In past years we've run a series of polls to see who Bluebird Banters would vote into the Hall of Fame. We'll run 2 or 3 polls a day until we get to the bottom of the list.
The Hall has always been of interest to me. We finally well to Cooperstown a few years back. I really enjoyed it, as I think any student of baseball history would. That said, I'm not a big fan of the BBWAA voting. As with the voting for the BBWAA awards, each writer seems to have his own agenda and often it has nothing to do with selecting the best players for the Hall. I'd rather they pick out a panel of baseball experts and have them choose, but the writers will never give up the vote.
Anyway the first player we'll consider is Jeff Bagwell. Jeff had a fine 15 year MLB career, from 1991 to 2005, and he only played for one team, the Astros.. He was a heck of a player. He finished with 2314 hits, 488 doubles, 449 home runs, 1529 RBI, 1401 walks and 202 stolen bases. His career slash line is 297/.408/.540.
He was the NL Rookie of the Year in 1991, was the NL MVP in 1994 and played in 4 All-Star Games. He has 1 Gold Glove and 3 Silver Slugger awards. Pretty impressive, especially when you consider he played his home games in the Astrodome, for most of his career, as pitcher friendly a park as you would ever find.
If WAR means more to you, Baseball Reference gives him a 79.9 career WAR, putting him 57th all-time and 37th all-time among position players. In an average season Jeff would hit 30 some homers, have about 110 RBI, 100 walks and 15 or stolen bases. That would look good in any team's lineup.
He and Craig Biggio have to be as good a twosome as any team has ever had play together for 15 seasons. He also had the widest batting stance I've ever seen.
You can take a look at Jeff's career stats here. He got 41.7% of the BBWAA vote last year. Unfortunately for him he would need 75% of the vote to get into the Hall.
Give us your vote, and use the comments to make your case.