Who, exactly, should be in the Hall of Fame?
That question arises at some level every year at this time when the Baseball Writers’ Association of America mails out its Hall of Fame ballot to its members who are eligible to take part – voters become eligible only after 10 consecutive years in the BBWAA.
The 2009 ballot is out now, and it poses a question that none of the other ballots dating back to the 1930s did. Can a man who played at a dominant level with his bat but left his glove behind find admittance to Cooperstown?
Such a man is Edgar Martinez, for 18 years a centerpiece of the Seattle Mariner offense. He came up as a third baseman, but a devastating knee injury limited his mobility to such a degree that for the final decade of his career, he could DH only. And he wound up defining the role of designated hitter.
He did it to the point at which he became the Yoda of the position, the man with whom all others were compared. His career numbers – a .312 batting average, a .418 on-base percentage, a .515 slugging percentage, 309 homers and 1,261 RBIs – were such that the last weekend of Martinez’s final season in 2004 saw baseball Commissioner Bud Selig in Seattle to salute Martinez.
Selig chose that moment to surprise Martinez and the Mariners with the announcement that the American League’s DH of the Year award would from that point on be known as the Edgar Martinez Award. There were those who said Selig was jumping the gun, but Martinez’s numbers as a DH, including a .314 average, 1,003 RBIs and a .428 on-base percentage, are the best of any DH in the 3½ decades the position has been in the American League.
Martinez won two AL batting titles and finished among the top 10 in batting average seven times, led the league in on-base percentage three times and was in the top 10 in on-base percentage 11 times. He was a seven-time All-Star and a five-time winner of the Silver Slugger award.
Of course, the reality is none of the statistics matter as much as how the voters feel about the candidate and who the other candidates are.
In the final couple of years of Martinez’s Seattle career, I asked veteran writers – those who would be eligible to vote for Martinez come 2009 – about their feelings for Martinez as a Hall of Fame candidate and about the DH as a Hall of Fame position.
There has been no designated hitter yet elected to the Hall of Fame, the closest being Paul Molitor, who spent about half his career as a DH. Martinez will be the litmus test. There are many writers who don’t like the DH, and that may preclude them from voting for Martinez, his stats notwithstanding.
But the writers I talked with generally liked Martinez, and a significant majority, maybe two-thirds, said at the time they believed he deserved a spot in Cooperstown. Whether that belief will hold up in voting five years later, however, is yet to be proved.
For their part, the Mariners’ public-relations staff sent eligible voters an informational packet about Martinez in support of his candidacy. It was interesting at several levels, not the least of which was no mention of the injuries that cut short Martinez’s career as a third baseman and forced him to DH.
Some of the gems:
Martinez is one of 20 players with an average more than .300 (.312), an on-base percentage more than .400 (.418) and slugging percentage more than .500 (.515). Of the players with those numbers, only Shoeless Joe Jackson and Lefty O’Doul aren’t in the Hall, and Jackson’s being part of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal is the only reason he isn’t there.
Although Martinez doesn’t have any of the “automatic” stats for inclusion in the Hall such as 3,000 hits or 500 homers, he does have some cumulative stats that seem to be just as automatic. Every other player to have finished his career with at least 300 homers, 500 doubles, 1,000 walks, a .300 average and .400 on-base percentage is in the Hall. There aren’t many, and the ones who qualify are among the best players ever – Stan Musial, Rogers Hornsby, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Ted Williams.
On-base percentage has become an increasingly valued statistic in the past decade-plus, and Martinez’s .933 on-base percentage is 32nd all-time. The only players ahead of him who are eligible and not in Cooperstown are O’Doul (again) and Mark McGwire, whose candidacy is dogged by the steroid issue.
Martinez averaged at least .320 in six consecutive seasons, 1995-2000. The others who have done that are all Hall of Famers – Musial, Wade Boggs, Rod Carew and Tony Gwynn – save for one, Todd Helton, who is still active.
The other issue that is sure to come up is Martinez’s first-time candidacy. Many of the voters seem to believe that only extra-special players should go into the Hall of Fame their first time on the ballot. It’s a bid odd, considering once you are in the Hall, nobody cares what round you went in on, but voters are real people with real opinions, and for some of them, the first-ballot issue is major.
To be elected, a player has to be named on 75 percent of the ballots. That total is almost certainly out of Martinez’s range the first time through, but over time, it would be surprising if Martinez doesn’t make a strong run at 75 percent.
Baseball-reference.com has something it calls its Hall of Fame Monitor, in which players are given numerical rankings based on their careers. Martinez earned 104 points with his offensive output over the years. Baseball-reference.com says that a total of 100 points means a “likely” Hall of Fame resident.
We’ll see.
