By Chas
It was a daunting task, but I managed to narrow my list of the greatest baseball players not in the Hall of Fame down to 50. Because this was such a difficult process, I decided to vote for all of the suggestions I received in my initial post on this subject here. All except one, that is.
First, to refresh your memory, here are my original ten:
Dick Allen
Roberto Alomar
Jeff Bagwell
Bert Blyleven
Joe Jackson
Barry Larkin
Dan Quisenberry
Tim Raines
Pete Rose
Ron Santo
Add to that the ten suggestions I received here, and we’re up to 20:
Will Clark
Dwight Evans
Ron Guidry
Tommy John
Jim Kaat
Don Mattingly
Jack Morris
Dale Murphy
Billy Pierce
Lee Smith
I also thought I should include a few 19th century players, so I added both winners of the SABR 19th Century Committee’s Overlooked Legends awards, as well as two players who also received considerable support:
Deacon White (2010 winner)
Pete Browning (2009 winner)
Bill Dahlen (2nd in 2010)
Tony Mullane (5th in 2010)
That left room for 26 additional players, so after painfully whittling down a list that was about twice as long, here’s who I settled on:
Albert Belle
Bobby Bonds
Ken Boyer
Kevin Brown
Eddie Cicotte
David Cone
Darrell Evans
John Franco
Steve Garvey
Dwight Gooden
Bobby Grich
Keith Hernandez
Gil Hodges
Edgar Martinez
Fred McGriff
Mark McGwire
Thurman Munson
Graig Nettles
Tony Oliva
Rafael Palmeiro
Dave Parker
Ted Simmons
Luis Tiant
Alan Trammell
Larry Walker
Lou Whitaker
Although I didn’t arrive at my final list of 50 names with the kind of analysis I would prefer, I’ve decided that the outcome of this exercise will be to narrow these 50 down to a ranked list of the 25 greatest non Hall of Famers, in my opinion. This will be a list that I’ll update every year, as players drop off by being elected to the Hall, and as my opinions change based on new information and on viewing current information differently.
Any thoughts to share? Let’s do what we do best here on the pine…discuss and debate.
After posting this and taking another look at the list, I noticed that it’s weighted pretty heavily towards players whose careers at least overlapped my lifetime. So, I guess my concerted effort to include players from the 19th century seems kind of odd, considering I mostly ignored the first half of the 20th century.
I just slapped myself for NOT mentioning Bobby Grich.
Bill Melton, longtime 3rd baseman for the ChiSox. Dick Allen era, but with them far longer than Allen. Had most Sox power hitting records til Thomas came along. Speaking of …
Frank Thomas. and Harold Baines of course.
Eric Davis. Larry Hisle?
Sal Bando. Joe Rudi.
Jose Cruz. Willie Randolph. Bernie Williams.
I filled out my ballot today too. I wound up mostly avoiding relievers and 19th century players. I just don’t think they’re as good as modern players.
Anyhow, thanks for taking part in the project, and I’ll talk to you later.
Should have reiterated that this is a list of players who haven’t played since 2005, so Frank Thomas and Bernie Williams are not eligible yet.
Harold Baines and Willie Randolph were among my finalists. I decided to cut one DH, so I took Edgar Martinez over Baines. Despite being a Yankees fan, it wasn’t that difficult to take Whitaker and Grich over Randolph.
As far as the rest of Wally’s mentions are concerned, a list of the 50 greatest players not in the Hall of Fame is a list of borderline HOF candidates:
Sal Bando, Jose Cruz: very good players, I could see them being considered borderline HOFers, but they don’t do it for me.
Bill Melton, Larry Hisle, Joe Rudi: good players, yes. Borderline HOFers, no.
Eric Davis: Coulda, shoulda, woulda…didn’t.
Graham: The 19th century dilemma is an interesting one. I may be slightly swayed by the fact that one of my best friends is the head of SABR’s Overlooked 19th Century Baseball Legends project. I think one of the difficulties 19th century players are up against, when it comes to HOF election, is that by the time the HOF was founded, that era was already kind of forgotten. Plus, there was probably not a plethora of information that was easily disseminated back then. But, I’m far from a historian, so I’ll leave it at that.
