BBWAA Hall of Fame Ballot; Latest: Alomar and Blyleven elected (reply #35)

[Baldkin]

Combine that with the fact that he played with a bunch of steroid users, and I think where you have smoke, you have fire.

At any rate, Griffey was a much better player than Bagwell anyway. Had Griffey used steroids, he might have hit 1,000 home runs.

Everyone in MLB played with a bunch of steroid users.

Joe Posnanski made the point today, that before Pujols, was Bagwell the best 1B ever in the NL? Musial was primarily an OF, and Banks a SS.

 

And for comparisons sake:

Player 1

.294 .387 .437 .824

.273 .368 .444 .812

.320 .388 .516 .904

.368 .451 .750 1.201

.290 .399 .496 .895

.315 .451 .570 1.021

-----------------------------

Player 2:

.264 .329 .420 .748

.300 .366 .481 .847

.327 .399 .527 .926

.308 .361 .535 .896

.309 .408 .617 1.025

.323 .402 .674 1.076

 

So, who was the big steroid user here?

[RockCoCougars]

Combine that with the fact that he played with a bunch of steroid users, and I think where you have smoke, you have fire.

At any rate, Griffey was a much better player than Bagwell anyway. Had Griffey used steroids, he might have hit 1,000 home runs.

Everyone in MLB played with a bunch of steroid users.

Joe Posnanski made the point today, that before Pujols, was Bagwell the best 1B ever in the NL? Musial was primarily an OF, and Banks a SS.

 

And for comparisons sake:

Player 1

.294 .387 .437 .824

.273 .368 .444 .812

.320 .388 .516 .904

.368 .451 .750 1.201

.290 .399 .496 .895

.315 .451 .570 1.021

-----------------------------

Player 2:

.264 .329 .420 .748

.300 .366 .481 .847

.327 .399 .527 .926

.308 .361 .535 .896

.309 .408 .617 1.025

.323 .402 .674 1.076

 

So, who was the big steroid user here?

Griffey was a 19 year old kid, barely a year out of Moeller H.S. with roughly a year of experience in mostly the low minors. Bagwell was a 23 year old rookie, with college ball and a full year of AA under his belt. I'd say that's a bad comparison.

 

Yount put up pretty putrid stats as a 19 year old, and he really wasn't very good offensively until he was in his mid 20's or so. I think that would be a better comparison to Griffey since I'm almost 100% that Robin didn't juice. Throughout history most teenagers (outside of- to the best of my knowledge- perhaps Griffey, Al Kaline, and Mel Ott) have struggled. Even Ty Cobb hit .240 when he was 18.

[dlk9s]

Slow pony to the Gaylord Perry discussion here.

 

I think people don't condemn Perry for doctoring the baseball because it was almost like a comical game. Everyone knew Perry was messing with the ball, and he knew they knew, but he did it anyway. Try to catch him. Then it became a head game with the batters - they were sure he was doing it even if he wasn't.

 

It seems to me that many people were actually impressed with Perry's resourcefulness and sneakiness. That, combined with the comedy of the whole thing, makes him a fun character, not a villain.

[Tbadder]

I'm just glad both made it. Bert has deserved it forever.

[RockCoCougars]

Now that Tony Perez and Bert Blyleven are in, who is going to take the torch of the 'Most Annoying Whiner Campaigning for the Hall"?

[Baldkin]

Jack Morris.

[DuWayne Steurer]

What an absolute joke. Blyleven, Dawson, and others are turning it into the "Hall of Pretty Good", and guys who's numbers stand among the all time greats are excluded. The entire system needs to be worked. As it stands now, this is about as legitimate as the gold glove voting.

 

Perry. Cheating. Knew he cheated. He knew we knew. This is ok.

 

Bagwell has never been linked to steroids in any way, shape, or form, other than "he got really big" and he's a cheater.

 

Sorry, but that's ridiculous.

