A Good Question
Is Jim Thome HOF material? Discuss.
posted by Number Three @ 3:20 PM
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Contributors
Previous Posts
- Food Shortages Hit Gaithersburg!
- Labor and Human Rights Win One
- Toot
- Not "Real Americans"
- Twister Fate
- More Book Blogging
- The Best Thing to Sell
- Staples Are a Menace
- Duck Blind Annie
- All the News That's STOOPID
The views expressed in posts on this weblog represent those of the individual blogger writing the post in question, and are not those of any other person, living or dead or undead, real or imaginary, friendly or hostile, fictional or non-fictional, historic or jejune, natural or artificial, in whatever form of business association, or any government agency or official. Also, not the views of George S. Patton either (apparently, he transcended the preceding categories). Freedom from Blog is a free speech zone. Have fun with it, while it lasts. But try to keep it (relatively) clean, people.
Freedom from Blog is home to Number Three, who is not a Cylon but would like to be, and the tenacious one, TenaciousMcD, who may be a Cylon.
3 Comments:
Gut reaction, yes. I think he needs a couple-three more good years, but I think he makes it based on being a very-good-to-great hitter for a long time, and that he also gets subconscious voter credit for never being implicated in the Steroid Era.
With 2-3 more solid seasons, Thome will be very close to 300 HR, given that he's at 512 or 513 now. With 600 HR, I think it gets very hard to keep him out of the Hall, unless some steroid allegations arise--and having followed Thome's career (in Cleveland, at least), I don't think that he ever bulked up in the way that would make one suspicious. So I tend to agree--a few solid seasons and his case becomes much better.
I think he should be in, but he's never won an MVP or even been in the top 3 of voting. He also never won a championship. His counting stats are very good, and 600 home runs is hard to deny, but those are the kind of things voters hold against you. I think he's like 60% chance of making it assuming a couple of good seasons but I don't think he'd make it now. His most comparable hitters list on Baseball-Reference is not great:
# Jose Canseco (863)
# Carlos Delgado (861)
# Manny Ramirez (845)
# Willie Stargell (837) *
# Willie McCovey (837) *
# Juan Gonzalez (834)
# Mark McGwire (826)
# Fred McGriff (819)
That's 5 non hall of famers among the top 8. not confidence inspiring.
Frank Thomas on the other hand, is a sure thing.
Post a Comment
<< Home