And I meant to say earlier in the thread Keith Hernandez absolutely belongs in the HOF if Rolen made it.
Scott Rolen to Cooperstown…
- Thread starter Maroon Eagle
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Well Todd lives in New Orleans so practically I only see him a handful of times a year around MSU football, and I am notably not a Cardinals fan.
He was great defensively. Best ever? Ever heard of Willie Mays? Mickey Mantle? Ty Cobb? Joe DiMaggio?
Jones was a great defensive player, but there's more to it than that. I know you braves fans are fanatic about this, but a little reality is in order, too.
Yeah, and I want to add that I can see the argument for leaving Hernandez out, too. He had some off-the-field stuff that embarrassed baseball in the early 80s and that's what got him traded by the Cards.
But if Rolen is the benchmark....
Did you ever see Mays, Mantle, Cobb, or DiMaggio play? Those guys were the best of their era no doubt. But none of us have seen any of those guys play. My eyeballs have seen Andruw Jones and I’ve personally never seen anyone play the position any better. But that’s my opinion and I am an expert on my opinion.
Thank you for admitting your bias and saying that you meant to say "best defensive CF I ever saw" instead of "best defensive CF ever."
I'd like to see the criteria they used to rank. Some of the guys on that list had much better individual seasons than Rolen did.
Rolen was consistently a very good offensive player and an elite defender. But he never put together MVP-caliber seasons. He missed a lot of time (A LOT) due to injury.
Biased or not (admittedly I am), I’d still debate Andruw Jones to be as good or better than any of the aforementioned HOF’ers in regards to CF defense. Thus, I stand behind my OP as “maybe the best ever”
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A fair case can be made, but there are a lot of variables that get overlooked, too. The older guys played in crappier ballparks with bigger outfields to roam. You think Willie Mays would've been better if he had a nice, tidy Turner Field outfield to navigate instead of the cavernous Candlestick Park power alleys and famous wind? OF defensive metrics are a lot more subjective than infield metrics.
I think Jones is top five, defensively. When you add in other parts of the game, he falls out of the top ten, and that makes him a fringe hall of famer. But given that guys like Rolen and McGriff are getting in now, Jones will probably make the cut eventually.
I thought Todd Helton put together a better career than either McGriff or Rolen, but he fell a few votes short this year.
I could be wrong as that is going from memory and I haven't looked at any stats. Helton did get the benefit of playing half of his games in the Rockies home park.
I could be wrong as that is going from memory and I haven't looked at any stats. Helton did get the benefit of playing half of his games in the Rockies home park.
Just throw out the stats from 1994-2004 and judge on a per season basis who should be in based on what they did before and after. Bonds should still be in based on what he did for the first 10 years of his career. Clemens probably should too. You have to find a way to look past the cumulative stats merits and look at what those players were on average each year they were healthy. Or, you have to acknowledge that when everyone is cheating, nobody is really cheating and acknowledge those guys were still better than the other cheaters.
Yes, Bonds, Clemens, and Palmiero should without question be in the hall. Bonds and Raffy are probably the two biggest casualties of the steroids era, just based on what they accomplished. I think we can all agree that Bonds would've been a HOF'er without the roids. I doubt Raffy took them until later in his career, but at the time he joined the 3000/500 club, there were only four guys who'd ever walked the earth who had done that before.
Those guys should be in, definitely.
ETA: If I had to pick one that I'd leave out due to roids, it would be Clemens. Roids don't make you a better hitter or a better fielder, but they make you stronger and help you recover faster, which in my opinion benefits pitchers more than position players.
I agree. Loved McGriff, but he is not a HOF type of player. Rolen.... not really either. Dale Murphy was way better than both of them.
Andruw Jones was not the best ever to play the CF position, seriously dude? Best Ever. I bet there are maybe 5 better during his playing career.
It’s WAR. He has a career WAR of 70. All the third basemen above him are in the HOF.
Dale isn’t even the best player in his family. His cousin Kent revolutionized the game. He was way ahead of this analytics craze and hitting for power vs small ball before the rest of the world caught on.
I honestly thought this was a joke when I saw the thread title.
I really lost touch with baseball at some point if Scott Rolen in HOF worthy (I did).
I really lost touch with baseball at some point if Scott Rolen in HOF worthy (I did).
He wasn't a Yankee, Dodger, or Cardinal. You will automatically get a 25% vote boost if you were one of those organizations.
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