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Blue Jays Discussion: Vlad Jr wait/watch II: Watch Harder

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deletethis

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Harold Baines was a very good player but he's not a Hall of Famer. This pick is a bit of a travesty. Baines was a good defensive outfielder for about his first 5 or so years. Then after back problems (I seem to remember) he wasn't even a permanent defensive player by the time he was 28 so his defense doesn't even play a role like say a player like Roberto Clemente. It was a pet peeve of mine how much Baines was hyped over better players during his career.

I can't wait to see the list someone compiles of outfielders with better careers who never got in the hall. Larry Walker for sure is one, it's not even remotely close. Don't forget Walker was terrific defensive player for most of his career. Ellis Burks, Jim Edmonds, Shawn Green, Moises Alou, Dick Allen, Tim Salmon are some names of better players than Baines.
 
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Discoverer

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JustAShadow said:
I can't wait to see the list someone compiles of outfielders with better careers who never got in the hall. Larry Walker for sure is one, it's not even remotely close. Don't forget Walker was terrific defensive player for most of his career. Ellis Burks, Jim Edmonds, Shawn Green, Moises Alou, Dick Allen, Tim Salmon are some names of better players than Baines.
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He's 160th in fWAR among OF, so it'll be a pretty long list. Then you factor in that Baines is only that high because he played for so long and everyone who's anywhere near him was significantly better on a per-PA basis, and he doesn't even really belong that high. To wit: of the 430 OF with at least 5000 PA, his 2.1 fWAR/600 puts him 310th, tied with Shannon Stewart, Mookie Wilson, Roberto Kelly, and BJ Surhoff. I mean...
 
TheMadHatTrick

TheMadHatTrick

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No place for Blue Jays among MLB winter meetings high rollers

“Right now if you think about the outfielders that we could have going into the season and if you thing about the (infielders) and catchers that we have, we could go into the year without making an addition and field a major league team,” Atkins said. “It’s not our goal, but we could field a major league team that could be relatively competitive — not competitive enough — but that’s a good starting point.”
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Get your season tickets now!:sarcasm:
 
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zeke

zeke

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TheMadHatTrick said:
No place for Blue Jays among MLB winter meetings high rollers



Get your season tickets now!:sarcasm:
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TheMadHatTrick

TheMadHatTrick

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I hate Rogers so much, and Shatkins by extension as they haven't shown to be much more than corporate shills.
 

aingefan

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Feb 27, 2008
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Sheesh, Atkins really shooting from the hip this off-season.
No ‘we like our group’ rhetoric.
Tulo, the trade market (Martin, Stro, Sanchez), now the OF.
 

Discoverer

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I think he would have been way better off saying something like "We're just not good enough and we're desperate to make some upgrades to our roster." As they say in poker, "Never ever try to bluff and always make sure everyone knows exactly what you're trying to do."
 
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TheMadHatTrick

TheMadHatTrick

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Discoverer said:
I think he would have been way better off saying something like "We're just not good enough and we're desperate to make some upgrades to our roster." As they say in poker, "Never ever try to bluff and always make sure everyone knows exactly what you're trying to do."
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That'd be a great analogy if only the other players couldn't already see the cards you had on the table. Bluffing is useless in this case. lol
 
BlueForever75

BlueForever75

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I wouldn't be surprised to see some deals go down. Atkins doesn't show his cards, he just makes the deals. I bet a couple of deals will happen at the GM meetings. Ones we never saw or heard of coming.
 

Discoverer

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TheMadHatTrick said:
That'd be a great analogy if only the other players couldn't already see the cards you had on the table. Bluffing is useless in this case. lol
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I disagree. Everyone knows the Jays are in the middle of a couple rebuild seasons. It would be perfectly reasonable for them to go into the season with a bunch of mediocre players and young kids and just see if anyone breaks out before making big moves to fill the holes the next couple years. There are plenty of directions they could go this offseason.
 
BlueForever75

BlueForever75

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If the Jays do nothing but acquire some second tier pitching for rotation and bullpen I am perfectly fine with this. The goal for the Jays should be to add to core if possible, if not acquire pieces that can be flipped at deadline for more prospects like they did with Axford, Oh, Granderson, Smith, etc.....