[Principessa21]

Edgar Martinez went down in voting percentage. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Ennder]

There is no way on earth that Morris deserves the HOF over Blyleven and yeah there is no way that Dawson deserved it over Raines. Find it odd that someone would support Blyleven and diss Dawson at the same time.

 

But yeah Edgar Martinez not making the hall is just idiotic.

[RockCoCougars]

What an absolute joke. Blyleven, Dawson, and others are turning it into the "Hall of Pretty Good", and guys who's numbers stand among the all time greats are excluded. The entire system needs to be worked. As it stands now, this is about as legitimate as the gold glove voting.

 

Perry. Cheating. Knew he cheated. He knew we knew. This is ok.

 

Bagwell has never been linked to steroids in any way, shape, or form, other than "he got really big" and he's a cheater.

 

Sorry, but that's ridiculous.

Point taken. That said, there is a similar lack of evidence that IRod juiced (outside of perhaps a mention from Canseco). Are we going to be having the same argument about him in 6 or 7 years? 'He was the best A.L. catcher ever', 'no proof', etc..... Does anyone believe that Rodriguez didn't juice after witnessing the transformation that his body made after testing became mandatory?

 

Steroids or not, Bagwell had a nice peak, but his career stats do not scream 'All Time Great' to me. In my view, Dick Allen had a very similar career path, but I think his stats were slightly more impressive due to the era in which he played. Allen recieves no consideration whatsoever, so why should Bagwell be a shoo-in?

[DuWayne Steurer]

What an absolute joke. Blyleven, Dawson, and others are turning it into the "Hall of Pretty Good", and guys who's numbers stand among the all time greats are excluded. The entire system needs to be worked. As it stands now, this is about as legitimate as the gold glove voting.

 

Perry. Cheating. Knew he cheated. He knew we knew. This is ok.

 

Bagwell has never been linked to steroids in any way, shape, or form, other than "he got really big" and he's a cheater.

 

Sorry, but that's ridiculous.

Point taken. That said, there is a similar lack of evidence that IRod juiced (outside of perhaps a mention from Canseco). Are we going to be having the same argument about him in 6 or 7 years? 'He was the best A.L. catcher ever', 'no proof', etc..... Does anyone believe that Rodriguez didn't juice after witnessing the transformation that his body made after testing became mandatory?

 

Steroids or not, Bagwell had a nice peak, but his career stats do not scream 'All Time Great' to me. In my view, Dick Allen had a very similar career path, but I think his stats were slightly more impressive due to the era in which he played. Allen recieves no consideration whatsoever, so why should Bagwell be a shoo-in?

I didn't say that Bagwell should be a shoo in. Honestly, I WOULD consider a counter argument for him based on the shortness of his career, and the tiny little park he got to play in. That said, I would probably vote yes on him, if given the choice.

 

My issue of contention here is that there ARE writers who are voting no on him, based on absolutely ZERO evidence that the guy has ever juiced.

 

As far as Irod, yes, the guy got smaller. He also got older. it's not that big of a stretch to see a guy lose some mass as he gets a little older. Maybe as his body started giving him a hard time, he decided to slim down and ease some wear and tear on his joints?

 

I find it very difficult to condemn these guys for 'cheating', when it's been done since baseball began. We GLORIFY the cheating that guys used to do 'back in the old days'. Some may argue that steroid use is a different kind of cheating and that it's 'illegal'. Well, we know Molly was blowing coke in the 80's. During games? Maybe. There's lot's of antecdotal evidence and heresay that guys used to 'bump' before games all the time in that era. Is that any less cheating? We're not keeping THOSE guys out of the hall are we? What they were doing (coke) is CLEARLY illegal.

 

There's been talk that Hank Aaron himself used to pop greenies. Mickey Mantle. Those guys are in.

 

Hypocrisy at its finest. But that's never stopped baseball before. And I doubt it ever will.

[jjkoestler]

Now that Tony Perez and Bert Blyleven are in, who is going to take the torch of the 'Most Annoying Whiner Campaigning for the Hall"?

