discus the 2012 HOF ballot

my guess is salmon gets just enough support to stay on and lopez falls a couple percentage pts below the line.

i have no idea how a single writer could justify a vote for javy lopez.

McGwire, McGriff, Walker and Bernie are all on the bubble for me - and guys like Trammell, Murphy, Gonzalez I'd be willing to hear arguments for.

as poz wrote, the argument for trammell is that he's the exact same player as larkin.

anyway: Larkin, Bagwell, Raines, Martinez, Trammell, McGwire, Palmeiro, and of course, Orioles legend Javy López.

Lopez had one spectacular season--think he still hold the single-season slugging record for catchers--and a few good ones, but the only semi-credible argument I can see for him is a rather vague, old-fashioned one: that he was the catcher for a dynasty, and handled one of the greatest starting staffs ever. But no, I don't think anyone should vote for him.

martinez is the only one of these that would make me sad if he didn't get in

as poz wrote, the argument for trammell is that he's the exact same player as larkin.

which i do not really agree with.

ok they are very similar.

Yeah, they're pretty close. Trammell is #1 on Larkin's similarity-score list, Larkin is Trammell's #2. Larkin runs about 10% better in BA/SA/OBP, probably just the difference between having your peak years in the '90s rather than the '80s. Something interesting is that Trammell drew a higher percentage of the MVP vote the year he finished second than Larkin did the year he won.

i think you might be able to get away with putting Larkin's higher SLG down to the '90s vs '80s thing - but Larkin's OBP being 20 points better isn't something that can be brushed aside as easily imho. i mean, it's not a huge thing, but it's not a negligible difference either.

what jumps out at me is how dominant Barry was as a base runner. 379 career SB and only caught a total of 77 times. the season where he stole over 50 bases - he was only thrown out 5 times!