SomeGuy on ESPN wrote a great article about my favorite ballplayer, Vladimir Guerrero. I'm a bit biased in that being a longtime "Vlad guy" I've always believed that, semantically speaking, the Hall of Fame was built so kids 50-100 years in the future could go to a place and find out that some awesome baseball relic like Vladimir Guerrero used to exist.



...but he's only got 53 WAR so you know he's a bubble/borderline HOF guy, if even that that because WAR > all and I think you're about to start talking about Larry Walker.

Legend of Vladimir Guerrero goes way beyond his numbers

Mark Simon ESPN Staff

Take first-year Hall of Fame candidate Vladimir Guerrero's most basic numbers -- a .318 batting average and 449 home runs in 16 major league seasons with the Expos, Angels, Rangers and Orioles -- and hold them up to the statistical spotlight.

He is one of six retired players (plus one active player, Miguel Cabrera) to pair a batting average that high with at least 400 home runs. The others are five of the greatest players of all time: Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig and Stan Musial.

Guerrero also had 250 intentional walks, a total that ranks fifth since the stat was first tracked in 1955. The four players ahead of him are Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols, Hank Aaron and Willie McCovey, another group that includes some of the best players ever.
Vladimir Guerrero

Career Highlights
* .318 BA, 449 HR in 16 seasons
* 9-time All-Star
* 2004 AL MVP
* 24th all-time in slug pct (.553)

But as good as the numbers are, to gain a full appreciation of Vladimir Guerrero, you had to see all 6-foot-3, 235 pounds of him.

“He looked like a velociraptor,” said former major league pitcher Nelson Figueroa, against whom Guerrero hit .500 in 10 at-bats. “What a specimen.”

“He had arms that were the size of four octopuses,” ex-rival and current ESPN Baseball Tonight analyst Doug Glanville said.

And you had to see him play.

Vladimir, the teammate

Expos outfielder F.P Santangelo had heard the stories about Guerrero dating back to when Guerrero was in the Gulf Coast League as a 19-year-old. Pretty soon, the two were teammates, and though there was a language barrier, there was mutual respect.

In his fourth game, Guerrero hit his first major league home run against Braves righty Mark Wohlers, who was then the best closer in the National League. “A majestic opposite-field home run to right field,” longtime Expos play-by-play broadcaster Dave Van Horne said. “That was a 'wow' moment."

On the other side, the Braves announcers referred to the homer, which Guerrero snuck just fair down the right-field line, as “lucky.” But that’s how Guerrero hit. His 400th home run was a carbon copy of his first. And had the broadcasters known Guerrero’s routine before his at-bats early in his career, they would have probably been even more befuddled.

[editor's note: that look on Wohlers' face after he gives up the HR = why vlad's in my HOF tbh]

“Before an at-bat, he would just start going through the bat rack, and he would pick them up, feel them, look at the name on the bat, raise his eyebrows and nod,” Santangelo said. “One at-bat, he’d use Darrin Fletcher bat. The next one he’d use David Segui's. The next one, he’d use Mike Lansing. He would grab whatever bat, ask if he could use it, and just go up there and swing at anything.

“We would say daily, 'How the f--- did he do that?' The guy went up, saw [the ball], swung and did damage.”

Guerrero swung so hard that he scared his coaches. In the 2001 All-Star Game, third-base coach Tommy Lasorda was fortunate he wasn’t hurt when Guerrero lost the bat on his swing. And then there was the worry of what to do when he made contact.

“You never knew where he would hit the ball,” said Phillies manager Pete Mackanin, who was the Expos' third-base coach for four years while Guerrero was there. “When the pitch was thrown to him, I turned my head and ducked.”

That wasn’t the only way Guerrero could cause discomfort.

“He had so much pine tar on the bat, because he swung barehanded that his hands were all calloused up,” said former Expos teammate Brian Schneider, now a catching coach with the Marlins. “He’d come in all excited. We knew he was going to give us a hard high-five. No one wanted to do it, because his hands were just rocks.”

