Banning the Spitter

The guy I stumped for, Andre "The Hawk" Dawson, got into the Hall of Fame this year. The case is simple - he's 25th all time in total bases, combined with over 300 steals and 8 gold gloves. He did it all, despite 12 knee surguries.

Bert Blyleven came oh-so-close, 5 votes short. You would think he'll make it next year, but he's only got 2 more years to do it. Over 3700 freaking strikeouts. Duh. As I have said before, anyone with more strikeouts than Walter Johnson should be in.

The guy who was the one sure thing this year was Roberto Alomar. He came up 8 votes short. You've got to think 8 guys penalized him for this umpire spitting incident. That was one expensive luggie.

I was always a big fan of Roberto Alomar. He came up at the age of 20, and was a starting player right away. He got 145 hits at the age of 20, and jumped to 184 in his second season. I speculated that if he had a long career, he'd have a chance at Rose's hit record. In his first 10 seasons he had 1,659 hits, and he was only 29. After 15 seasons, at age 34, he had 2,546. He faded, and only played 2 more seasons, picking up only another 178 hits. So he didn't even make it to 3,000 (2,724), no less 4,000.

His career was an even .300 BA, stole 474 bases, and slugged .443, with a career OPS of .814. Nice numbers, but an automatic first year player? He is considered possibly the greatest fielding 2nd baseman ever (though that might not be good enough for Omar Visquel). It's a nice package, and he'll get there next year.

Barry Larkin got a lot less votes than Alomar and I'm not sure why. His career BA was .295, he slugged .444, he stole 379 bases and had an OPS of .815. That's awfully similar to Alomar, though he did have only 2,340 hits less. Of course, he was injured all of the time, so this hurt all of his hitting totals. He won 3 gold gloves. And one thing he won that Alomar never even sniffed was an MVP, in 1995. He and Alomar are closer than you'd have thought. And he played for one and only one team his entire career, while Alomar's longest tenure was 5 years with Toronto.

Meanwhile, Rock Raines' numbers are pretty comparable too: .294 BA, .425 slugging, OPS of .810 and he finished with 2,605 hits. Furthermore, Raines stole 808 bases, which is 5th all time behind Henderson, Brock, Billy Hamilton and Cobb. (Guess who's 6th with 752. Answer below.) He was not known for his glove, only his legs.

I saw an interesting comparison of Raines to Lou Brock, who got in on his first try. Brock's numbers were .293 BA, .410 slugging, OPS of .753. He did get to over 3,000 hits, and stole 938 bases. The stats are closer than you'd think. However, Brock had 3 phenomenal World Series, in which he had 34 hits, batted .391, stole 14 bases (7 in 1967 and 7 in 1968) and slugged .655 with 4 homers, 7 doubles and 2 triples. All three went to 7 games, with the Cardinals winning in 1964 and against the Yankees and 1967 against the Red Sox before losing in 1968 to the Tigers. Signature moments. Jack Morris moments. Bill Mazeroski moments. Lou Brock moments.

Answer from above - Vince Coleman was 6th all-time in steals.

Finally, here's the list of guys who won't make the ballot next year: Andres Galarraga, Robin Ventura, Ellis Burks, Eric Karros, Kevin Appier, Pat Hentgen, David Segui, Mike Jackson, Ray Lankford, Shane Reynolds and Todd Zeile. Zero votes for the last 4 guys.

Somebody voted for David Segui? Are you kidding? Segui finished with 684 RBIs. Hell, Joe Pepitone had 721.