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DISCLAIMER: I KNOW I TALK TOO MUCH. I KNOW THAT YOU PROLLY DIDN'T READ. I ALSO KNOW THAT IT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER ABOUT YOURSELF TO COMMISERATE WITH THE GROUP/THINK AND GO "HOLEY HOOEY THIS GUY IS WEIRD" --- I GET IT. PLZ BE ORIGINAL AND SUITABLY HILARIOUS IN SKEWERING ME FOR MY HELLBENT DESIRE TO TYPE!
low blow on EL TIBURON! i have a feeling that you're about go get some PMs from board luminaries sometime soon.
also, i didn't go to a single stats search or anything to look up these players' stats/comps/WARs b4 i voted with my gut, so i just wanted that out there.
THAT SAID, AHEM, * HACQUES UND'LOOGIE, cracks knuckles *
i went with kent, maddux, loaiza, mussina, frank, larry walker, bonds
.
jeff kent = world class pudwhack by many accounts, but the dude could hit at second base like few before him (joe morgan with less power?) and he sustained that excellence over a long period of time. idk how much he shifted around later down the road, nor do i know if he initially became a 2B because he was in a situation where he couldn't crack OF/DH types and thus he was plugged @ 2nd and did it well enough to rack up those #s.... but when you're talking all-time top offensr second baseman, you gotta include jeff kent and his truck.
maddux = duh. it goes without saying........that said, the only real drama for him about this is whether he gets in this yea ror next year, since many old crusty BBWAA writers will leave him off their ballot just because basically, sans steroids, the only way to really try and reinforce the classic "gotta EARN it" mantra is banding together to keep a surefire HOF lock out of the hall for one year UST SO THE WRITERS CAN REACHAROUND THEMSELVES TO SAY ANOTHER JOB WELL DONE
esteban loaiza: mexican pitching record. need i say more? PROTIP: my work here is done.
mike mussina: coming back from the comedy pick, wow, moose is one of those guys who truly sneaked up on you in terms of "oh my lord this guy has 250+ wins along with the !!! career stats? PLAQUE PLEASE!* time and time again the hall has provided us with the occasional tale of a guy who had an all-time peak-years run but then hit a wall.... the equivalent of gayle sayers being magic until his knee/s got toe-up? or maybe sandy koufax, who left at/near the top of his game deciding to forego the finalizing of his career which were surely on a trajectory to bE hof-worthy and thensome (pedro is gonna give you another guy in that mould, except that he rebuilt himself and evolved into a very good pitcher who only showed the briefest glimpses of pedro) ------------- THAT SAID, mussina is like the polar opposite of that. he kept hanging around and honing his craft and was very very good as a yankee... except he had a bum year in his penultimate season, only to turn around and drop typical ~15+ win ~low-mid 3s ERA and THEN walked out on his own terms. if he was truly in it for the $$$ he'd still be in the yankees rotation for day.
frank "big hurt" thomas --- i was born in 1980. when i was a kid frank thomas was "that dude" in chicago.... huge, stacked, ready to unleash at any given split second.... but at hte same time he was tecnically a brilliant hitter as he managed to work all of those wallks and clog up the bases, thus dustyproofing himself. what's interesting with frank is that he bridges the "should DHs get in the HOF?" gap between the traditional NOs and the newschool YEAHs. i think frank ended up taking 57.5% of his start at DH thrroughout his career, but when you needed him to play 1B he played 1B. his young/ish super-prime/apex years in the early/mid 90s, man, he was a force of baseball righteousness. so i think with frank besides the 1st year super31337club (you know, where bonds would be sans riodage) frank has both the insane super-peak run and the overall #s to ensure that he's in the hall sooner than later
larry walker: welp, this is example #1 of my les expos bias here.... but while it's easy to slag him off and say that his overall #s weren't superbly decadent, you can make a example of him having a higher career WAR or..... fuck whats the HOF metric that the people at baseballthinkfactory.com comes with.... larry walker ranks in the top ~15 all time of their RF rankings, even ahead of vlad.... which is !!!!!. i'm sure he had some lingering issues from the years served @ la stade olympique, and of course his going to coloradio turned him into a product of the coors-field-bias-elite.... i think if jim rice is gonna get in.... well lets not even use that.... let's say if andre dawson got in, i think larry should get in because HE. WAS. BETTER. THAN. ANDRE. DAWSON. AT. BASEBALL.
barry bonds: yeah, this is where it all comes to a head.... the stuff he did from 01/onwards is just pure legend.... it was literally the apex of roided up superplayers whose BP sessions were worth the price of admission. and think of hwo hard it was to be bonds, what having a dissheveled ron kittle running up like PLZ SIGN THIS STUFF FOR MY CHARITY" and barry did what many of us would do, told him to fuck off.... but that makes barry specual is that he also added in that he doesn't do this charity signing shit for white people. wow. just wow.....;
but hey, at least he has honest.... there. without dissecting the presumed pre-riods/post-roids merits on whether or not barry deserves to get in, dude, the man was a fucking spectacle at the plate. especially between 01-05 and whatnot. he was just in another world of ballplayer and nobody came close.... he might see one or two pitches a game, and i'll be damned if he didn't parrlay that into ~60-70HRs.... all the while upping the rest of his offensive game from early days going up to perennially hitting .350... that's the amazing part.
so for sheer spectacle alone, for cutting years off of hs life to become sort some of baseball ,achine.... you gotta give it to bondd. every isijce i
oterwise, meh.... jack morris had one postseason and he's milked it really far. biggio is the posterchild for hall of very goood.... i mean, how many people played the vintage killer bees astro ans said OMFG WE GOTTA STOP BIGGIO... pfft. hearken doug and STOP YOURSELF.
obviously the same could be said of larry walker, however, i think he's just a more extreme / less characterable versiion of vlad. overall i'd give his arm higher marks but still, damn, 69.7 war? to give you an idea, my guy vlad had like 55.8 war or someting and sammy sosa was only ~54. i would tender to guess that since larry had his pre-late-career/coors comeback the WAR discrepancy can be attributed, somehwat, do the change in the replacement player from larry's prime ~(90-02) whereas to vlad's (~99-08)
it's also amazing that larry could have seasons of hitting .366, .363, .379, and .350 and still end up with a career average (.313) versus vlad's (.318)
ah well, c'est la vie... soon enough i'll get around to my vlad for the HOF career post... i'll resarch it and use capital letters nad stuff. until then.... geronimooooo!!!!
oh and hey lets toss in rock reigns cuz seeing an expos logo on the front page of the sunday trib and then a bigger one in the paper's guts is always a good thing =D
_________________ Curious Hair wrote: Les Grobstein's huge hog is proof that God has a sense of humor, isn't it?
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