The Goat Pen

He was never a superstar.

True.

But, in spite of the pace of his start compared to Edmonds, the stats are stacked against Mr. Bruce.

Sometimes I get sloppy. At such times I often don't type what I mean. Not because I don't know what I mean, but rather, because saying what I mean is a lot of work.

The argumen Rat, and to a lesser extent aggie, has offered is specious because both make comparisons to an exceptional player's weakness rather than his strength.

A similar argument is the often voiced notion that Dave Concepcion should be in the HOF because his offensive stats are similar to or even superior to Ozzie Smith's offensive Stats. This type of argument fails because It attempts to establish a player's value by comparing him to a great player's weakness. Ozzie Smith is in the HOF despite his weak offense, not because of it.

So it is with Jim Edmonds. Jim had a Hall of Fame level career despite his relatively slow start.

I could compare Bruce to Edmonds statistically, but such a comparison would mean little since Bruce is only in his 4th year.

This is what I meant, when I said I wasn't basing my comments on stats, but rather on Edmond's incredible career.

Would somebody please just shoot this crack whore already?

Any mention of Davy and the HOF goes a long way.

Who said anything about Davy?

I'm not sure which team to root for tonight. To bad there's no way both the Reds and Brewers can lose.

News you can't eat:

Tomorrow, the Cardinals will place both Matt Holliday and Kyle McClellan on the 15-day DL.

That'll be 4 of the Cards top 15 players (Wainwright, Freese, Holliday, McCellan) on the DL. It's hard to imagine a team overcoming so many injuries to top players.

Why ask this question if you already know the answer?

Tough loss tonight. Twice the Cards had the lead and twice they failed to hold it.

This team has a lot of issues. Injuries to key players, sub-par performance of big stars like Pujols and Carpenter. Not sure they can keep overcoming their weak fielding and Swiss cheese bullpen.

The Giants don't look like much on paper, but they're scrappy and they have good players at key positions. I guess that's why the won last year.

Chipper Jones: First Balloter.

If Bagwell isn't a 1st ballot HOFer then I don't see much to show me that Chipper Jones is.

They both ought to be first ballot Hall Of Famers.

Bagwell and Jones are roughly comparable, and rank as each others best match in similarity scores. Their WAR scores are close with Jones creeping ahead a bit in the last year or so.

Jones 80.9
Bags 79.9

Bagwell had a bit higher peak but this distinction isn't glaring. Each won an MVP award, but neither was a "superstar" by popular acclaim - All Star Games: Jones 5, Bagwell 4. For comparison Ken Griffey, even though he ranks below both Bagwell and Jones in WAR, was a a 13 time All Star.

The numbers all suggest Aggie is right; these players are similar and Jones might reasonably expect similar treatment from voters. However, there is the cloud of steroids to consider. Bagwell is suspected of being a user, and it seems likely that this suspicion held his vote total down last year. One can only guess how voters will treat Bagwell in future votes. So assuming that Jones is thought to be clean, he may still have a shot at first ballot induction.

Lastly, in my mind, a Hall Of Fame player is a Hall of Fame player. It doesn't really matter how long it took for him to get in. The voters are fickle, not particularly well informed and often down right ignorant about statistics - to this day many sports writers value players purely based on their perception rather than cold hard numbers.

First ballot or tenth, I expect both players will be enshrined.

Each won an MVP award

Ugh, whats annoying about that little comparison is that Jeff Bagwell should have been MVP for the 2nd time in the year Chipper won his.

Perhaps. Bagwell plainly was underrated during his career. For example, he only played in 4 All Star Games, that's almost unbelievable considering his other accomplishments. But As I've said many times, people's perceptions often do not match reality well.

Over his career, Bagwell did receive much greater MVP support than Jones, Bagwell ranking 35th all time and Jones 64th.

BTW: Jones played in 6 All Star Games, not 5 as I previously stated.

Chipper often won the fan vote. Bagwell I think only started one game, (plus the game at Fenway where he was justifiably named DH for the game). The "fans" apparently wanted to see the stellar play of Mark Grace and Fred McGriffs of the world in their all-star games.

Number of all-star games is pretty meaningless with every thing that goes in. Sometimes a good player gets bumped just to make room for the best guy on a crappy team. Chipper Jones wasnt an all-star in 1999 when he won the damn MVP award.