He's off the ballot.

Wow is he really? What a joke.

I miss redbean. I figured out who he was irl at one point too.

What are some thoughts on Rolen? I never really considered him a HOF candidate, but his numbers certainly make a case for him.

May as well give my 2 cents about the HOF guys.

Jim Thome signed in Philadelphia before the 2006 season, having played his entire career in Cleveland (48 WAR, 1400 games). He remained in Philly for a couple years until a combination of lingering foot injuries and the emerging Ryan Howard pretty well pushed him out of town. He was traded to the White Sox for Aaron Rowand, Daniel Haigwood, and Gio Gonzalez before the 2006 season.

Haigwood appears to have retired after the 2009 season, without ever having reached the bigs.

Gonzalez, originally drafted by the White Sox before the Thome trade, was sent back to Chicago the next year, with Gavin Floyd, for Freddy Garcia, a deal that was an unmitigated disaster for the Phils. Garcia was below replacement for his only year in PHI, walking at the end of the year.

Rowand had a pretty damn good walk year in Philadelphia, putting up 5.1 WAR in 161 games, before filing for free agency, signing in SF and sucking. Compensation for him leaving was draft picks Zach Collier and Anthony Gose. Collier left Philadelphia as a minor league free agent, but he appears to be doing well in AAA (albeit as a 27 year old). Gose was traded as a prospect to Houston for Roy Oswalt, with JA Happ and Jonathan Villar. Oswalt gave Philly 5.4 WAR over a year and a half or so, forming one head of the 4 Aces, before leaving in free agency after 2010.

I'd vote Rolen.

And we lost Kevin Maitan, the 17 year old Venezuelan kid who was drawing comparisons to Miguel Cabrera

The hitting was meh as hall standards go, but he was one of the best fielders I've ever seen, and I really only watched him play a lot once he came to Toronto, after he was past his prime. The numbers suggest he should be in.

Boring trade history for these purposes... traded for Placido Polanco (free agent), Bud Smith (no hitter!, but released) and Mike Timlin (free agent).

Then traded for Troy Glaus, but Glaus walked.

The traded for Edwin Encarnacion, Zach Stewart, and Josh Roenicke. I already wrote about that one in the Octavio Dotel writeup though, so I'm not doing that again. I guess that was a pretty good tree of trades though... Rolen -> Stewart-> Jackson -> Rasmus.

Damn, the Braves got their grapes crushed. Pretty sure they are never doing THAT again.

Otani clear to come to the bigs!

It was a weak draft class and he wasn't the consensus #1 like the Nats got

Harper and Stras were locks. Maybe he was in the same type of prospect category as Upton.

1. When I pitched in college my pitching coach was Sam Militello: https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...ilitsa01.shtml

Dude was hilarious.

2. When I played in Babe Ruth (13-15 league), my city hosted the regional all-star tournament. Normally you had to win a bunch of earlier tournaments to make regionals, but because we were randomly picked to host, my all-star team got a bye right to the tournament.

This was our 14 year old year. The previous year we lost two straight in the local tournament and got bounced. We figured we were going to get murdered.

Also, as a part of hosting the tournament, we housed players and their families from other teams. We got a pair of brothers from the Pennsylvania state champs. They were some cocky bastard and were so sure they're were gonna ship the tourney.

Our first game we dominated Southern New Jersey 16-5, and the second game we knocked Delaware out of the tournament 14-3. To

To make it even sweeter, the Penn brothers lost their first two games and had to leave my house in shame.

Sadly, we got pwned the next two but we were pretty happy to secure the first two (and only) regional wins in my city's history.

3. A couple years back I'm playing adult league baseball out in Queens and we're playing a team made up of mostly Domincan dudes. I go up to bat and I think I smell weed but who knows, it's the middle of a city park. Wouldn't surprise me.

Anyway, gradually the catcher gets worse and worse and stops being able to catch the ball. Some of these misses start hitting the umpire who gets angrier and angrier.

Finally the ump has had enough and ejects the catcher from the game.

The catcher's response is to calmly remove his shin guards and baseball pants, drop them on home plate, and stroll down the foul line, out of the field.

No.

Yea a big LOL at thinking Vizquel is a Hall of Famer. Dude played 24 years in the Steroid Era and didn't crack 100 HR's or 1,000 RBI's in his career. He couldn't even average 4 HR's or 40 RBI's a year.

mark appel another cautionary tale of baseball prospects and lol scouting reports "high floor, he could start for a team right now"

has literally never pitched in the majors and now has no team.

I think it will be Chipper, Thome and Vlad. Would like to see the committee vote in Dale Murphy

Ozzie Smith? Vizquel is the best defensive shortstop since Ozzie.

No, he isn't.

lol @ not including Hoffman.

Just think, Roberto Alomar came into the league one year prior to Vizquel. Alomar has been in the Hall of Fame for 6 years before Vizquel even came to vote.

Re: that fangraphs article

That seems like incredibly flawed logic and that analogy does not make any sense to me at all.

With all this back and forth over WAR, I'm having trouble understanding why FG and BP can't just develop a context-heavy version of WAR to list next to the original.

Makes sense to me. A single is a single. If you're going to give more or less credit to the hitter for that single based on what his teammates around him do (i.e. events 100% beyond his control), what difference does it make whether they did it before or after him?

Man this was a well written article.