What is Blyleven going to do in his free time now that he has been elected to the HOF?

[gregmag]

Rock Co -- please forgive me for being contrary . . . I agree that Bagwell and Allen have some important similarities. They both played at a high level for 15 seasons. They both won rookie of the year and MVP awards. I also agree that Allen was a slightly better hitter, in context, than Bagwell. Even so, I think the comparison only underscores why Bagwell should be a shoo-in.

 

First of all, I think there's a pretty strong consensus that Allen's numbers are good enough to put him in the Hall, or at least to put him in the discussion. The reason he isn't in is that, by most accounts, he was one of the most notorious clubhouse cancers in baseball history, a guy who actually cost his team wins because of his attitude and behavior. I'm very sensitive to the hazards of making amorphous claims like that, especially about black players who played in an age of rampant racism, but what I've read (see the Allen entry in Bill James' Historical Abstract) persuades me that his lack of character should count against him.

 

Second, while Allen was a better hitter than Bagwell, it wasn't a huge gap (156 OPS+ to 149), and there are some important factors that cut in Bagwell's favor: (1) More of Bagwell's value came through OBP (Bagwell: .408 OBP / .540 SLG; Allen, .378 / .534), and OPS undervalues the relative importance of OBP. (2) While both guys played 15 seasons, Bagwell played 401 more games than Allen (2150 to 1749) -- 27 games per season. That's enormous. I'd much rather have 149 OPS+ guy for 144 games a year than 156 OPS+ guy for 117, which is how their totals average out. (3) Assuming Bagwell didn't use steroids, he put up great numbers clean during an era when a lot of his rivals were using. That means that, to the extent we consider steroids an illegitimate factor in the game of that era, the league OPS was artificially inflated, and thus Bagwell's OPS+ understates his value by "clean" standards. If we're going to penalize the juicers in HoF voting, shouldn't we elevate the clean players who prevailed against them?

 

Third (not really related to Allen), I just don't see how Bagwell's raw numbers don't scream "shoo-in." .297/.408/.540? 449 home runs? I absolutely agree with your premise that we should view players' achievements in context, but to the extent we just eyeball numbers, Bagwell clearly (IMHO) weighs in as a HoF quality player.

 

But to put it in better context, let's focus on OPS+. I agree with you that Dawson shouldn't be in, and I'm also not a fan of Perez and Rice as HoFers. On the other hand, I certainly think Dave Winfield, Reggie Jackson, and Eddie Murray belong in the Hall. I just tossed off those names without looking them up; let's see how I did. Winfield: 2973 games, 130 OPS+. Jackson: 2820 games, 139 OPS+. Murray: 3026 games, 129 OPS+. That's sort of what I expected. Those guys had substantially longer careers than Bagwell, but they were substantially inferior hitters. Of course a longer career means that less of it is peak, which mitigates the difference somewhat. To address that problem, let's look at top 3 full seasons; again, I haven't peeked. Bagwell: 213 (strike season), 178, 168. Winfield: 166, 159, 154. Jackson: 189, 172, 166. Murray: 158, 156, 156 (he actually put up four straight 156s).

 

I'm not saying any of this is conclusive. You could very well argue that Bagwell's career was simply too short to warrant comparison with the deserving recent HoF sluggers I'm citing. But Bagwell played as many games as, or more than, Orlando Cepeda, Larry Doby (lost time to segregation, but was still only 23 as a rookie), Ralph Kiner, Kirby Puckett, or Ryne Sandberg (Sandberg actually played 14 more games than Bagwell), and he had a substantially better OPS+ than any of those guys except Kiner (tied at 149), who played the fewest games of the group (1472). Granted, Doby, Puckett, and Sandberg close some of the gap with defensive value, but Bagwell was no slouch as a 1b. To my eyes, Bagwell was a better hitter over his career and a better hitter at his peak than the recent crop of elite corner-position sluggers, and his career was as long as, and better than, a bunch of other worthy HoFers. I think Bagwell has a very good case.

