Source: chicago.cbslocal.com --- Wednesday, November 23, 2016
By Dan Bernstein– CBSChicago.com senior columnist (CBS) The 2017 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot was released Monday, and the 34-name list is again rife with reasonable cases to be made, featuring a total of 13 position players with at least an argument for enshrinement based on the information at hand. We’ll table the discussion of pitchers for the time being to examine a particular issue the Hall created for itself when it lowered the accepted threshold for modern position players so notably in 2009, opening up such cases to be made. It’s a theoretical exercise more than anything else, presented with the full awareness that voters will likely continue to hew to established patterns. As a caveat, we are dismissing any issue of proven or suspected use of performance-enhancing drugs for the purposes of this discussion. The Hall already features some certain to be guilty of that. It’s mostly pointless moralism over a museum in upstate New York that is unaffiliated with MLB and not bound by its rules, judged often on hearsay and slippery innuendo. And it’s a criterion we are not going to apply. This year’s list features the second best player of all time in Barry Bonds, whose 164.4 Wins Above Replacement per Fangraphs.com is a mere four behind that of Babe Ruth and a full 14.5 ahead of the next best player in history, Willie Mays. Next is Jeff Bagwell at 80.2 fWAR, and expected to make it this time around. Ivan Rodriguez is ranked thir ...
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