Relievers are a tough one too. I tried to limit to only a few. Lee Smith I voted for based on his support here and the fact that so many people have advocated his candidacy, but he can’t get over the hump. That’s probably not going to get any easier as he’s now third on the all-time saves list. I probably went out on a limb for Dan Quisenberry, to be honest. I went with John Franco because he’s one of the two greatest left-handed relievers of all-time, but he’s going to be overshadowed by Billy Wagner if he doesn’t make the Hall before Wagner is eligible.
19th Century players have never been appropriately evaluated by the Hall of Fame, especially amateur era players. Players such as Deacon White, Dickey Pearce, Joe Start and Dick McBride (to name a few) cannot be accurately measured by stats. They were among the best players of their era and pioneers that laid the foundation of the game for everyone that followed. If a Hall of Fame was created in 1910, the names above and a few others would have been first ballot Hall of Famers. These guys were the giants of their day. Deacon White may be the best player not in the Hall. He was a pioneer, a champion and one of the top 2 or 3 catchers of the 19th Century. Check out Catcher by Peter Morris to see what it was like to be a catcher in the 19th Century. Most would move White up their list after reading this outstanding book.
About relief pitchers, I included 2 on my list. Lee Smith and Firpo Marberry, the first great fireman. If it was the top 75, I probably would have added a few more like Franco, Quisenberry and Sparky Lyle.
Joe Williams! Welcome to the Pine!
Thanks for the contribution, Joe. You know much more about 19th century baseball than I do. There hasn’t been all that much interest in discussing the relative greatness of 19th century players in comparison to the modern era on the Pine. It’s understandable, though. In order to make such comparisons, you have to be willing to do more than a little research, and/or trust what’s been written by 19th century historians such as yourself.
I saw, in my own unintentional bias towards players from the second half of the 20th century, how I’m swayed by what I’ve seen and know more about versus what I can only know by reading and trying to decipher statistics.
Here are the results of the actual voting on Baseball Past and Present:
https://baseballpastandpresent.com/2010/12/06/the-50-best-baseball-players-not-in-the-hall-of-fame/
The 50 I voted for, with your help, fared pretty well. I think only eight of them didn’t make the overall top 50: Bobby Bonds, Pete Browning, Eddie Cicotte, John Franco, Dwight Gooden, Tony Mullane, Billy Pierce, Deacon White.
Mark Belanger received one vote out of 63 ballots cast. It wasn’t by Casey. 🙂
Chas – I need an explanation on Kevin Brown. I don’t know why I’m surprised to see him on this list. I guess I thought he had a dominant half-decade, but is that Hall-worthy (not be confused with sponge-worthy)?
Rey, no one is necessarily saying Kevin Brown is Hall of Fame worthy, just that he’s among the top 50 players not in the Hall. Personally, I don’t think Brown’s a Hall of Famer, but I think he’s pretty close. He actually compares very closely to Curt Schilling, someone whose Hall of Fame credentials are considered borderline:
Brown: 211-144, 3.28 ERA, 2397 SO, 1.222 WHIP, 6 All-Star selections
Schilling: 216-146, 3.46 ERA, 3116 SO, 1.137 WHIP, 6 All-Star selections
Schilling’s Ks and postseason performance make him clearly a better candidate than Brown, but that’s why Schilling has a shot at the Hall of Fame and Brown is just a guy worthy of a little consideration.
I’d say only the top 15 or 20 or so guys on the list are Hall of Fame worthy.
So I think Randolph should be in over Morris FWIW.
Of everyone here, I think the following deserve enshrinement:
Allen
Alomar
Bagwell
Blyleven
Jackson
Rose
Larkin
Quiz
Raines
Santo
Clark
Dewey
John
Kaat
White
Dahlen
Mullane
Brown
Darrell
Grich
Keith
Gar
McGriff
McGwire
Nettles
Palmeiro
Oliva
Simmons
Tiant
Trammell
Walker
Whitaker