and vibes (and for whom counting stats can be disregarded as compilation if the vibes don't concur).
There are many reasons why I hate that 'argument', but most of all because it refuses to allow for a reality in which people find players compelling for completely perplexing reasons. You, as a Djokovic fan, should understand this. Sometimes people just love the Tim Duncans of the world (I'm talking about demeanor not stats)
They like the players who are borderline as candidates but have personalities that don't lend themselves to a feeling of stardom. I hate the Cardinals. I loved Scott Rolen. I was very happy that he made it in, in spite of accusations of not being compelling enough. I watched every Cardinals game that came on just to watch him. I knew many other 3rd basemen who did the same. He was a HOF player to us, and he deserved his moment.
He deserved to be discovered the way that I discovered Hoyt Wilhelm and Billy Herman in my copy of 'Baseball's Hall of Fame: Cooperstown--Where the Legends Live Forever', where I found players who became favorites who I had no hope of ever seeing.
The men in that book were Hall of Famers to me because they were in that book. I never questioned if they should be. I read about them, and picked favorites from rows of long-dead ballplayers.
There will be kids and adults who in reading material like that 100 years from now will fall in love with Kent, or Beltran, or Jones. 'They don't feel like Hall of Famers to Me' is an argument of the present, and doesn't account for the love of discovery, or the reality that no one will be alive to even tell people walking the Hall of Fame whether a player of the 90's or 2000's deserves to be there because they 'didn't feel like a HOFer when I watched them'.
I get that you would rather have Murph in over any of them. Diminishing them in favor of your argument is, I think, ironically, an argument against joy.
The great thing about the Hall of Fame is not uniformity of agreement (see: Babe Ruth's voting totals), but the diversity of the odd, fascinating, baffling individuals who were once great at this very, very silly game, and the joy of finding some especially unique member who only you seem to have any love for.
In arguing against them in this way, you are arguing against a future someone's 'A Most Improbable Love' -- which is sad, because I thought that was a beautiful piece that understood the contradiction.
The contradiction is the essence of the Hall, where someone can fall in love with the deserving and the 'undeserving' in equal measure, irrespective of what someone might have said about that player during that era.
The hall is badly named, because fame was never really the prerequisite. Whatever combination of skill and luck is enough to get you in is the real prerequisite.
Time passes, and the Hall holds onto to the names.
The fans provide the awe, even when the awe has long expired.
What a lovely reply. Murphy is my all time favorite player. Andruw is the greatest player I ever got to follow for an entire career as a true fan of the game. I had a HOF book much like the one you mentioned when I was in middle school. I know all those old timers because of that book. I’m glad they got in because it continues the story.
It also counts toward Whitaker’s fame case that he was half of an all-time great double-play combination, with a good case as the best ever. Very few combos have been as good; none has been as good for as long.
Jones wasn’t as good as Kenny Lofton. When Lofton got less than 5% his one year on the ballot, and then never considered by a Veteran’s Committee… why would I care who gets elected after that?
(Jones may deserve to be in the Hall, but Lofton does, too. I can’t believe only one Indian from those incredible mid to late 90s teams is in the Hall of Fame.)
I wonder what Kent's stats were for the 132 times he batted after a BB intentional walk? My AI tool does not have the answer. Did he make the opposing pitchers pay?
The Hall of Fame is an oddity. In the end, probably our most favorite and debated listicle. (For my part in this year's thing, I would have voted for Beltran and Jones but not for Kent, who I don't think was even the standout of the committee choices.)
There are intense arguments about who should or should not be in. Everyone has their pet snub, and some of us (including me) have several. Everyone has people they think shouldn't even be borderline that are in. (An absurd percentage of that 2nd category were voted in by small committees) Some people just want tiny version of what the Hall is. Some want it to be bigger.
It is amazing the passion of the opinions of baseball fans that keep this debate going and keep comments on every article dealing with it plentiful, unlike any other Hall of Fame in any other category. Some want to compare WAR. Some want to compare fame. Some guys favor longevity. Some favor peak. Some want to compare eras directly. Some feel that if a guy was one of the top two at their position in their era, it shouldn't matter that the 5th best guy of a different era who is not in has more career WAR.
I may not agree with you. In fact, even of we start out with a couple of cases we agree with, if we keep talking we will find a case where we are equally passionate on opposite sides. It is what keeps this never ending argument, and the Hall itself, alive. A seemingly timeless never ending passion for the game and it's history.
