{"id":78,"date":"2010-08-10T12:38:05","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T17:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=78"},"modified":"2013-01-14T13:06:03","modified_gmt":"2013-01-14T18:06:03","slug":"interesting-hall-of-fame-candidates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=78","title":{"rendered":"Interesting Hall of Fame candidates&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Droopy passed along a great trivia question; what four players have hit 400+ homers and have 10 gold gloves.\u00a0 (the question was spurred on by one of the four answers, one <strong>Andruw Jones<\/strong>, having just hit his 400th homer this season and joining this exclusive club).\u00a0 (The other three answers are at the bottom of the post).<\/p>\n<p>But, it got me to thinking.\u00a0 Andruw Jones is only 33, has 400 homers, 10 gold gloves and should be towards the end of his prime as a ballplayer.\u00a0 Instead he seems to have basically forgotten\u00a0 how to hit at age 30 and is bouncing from team to team to try to regain his swing.\u00a0 Certainly Andruw is not a HoFamer at this point in his career, but if he was able to turn it around and become relevant again, even for a couple of seasons, and achieve some milestone numbers he very well may be.\u00a0\u00a0 I think the epitaph of Jones&#8217; career will read something like, incredibly accomplished early in his career but inexplicably washed up by age 30.\u00a0 Steroids?\u00a0 Falsified age? Anything is possible.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a couple other test cases for HoF worthiness:<br \/>\n1. <strong>Johnny Damon<\/strong>.\u00a0 Currently sits at 2527 career hits at age 36 and still hits well enough that you&#8217;d have to think he has an ouside shot at 3000.\u00a0 Is he a hall of famer<\/p>\n<p>if he gets to 3000?\u00a0 The only guys who have 3000 that are NOT in the hall are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Rose <\/strong>(ineligible)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Biggio <\/strong>(will be soon)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Palmeiro <\/strong>(Roids).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Bonds <\/strong>retired with2935 (roids).\u00a0 <strong>Jeter <\/strong>will get 3000 but i think he&#8217;s HoF material no doubt.\u00a0 <strong>Harold Baines<\/strong> another test case; 2866 hits but isn&#8217;t getting close to induction on the votes.<\/p>\n<p>My vote: nope.\u00a0 Not an impact player, also an accumulator of stats over a long career.\u00a0 He&#8217;s actually a worse fielder and hitter than Baines.<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>2. <strong>Jim Thome<\/strong>.\u00a0 Currently sitting at 578 homers career and almost a lock to get 600 at age 39 and producing pretty well this year.\u00a0 A number of years getting<\/p>\n<p>MVP consideration but never finishing top 3.\u00a0 5-time all star.\u00a0 Some fo the hall of fame standards stat measurements have him just over the cusp.\u00a0 My &#8220;standard&#8221; is always the stardom or fear factor test.\u00a0 When Thome comes up, are you scared?\u00a0 Are you on the edge of your seat?\u00a0 Would you (as a visiting fan) see his team coming to town and think about buying tickets so you could see him (like <strong>Pujols <\/strong>with St. Louis for example).<\/p>\n<p>My vote: borderline yes.<\/p>\n<p>3. <strong>Adam Dunn<\/strong>.\u00a0 (for the sake of argument you have to project his career to what it probably ends up at).\u00a0 I&#8217;ll project him, sitting at 346 now but on pace to end<br \/>\nthis year at 360 , to end up with right around 600 homers for his career. Analysis: give him 40-40-38-35-30-30 for the next six seasons, taking him to age 36 and sitting at around 575 homers.\u00a0 Even if you trend those numbers down a bit, he&#8217;s still sitting in the mid 500s at age 36, and Thome has hit hearly 100 homers after that age.\u00a0 Hell, if Dunn stays healthy and doesn&#8217;t precipitously decline in power (like <strong>Ortiz<\/strong>), he has an outside shot at 700 homers.\u00a0 Unbelievable.<\/p>\n<p>But you look at his career &#8220;accomplishments&#8221; and there&#8217;s NOTHING there.\u00a0 To date he has made ONE all star team, finished 4th in ROY voting and in only two seasons<br \/>\nhas even had an MVP vote, let alone come close to winning.\u00a0 If Dunn reaches 600 homers is he a hall of famer?<\/p>\n<p>My vote: nope.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s other great test cases out there (David Ortiz, <strong>Carlos Delgado<\/strong>, <strong>Jim Edmonds<\/strong> or <strong>Paul Konerko<\/strong>) with it comes to looking at &#8220;home run accumulations&#8221; for a career.\u00a0 Perhaps another time.<\/p>\n<p>ps: Trivia Answer: Andruw Jones, <strong>Ken Griffey Jr<\/strong>, <strong>Willie Mays<\/strong> and <strong>Mike Schmidt<\/strong>.\u00a0 <strong>Al Kaline<\/strong> had 10 gold gloves but exactly 399 career homers.\u00a0 <strong>Barry Bonds<\/strong> only managed 8 gold gloves before turning into a hulking left fielder on or about the same time he found steroids in 1999.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Droopy passed along a great trivia question; what four players have hit 400+ homers and have 10 gold gloves.\u00a0 (the question was spurred on by one of the four answers, one Andruw Jones, having just hit his 400th homer this season and joining this exclusive club).\u00a0 (The other three answers are at the bottom of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1390,5],"tags":[139,1004,123,998,596,1001,639,605,354,999,997,1075,1000,717,607,1003,676,747,646,279],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","category-hall-of-fame","category-natsgeneral","tag-adam-dunn","tag-al-kaline","tag-albert-pujols","tag-andruw-jones","tag-barry-bonds","tag-carlos-delgado","tag-craig-biggio","tag-david-ortiz","tag-derek-jeter","tag-harold-baines","tag-jason-kellenbenz","tag-jim-edmonds","tag-jim-thome","tag-johnny-damon","tag-ken-griffey-jr","tag-mike-schmidt","tag-paul-konerko","tag-pete-rose","tag-rafael-palmeiro","tag-willie-mays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5744,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/5744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}