Hall of Fame Poll: Fred McGriff

This is the Crime Dog's 8th time on the ballot, last year he had a jump to 20.9% of the ballots from 10% the year before. I'm biased, but I don't know why Fred McGriff doesn't get more support for the Hall. 493 home runs, 1305 RBI, a 1550 RBI and 1305 walks with a.284/.377/.509 slash line. Baseball Reference has him at a 52.5 career WAR.

I really liked him when he was a Jay. When they traded him, and Tony Fernandez to the Padres for Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter, I told my friend that we were trading away a future Hall of Famer. 30+ homers, 100 walks a year seemed like a guy that should make the Hall to me.

We got him in a  lopsided trade with the Yankees. We got him, Dave Colins (who was a pretty good left fielder for us) and Mike Morgan (who wasn't good for us but went on to be a pretty good pitcher) for Dale Murray (who had a 4.73 ERA in 62 relief appearances for the Yankees) and Tom Dodd (who never played in the majors for the Yankees, he would go on to play 8 games with the Orioles, 4 years later).

Fred made 5 All-Star teams and had 3 Silver Sluggers. He was always close to the top of the league in OBP and Slugging. The top 4 players on his Similarity Score list are Willie McCovery, Willie Stargell, Jeff Bagwell and Frank Thomas.

His problem is that he played in an era where there a number of good first basemen and, of course, when steroids were all around. I don't remember Fred being accused of using PED,

If he had those 7 more homers to get to 500......

Matt gives us a graphic look.

A lot of debate about the Hall of Fame relates to comparing a candidate against others elected and excluded. The chart below shows all players who played the majority of their career after 1945 (excluding active players, and those on the ballot or yet to hit the ballot) according to how long they played and how productive they were. TRC+ is wRC+, just for all runs rather than just batting runs. This is not meant to be definitive, but a high level starting point showing how players with similarly productive and lasting careers have fared.

Similar Players: Ernie Banks (elected BBWAA), Billy Williams (elected BBWAA), Jeff Kent (on ballot), Sammy Sosa (on ballot), Gary Sheffield (on ballot), Bobby Abreu (awaiting ballot), Darrell Evans, Ted Simmons, Luis Gonzalez