Jul 24, 2015; Pittsburgh, PA, USA; Pittsburgh Pirates former second baseman Bill Mazeroski (left) chats with manager Clint Hurdle (right) prior to the Pirates hosting the Washington Nationals at PNC Park. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
Mandatory Credit: Gregory J. Fisher-USA TODAY Sports /
There are 312 members of the MLB Hall of Fame. Yet, not all of those players inducted deserved to be enshrined.
As Baseball’s Hall Of Fame enshrines the Class of 2016, let’s take a look at eight members whose statistics don’t bear out HOF consideration, much less membership. We’re continuing a tradition began at FanSided last year.
For this discussion, we will exclude former players who are in for managing, front office work, broadcasting or any other non-lineup activities. We will also give a pass to those whose career numbers may have risen to HOF-levels of excellence if not for military service.
We will break things down by position, and separate starting pitching from relievers. We recognize relief pitchers have not been en vogue throughout the Modern Era of baseball, but some have been enshrined and therefore must be examined. We will also exclude those who spent the majority of their playing careers in the Negro Leagues; they would have played in the big had it been an option, and an argument can be made the play in the Negro Leagues was as good as it was in the MLB.
The list will be big on those elected by the Veterans Committee, which has been accused of cronyism before. The Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) is responsible for selection of players to the Hall Of Fame in their early portion of their post-career lives.
Leading off the discussion is Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski. His bottom-of-the-ninth, World Series-clinching home run in 1960 is among baseball’s top iconic moments. But would anyone know who he was if not for that moment?
Mazeroski didn’t hit for average; his career average is .260 and he never his .300 in a single season. (In fairness, he did amass 2,016 hits in a 17-year career.) He didn’t hit for power; 138 career homers and 294 doubles. He didn’t walk much, but to be fair he didn’t strike out much, either.
In fact, looking at his career, Mazeroski was quite similar to another glove first second baseman in the Kansas City Royals Frank White. While White was on the ballot for one year, Mazeroski was enshrined despite similar production and the same defensive reputation. So, what got him in to Cooperstown?
The thing that got Bill Mazeroski into the Hall Of Fame is his glove and his popularity with Pirate Nation; Mazeroski finished his career with a fielding percentage of .983, and anyone who ends a World Series with a walk-off home run in a seventh game would have to intentionally give away his status as a hometown hero.
Charles James “Chick” Hafey played 13 seasons, most in a St. Louis Cardinals uniform. His career was plagues by injuries and poor eyesight. When teams played 154-game schedules, Hafey cleared 140 games just twice; in two of his last three seasons. After playing just 15 games in the 1935 season for the Cincinnati Reds, Hafey exchanged the entire 1936 campaign for military service before closing out his career with 89 games played in 1937.
In terms of modern statistics, Hafey’s WAR was just 30.1 over his 13 years in the National League.
His Hall-Of-Fame page says “hampered by poor eyesight and severe sinus problems Hafey played just 1,283 games but still managed to amass 1,466 hits and a career batting average of .317. Hafey won one batting title and was named to the inaugural All-Star Game, where he collected the first ever hit in All-Star Game history.”
Branch Rickey said “I always thought that if Hafey had been blessed with normal eyesight and good health he might have been the best right-handed hitter baseball had ever known.”
While acknowledging there was a ton of potential here, Hafey makes this list because he couldn’t stay healthy. It’s unfortunate, because he was beaned several times in his career, but as everyone knows, injuries are a part of the game. In fact, that may have been more so back in his day than it is today.
There has to be more to Ray Schalk’s story than meets the eye, because there isn’t a lot on the stat sheet for the eye to meet.
Having broke in with the Chicago White Sox as a 19-year-old catcher in 1912, Schalk had played half his life for the South Siders by the time his career ended in 1929. Just to clarify, he was a teammate of the so-called 1919 Black Sox, but was not among those implicated in the case. Rather, he was among a group that rarely spoke, on or off the field, to those who would even consider such a proposition.
Schalk hit just 11 home runs in 18 seasons, and his career batting average of .253 won’t turn any heads. Schalk had a WAR of 3.0 or better just five times, with a high of 3.7 in 1914. His career WAR of 28.5 isn’t really considered average for someone who played so long.
Where Schalk excelled was on the defensive side and in calling a game. He caught four no hitters, including a perfect game, and would send a congratulatory letter to any catcher who caught a no hitter until the day he died. Yet, even that defensive reputation and ability to manage a pitching staff do not show a reason for Schalk’s induction.
Clearly, I need to do more research on Schalk, because his statistics just don’t show much more than an average, but lengthy, career.