Guerrero was a gentle giant who always walked with a smile, and whose mom lived with him wherever he called home. In Anaheim, she cooked rice, chicken and beans as the pregame meal for both teams. Guerrero might have just been a big kid out there, but he wasn’t lacking for confidence.

“I saw him rubbing his hands and [smiling, knowing] that we were facing [ace pitcher] Kevin Brown,” former Expos and now Mariners coach Manny Acta said, remembering a game from May 2002. “Brown was so nasty that I was a coach and I feared him. Vlad said, ‘I’ll hit a homer today.’ And I thought, ‘Yeah, right.’ In his first at-bat, he hit a bomb to dead center.”

Said Santangelo: “I can remember Brown would ask me, ‘How do I get this guy out?’ I’d say, ‘Just throw it down the middle and hope he hits it at someone.'”

That didn’t work either. Guerrero hit .450 against Brown for his career.

Average Season
(1998-2010)
BA .321
OBP .385
Slug pct .567
HR 33
RBI 107
SB 14
K-BB 68-54
Games 146



(the article continues on from there)

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This one LA sports blogger dude had a great article back in 2007 which ended up properly the raison d'etre for Vladimir Guerrero than I ever could...

wrote:

There is no hitter in the game -- none -- that I would rather watch hit than Guerrero. It's that swing, plus his clearly evident joy of hitting ... he's going up there to have some fun, and to do some damage.

so hey, why isn't Vlad in your HOF? anyone wanna go to WAR on this one?!

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I didn't even think this was up for any debate, Vlad is a no doubter hall of famer. Not sure how anybody could disagree.

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If his WAR keeps him out of the HoF, then WAR is more flawed a stat than I think it is. Chet Lemon has a career WAR twice that of Paul Konerko. I was a fan of both, but I'd take Konerko every time over Chester. (I realize that they played different positions.)

Vlad is first or second ballot....

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I had no idea about your Chet Lemon point. It makes me never want to consider WAR again. In fact someone needs to save that and call Bernsie.

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Elections have consequences.

"IS THIS A BIT???? TELL ME THIS IS A BIT !!!!"

He is one of my favorite players. He probably had the biggest strike zone in terms of what he would swing at and still make contact. If I recall (from my fantasy baseball recollection), he tailed off badly due to injuries at the end. Specifically, I think he was very fast and stole bases but basically had Sopriano legs by the end.

Edit: http://www.baseball-reference.com/playe ... vl01.shtml

A few good steals years. But very high OBP. Is lower WAR just a function of career length? His good WAR years only lasted 10 years or so.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

War is absolutely useless.

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Absolutely a Hall of Famer. Montreal hurts him as it did Dawson, not just in Stade Olympique's unacceptable playing surface shaving years and numbers off his career but because he toiled during the Expos' dying days when the league was actively working to bottom out Montreal baseball so they could cash in on Washington.

One of the bigger injustices no one talks enough about was the 2003 Expos, where Vlad was singlehandedly willing an island of misfit toys through the Wild Card standings only for the commissioner's office to deny the Expos its September callups, at which point they sputtered out and lost it to the Marlins (who, wouldn't you know it, were organizationally speaking, the Montreal Expos in everything but roster: the personnel, scouts, and even office supplies were all Montreal's and Loria brought them all to Miami in the Marlins-Red Sox-Expos swap).

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Vlad is a no-brainer first ballot guy.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I use the sight test, and I agree. But let's see what the unpredictable voters think. He was one of my favorites for sure. I loved everything about his game. I think CH is correct in that Montreal killed his legs.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Do you remember that they replaced the terrible paper-thin AstroTurf with good old FieldTurf in 2004, when a third of their games were in Puerto Rico and everyone knew they were leaving? I found that so odd.

It's weird how we'll look back on a time when ballplayers at the height of their game played baseball on industrial carpet rolled out over concrete.

