2023 Hall of Fame

I agree, very good player HOF NO. Much like Don Mattingly who as much as I loved him just a little short of HOF. Past great like Rocky Colavito also comes to mind as a near miss. I think Albert Belle should have had greater consideration, 10 years of 100 plus RBI 30 plus HR probably would have gotten a lot of "nice guys" into the Hall but the sports writers hated him.

Santo and Rolen are two of the top 10 third basemen of all time. Any Hall that excludes them would be ridiculously small. Cey, Delgado, and McGriff are closer to borderline. Baines and JuanGon probably don't belong.

The HOF already includes 276 players, so any inquiry into adding someone should start with "does he have a credible case for being one of the top 276 players all-time?" By that standard Santo and Rolen are clearly, easily deserving. And that's not "Big Hall," that's just maintaining current standards. Don't gotta make Baines the standard just because a not-very-bright committee voted him in.

I was thinking about this and wondering why 3B seems to be the weakest position in baseball. There don't seem to be a lot of 3B that would be in the top 276.
Schmidt obviously and I won't argue about Rolen and Santo (and Boggs). But there are not many names that come to mind as ATG 3rd basemen.

3B has definitely had a hard time as far as the HOF is concerned. Another odd thing about 3B is almost all the great ones are modern players. Prior to Eddie Mathews the greatest all-time 3B was probably Jud Wilson, but in organized ball it was either Frank Baker or Jimmy Collins, hardly inner circle guys. In the three decades between Baker and Mathews the greatest 3B in the AL/NL was...Stan Hack.

3B no-brainer guys are Schmidt, Mathews, Chipper, Boggs, Brett, Brooks Robinson. Then you get Rolen, Santo, Jud, and Molitor, still easy includes IMO. Then you get Baker, Collins, and a whole blob of modern guys who people often don't think of as worthy but have credible arguments for the top 276 because the top 276 extends further down than people intuitively assume: Ken Boyer, Buddy Bell, Dick Allen, David Wright, Darrell Evans, Matt Williams, Longoria, Nettles, Ventura, Bando, Machado, Arenado, Cey, Donaldson. The current HOF borderline is properly somewhere in that blob.

Great points. Agree on Baines, that it wasn't like a watershed moment or anything. He got in. That's that. A few people are borderline. That's how it goes. He was probably a nice guy and a great teammate so there you have it. That is half the battle, a fact unknown to some of the current HOF-quality players who are not in.

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/harold-baines/

A really good article, thanks1

Results to be announced tonight, from those who've already indicated who they voted for, and tendencies from those who do not disclose in advance, it appears it will be a close call for Rolen and Helton. Could go either way, narrowly voted in or just miss by a couple of votes.

When you compare Rolen to the other third basemen elected by the BBWAA, (Traynor, Mathews, Robinson, Schmidt, Boggs, Jones) he meets the standard IMO.

A shutout for the HOF in any year is just terrible for baseball -- a missed opportunity to be in the spotlight celebrating great players during the offseason.

I'm a 'bigger HOF is better' type. The voting process whereby only so many players can be chosen on each writer's ballot has in part created these shutout problems.

I agree Hack, it's more fun to celebrate players than not, and baseball's history is such a uniquely large part of what makes it great. No one cares about the NFL or NBA HOFs in really the same way.

At any rate Rolen did sneak in. We love to see it. Helton looks set to get in next year, when Beltre, Mauer, and Utley will also become eligible. I think Beltre is first-ballot while Utley will have to wait. Mauer could go either way. All are far above the borderline analytically.

Didn't realize next year is Sheffield's last on the ballot. He's going to need a Larry Walker-sized push to get him over. People lump him in with the juicers but his only connection is a single, self-reported, unwitting use of the Clear, which for me is not nearly enough to warrant keeping him out. It's basically identical to Hank Aaron's admission of trying greenies once. And by the numbers he should easily be in. He was basically Edgar Martinez forced to play the field, and I say this as a Mariners fan with an abiding love for Edgar. He was simply one of the best, fun to watch, most intimidating hitters of his generation. If you were an opposing team you never wanted to see that bat twitch in the box in a big situation.

One reason there are so few 3Bs from the early years of baseball is that, at least according to Bill James, in the early days, 3B was considered the defensive position and 2B was more of an offensive position. It was only with the rise of the importance of the double play that 2B became the more important defensive position.
That means that a lot of the real hitters before about 1935 were at 2B, whereas the 3Bs were defensive standouts with comparatively light bats.

Look at the players themselves. Earlier era 2Bs include such heavy hitters as Lajoie, Hornsby, Collins, Lazzeri, Gehringer, etc. And Frank Frisch could hit a little too. OTHO, early HOF 3Bs include glovemen like Pie Traynor and Jimmy Collins who were not bad hitters, but not at the Lajoie or Hornsby level.

When double plays started to gain in importance (partly because players were bunting and stealing less, and therefore making DPs more plentiful), then the ability to make the pivot to turn two, which a 2B now has to be able to do, became more important than making the long throw from 3B.

The slugging HOF 3B didn't really start until Eddie Mathews. Mathews finished his career with 512 homers. Before him, the highest homer total for a HOF 3B was Freddie Lindstrom's 103. That's a staggeringly wide gulf, and it's indicative of the change in perception of the role of the third baseman.

Among the pre-Mathews HOF 2Bs who had more HR than Lindstrom's 103 we could mention Doerr (233), Gehringer (184), Gordon (253), Hornsby (301), and Lazzeri (178).

This link to the Baseball Almanac has the stats for HOF 3Bs: https://www.baseball-almanac.com/hof/hofst3b.shtml
And here are HOF 2Bs: https://www.baseball-almanac.com/hof/hofst2b.shtml