I Think I Talked Myself Into Being Pissed That Edgar Martinez Isn't A Hall Of Famer
One of the main points that I made yesterday was that, with the shitshow that the Baseball Hall of Fame has been in recent years, the bigger talking points have become who gets left out, rather than who gets voted in.
This year, it was a little bit of both, but still heavier on the “who got left out” side. I did not think that the voters would put Pudge Rodriguez in on the first ballot. That was a surprise to me. Not shocking, but definitely unexpected. Then, you have the subplots where Curt Schilling went from 52.3% down to 45% because of his tweets. Ever since their first year on the ballot, the “will they or won’t they” storyline surrounding Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens has been a big headline-grabber. And there are a few smaller storylines sprinkled in there, too.
But what about Edgar Martinez? He’s not a slam dunk first-ballot Hall of Fame candidate. He’s not a player that’s drawn any PED suspicion. He’s just kinda…there. But why? Are the voters so concerned about the steroid witch hunt that they’re not even looking closely enough at the fringe players not linked to steroids? Who would I even put in a category like that? I’d say Schilling is one, Mike Mussina is another, and Martinez fits right in with that group. If you crunch the numbers enough, you could definitely make Hall of Fame cases for all three, although they’re not eye-popping, obvious cases, but they’re not linked to steroids.
With Martinez, though, you have a guy who is a pure DH. We have players in the Hall of Fame who extended their careers and added to their Hall of Fame resumes because of the DH position, like Paul Molitor and Frank Thomas, but they weren’t solely designated hitters throughout their careers. Martinez is the first pure DH who has a legitimate shot at enshrinement, but after eight years on the ballot, he’s only at 58.6%.
Advanced statistics have changed the game. A common complaint amongst baseball fans is when they say, “How did so-and-so’s voting percentage go from X in year-one, to Y in year-ten without ever playing another baseball game?” No, the player didn’t do anything to improve their Hall of Fame resume, but the voters became smarter. They began using more advanced statistics to measure Hall of Fame credentials. That’s how Tim Raines went from 24.3% in his first year on the ballot back in 2008, to a Hall of Famer with 86% of the vote in 2017, without any links to PEDs.
Why isn’t the same thing happening with Edgar Martinez? Well, it is. Sort of. Out of all the players on the 2017 ballot, Martinez saw the biggest jump of any player, going from 43.4% in 2016 to 58.6% this year. He has two years to accumulate the remaining 16.4% of the vote needed to get inducted. It can and will be done. In Raines’ eighth year on the ballot, he had 55.0% of the vote, so Martinez is already ahead of where Raines was at this time. Raines went from 55.0% to 69.8% in his ninth year, and then got in this year with 86% on his final try. One can only assume that Martinez will follow a similar path, especially considering the giant leap that he took this year.
I’ll be happy when he gets in, sure, but I’m more just scratching my head at how he’s not in already. We have the advanced statistics at our disposal right now — the same ones that got Raines inducted this year in his tenth year on the ballot. Vladimir Guerrero got 71.7% of the vote in his first year on the ballot in 2017, so you can pencil him in for the class of 2018, but how did Vlad debut that high, and Martinez is still only at 58.6% in year-eight?
Well, it’s simple. Vlad played a defensive position, and he had one of the most legendary rocket arms of all-time. But there’s a way to measure all of that, right? I don’t think that WAR is the end-all, be-all, but it carries a lot of weight when evaluating Hall of Fame candidates, does it not? WAR, or Wins Above Replacement, factors in offense, defense and base running, so naturally, a player who doesn’t play a defensive position — Edgar Martinez — would be at a disadvantage when using this metric to compare him to a player who plays a defensive position. It’s funny, because, even as a DH, Martinez’s career WAR (68.3) is better than Guerrero’s (59.3), so what’s the deal with the discrepancy in voting percentages?
I don’t understand how it’s 2017, and we’re still holding being a DH against players. If you wanna hold it against a player in the MVP discussion, sure. Go right ahead. That is at least justifiable. But designated hitter is a position, and it has been for FORTY-FOUR FUCKING YEARS. The MLB literally named the annual award for the best DH in the American League after Edgar Martinez, yet he’s not in the Hall of Fame after eight tries.
How? How is the best DH of all-time, in the eyes of the fucking league itself, not a Hall of Famer? I don’t get it, but I’m also not going to totally freak out about it, because, like I said, if you look at the path that Raines took to Cooperstown, Martinez is likely to follow the same one. I’m more just pissed off that he’s had to wait this long, because he should’ve been in a long time ago.