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Hall of Fame Poll: Edgar Martinez

Next on the alphabetical list is Javy Lopez but though Lopez had a good 15 year career, with 260 home runs, 864 RBI and a .287/.337/.491 slash line, all fine numbers for a catcher, I don't see him as a Hall of Fame type. There are a couple of Hall of Fame catchers on his Similarity Scores top 10: Roy Campanella and Ernie Lombardi. Anyone who has Roy Campanella as the most similar to him must be pretty good. Still, I'm skipping him.

Edgar Martinez played for the Mariners for 18 seasons. He had 2247 hits, 514 doubles, 309 home runs, 1261 RBI and 1283 walks. His slash line is .312/.418/.515. He led the league in batting average twice, on base percentage 3 times, doubles twice and RBI once. His stats are here.

He made 7 All-Star teams and had 5 Silver Slugger awards. His career on base of .418 is 22nd on the all-time list and his slugging average, .515, is 66th. Baseball Reference has him at a 67.2 WAR career, 70th among position players.

The knock against Edgar is that he spent half his career as a DH. Early in his career he had been a third baseman, though he wasn't very good one defense, and he was injury prone. The Mariners came to the, rather obvious, conclusion that he should be a DH.

Last year Martinez received 32.9% of the BBWAA vote, down from 36.2% the year before.