Wouldn’t you know it. The day after I post an article asking everyone how you evaluate players when voting for them on awards, the Illowa APBA League ballot for Hall of Fame comes out.
The job for handing that lands on our vice-president, Rob Moore. He did a great summary of the Hall of Fame candidates in his press release.
Rob writes:
“This year, we have six new candidates: Jon Garland and Mariano Rivera on the pitching side, joining Mike Mussina and Andy Pettite who carried over from last year, and Lance Berkman, Vladimir Guerrero, Magglio Ordonez, and Miguel Tejada joining Gary Sheffield and Ivan Rodriguez who carried over from last year.
I’d love to hear what everyone thinks about the candidates, and get some discussion going, either over e-mail or on the APBA Blog. I’d like to get ballots back by the draft weekend, but I’d also like to see some discussion first! Here are my thoughts.
On the pitching side, Mike Mussina has been knocking on the door for a while, just missing the cut off to make the Hall, which is 7 out of 10 votes. Both he and Pettitte (who had less support last year, in his first year on the ballot) have a similar profile, with Mussina having a few more wins and K’s, but Pettite having the better winning percentage and ERA. However, both have ERA’s well over 4, and the only pitchers in the Hall with an ERA over 4 are Dennis Eckersley (who also has 208 saves) and Tom Glavine, who has 44 more wins and around 800 more career innings than Mussina.
Jon Garland has 130 wins, threw a no-hitter, and won 20 games once (21-5 in 2005 with my team, the Chicago Highlanders), but falls well short of Hall-worthy for me. Mariano Rivera on the other hand is a slam-dunk for me; 461 saves and a 2.90 ERA are impressive – even more impressive is that in a league where relievers often get knocked around regardless of grade, his worst season ERA was 4.42 in his second season, and his second worst was 4.02 in his second to last.
On the hitting side, Gary Sheffield and Ivan Rodriguez both missed the cut by the slimmest margin last year; Sheffield ranks 7th in career runs, 14th in RBI, and 13th in HR. Rodriguez is the leader for catchers in most counting stats other than HR, with more than 500 more hits than Mike Piazza to go along with gold-glove defense for his entire 20 year career (all with my team; you may notice a theme this year). He’s also 4th in career doubles, which is impressive for a catcher.
Among the new guys, I can’t quite get behind Lance Berkman, despite his being on of my favorites (and also a former Highlander, along with Garland, Sheffield, and Rodriguez). His counting stats and power numbers aren’t what I’d like to see from a slugging first baseman/outfielder. 320 career homers and 1,511 hits doesn’t cut it. Magglio Ordonez falls into the same category – unquestionably great in some of his best years, and a .295 average in this league is very impressive, but the lack of durability cut into his career totals – over the last 8 years of his career he only managed to stay on the field over 90 games three times (nd one of those was only 115 games).
I imagine Vladimir Guerrero will get a good amount of support – he had nearly the same career average as Magglio (.293) and also added over 600 more hits, 150 more homers, and 700 combined runs and RBI. Miguel Tejada’s numbers seem relatively pedestrian in comparison until you look at them in the context of IAL middle infielders – he has fewer hits than the other middle infielders in the Hall (Ripken, Larkin, Alomar and Whitaker, but he has better power numbers than all of them but Ripken. He’s also a career-long Highlander. I’m thinking there might be a reason I had a six year playoff drought after all these guys retired…”
Click here to see our entire ballot including current Illowa APBA League Hall of Famers and their stats.
My thoughts:
I think that Sheff and Vlad are shoo-ins. I did the math and only 15 players in IAL history have more than 1200 runs and 1200 rbis (not including this season).
I-Rod comes close to that with great defense on top of that.
I don’t know why but I’ve always been a Mussina man. So incredibly solid. His problem is that he’s never been a been a 20 game winner and never had one or two real superstar seasons. Regardless, he’s on five or so top ten lists in the IAL including Wins and Ks.
Can’t really ignore Mariano Rivera who has the most saves in IAL history. His 461 mark eclipses Billy Wagner’s 307 by quite a bit.
Well let me start with the obvious anyone who doesn’t vote for Mariana Rivera should be disenfranchised and probably committed to the happy farm with trees and flowers and chirping birds. I don’t think I would quibble going either way on the other 3 pitchers.
I think Rodriguez should be elected. Remember he is probably the best defensive catcher in the history of your league and when you add in his offense he is frankly better than several of your Hall of Fame members. I would also vote for Sheffield and Guerrerro. Granted Sheffield’s average is not great but his .349 OBS is impressive. Also remember that Vlad was a good fielder.