Quote:
Originally posted by OldGiants
Brooks Robinson was a great clutch player who performed in pennant races and World Series. Santo rarely was in a pennant race and, as I pointed out earlier, choked in the big race he was in, along with the rest of his team in 1969. Its a lot easier to hit after your team is out of the pennant race. Just ask Albert Belle.
I'll spot you Santo and put Brooks Robinson at third and watch Robinson find a way to beat you, best 4 out of 7 every time.
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Whoosh! Clutch. "Find a way to beat you." Now I understand fully that there's simply a fundamental difference between you and Jason Moyer (and among a variety of other posters) and how we look at the game.
While I too observed Albert Belle's numbers climbing when it "didn't matter," I'm not yet ready to trust my observations above all else. Likewise, if Dick Ellsworth is the #1 authority on Hall of Fame worthiness, then I have learned something. That said, observation is certainly a valid means of evaluation. It's hurt Dick Allen a lot; didn't hurt Cap Anson a bit. But it's just not the only one.
OldGiants, I'm not going to do you the disservice of assuming that you've never been in a baseball environment, nor am I going to suggest my 4 years as a fetchit-boy in a minor-league pressbox give me license to consider my opinions as fact. But if you know anything about "baseball men," you know that they are blowhards with a lot of axes to grind. Scouts across the Eastern League - especially Red Sox scouts - HATED Dan Duquette. Even in 1996 when he was considered not a flop but a savior. The fact that Duquette was a success and that his staff's lack of faith in him, then and afterward, was as much his undoing as anything he did himself, speaks for the ways that the old man's network of baseball often undermines what's best for the game, what's true about the game, and determines who's to get the credit and the blame without ever submitting to logic.
Syd Thrift, who has never failed to fail, can't stay unemployed, while Duquette, who only repeatedly put the Sox in the playoffs, who won by acquiring prospects, then won again by selling those prospects off, is a little league coach. Tell me again what it is exactly that baseball people know? The Brewers just signed Royce Clayton. That's what they know, although I am going to guess that you think Royce Clayton is a fine ballplayer. And he may be, he may be. I just don't think so, and the information at my disposal tells me so.
What's interesting is that there are things that can be proven, such as "Royce Clayton can't get on base." There are things that can't be proven, like "Boy, you put me some hard-nosed country boys in the field and I'll show you a team what would whup anybody came near town." And yet the burden of proof is still shifted to the ones with the facts and figures. That's baseball.
The Baseball HOF is one of the most interesting centers of debate in the world. As opposed to the NFL HOF, where I think Elvis Patterson might be a candidate for induction, or the LPGA HOF, where Annika Sorenstam already qualified when she was about 18, we are able to have energetic and passionate discussion about who goes in and who doesn't. However, I feel that there's a lot to be said for reexamining and refiltering history through some metrics, as opposed to talking about clutch and about what somebody who played during the segregated era of baseball has to say about Ron Santo vs. Ernie Banks. No offense to Mr. Ellsworth, I'm sure he's a great guy.