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Easy vote in -- first or second ballot.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

'
you know what works against Vlad with WAR? when he played the game he was in the tail end of the "steroids era" so he was going up against guys like, say, let's look at 2001 and discover some of the outliers that were factored in to determine what a "replacement-level player" was in 2001, when vlad had his "worst" prime-of-his-career season:

vladimir guerrero: .304/34/108/40(SB)
bret boone: .337/37/141
rich aurilia: .327/37/97
brian giles: .307/37/95
barry bonds: .328/73/137
paul lo duca: .320/25/90
phil nevin: .306/41/126
brian jordan: .295/25/97
luis gonzalez: .325/57/142
sammy sosa: .328/64/160 (far and away his best season, better than 98 IMO)
shawn green: .297/49/125
larry walker (COL): .350/38/123
[ok let's switch to the AL now... =]
jason giambi: .342/38/120
corey koskie: .276/26/103
mike sweeney: .304/29/99
juan gonzalez: .325/35/140
alex rodriguez: .318/52/135
rafael palmeiro: .273/47/123
mike cameron: .267/25/110
jim thome: .291/49/124
garrett anderson: .289/28/123
miguel tejada: .267/31/113
tino martinez: .280/34/113
manny ramirez: .306/41/125
[and if you were looking at MVP votes to find these #s, you wouldnt even notice...]
magglio ordonez: .305/31/113

so yeah, this is obivously just 1 year... but can you see how the game has changed in 15 years? that's not even all of the guys who had !!!!/video-game-numbers out of the MVP voting lists on bb-ref, but i mean, there were just so many people hitting HRs like LOLWA?!?!? (bret boone and rich aurilia, a 2B and a SS respectively, each going for 37HR = lolwat?) and remember back then having a ~2.93 ERA would be like "holy shit that pitcher is amazing!!! he has an ERA under 3!!!!" --- nowadays if jake arrieta had a 2.93 ERA i guarantee like 50-75% of chicago/land aka cubbie nation would be like "what's wrong with jake arrieta?" --- sub-2.00 is the new sub.300 tbh, just like 20HR is the new 30HR and 30HR is the new 40HR in terms of looking at overall #s for players [in a fantasy baseball sense as i'm keen to do]

quite honestly, during the bulk (and especially the peak) of vlad's career it was simply way harder to get a WAR than it is nowadays. i remember seeing that in 2015 kevin kiermaier, mainly on the strength of his defense, was a ~7.3 WAR player despite htting .263/10/48/18(SB) -- mike trout (.291/41/90/11 in what was honestly an "off year" for the BPIB) was only worth 9.4 WAR. In vlad's MVP season of 2004 (.337/39/126/15) he managed only 5.6 WAR, and his overall best WAR season was 2002, where he was 1HR short of 40/40 @ .336/39/111/40... and he was good for 7.0 WAR, AKA NOT EVEN GOOD ENOUGH TO GET INTO "KIERMAIER KOUNTRY" ON HIS BEST DAY!

so yeah, that said, i'd say that a WAR was worth more back in vlad's day than it is now... or well if you tie WAR/$$$ then technically the $$$-per-WAR is as high as it's ever been.... but man, the league as a whole was still pretty roided up and mashing all over the place when vlad was at his best, i mean, vlad's best pure-#s season was 2000 where he was .345/44/123/9, and that year he came in 6th in NL MVP voting because, you know, jim edmonds' .295/42/108/10 was worth 6.3 WAR to vlad's [royce da] 5.9, and then MVP winner jeff kent .334/33/125/12 was worth 7.2 --- you know, basically MLB was just loaded with all kinds of guys casually mashing 35+ HR and 100+ RBI and then even the replacement players were a bit more !!! because, again, way more runs were simply scored.... and then again nobody can play defense like kevin kiermaier and his 7.3 WAR in 2015, hence why i's so important.

