Re: MLB 2010: The Second Half
Maybe so, but outside of McGwire's best 4 seasons (1997-2000) his career looks much more pedestrian. Much more often than not, Hall of Famers do not have years in the middle of their careers like McGwire had from 1989-1991. Go look at those numbers. That's not HOF material there, unless that HOFer is on the wrong side of 40 and at the end of his career.
Mark McGwire was a one-trick pony. His other totals, outside of his homers, are simply not Hall of Fame worthy. Look especially at his doubles totals. Great power hitters average more than 16 doubles a season. 252 doubles over 16 seasons = 15.75.
See for yourself
OK, and nuclear weapons aren't good for much except blowing **** up. Yeah, McGwire was a one-trick pony, but the one thing he did very very well is the best thing a hitter can do. Yeah, he didn't hit a lot of doubles, but who cares?
And you're obviously tricking the numbers to make McGwire look like a worse doubles hitter than he actually was by counting each of those 16 seasons equally when there were seasons in there with 18, 27 and 47 games. Per 162 games Palmeiro hit 33 2B and 33 HR, McGwire hit 22 2B and 50 HR. I know which I'd take.
Yes, McGwire was crappy in 1991, but so what? Mike Schmidt had a poor year by his standards in 1978 at age 28, but it's a blip in the context of his whole career. (I'm certainly not saying McGwire is in Schmidt's league, I'm just saying a bad year isn't the end of the world.) I don't see how you can claim he wasn't good in 1990, though; he was 2nd in the AL in HRs, 6th in the AL in OPS (once again: batting average? not a good way to evaluate hitters), and 11th in the MVP voting. Even in 1989 he got MVP votes. And I don't see how you can call his 1992, 1995, or 1996 "pedestrian".
Now, if you want to take the stance that he would've been done after 1991 but started using PEDs and that produced the hitting that he did starting in 1992, that's a separate issue, but that doesn't jive with:
The PED issue is a non-issue for me. Baseball looked the other way and now they want to act all sanctimonius about it. No. Baseball allowed it, so now they've got to wear the results. If I had a ballot, Palmeiro, Bonds, Sosa and Clemens all go to Cooperstown. McGwire does not.
For what it's worth, I'm sort of leaning towards the same stance as you regarding the sudden sanctimony about PEDs (as if baseball was so pure back in the day, with greenies and coke and booze and racism and all the other stuff). At some point, guys with PED issues are going to have to get voted in. So many guys were using that it's awfully difficult to say anyone is entirely above suspicion, and when it comes down to it, the guys who stood out in that era probably would've stood out in other eras as well. But this highlights why you have to look at ways to compare players to their peers in the context of their era (whether you want to use something complicated like WAR, or something reasonably basic like OPS+, or something very rough like All-Star game appearances), rather than raw benchmarks (like 500 HR) that don't mean remotely the same thing now as they did back in the day.
Jim Rice is going to be the benchmark that allows a heck of a lot more players into the Hall who wouldn't have normally been there. But the HR/Hits numbers that Palmeiro put up, as for everyone else in MLB history who have ever accomplished them, would normally make him a first ballot hall of famer by precedent. Call me crazy, but I think we'll find 1 in 4 BBWAA voters who'll withhold their votes.
Yeah, Rice isn't a great benchmark overall, I just meant to use him as an example of a player who had a long very good career but whose high-water marks weren't really as high as some of his HoF peers. But like I said, it'll be interesting how the voters deal with a guy who made the traditional "benchmarks" but is a question mark for other reasons.
The edge? 200 hits over a career is an edge. 1,394 hits isn't an edge, it's a cliff the size of the Grand Canyon.
That's like saying Hank Aaron has an edge over Al Kaline when it comes to home runs.
I did say "massively fewer" earlier in the same post; calling it simply "the edge" was just shorthand. Obviously it's a lot fewer hits.
