Edgar for the HOF?
The Founding Father casts his ballot

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Tongue in cheek, we like to refer to a 'Founding Father'. But:  not-tongue-in-cheek, wouldn't it be great to know how George Washington and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson would vote on today's issues?  That is, if they were brought fully up to speed on 2013 society's context and all of the point/counterpoint?

Here's Benjamin Franklin, as it were, on the issue of Edgar Martinez and the HOF.  There's probably no sector of sabermetrics on which James specializes more than the HOF.

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I'm wide open to an argument against Edgar Martinez' HOF candidacy.  But that argument has to be a little bit more than "We're not going to put a DH in unless we're forced to," which is what they mean when they say "the standards for a DH should be very high."

We asked James for a way to organize our thinking as to the 9,000 variables in this equation.  He replied at Bill James Online:

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Re: your interesting Todd Helton remark that with sabermetrics, we have little trouble with weird contexts and numbers.
 
Edgar as a Hall of Famer? ... there was an interesting article in the local newspapers about two Warts Spiders sitting in the press box arguing it. The pro-Edgar guy pointed out at Ichiro and asked, "Who would you rather have in the lineup today, Ichiro or Edgar?" and the anti-Edgar-HOF guy shot back, "Edgar, of course." Because the anti-Edgar guy supports Ichiro as a certain HOF'er, but this logic still didn't sway him. ...
 
My question: To what extent would you say that a subconscious distaste for the DH is affecting the Edgar debate?
 
To get a crystal-clear way to organize our thoughts, would you essentially apply the paradigm of "Edgar as lousy first baseman," or would you resist comparing this DH to any existing template, or go off Win Shares, or how would you clear it up? - thanks, Jeff
Asked by: jemanji
Answered: 1/4/2013
Well, the best I can do is this.    A 300-game winner belongs in the Hall of Fame.   A third baseman ordinarily wins 250 games with his bat, 50 with his glove, or maybe it is 220 and 80.   Edgar won zero with his glove, but he won 300--and more--with his bat.    So, in my view, he belongs. 

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By the way, some of you had wondered about James' curt response to my earlier Jose Lopez question.  Two things:

1.  Since then, I let him know who Jemanji is and since then we've been cool.

2.  James can be gruff, especially when he thinks people are being stubborn, but it's a kind of gruff that doesn't bother me.  James doesn't jab a person in the back with snark, and then duck around the corner.  He doesn't discourage debate -- either on the first round or the fifteenth round.  He doesn't resent lack of faith in his authority; he doesn't care at all whether you show Proper Deference or whether you don't.

He will stand in the middle of the ring and slug away as long as you want to.  He fights like a man, and he'll sometimes throw the first punch -- but when he punches you get to punch back, so I respect him as a man.

If, on the 15th round of the debate, you prove his position wrong, he's liable to turn around and publish a detailed article explaining where he went wrong, and calling attention to the real truth on the matter.  (This may be what is now occurring with respect to that original Jose Lopez / Wil Myers issue ... developing ...)  That's a little bit different from some of the local hit-and-run snark that Dr. D has objected to over the years.

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The Helton question, since we're on the subject, was also interesting and that one went

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As Todd Helton's career winds down, wondering about your thoughts on it. He does well on Hall of Fame career standards and monitor despite his late start, and had a pretty remarkable peak (2000-2004), as measured by both traditional stats and WAR, though not Win Shares (147). He never did terribly well in MVP voting, due both to the era (Bonds was pretty good those same years) and the park. I view him like Norm Cash - a good, not great, player who statistics are unusually hard to assess due to context and who will have a hard time with HOF voters. Your thoughts?
Asked by: Robinsong
Answered: 1/3/2013
I think he is a Hall of Famer, period.   I think he is comfortably above the Hall of Fame standard.   
 
He is more like Chuck Klein, I think, than any other candidate.    Like Klein, he had just absolutely fantastic numbers, but in a time and place where many players had unusual numbers, and he never achieved public acceptance as a true superstar.
 
When the numbers are way out of whack, we start to ignore them.   I always remember Dick Stuart talking about hearing the Pirates get real excited about some minor league first baseman who had hit 35 home runs in 1955 or 1956--but when he hit 66 home runs for Lincoln in 1957, they couldn't deal with that so they just pretty much wrote it off as a fluke.    When the numbers get outside of normal boundaries, we don't know how to process them in the usual way, by reading the statistics as a kind of language, so we start ignoring them.  
 
But with sabermetric methods we can process unusual numbers as comfortably as normal numbers.   When we do that, Helton is actually a far better candidate than, for example, Chuck Klein or George Kelly or Bill Terry.   Cash is a misleading comparison because Cash is a very underrated player.   You have to compare him to a player who has been fairly and properly evaluated by history, like Greenberg or Johnny Mize or Garvey or Boog Powell or Killebrew.   It is my opinion that when you put him in line with that group, he's a Hall of Famer. 

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I thought that was an interesting observation -- that one of the best things about sabermetrics is that it is great for attacking weird questions.

Cheers,

Dr D

Comments

1

...for a RH hitter.
It goes Rogers freakin' Hornsby, Jimmy Foxx, Frank Thomas, Edgar Martinez. That's it. There are 5 RH hitters in the top-30 OBP chart, and the only other one is Pujols. To do what Martinez did from the right side was amazing. Edgar got on base better than every RH batter that EVER LIVED, except for those three guys.
Why are we even talking about this? Because he played DH, and because the BBWA keeps giving out lifetime voting passes to guys who still remember a time when there was no DH and feel like the designated hitter is a crime against the game.
They'll die, and Edgar will get in eventually. It was nice to see him in the Top-125 of all time list ESPN did a couple months ago, along with a little rant that he was only in the 120s. He has his supporters. I hope eventually someone can highlight the #4 all-time stat and shove it under enough coke-bottle-lensed eyes to make people understand how good he was.
Being the 2nd best RH hitter of his era to Frank Thomas is no shame. Heck, if you want to give it to Bagwell and include Big Mac for pure love of the longball, being the FOURTH best RH hitter of his era isn't shameful either. Not being Griffey or A-Rod is apparently his biggest offense other than being left in the minors 2 years too long and ripping up his hamstrings. Thomas, Bagwell and Gar were all tremendous, and all deserve to be in the HOF.
They're three of the greatest RH hitters of all time.
~G

2

We also have to remember that the DH is a position that 99.99999999% of time is filled with SOMEBODY other than the pitcher. It's a part of the team every game.
Let's assume for a moment that the DH didn't exist. Do you think for one second that Edgar wouldn't have been on the field on some position? Would the Dodgers or Braves have said "No way want that guy with his poor defense" had they had a chance to get him in the mid 90's?
Bottom line is DH (who doesn't field) is a recogized position. As is the AL pitcher (who doesn't hit). Should we leave out AL only pitchers?
It amazes me that it's even a question to begin with....

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