so yeah, when people say "53 WAR and a 7-year-peak of [whatever]" and then start to look at contemporaries and say WELL LARRY WALKER HAD MORE WAR SO IF VLAD'S IN LARRY'S IN, nevermind the coors-when-it-made-dante-bichette-a-top-slugger factor or vlad playing in montreal where the turf was likely taking 2-3+ years off of his career by destroying his knees (go look at some career highlights of vlad and notice how big and bulky and hobbling he was by the time he went to texas in 2010... yowzers)

and yes, as a "Vlad guy" i can tell you that the only puff of smoke re: vlad and steroids = one of his offseason dominican trainers had worked with some guys who were roiders, so he was kind of investigated once as a common sense thing to do. the only connection with vlad was that vlad would work out with him during the offseason.... but i mean, look at the eye test and notice how vlad's career had a 100% normal (read: "oldschool") trajectory where he didnt go all barry bonds and get a 2nd wind in his mid-late 30s... he got older, fatter, and more hobbled.... and still was like .309/29/115 even when his body basically had 1 MLB year left (a pedestrian-for-vlad .290/13/63 that kinda damaged his legacy cuz that unsightly/career-worst .290 BA took him down from .320/.321 career AVG o the .318 he finished at.

and oh yeah, if you look at vlad's stats.... did he ever strike out 100 times in a season? i mean, the dude was THE premier free swinger in MLB to the point that people laughed, joked, and told amazing stories of vlad's legendary free-swing-at-EVERYTHING M.O., but despite that he NEVER struck out 100 times in a season? and only got close (95) in his first full season in the bigs, a ho-hum .324/38/109? --- yeah, don't forget that despite 449HR Vlad was never a home-run hitter! -- he was just a contact/line-drive hitter that happened to hit enough hard/long ones that he managed like ~27+HR/year basically for his whole career, until 2/3 injury/age ravaged seasons [respectively] at the end of his career.

B-BUT 53 WAR = BORDERILINE AND WAR = ALL AND WAR = EVERYTHING AND WAR = THE #1 STAT EVER, SO VLAD IS ONLY AS GOOD AS WAR SAYS HE IS AND WELP, HEY, MAYBE AFTER LARRY WALKER GETS IN, RIGHT?!?!

*sigh*

i maintain if you go beyond the #s and into the "legend" aspect of the game, that the hall of fame was built so conquering aliens ~200 years from now could go to cooperstown and learn about the only ballplayer i ever heard of named after a fucking historical menace like VLAD THE IMPALER!!! (ROMANIA'S #1 HERO TO THIS DAY CUZ HE SURE DIDNT LET THEM GO MUSLIM WHEN THAT SEEMED LIKE THE THING TO DO IN THE ~1300S OR WHATEVER =)

oh yeah, and the #1 metric of them all = THAT PIECE OF SHIT ALEX RODRIGUEZ STOLE VLAD'S RIGHTFUL PEPSI!!! VLAD DESTROYED THE MOON FFS!!!!

oh and the #2 metric of them all = vlad has a better/cooler music video [w/original song] than your favorite ballplayer! HOF! HOF! HOF! ---- that's right... who's your favorite ballplayer? do they have a music video? no? mine does! =P

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Most likely belongs in the hall of very good but that's what the Hall of Fame is these days so yeah he's in.

I see that Javy Vasquez didn't even make the ballot. That's awesome. At least these assholes got something right.

Vlad Guerrero is a no doubter to get in. The dude could hit anything for a hit.

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Vlad should get it. But I'm withholding support until Edgar Martinez gets in first.

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"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

Superhuman arm too. That whole thing with Tommy Herr's wife might keep him out though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdzM02BgL-k

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Soccer 1,2,3
Spanish Honor Society 1,2,3,4
Forensics 1,2,3,4

"Smiles with Nostrils"

"...no Hmong, go find some blacks"

I think that was Tito Landrum, not Vlad.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Oh. Well, you have your truth, I have mine.

#onetruthonevote

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Soccer 1,2,3
Spanish Honor Society 1,2,3,4
Forensics 1,2,3,4

"Smiles with Nostrils"

"...no Hmong, go find some blacks"

Not first ballot, but he gets in about 2-4 years

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1926-1931-1934-1942-1944-1946-1964-1967-1982-2006-2011

He's getting a decent amount of the early votes so far.

HOF vote tracker thing

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1926-1931-1934-1942-1944-1946-1964-1967-1982-2006-2011