As an Astros fan, I love Kent and Beltran (and respect Andruw Jones as a worthy competitor for all those years), but Lance Berkman is more Hall of Fame worthy than all of them.
I did say it was just my opinion but, admittedly, I didn’t give this a lot of thought. Other than reading Joe, and some articles here and there, I don’t pay very close attention to today’s version of major league baseball anymore. However, I stand by the fact that Judge feels like a special player from a bygone era to me and I’m not even a Yankees fan.
Ohtani and Trout, despite the injuries that have derailed his career for the past several seasons, are no brainers. I hope Mookie is just having a bad season but he wasn’t great last year either. Verlander and Scherzer are first ballot guys but I tend to forget about pitchers that hang around for years and years after they have lost their effectiveness and then bounce from team to team to keep their careers going.
I agree with the overall arch of Joe's article but make no mistake--analytics and people who get so obstinate about it takes some of the joy of the HOF away. Take the case of Jack Morris. Joe and others argued on and on and on how Morris did not deserve the HOF. Many others thought he did deserve it. One of the main arguments was his high ERA. When people introduce Mike Mussina as a HOFer including Brian Kenny in his roll call on Sunday, they say "he pitched in the rugged AL East". Yet not one person has ever said that about Morris. He had to face the Murray and Ripken Orioles, the Yankees, the Red Sox, Harvey's Wallbangers Brewers and, when they faded, the Blue Jays were a powerful team. Yet no one every mentions that. I love HOF debates but after Baines, Walker and Rolen got inducted in the last few years, it's turning into the Hall of Very Good.
Dale Murphy should be in. Period. I enjoy the value of WAR and other newer metrics, but those metrics didn't exist when Murphy played and, perhaps, the game wasn't structured around those nonexistent metrics. It's like holding the Dead Ball Era against Honus Wagner. Voters should find a way to look at the game through the prism of its time.
IMO, the only current player who feels like a true hall of famer, at the level of the all time greats, is Aaron Judge.
It's time for the Willie Mays HOF again!
I'm enjoying the idea that Shohei Otani, Mike Trout, Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, and Mookie Betts fall below the standards of the Hall of Fame. Some of us have spent the last decades wondering about the cases for Jack Morris or Scott Rolen. I didn't know that anyone wouldn't let Mike Trout in.
I can squint and understand an argument that some of those don't "feel" like a HOFer. They are, of course, but the feel test isn't completely foreign. Mookie, for example, is obviously overqualified and should be elected with ease as long as he stays away from the Rose path. But it takes looking at the whole of the player to see that quality. A guy with ~1900 hits and 300 homers and on the downside of the career isn't facially obvious. I mean if I only looked cursorily, I wouldn't see much to separate him from Hanley Ramirez.
Ditto the obviously overqualified Scherzer who, facially, looks like Tim Hudson, not Walter Johnson. It takes recognizing that Mad Max's 220 wins is a LOT in this era. But when I have to era adjust, I'm doing it with my head, not my heart and thus takes away from the 'feels like' test. (Chris Sale will probably be an interesting test case if I live long enough to see it. He'll end his career with about 70 bWAR but under 175 wins. That doesn't "feel" like a HOFer but is, IMHO, one anyway.)
“Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health ... what have the Romans ever done for us?"
Not a huge fan of Kent in any way, but very curious why you used the decimal point in 0.0 to list the number of intentional walks Kent received so pitchers could face Bonds. Are partial intentional walks now a thing? Or is that just to insult Kent? (Again, I don't care for Kent or Bonds, so I don't care, just seems.... meaner than a usual Joe Pos comment. Bad day?
Bobby Grich, Lou Whitaker, Willie Randolph are my main Hall of Fame pet peeves and I think it's a bias of "If they were really hall of famers they would have been Shortstops." Hit like Honus or don't get in.
In Whitaker's case, he played his entire career next to a Hall of Fame shortstop. That's a pretty good reason for him to play second (someone has to) and his offensive statistics are superb for his era.
Rogers Hornsby...It's before noon
I have no idea why, but I often conflate Honus and Hornsby. They couldn't have been more dissimilar as people and really weren't too similar on the field either despite being in the tiny group of arguably best ever middle infielders. But unless I think about it, I can easily flip flop the two.
Love ya Joe but gee whiz this lands kind of funny from the guy who spent half his adult life arguing about Jack Morris who 100% FEELS like a Hall of Famer to a lot people.