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Hall of Fame Poll: Juan Gonzalez

I was going to go through all the players on the ballot, but there are some that we really don't need to vote on:

  • Jeromy Burnitz was a pretty good player. He hit 315 home runs, drove in 981. His batting line is .253/.345/.481, not bad at all really. He made 1 All-Star team. Baseball Reference has him at a 17.6 career WAR. Not bad but not a Hall of Famer. His career stats are here.
  • Vinny Castilla, again was a good player, especially when playing in the thin air in Colorado. He had 320 homers, 1105 RBI and a .276/.321/.476 slash line. His slash line as a Rockie was .294/.340/.530. Coors Field, prehumidor was a place where any player could hit a home run. Vinny hit .316/.348/.504 there. The Hall is a little short on third basemen but there are likely a dozen that should get in before Castilla gets mentioned. His career numbers are here.

So let's look at Juan Gonzalez. Juan hit 434 home runs, had 1404 RBI and had a slash line of .295/.343/.561 on his career. He won 2 AL MVP awards (1992 and 1998), made 3 All-Star teams and was a Silver Slugger winner 6 times. His .561 career slugging average puts him 17th on the all-time list. He led the AL in homers twice and is 40th in the home run list.

He is one that early in his career looked like a sure bet to be in the Hall of Fame, but his numbers dropped off after he turned 30. He only hit 94 home runs after the age of 30.

You can check out Juan's career numbers here.