With Baseball done for the season does not mean that i'm done talking about it. I want to start breaking down the players on the 2014 Hall of Fame ballot, per baseball-reference.
One thing i'm going to work on is looking at the people on here and seeing which ones have a Hall of Fame case and which of these players are only going to the hall of fame if they buy a ticket. Also, i'm working under the assumption that the committee will eventually soften their stance on those tied to steroid use (even if its not this year). During my evaluation, the focus is solely on what they did on the field, not off it.
Unless otherwise indicated, players are going to be evaluated alphabetically and broken down into several postings.
Moises Alou:
At first glance, a good but not necessarily great hitter. He had a couple of top five MVP finishes (ranking third in 1994 & 1998) the only two seasons where he was more than five wins above replacement. While never the best hitter in the league, he was a highly productive player for many years being a productive player until he was 40.
Amongst his top 10 comparable in Similarity Score, the only one in Cooperstown is Chuck Klein and even then I think its a different case as he had a brief stretch where he was very dominant (1931-1933) where Alou was above average for a very long time without being the best.
However, Alou's other comparisons back up my gut instinct as he's grouped with other very productive hitters that are not in the hall of fame (i.e. Ellis Burks, Reggie Smith, Will Clark, Fred Lynn). He at least stays on the ballot for a few years but never gets in.
Verdict: Maybe if they change the name to Hall of Very Good
Jeff Bagwell:
Bagwell was the best player on some pretty good Astros teams with his peak coming in his 1994 NL MVP season when his OPS was an un-worldthy 1.201 and had a WAR greater than 5 in 8 of his 15 seasons.
My initial perception is that his induction is being delayed by things beyond his control (i.e. the inflated power numbers of the 1990s amongst other things). The last few years his Hall of Fame case is growing with him getting a shade under 60% of the vote last year. Out of his top 10 similar players, only one is in the HOF (Stargell) which I find a bit surprising.
This I feel is a bit misleading as there are several in there that are either in year 1 of eligibility (Frank Thomas) or are currently active (Giambi, Big Papi, Pujols, etc.)
Out of the five HOF stat monitors tracked on players baseball-reference pages (Black Ink, Grey Ink, Hall of Fame Monitor, Hall of Fame Standards & JAWS), his numbers are better than the average hall of famer for four of these. I don't know if he'll be in this year but I think he's in within the next five years.
Verdict: Probable Hall of Famer
Armando Benitez:
Every year it seems like a handful of players end up on the HOF ballot just for kicks and giggles and my first impression is that Benitez is one of these players. Granted his OPS+ of 140 is much better than what I remember, he even had a few separate seasons where he was actually pretty dominant. The numbers indicate he was better than what I remember.
The standards for a closer go beyond "oh he's better than I remember" with only two seasons with a WAR above 3. A couple all star games and a shade below 300 saves ain't gonna get you into Cooperstown. All of his baseball reference comparison players were also players that had sustained success as a closer but with no HOF shot (i.e Tom Henke, Troy Percival).
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