Keep adding prospects to the cupboard and let them develop into assets for future trades when we are ready to compete.
 
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Nineteen67

Nineteen67

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Harold Baines is a Hall of Famer. Harold Baines. Seriously. He has 38.4 career fWAR and exactly one season where he surpassed 3.0 fWAR. He was a DH with a 119 wRC+ who played in the homeruningest era and never hit 30 in a season. He didn't reach any of the counting stat milestones associated with the Hall of Fame.

The Hall of Fame has been a joke for a long time, but they've really stepped it up with this one.
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Seriously? He was OK but not a HoF player.
 
dredeye

dredeye

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Mar 3, 2008
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Reds looking to trade scooter Gennett. I’d be interested cost dependant. I’m not sure what his contract status is though.
 
The Nemesis

The Nemesis

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More fun with the Harold Baines HOF election, courtesy this Fangraphs piece

Hall Election of Lee Smith Makes Sense, But Harold Baines? | FanGraphs Baseball

According to that article, Baines' election by the "Today's Game Committee" sets a new low-water mark for modern, post-expansion (1961-onwards) players in terms of how little HOF traction they had on the regular ballot before falling off of it and being elected by one of the "second chance" committees.

What I mean is that in his 5 years on the HOF ballot before he was removed for lack of support, the most push Baines ever scored on a HOF ballot was 6.1% of possible votes. SIX POINT ONE PERCENT!

Every player who received fewer votes on the standard ballot and eventually got into the hall either came from before WWII or have extenuating circumstances for their lack of support (the two postwar players are Larry Doby (who broke the AL's color barrier and probably got the shaft for racist reasons) and Satchel Paige (whose short MLB career of 6 years technically made him ineligible for standard HOF voting at the time and whose single vote received was actually even more improper given that he got it while he was still an active player in MLB)



In short: Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we now have a strong new contender for "worst guy in the HOF"

I get it. The all is a popularity contest and not a rigidly structured bastion of rational election. But part of the reason it gets the disdain it gets is for puzzlingly bad decisions like this.

If Edgar Martinez doesn't get in on the media ballot after this bit of insanity, people should riot. Martinez was eleventy jillion times the player that Baines was
 
The Nemesis

The Nemesis

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More, more fun:

Baines represents an embarrassing Hall of Fame selection

Tomase: If Harold Baines is a Hall of Famer, then so is Dwight Evans. And Reggie Smith. And J.D. Drew. And . . .

Harold Baines and Lee Smith are going into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the system is broken

and finally, this piece from a couple of weeks ago in which the writer was making the case for a bunch of players and in this edition looked at Baines:

Hall of Fame case for Harold Baines

The case "for" is basically one paragraph that boils down to "he didn't get hurt, played for a long time, and he was the face of the White Sox when he played there early in his career" while the case "against" is 4x as long and can largely boil down to "he just wasn't good enough"

their conclusion is that he absolutely won't get in. Whoops. :laugh:


Harold Baines is now officially the go-to guy for "if Harlold Baines can get into the HOF, then <player> should be in the hall" arguments.
 
Longshot

Longshot

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A lot of talk about Harold Baines, any thoughts on Lee Smith? I know he put up massive save numbers, but I don't remember (and I admit, this is not the most scientific way to judge it) ever remember him being one of the "feared closers" of his era. The Hall of Fame debate for one-inning-closers has always been fascinating to me. My mind is still not settled on exactly how to judge those players.
 

Discoverer

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Longshot said:
A lot of talk about Harold Baines, any thoughts on Lee Smith? I know he put up massive save numbers, but I don't remember (and I admit, this is not the most scientific way to judge it) ever remember him being one of the "feared closers" of his era. The Hall of Fame debate for one-inning-closers has always been fascinating to me. My mind is still not settled on exactly how to judge those players.
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I'm not really sure how I feel about Smith, but I expected him to get in eventually so I don't really care all that much either way. For me, the question is about how to evaluate relievers. If we're going to compare them to other pitchers, then none of them should ever get in. If we're going to evaluate relievers as their own class, then Smith pretty easily deserves a spot.
 
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