Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
April 19, 2006
Five Hundred Doubles

Luis Gonzalez reached the 500 double mark last night, the forty fourth player in the history of baseball hit that milestone. Should this be another one of those milestones that put you in the Hall of Fame? It's an impressive accomplishment. You need to play a long time and have good power. Twenty-eight of the forty four are in the Hall. Pete Rose would make it twenty nine if he were eligible. Biggio, Ripken, Gwynn and are going in at some point, and probably Bonds and Palmeiro. Roberto Alomar is also deserving. So Rose and those six would bring the total to 35 of 44. Seems like a Hall of Fame standard to me.

That said, I don't believe Luis will make it. The first half of his career, wasn't anything special. In judging his whole career, his averages are just not outstanding, especially in an offensive era. A great career in your 30s isn't going to be enough to put him in the Hall.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:40 AM | Statistics | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Agree that Gonzalez won't make it. The Cooperstown voters mainly look at the traditional triple crown stats, and Luis just doesn't have super-impressive numbers: .285/320/1261. With his career winding down, Gonzalez won't get much further in the HR and RBI stats. He's nowhere close to the automatic numbers: 500 HR or 3,000 hits.

The relatively few voters who know what OBP is (and who might even look at the effects of the player's era and ballparks) also won't care for Gonzalez's nice but not overwhelming .285/.369/.457.

On the other hand, Gonzalez would be a perfect pick for Bill James' suggested "lower tier" of the HOF. Except that idea won't ever get anywhere because the writers catch enough grief on a simple yes-no vote. They're not interested in a tiered vote.

Posted by: Casey abell at April 19, 2006 09:47 AM

Yeah, Luis Gonzalez is a great candidate for what I call the "Hall of Very Good," enshrined alongside Don Mattingly, Dave Kingman, Harold Baines, Orel Hershiser, Fernando Valenzuela, etc.

Posted by: Adam Villani at April 19, 2006 01:38 PM

Ray Lankford Wing of the Hall of Fame much?

Posted by: Marc Normandin at April 21, 2006 11:08 AM
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