In an article a couple of weeks ago, I ranked the best hitters outside the Hall of Fame, and concluded that Dick Allen deserves the top spot. Of course, hitting by itself doesn’t determine Hall-worthiness; defense–the difficulty of the position and the quality of play–and baserunning are parts of the picture as well. So who are the best all-around position players not in the Hall?
Assorted thoughts on 2002 pitching
Among the many responses I got to the Bert Blyleven Hall of Fame article on ESPN.com, one of the most interesting was from Dan Kelley of the Boston Metro and yankees-suck.com (a completely objective, non-partisan web site, I’m sure). While my article argued that Blyleven is by far the best pitcher not in the Hall, Dan raised the complementary issue of the best hitter not in the Hall.
A ludicrous slippery-slope response to baseball’s recent announcement that they will enforce rules limiting the wearing of protective “body armor” at the plate? Of course it is. No one wants to see batters lose their head protection, no matter how much they crowd the plate.
NEW YORK, March 15, 2006 — A 50-year baseball tradition has come to an end. Batting helmets, mandatory equipment for all major-league hitters since 1956, will no longer be allowed in MLB games, officials announced today. The move comes after previous league attempts to back hitters off the plate resulted in little change in batter…
"The Man With the Golden Gun", an article that ran last month on this site, recognized the most valuable and least valuable catcher arms in the majors last season. That piece generated a lot of reader response, including this e-mail from M.H.: I have my doubts about this Stolen Base Runs Prevented statistic. It seems…
Another Hall of Fame election has come and gone, and the post-mortem columns look pretty much the same as last year. They lament the fact that Gary Carter has to wait another year, that Bert Blyleven and Rich Gossage got stiffed again, and that a decent candidate got dropped from the ballot. (Actually, I’m surprised…
It’s time to present the inaugural Golden Gun award, given to the league’s best catcher at shooting down would-be baserunners. The winner is the major-league leader in Stolen Base Runs Prevented (SBRP), which is calculated from the number of opponent steals (SB), the number of runners the catcher throws out (CS), and the number of…
Let’s play Name That Player. Today’s HOF-eligible mystery player was an outstanding hitter over his long career, finishing with 339 homers (65th on the all-time list), 526 doubles (27th), and 4405 total bases (35th). He is the career leader in Equivalent Runs among all eligible players not yet in the Hall of Fame. He was…
Did you know that some umpires are more steal-friendly than others? I have to admit, that possibility had never crossed my mind until a recent discussion on Usenet’s rec.sport.baseball mentioned a couple of articles in previous years’ STATS, Inc. books that addressed the relationship between umpires and stolen-base percentage. The earlier of those two articles…
In my years of following baseball, I’ve formed the impression that starters who pitch in the All-Star Game tend to be a little off in their first start after the midsummer classic. This year, while watching SportsCenter highlights of Al Leiter getting shellacked, I decided to look a little more deeply to see if my…
The Texas Rangers’ bullpen has a new take on an old saying this year: You scratch my back…and I’ll stab you in the back. In last Thursday’s game against the Orioles, the Rangers’ Jeff Zimmerman relieved Francisco Cordero in the seventh inning with the bases loaded, one out and the dangerous Albert Belle at the…
Who were the best pitchers of the 1990s? Almost everyone would rank Greg Maddux number one, and you probably wouldn’t get too much argument by picking Roger Clemens number two, but after that it gets a little more controversial. With the voting for the Team of the 1990s in the home stretch, we thought it…
"Baseball is 75% pitching." "Pitching and defense are what win baseball games. " We’ve heard these cliches spouted countless times, but thanks to the work of analysts like Bill James, among many others, we know they don’t stand up to scrutiny. Scoring runs plays just as important a role in winning as preventing runs. However,…