[crewcrazy]

What an absolute joke. Blyleven, Dawson, and others are turning it into the "Hall of Pretty Good", and guys who's numbers stand among the all time greats are excluded. The entire system needs to be worked. As it stands now, this is about as legitimate as the gold glove voting.

 

Perry. Cheating. Knew he cheated. He knew we knew. This is ok.

 

Bagwell has never been linked to steroids in any way, shape, or form, other than "he got really big" and he's a cheater.

 

Sorry, but that's ridiculous.

Point taken. That said, there is a similar lack of evidence that IRod juiced (outside of perhaps a mention from Canseco). Are we going to be having the same argument about him in 6 or 7 years? 'He was the best A.L. catcher ever', 'no proof', etc..... Does anyone believe that Rodriguez didn't juice after witnessing the transformation that his body made after testing became mandatory?

 

Steroids or not, Bagwell had a nice peak, but his career stats do not scream 'All Time Great' to me. In my view, Dick Allen had a very similar career path, but I think his stats were slightly more impressive due to the era in which he played. Allen recieves no consideration whatsoever, so why should Bagwell be a shoo-in?

I didn't say that Bagwell should be a shoo in. Honestly, I WOULD consider a counter argument for him based on the shortness of his career, and the tiny little park he got to play in. That said, I would probably vote yes on him, if given the choice.

Minute Maid Park/Enron opened in 2000, so he only got 5+ seasons there. The Astrodome was notoriously one of the best pitchers parks of all-time, and he hit .304/.416/.545 from '91 to '99 playing half of his home games there. He was hitting .303/.421/.546 at home during those years. If anything, I would think that bolsters his case.

[LouisEly]

You have to raise the bar for first basemen because of the relative physical ease of playing 1B versus every other position. And that's the big argument against Edgar Martinez - he was a DH, so he didn't endure the grind of having to go out and play defense for 9 innings, even if it was standing around at first base. He got to sit on the bench and rest between ABs. That is a tremendous advantage because of the physical toll that playing 154-162 games a year places on the body.

 

Someone mentioned Palmiero being one of only four players with 500 homers and 3000 hits. Dawson IIRC was one of only three players to hit 400+ HRs and 300+ steals, the other two being Willie Mays and Barry Bonds. They are also the only ones with 400+ HRs, 300+ steals, and 8+ Gold Gloves (back when Gold Gloves meant something). Dawson also never DH'd until he was 38; Jim Rice was two years retired at that age with a couple hundred games as a DH under his belt. Don't underestimate the advantage that rest has over such a long season.

 

As for OBP... no one ever walked their way into the HOF, and no one ever will.

[kramnoj]

He got to sit on the bench and rest between ABs. That is a tremendous advantage because of the physical toll that playing 154-162 games a year places on the body.

 

Some major league hitters don't like being a DH. It's tough to sit around for 3 hours and then be able to focus for a minute or so 4-5 times a game. With hitting being an occupation where the best fail most of the time, it's tough to sit around and think about missed opportunities and come back up positive and focused. For players in the field, they can feel good about a play that they made. DHs have to be comfortable with failure and be able to thrive on it.

[TooLiveBrew]

As for OBP... no one ever walked their way into the HOF, and no one ever will.

 

Rickey Henderson essentially did. He doesn't post the gaudy SB totals without the nearly 2200 career BBs (2d all-time) & .401 OBP (tied for 55th-best). He was a LF with a career OPS+ of 127 (tied for 200th-best). What made him special was that he got on base so much. Obviously the BB wasn't his only offensive skill, but it was by far his most valuable one. It was the reason he was able to play into his early & mid-40s -- his eye at the plate allowed him to carry a solid OBP even when he was batting in the .220s.

[gregmag]

Standards change and -- we have to hope -- improve as people have more time to figure things out. We have now figured out that OBP is the single most important component of a player's offensive contribution. I would think, then, that OBP would be the first stat we look at now when evaluating a hitter's HoF qualifications (really second, after plate appearances). It certainly should be, IMHO.

