Every year, like many baseball fans, I anxiously await the results of the voting for the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Where most fans look immediately to the top of the page, however, my eyes immediately drop to the bottom, to the players who appeared on the ballot but received zero votes. They are the newest additions to my long-running series: The Bizarro Hall of Fame.
There are eleven new members this year, bringing the total to 247 since 1978. While the number of annual newcomers has been on the rise (from 1993-2010 there were never more than five inductees in any given year; since 2011, there haven’t been fewer than six), this is only the second time since 1991 that more than ten players were honored (there were also eleven in 2013).
I noted in last year’s introduction that it is harder than ever to get to the computer to write these posts. Well, obviously I needed this, because I started searching for “Hall of Fame voting results announced” a month ago, sent an angry text to my friends Chris and Billy earlier today when I realized the results wouldn’t be announced until 6pm (I passed the time by shoveling the driveway), and am currently sitting in my kitchen at 11:43 getting ready to write about a bunch of guys I barely remember. They are true Bizarros. I love them.
(One last note: Tim Wakefield got one Hall of Fame vote this year. I can’t believe this. He was integral to my baseball fandom – he pitched the first game I saw live, he was my wife’s all-time favorite player, he gave up the homerun to Aaron Boone – yet I wanted him to make this list. I had his entry half-written in my head while shoveling. This is the most disappointed I’ve been in the Bizarro process since Rich Garces and Mike Morgan were snubbed from the ballot altogether several years ago. I blame Dan Shaughnessy.)
Corey (Casey) Blake – This is the best. The absolute best. The player listed on the voting results at the Hall of Fame website is Corey Blake. “Who the fuck is Corey Blake?” was the first thought that popped into my head and the answer immediately became obvious: he’s nobody. He doesn’t exist, at least in a baseball sense. The actual Hall of Fame eligible player was Casey Blake, who played for five teams in 13 major league seasons. I’ve seen mistakes in the official results before, but this is a pretty impressive one.
Blake’s career was also impressive: he didn’t make his major league debut until nine days before his 26th birthday, had 125 plate appearances in 49 games for three teams in his first four seasons, yet still managed to play 13 years, including a nice little eight year run from 2003-10 where he averaged .265 with 23 homeruns and 83 RBI. In Cleveland’s seven-game loss to Boston in the 2007 ALCS, he hit .346 with a homerun.
Even his exit from Cleveland was a good thing: when the Indians sent him to Los Angeles near the 2008 trade deadline, one of the players they received in return was prospect Carlos Santana, who has served as an above-average bat in their lineup for the past six seasons.
Pat Burrell – My friend Nadine is a huge Phillies fan. About a year and a half ago we were at a reunion for past Hall of Fame interns when she and our friend Trish told me a story about returning to Cooperstown in 2003, the year after our internship, and chasing a car carrying Pat the Bat down the street. Todd Pratt may also have been involved. I remember no other specifics but believe this to be 100% true.
If my math is right, Burrell is the second first overall pick (after Bob Horner) to make the Bizarro Hall, which means there are more first overall picks in the Bizarro Hall than the real Hall. He and Matt Stairs are probably the obligatory “2000s slugging outfielders” in this year’s class: Burrell went deep 292 times in his career, hitting more than 30 four times. He owns two World Series rings (Philadelphia in 2008 and San Francisco in 2010) despite hitting .037 (1-for-27) for his career in the Fall Classic. That one hit was pretty big, though: a leadoff double in the seventh inning of the fifth game against the Rays in 2008. Burrell was removed for pinch-runner Eric Bruntlett, who went on to score the eventual Series-winning run.
Orlando Cabrera – This is one of those guys I don’t really have to look up. Not that I remember a lot of his stats (none of them, actually), but for a Red Sox fan the only important numbers in Cabrera’s career are 2004. That July, he was acquired in a deal for Nomar Garciaparra, improving Boston’s infield defense and giving them a key piece in their march to the World Series. It’s weird that he only played 58 games in Boston before leaving for the Angels as a free agent; it feels like he was there a lot longer.
Mike Cameron – A quality centerfielder who won three Gold Gloves, Cameron also showed off a nice mix of speed and power during his career, hitting 278 homeruns and stealing 297 bases in 17 seasons. His most memorable moment came on May 2, 2002, when he tied a major league record with four homeruns against the Chicago White Sox. (Fun fact: the Mariners lineup that day also included Bizarros Ruben Sierra, Carlos Guillen, and Jeff Cirillo).
Cameron was involved in two key trades as a young player. Following the 1998 season, he was sent from the Chicago White Sox to the Cincinnati Reds, straight-up, for Paul Konerko (Chicago was Konerko’s third team, but he went on to spend the remainder of a very successful 18-year career there; counting the Mariners, Cameron played for six more teams). Then, in February 2000, he was one of four players traded to the Mariners for Ken Griffey Jr.
