The Baseball Writers' Association of America (you know - that elite group of writers and journalists who know as much about baseball as I do but whose columns aren't nearly as entertaining as my blog) just announced its newest class of inductees into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The class of 2018 includes Vladimir Guerrero, Chipper Jones, Trevor Hoffman, and Jim Thome. I would have voted for three of these four guys, choosing Edgar Martinez instead of Hoffman. But hey - three out of four is pretty good, and I'm confident that Martinez will make it in the next year or two (especially since they seem to be including a lot more statistics and analytics into the selection). So what do I think of these four guys? Well I'm glad you asked!
Chipper Jones was a shoo-in. Whoever thought Jones wasn't going to get in on his first year of eligibility is an ignorant idiot. With a career batting average of .303, 468 home runs, and 1.623 RBI, this eight-time All-Star has the most career RBI for a third baseman. Chipper was part of those Atlanta Braves that I loved to hate that won 14 straight division titles and joins teammates Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, and Tom Glavine (and manager Bobby Cox) in the Hall. Chipper is one of those guys who still looks like he's in his twenties, and I can actually tell my kids that I watched him play in person several times. An interesting fact about Chipper is that he hit his first major league home run against the Mets at the old Shea stadium, and it's probably the reason why his oldest child is named Shea.
Vladimir Guerrero, a former outfielder who played many of his years with the Montreal Expos, could hit just about any pitch that was thrown at him. He had the biggest hitting zone I've ever seen - he would get these wild and crazy pitches that only he could hit for a single or double, and I remember laughing several times and saying to myself "Did he seriously just hit that?" With a career batting average of .318 with 449 home runs and 1,496 RBI, this latest pride of the Dominican Republic definitely deserves to be in the Hall. Interesting to note, Guerrero's son, Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., is an up-and-coming third baseman in the Toronto Blue Jays organization.
Then there's Jim Thome, an infielder who was always on my "badass" list. He is currently eighth on the all-time home runs list with 612, and he was one of those guys who always stood straight up and pointed his bat at the pitcher right before getting in his stance. I used to mention him a lot when I first started blogging, because I loved watching him play. Thome will go into the Hall as a Cleveland Indian, so if they're not going to win a World Series, they might as well have a Hall of Fame member to cheer about.
Finally there's Trevor Hoffman, who was chosen in his third year of eligibility (I would have voted him in next year, but nobody asked me). This reliever who entered each game to AC/DC's "Hells Bells" when he was with the San Diego Padres, had a nasty change-up that helped him earn 601 saves (which is only second to Mariano Rivera's 652). Hoffman becomes only the sixth pitcher who was mostly a reliever to be inducted into the Hall. Can you name the other five? I was only able to come up with four before having to look the other guy up: Dennis Eckersley, Goose Gossage, Rollie Fingers, and Bruce Sutter. The other guy is some dude named Hoyt Wilhelm, who played for a bunch of different teams and was inducted into the Hall in 1985. I feel dumb now for not knowing who he was!
So other than Edgar Martinez, who else was snubbed this year? Why Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, of course! And Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Manny Ramirez too. Sorry dudes - you juice, you lose! There are many who believe that these guys would have produced Hall-of-Fame-worthy numbers despite their use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), but to me that's not the point. They cheated, so they don't deserve enshrinement. One former baseball official even went as far as to say that these guys should be in the Hall because Babe Ruth is in the Hall, and Babe Ruth would not have been such a great player if he had faced some of the pitchers from the Negro Leagues. What??? What does one thing have to do with the other? That's like me saying that the meatloaf that I made for dinner wasn't tasty because it was raining outside. Reading that got me so worked up! But I took some deep breaths and am fine now; you just can't fix ignorant.
On a lighter note, pitchers and catchers will report to Spring Training in less than three weeks! Yeay - can you believe it?! But there are still some pretty good players (like Yu Darvish, Eric Hosmer, and Jake Arrieta) who haven't been signed yet - yikes! Let's hope these guys find jobs in the next couple of weeks, because they're all players who still have some good years left in them. If anything earth-shattering happens, you know I'll fill you in (despite not being a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America).
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