Hall of Fame Poll: Gary Sheffield

I'm going to skip Jason Schmidt. He had a nice career, with some good seasons late in his 14 year career. He was 130-96, with a 3.96 ERA in 323 games. Not someone I'd try to make a case to make the Hall.

Looking at his stats, Gary Sheffield was a better player than in my memory. Sheffield, nephew of Dwight Gooden (who was a one and done in Hall of Fame voting, getting just 3% of the vote) was a first round pick in the 1986 draft by the Brewers. He went on to have a 22 year major league career, playing for 8 different teams (apparently he wasn't that easy to get along with.

He played 2576 games, hitting .292/.393/.514 with 509 home runs, 1676 RBI and 253 stolen bases thrown in for good measure. He made 9 All-Star teams. He won 5 Silver Slugger awards. He received MVP votes 7 times, finishing 2nd once and 3rd twice. His career WAR is 60.2.

He came up as a shortstop, was moved to third base and then the outfield, he was never much of a defensive player, but then he could hit.

He was pretty interesting off the field too. He called the Brewers 'racist' when they moved him off short to play third. He felt racism was behind anything bad that happened to him. And he figured there were more Latin players in the majors than African-Americans because Latin players were 'easier to control'. He claimed that manager Joe Torre treated black players different then white players.

He was also named in the Mitchell report as someone that used PEDs.