Hall of Fame Poll: Fred McGriff

This is the Crime Dog’s 10th (and last) time on the ballot, last year he was on 23.2% of the ballots. I’m sad he’s not going to make it.

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 52.6 career bWAR (just your remind that Harold Baines is a 38.7). Maybe Fred will have a bunch of friends on the Veteran’s committee.

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 keep. But it all worked out.

We got him in a lopsided trade with the Yankees. We got him, Dave Colins (who was a pretty good left fielder) 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’s chart:

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.