 

As for the DH issue, I have never understood the assertion that "resting" between ABs makes a player a better hitter. If that were true, then hitters would routinely get better when they DH, but that doesn't happen. A lot of guys, of course, get hurt less after moving to DH, but I don't think that's a mark against them. The real reason to downgrade DHs is that they don't help their teams win on defense. But that's a factor we can measure and assess. A hitter as good as Edgar Martinez can win a lot of games for his team without playing in the field. Would he really have been worth more if he had spent ten years playing a mediocre left field? I don't see how.

[RockCoCougars]

Standards change and -- we have to hope -- improve as people have more time to figure things out. We have now figured out that OBP is the single most important component of a player's offensive contribution. I would think, then, that OBP would be the first stat we look at now when evaluating a hitter's HoF qualifications (really second, after plate appearances). It certainly should be, IMHO.

 

As for the DH issue, I have never understood the assertion that "resting" between ABs makes a player a better hitter. If that were true, then hitters would routinely get better when they DH, but that doesn't happen. A lot of guys, of course, get hurt less after moving to DH, but I don't think that's a mark against them. The real reason to downgrade DHs is that they don't help their teams win on defense. But that's a factor we can measure and assess. A hitter as good as Edgar Martinez can win a lot of games for his team without playing in the field. Would he really have been worth more if he had spent ten years playing a mediocre left field? I don't see how.

I don't think Martinez should sniff the Hall of Fame. He was a very good hitter, but not an elite hitter in my view. Plus because of the late start on his career, his overall 'milestone stats' are pretty pedestrian. The .312 career batting average is very nice, but I think the fact that the vast majority of his games were at DH work against him. Molitor is probably the closest comparison to Martinez in the Hall of Fame. At the end of his career he DH'd a lot, but over half his career games he was on the field defensively. Martinez is more like 25% non DH games- not to mention that Molly got 3,000 hits. Another comparison that I would find as fairly similar would be Harold Baines (the Brewer killer.....if this guy played the Brewers exclusively, he would have been one of the all time greats). At any rate, Baines was a DH for roughly the final 2/3 of his carreer, but still had a higher ratio of games played in the field. He also came closer to 3,000 hits and 400 homers. Though I think that he has a better argument for the hall then Martinez, I think he falls short as well.

[RockCoCougars]

Rock Co -- please forgive me for being contrary . . . I agree that Bagwell and Allen have some important similarities. They both played at a high level for 15 seasons. They both won rookie of the year and MVP awards. I also agree that Allen was a slightly better hitter, in context, than Bagwell. Even so, I think the comparison only underscores why Bagwell should be a shoo-in.

 

First of all, I think there's a pretty strong consensus that Allen's numbers are good enough to put him in the Hall, or at least to put him in the discussion. The reason he isn't in is that, by most accounts, he was one of the most notorious clubhouse cancers in baseball history, a guy who actually cost his team wins because of his attitude and behavior. I'm very sensitive to the hazards of making amorphous claims like that, especially about black players who played in an age of rampant racism, but what I've read (see the Allen entry in Bill James' Historical Abstract) persuades me that his lack of character should count against him.

 

Second, while Allen was a better hitter than Bagwell, it wasn't a huge gap (156 OPS+ to 149), and there are some important factors that cut in Bagwell's favor: (1) More of Bagwell's value came through OBP (Bagwell: .408 OBP / .540 SLG; Allen, .378 / .534), and OPS undervalues the relative importance of OBP. (2) While both guys played 15 seasons, Bagwell played 401 more games than Allen (2150 to 1749) -- 27 games per season. That's enormous. I'd much rather have 149 OPS+ guy for 144 games a year than 156 OPS+ guy for 117, which is how their totals average out. (3) Assuming Bagwell didn't use steroids, he put up great numbers clean during an era when a lot of his rivals were using. That means that, to the extent we consider steroids an illegitimate factor in the game of that era, the league OPS was artificially inflated, and thus Bagwell's OPS+ understates his value by "clean" standards. If we're going to penalize the juicers in HoF voting, shouldn't we elevate the clean players who prevailed against them?