J.D. Drew – J.D. Drew took a lot of flak throughout his career for having a negative attitude. He was one of those guys who just didn’t seem to really care about what he was doing, which I realized in light bulb moment at one point during his tenure with the Red Sox may have been absolutely true. We expect baseball players (all athletes, really) to love their jobs because it seems so obviously cool; well, maybe Drew was no different from a lot of ordinary people who can’t stand their jobs even though they’re good at them. His problem was that his position put him on a much bigger stage under a much brighter light, so we got to SEE him being like, “Blah, gotta go to work today. UGH,” and taking sick days even when we totally knew he wasn’t sick. I don’t know, just a theory.
The thing is, though, Drew wasn’t terrible. He got a bad rap for his attitude, and for the way he first appeared in the public eye (refusing to sign with the Phillies after they drafted him, and even going so far as to play independent ball and reenter the draft to avoid the City of Brotherly Love), but he could hit: from 2000-09, he averaged .286 with 20 homeruns, 65 RBI, and a 132 OPS+, and while his 2007 debut with the Boston Red Sox was poor (his 105 OPS+ was the lowest of that ten year stretch), all was forgiven when he hit a first-inning grand slam in Game Six of the ALCS that set the tone and virtually guaranteed a Game Seven.
Carlos Guillen – A three-time All-Star, Guillen had a nice post-season for the Tigers in 2006, sandwiching a .571 ALDS average and a .353 World Series average around a disappointing ALCS. WAR credits him with high-quality offensive seasons in 2004 (4.6) and 2006 (6.0).
Like Cameron, Guillen was involved in one of the trades that broke up the Seattle Mariners’ potential dynasty: as a minor-leaguer in 1998, he was acquired from the Houston Astros with two other players for Randy Johnson.
Derrek Lee – Upon seeing Lee’s name, my friend Chris texted, “Derrek Lee must have been better than memory than his stats,” and I think he was right. Lee was a really good offensive player, but his outstanding 2005 season (.335, 46 homeruns, 107 RBI, 174 OPS+, 393 total bases, a Gold Glove, and third place in the MVP voting) skews him in our memory. We spread that value over the course of his career in our minds when that was really an anomaly.
Melvin Mora – Like Casey Blake, Mora debuted at an advanced age for baseball (he was already 27 before he played his first game) but still managed to put together a nice 13-year career in the major leagues. He started out primarily as a shortstop before moving to the outfield (though he was slotted in virtually everywhere). He became the regular third baseman for the Baltimore Orioles in 2004 and immediately enjoyed his finest offensive season, hitting .340 with 27 homeruns, 104 RBI, and a league-leading .419 on-base percentage.
Arthur Rhodes – If Burrell and Stairs are the obligatory sluggers on this year’s Bizarro list, then Rhodes is the obligatory reliever. It seems like every year there is one who gets inducted. Usually those guys have a bunch of saves; in this case, Rhodes played 20 years and transitioned from a mediocre starter into a high quality LOOGY. From 2000-11, he averaged more than one inning per appearance just twice, and his numbers from 2008-10 were excellent: 2.32 ERA, 8.6 K/9, 181 ERA+.
His last season wasn’t very good (he had a 4.64 ERA in 33 innings over 51 appearances with the Rangers and Cardinals, which isn’t very good when your job is basically to get one guy out), but he finished his career in style (against the team that had released him earlier in the year, no less): called upon in the seventh inning of the seventh game of the World Series with no outs, a runner on second, and his Cardinals ahead 5-2, Rhodes got Yorvit Torrealba to fly out to center. Three fellow relievers continued to preserve the lead and eight outs later, Rhodes was able to retire with his first World Series ring.
Freddy Sanchez – He was supposed to follow Nomar as the Red Sox shortstop. Instead, he was traded to Pittsburgh (where he made three All-Star appearances and won a batting title) and played mostly second and third base. So that almost worked out as expected. Meanwhile, Boston had to wait another decade to figure out what to do about shortstop, because everyone they put there either left or somehow forgot how to play baseball. Cabrera, Edgar Renteria (who got two votes this year), Alex Gonzalez (I completely forgot about him), Julio Lugo (I remember him all too well), Nick Green, Marco Scutaro, Mike Aviles, and Stephen Drew. It looks even worse all listed out like that. No one had better complain about Xander Bogaerts, ever.
One thing I really like about Sanchez is that he just barely made the Hall of Fame ballot. Players have to play ten years to even be considered; Sanchez saw action in parts of ten seasons, including one year in which he played just nine games (and another with just twelve). Pittsburgh doesn’t give him a look in September 2004 and we’re not having this conversation.
Matt Stairs – I’ve mentioned him twice already, now here he is. This big, burly Canadian played 19 seasons in the major leagues, and I am absolutely astounded to look at his Baseball-Reference page and see two things:
1) He is listed at 5’9”, 200 pounds. Nonsense. I am quite certain that Stairs was at least seven feet tall, weighed 500 pounds, and used an oak tree for a bat. He is Canadian, after all.
2) He had 265 career homeruns. I was positive we were in the 300s.
No matter. I still like him. He was a good player who hit homeruns (five seasons with 20 or more) and more often than not had a decent OPS+. He also played for everybody – 12 teams in those 19 seasons.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment