Hall of Fame Poll: Jeff Bagwell

Each year we've run a series of Hall of Fame polls, to see who readers of BBB would put into the Hall, if the they had the smarts to take the voting away from the BBWAA and give it to us instead. We'll run through this series of polls over the next couple of weeks.

We have an advantage over the BBWAA, we can say  yes to more than 10 players. The Hall and the BBWAA have a mess on their hands because they have many players who are good candidates for the Hall, but can only put 10 on the ballot. With this many good players on the ballot, it is tough to get enough on them on 75% of

The first name on the list is Rich Aurilia who had a good career, but I don't think he's anyone's idea of a Hall of Famer, so we'll skip him, despite a 15 year career, a .275/.328/.433 slash line, with 1576 total hits, 186 home runs, 756 RBI while playing pretty reasonable defense at short. A career WAR of 18.1 comes up a good bit short of what I'd need to put a guy in the Hall. He made 1 All-Star team and won 1 Silver Slugger award.

Jeff Bagwell, on the other hand, has a pretty strong case. He played 15 seasons with the Astros, as a first baseman. He hit 297/.408/.540 with 499 home runs (38th all time), 1529 RBI (49th all-time), 202 stolen bases in 2150 games.

Jeff played in 4 All-Star games, was NL Rookie of the Year in 1991 and NL MVP in 1994. He has 1 Gold Glove and 3 Silver Slugger Awards. Baseball Reference has his career WAR at 79.6, which would be 63rd all-time.

This is Bagwell's 5th year on the ballot, he has been getting around 50% of the vote each year He was at 41.7% in 2011, 56.0% in 2012, 59.6% 2013 and 54.3% last year.

There are suggestions that Bagwell used PEDs. I don't think there is any proof that he used, but he was friends with Ken Caminiti, which some think is guilt by association.

I was at a game in the Astrodome. I remember thinking that Bagwell had the widest stance I've ever seen. His feet must have been 4 feet apart when he was in the batters box.