 

Third (not really related to Allen), I just don't see how Bagwell's raw numbers don't scream "shoo-in." .297/.408/.540? 449 home runs? I absolutely agree with your premise that we should view players' achievements in context, but to the extent we just eyeball numbers, Bagwell clearly (IMHO) weighs in as a HoF quality player.

 

But to put it in better context, let's focus on OPS+. I agree with you that Dawson shouldn't be in, and I'm also not a fan of Perez and Rice as HoFers. On the other hand, I certainly think Dave Winfield, Reggie Jackson, and Eddie Murray belong in the Hall. I just tossed off those names without looking them up; let's see how I did. Winfield: 2973 games, 130 OPS+. Jackson: 2820 games, 139 OPS+. Murray: 3026 games, 129 OPS+. That's sort of what I expected. Those guys had substantially longer careers than Bagwell, but they were substantially inferior hitters. Of course a longer career means that less of it is peak, which mitigates the difference somewhat. To address that problem, let's look at top 3 full seasons; again, I haven't peeked. Bagwell: 213 (strike season), 178, 168. Winfield: 166, 159, 154. Jackson: 189, 172, 166. Murray: 158, 156, 156 (he actually put up four straight 156s).

 

I'm not saying any of this is conclusive. You could very well argue that Bagwell's career was simply too short to warrant comparison with the deserving recent HoF sluggers I'm citing. But Bagwell played as many games as, or more than, Orlando Cepeda, Larry Doby (lost time to segregation, but was still only 23 as a rookie), Ralph Kiner, Kirby Puckett, or Ryne Sandberg (Sandberg actually played 14 more games than Bagwell), and he had a substantially better OPS+ than any of those guys except Kiner (tied at 149), who played the fewest games of the group (1472). Granted, Doby, Puckett, and Sandberg close some of the gap with defensive value, but Bagwell was no slouch as a 1b. To my eyes, Bagwell was a better hitter over his career and a better hitter at his peak than the recent crop of elite corner-position sluggers, and his career was as long as, and better than, a bunch of other worthy HoFers. I think Bagwell has a very good case.

Thanks for the response. It was very well thought out and pretty convincing. At any rate without the steroid issue looming, I think that Bagwell has a very strong case for enshrinement down the road.... provided he's not linked to juicing in the next few years- I just don't think that he was 'screwed' as many seem to think, because I don't think that he should be a first ballot guy in any case.

 

As for Dick Allen, from what I've read, his reputation of a clubhouse cancer has been discredited over the years by some of his managers. The guy was obviously very controversial and did some questionable things such as walking out on the White Sox mid season (still led the league in homers that year), writing 'messages' in the infield dirt with his spikes, etc. However, I've heard that he was actually a pretty decent clubhouse presence, especially with young players. I'd highly recommend his autobiography 'Crash', it's a pretty interesting read.

[LouisEly]

Standards do change, and that's why we need to consider what the standards were at the time the player played. 30 years ago if you couldn't hit but could draw walks you wouldn't get playing time, so you can't hold OBP against a player because that wasn't a metric that was considered important at the time. You had to hit to get into the lineup. That's especially true with Latin ballplayers - you had to hit in order to get signed and make your way through the minors, thus many of those players hack at pitches outside the strike zone because they are/were conditioned to believe that they had to in order to make it and stay in the big leagues. So we need to look at the standards of the time to judge if a player was hall-worthy. You can't judge a player by current standards - parks change, fields change, PEDs change, strategies and game/season management change, key metrics/stats change... you have to look at a player compared to his peers at the time he played.