He wasn’t a full-time starter until 1920 with the Giants, but played at least 144 games every season but two until 1929, even after being traded to the Reds before the 1927 season. In 1924 he was sixth in the Most Valuable Player balloting, and third the following year. Twice he led the National League in runs batted in, once in home runs and once in strikeouts. Seven times he drove in at least 94 runs. HIs career average is a very respectable .297, but the slugging is just .452.
If there was such a thing as a New York bias in the media in those days, that might have explained how Kelly got into the Hall. But it wasn’t the writers who voted him in; the Veterans Committee voted him in more than 40 years after his career ended and 16 years after the Giants moved to San Francisco.
So, while there were some solid years, it was due to the number of former teammates that made up the Veteran’s Committee that allowed Kelly to be a part of such a hallowed group. Otherwise, he would never have gotten in.
The next two members of this list were solid Major League ballplayers who gained popularity with their fan bases as broadcasters. I had the privilege of listening to the tail end of Ron Santo‘s broadcasting career, and there can be no doubt he bled Chicago Cubs blue every day.
Santo’s on-field claim to fame is that he played at least 154 games every year between and including 1961-1971, and in seven of those seasons he played in at least 160 games. In 1964 he led the National League with an improbably 13 triples, and eight times he drew at least 79 walks in a season. He had a respectable .277 career batting average, and amassed 2,254 hits for Cubs teams that never made the postseason. If you combine hits and walks, he reached base 3,362 times.
He was a good defender, winning five Gold Gloves and amassing a .954 career fielding percentage.
What puts Santo on the list, and kept him out of the Hall for decades, is that he was rarely the best player on his team, and his teams won 90 games just once, in the ill-fated 1969 season. But the Cubs lost at least 90 games at least five times during Santo’s career, and finished as high as second only once.
As a broadcaster in 1990, Santo connected with Cub fans in a legendary way. He audibly shared in the highs and lows of being a Cub fan. If only his Hall plaque reflected that unique relationship.
Jim “Catfish” Hunter was believed to have come up big in big games, but the reality is he had a 9-6 record in the postseason.
In his favor, Hunter had five consecutive seasons with 20-plus wins; a feat unlikely to be duplicated in the 21st century. He won a Cy Young award, and finished second once, third once, and fourth once. In those five seasons, he won 111 games.
But in his other 10 seasons, he won 113 games. In seven of those 10 seasons, he was no better than a .500 pitcher, and his average overall record was 16-12. Decent and serviceable, but not exactly Hall worthy. Among those other 10 seasons, Hunter had a WAR better than 1.0 just once, and twice the number was negative.
It is that reputation in the postseason, and how he is considered to be the key to the Yankees dynasties in the late 1970’s, that give Hunter a mystique he otherwise would not have. That legend masks his decent accomplishments, putting him on another level, even though he does not deserve such a lofty status.
in a nutshell, George Steinbrenner paid for the best years of Catfish Hunter’s career, but frankly he did that a lot in the early years of his ownership. It seems likely Charlie Finley would have loved that statement.
There are a lot of ways to look at the career of Dennis Eckersley. But the bottom line is if Eck hadn’t been, as they said in the early 1980s “demoted to the bullpen,” then this conversation is moot.
Eckersley made his HOF case with the Oakland A’s of the late 1980s, which was a dominant and swagger-filled team as has ever existed. The remainder of his career was so-so at best, and due to off-the-field issues was nearly derailed before he got demoted.
There were two solid seasons as a starter for the Boston Red Sox. In 1978 Eckersley was 20-8 and he followed that up with a 17-10 season in 1979. Take out those two years and his career won/loss record comes out 160-153 over 22 seasons.
What got him into the Hall was in eight of his last 11 seasons he saved at least 33 games a year, most of that with an A’s squad that made three-straight World Series appearances. Eckersley also gave up a legendary home run to Kirk Gibson in Game One of the 1988 Series.
If you look merely at the numbers generated over the last half of his career, it’s hard to argue his place in Cooperstown. But before that, Eckersley was more well known for nearly taking himself out of baseball rather than what he was adding to the game.
Bruce Sutter may well be the only person elected to the MLB Hall Of Fame who, elected as a player, has a losing pitching record. His 68-71 career mark hardly tells the whole story, though.
He did record 300 saves over 12 seasons before the wheels came off of his career due to injury in the 1985 season, where he got a save in fewer than half of his appearances. He also missed the entire 1987 season, and closed out with 14 saves in 38 appearances in 1988.
Over 12 seasons he had a WAR of just 24.5, and gave up a home run once every 8-1/2 appearances. Twice, as a reliever, he had seasons where he gave up 10 or more homers. That just does not show the type of dominance one expects for a Hall of Fame pitcher.
What Bruce Sutter really did was to popularize the use of the splitter. Before his time, few pitchers used that offering, yet Sutter was able to turn that afterthought into a weapon. Was that worth being inducted for? The voters seemed to think so, despite his underwhelming overall numbers.
