Lush
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RE: potential HOF (baseball)
so cbssportsline.com has been having a pretty great lead up to next year's hof. they've been counting down from 20 or something. and here at number 3 is jeff bagwell, one of my all time favorites. my first is albert belle
http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/blog/eye-on...ff-bagwell
3. Jeff Bagwell; 1B; Astros; 1991-2005
Year on ballot: 3rd (named on 56.0% of ballots last year)
Career stats: 9,431 PA; .297/.408/.540; 449 HR; 1,529 RBI; 1,517 R; 202 SB
bWAR, rank among candidates: 76.7, 3rd
JAWS, ranks among candidates: 61.7, 3rd
This really shouldn't be difficult. Bagwell is a gobsmackingly obvious Hall of Famer by any reasonable standard, yet he is on the ballot for the third time and seems unlikely to make it in this time around.
Consider, for instance, his top-100 all-time rankings in several important categories: 67th in total bases, 65th in doubles, 63rd in runs scored, 56th in times on base, 46th in RBI, 42nd in extra-base hits, 41st in OBP, 40th in times hit by pitch, 38th in OPS+, 37th in slugging, 36th in home runs, 28th in walks, 25th in sac flies and 22nd in OPS. Add to that an NL MVP Award, five additional top-10 MVP finishes, a Rookie-of-the-Year award, a Gold Glove and three Sliver Sluggers.
In terms of bWAR, Bagwell comfortably exceeds the established Hall of Fame standards for career and peak value. Moreover, according to JAWS, Bagwell is the sixth-best first baseman of all-time. The only case against Bagwell's enshrinement? Innuendo.
Bagwell, presumably because he hit for power, played when he did and looked somewhat muscular, has been lumped in with confirmed PED users and sorta-kinda confirmed PED users. This is, needless to say, outrageously unfair, but some voters and observers have sanctioned themselves to pass judgment based solely on assumptions they're not qualified to make.
Insofar as Bagwell is concerned, you generally see two misguided attacks. The first, put on shameful display by ESPN's Pedro Gomez, is to proclaim that Bagwell hasn't denied PED use even though, in point of fact, he has very forcefully denied PED use. (Bonus points to Gomez for then resorting to the "take my ball, flip the bird from a safe distance, and then run home" defense when confronted with the facts on record.)
The second is one leaned upon by SI's Jeff Pearlman, who implies he can spot a PED user via the eye test. Bulletin: He cannot. It is readily possible to become large, muscled and strong without the use of banned substances (including those subtances that weren't banned for the bulk of Bagwell's playing days but are now). All the bleats of "Just look at him!" can't change that basic fact. The "big muscles = steroid use" argument betrays a comical lack of basic knowledge about strength training. We should not allow ignorance to be an effective cudgel.
Furthermore, Bagwell lacks that "power spike" season that for so many is tantamount to condemning evidence, and he also has a normal and steady decline phase in his 30s. Still and yet, the half-baked accusations -- tacit and otherwise -- persist.
The good news is that Bagwell is almost certainly going to get in ... eventually. In 2011, he debuted on 41.7 percent of ballots, and last year he improved -- as noted above -- to being named on 56.0 percent of ballots. That's a baseline and trajectory that will lead to his election. But whenever it happens, it's going to have taken multiple years longer than it should have.
Would we vote for him? Snyder: Yes (3); Rosecrans: Yes (3); Perry: Yes (4)
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potential HOF (baseball)