 

30 years ago pitchers routinely threw 10 CGs a season; now they protect the arms so much that last year only four pitchers had more than five, and only three had more than five in the prior two years. 30 years ago Rick Langford threw 28 complete games in a season; now Roy Halladay leads the league with 9. 30 years ago four man staffs were the norm; now it's five man staffs. 30 years ago Steve Carlton threw 300 innings a year; now the league leader is 230-250. 30 years ago you didn't have supplements, and PEDs were very limited - it was more "uppers" and "greenies" and not HGH and steroid masks. 30 years ago a Gold Glove meant something; now it's almost an extension of the Silver Slugger. 30 years ago Astro Turf was in almost half of all stadiums and it was just carpet on top of concrete; now only a few stadiums have artificial surfaces and they are field turf.

 

You can't use today's metrics to judge HOF candidates, because the game is so much different now compared to when they played.

[Baldkin]

I don't think Martinez should sniff the Hall of Fame. He was a very good hitter, but not an elite hitter in my view.

Here is Martinez's 6 year peak: 1995-2001

BA/OBP/SLG/OPS/OPS+

.356 .479 .628 1.107 185

.327 .464 .595 1.059 166

.330 .456 .554 1.009 165

.322 .429 .565 .993 158

.337 .447 .554 1.001 152

.324 .423 .579 1.002 157

.306 .423 .543 .966 160

 

He wasn't just an elite hitter, he was an all time great hitter.

Anyway, I can't make the argument for him nearly as well as Joe Posnanski did.

[1992casey]

Five hundred homers used to be an automatic ticket to the Hall; 493 would have been close enough to force a guy into the discussion. But now a bunch of guys have hit 500 homers with chemical assistance, so that benchmark is (temporarily or permanently) dead.

 

Heck, 400 homers was an automatic ticket until Dave Kingman appeared on the ballot in 1992. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

[gregmag]

Standards do change, and that's why we need to consider what the standards were at the time the player played. 30 years ago if you couldn't hit but could draw walks you wouldn't get playing time, so you can't hold OBP against a player because that wasn't a metric that was considered important at the time. You had to hit to get into the lineup. That's especially true with Latin ballplayers - you had to hit in order to get signed and make your way through the minors, thus many of those players hack at pitches outside the strike zone because they are/were conditioned to believe that they had to in order to make it and stay in the big leagues. So we need to look at the standards of the time to judge if a player was hall-worthy. You can't judge a player by current standards - parks change, fields change, PEDs change, strategies and game/season management change, key metrics/stats change... you have to look at a player compared to his peers at the time he played.

 

30 years ago pitchers routinely threw 10 CGs a season; now they protect the arms so much that last year only four pitchers had more than five, and only three had more than five in the prior two years. 30 years ago Rick Langford threw 28 complete games in a season; now Roy Halladay leads the league with 9. 30 years ago four man staffs were the norm; now it's five man staffs. 30 years ago Steve Carlton threw 300 innings a year; now the league leader is 230-250. 30 years ago you didn't have supplements, and PEDs were very limited - it was more "uppers" and "greenies" and not HGH and steroid masks. 30 years ago a Gold Glove meant something; now it's almost an extension of the Silver Slugger. 30 years ago Astro Turf was in almost half of all stadiums and it was just carpet on top of concrete; now only a few stadiums have artificial surfaces and they are field turf.

 

You can't use today's metrics to judge HOF candidates, because the game is so much different now compared to when they played.

Apples and oranges. Pitchers throw fewer CGs now because managers have refined bullpen roles (maybe too much, but that's another discussion). Getting on base has always been critical to winning baseball games. It's a necessary skill, not a strategic choice. There has never been a time when getting on base wasn't the most important element in a baseball offense. History bears this out to a greater extent than you acknowledge; there are plenty of "OBP stars" from earlier eras. So I don't see how you can call the value of OBP a recent discovery, but even if it is -- so what? We know more now than we did 30 years ago, and I hope that people in 30 years will know more than we do. I don't think we should discount our assessment of the past based on what people (allegedly) didn't know at the time.