Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Is Mark McGwire a Hall of Famer?



I'm curious about whether you think Mark McGwire is Hall of Famer, considering ONLY his stats. I don't know how to judge the steroids/PEDs issue yet.

Please vote in the poll below and feel free to add a comment.

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7 comments:

  1. steveisjewishAugust 4, 2009 at 10:22 AM

    If we are going just based on his numbers then I dont see how he could not be in the HOF - he was the one of the most feared sluggers of his era

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  2. AndyAugust 4, 2009 at 10:26 AM

    So was Dave Kingman.

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  3. Carl Crawford CardsAugust 4, 2009 at 10:27 AM

    OK, I voted "not even close" w/o looking hard at his stats.

    BUT, objectively speaking, anyone with 583 HR is a HOFer.

    With regard to the PEDs, the question for me is where this puts a guy like Fred McGriff. From '97-'01 Mac hit over 200 HRs, over 1/3 of his career total. If they count, they count.

    McGriff, by comparison, hit only 170+ from '97-'04 and finished 7 short of the magic number, 500. If over 1/3 of Mac's HRs are roided, and he gets in, what about border line guys who, as far as we know, never used and came up just short of 500?

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  4. night owlAugust 4, 2009 at 11:56 AM

    I wouldn't compare McGwire to Kingman. Every time Kingman came to the plate, you thought he was going to strike out, not hit a home run.

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  5. Cuntry TrashAugust 4, 2009 at 12:30 PM

    No, and nobody who was on the 'list' or have tested positive for PED's should be. The voters have spoke with Mark in the past HOF votes- maybe when he is 80 the veterans' committee will elect him.

    I am a fi9rm believer that statistics alone do NOT get you in the HOF. Without PEDs Mcgwire would have hit 400-420 HRs (that's a liberal guess) and hit about .260, anyone disagree? I think Bonds has a better shot at the HOF than Mark because Bonds was a HOFer at age 35.

    However, Palmiero, Bonds, Mac, Manny- not HOF material. They cheated the game just as much as Pete Rose did and defrauded fans and destroyed the integrity of the game.

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  6. AnonymousAugust 4, 2009 at 1:13 PM

    I voted 'Yes, Definitely'. That is not to say that he’s a top-echelon HoFer, but he’s definitely in. As steveisjewish said, he was one of the most feared sluggers of his day, as his 12 All-Star selections attest to. He also won the Rookie of the Year award while setting a new rookie record for homers (with 49) in 1986, won a Gold Glove award (yes, he did), three Silver Slugger awards, and though he did not win an MVP award (in my opinion, he deserved the 1998 MVP over Sammy Sosa) he finished in the top 25 in MVP voting ten times (including 5 of his first 6 years – *before* his monster home run seasons) and in the top 10 five times. He was also considered an average to above-average defensive first baseman early in his career.

    The comparison to Kingman is unfair. Compare their stats, McGwire to Kingman (league averages in parentheses): BA .263 (.262) to .236 (.262); OBP .394 (.332) to .302 (.329), SLG .588 (.409) to .478 (.389), OPS .982 (.741) to .780 (.718), OPS+ 162 to 115 (both 100, by definition), HR 583 to 442, TB 3639 to 3191, IBB 150 to 72. Even normalized for era offense, Big Mac’s stats are all above league average, and blow Kong’s out of the water.

    While OPS+ (on-base plus slugging, normalized for average league offense) is not the perfect measure of offensive production, it is pretty good – better than most “traditional” measures. Only eight HoFers – Babe Ruth (207), Ted Williams (191), Lou Gehrig (179), Rogers Hornsby (175), Mickey Mantle (172), Dan Brouthers (170), Ty Cobb (167), and Jimmy Foxx (162) – have a career OPS+ as high as McGwire’s 162. There are also multiple examples of players who got in primarily for their slugging that cannot match McGwire’s OPS+ numbers, among them are Hank Greenberg (153), Ralph Kiner (149), Harmon Killebrew (143), and most recently Jim Rice (128). Note that of those mentioned, only Greenberg (22) played more seasons than Mac’s 16. Greenberg (13) and Kiner (10) played fewer seasons, and Rice equaled Mac’s season total.

    So is Mark McGwire a well-rounded, multi-dimensional threat? No. Was he *so* good at what he did that he was one of the best players of his era and deserves to be in the Hall of Fame? Absolutely. Will he be shunned and ostracized from the Hall because of PED allegations? We’ll see…

    Btw Scab: First, read the post - "considering ONLY his stats”, ignoring the PED issue. Secondly, Mac has not been confirmed as being on "the list", thus far there’s no firm evidence that he juiced, only hearsay and his refusal to talk about it at the Congressional inquiry.

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  7. AnonymousAugust 28, 2009 at 10:48 AM

    looking at just his stats, he only has two stats that you would consider even above average, his home run totals and his slugging percentage, granted he did those very well, but if you look at a first baseman who dosent hit for average, have alot of hits, was average defensivly, and had a poor onbase percentage, there is no way that player should be in the hall of fame. And on an earlier comment, dale murphy, jose cansec, andre dawson and tim raines were also some of the most feared hitters of their era and most people say they dont belong in the hall (which they do apart from canseco)

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