What is your opinion on Utley? I think he got about 25% of the vote but when you look at it, he has a lot of similarities to Mauer.
www.baseball-reference.com
feels like 2nd basemen have a tougher road, see Grich/Whitaker/Randolph. Utley doesn't have a ton of hardware (never finished higher than 7th in MVP voting; which is absurd as he had five consecutive top 3 WAR finishes) and never won a Gold Glove, which runs contrary to defensive metrics rating him as an excellent defensive player.
28.8% isn't a bad start, though there's work to be done. I think the biggest question is how many votes he gains in the next few years... if he can get to 50%+ in 2-3 years I think he'll eventually get in.
I think he should be in. Awesome peak (05-10) and still provided plenty of value when he was healthy (14.2 WAR from 11-14) and finished with 64.5. His JAWS is in line with the average HOF 2B, but he has a much higher WAR7 than the average HOFer.
Second Base JAWS Leaders | Baseball-Reference.com
Second Base JAWS Leaders
Yeah that's what I was thinking. It seemed like he could have picked up a couple gold gloves based on his defensive ratings on baseball reference.feels like 2nd basemen have a tougher road, see Grich/Whitaker/Randolph. Utley doesn't have a ton of hardware (never finished higher than 7th in MVP voting; which is absurd as he had five consecutive top 3 WAR finishes) and never won a Gold Glove, which runs contrary to defensive metrics rating him as an excellent defensive player.
28.8% isn't a bad start, though there's work to be done. I think the biggest question is how many votes he gains in the next few years... if he can get to 50%+ in 2-3 years I think he'll eventually get in.
I think he should be in. Awesome peak (05-10) and still provided plenty of value when he was healthy (14.2 WAR from 11-14) and finished with 64.5. His JAWS is in line with the average HOF 2B, but he has a much higher WAR7 than the average HOFer.
Second Base JAWS Leaders | Baseball-Reference.com
Second Base JAWS Leaders
Yeah definitely not a charismatic guy, lol. Even people in Philadelphia that watched his whole career probably only remember him ever saying 3 words. And that was at the parade the time they won the world series. "World Fucking Champions". That's it. Just totally low key blue collar. Maybe that's why they overlooked him in some of the awards.
Yeah the weird thing about that is that that wasn't him doing something different because he was in the playoffs. He did that every single time for his entire career before that and no one was talking about rule changes. And as far as I can remember that was the only time anyone was injured, other than himself.
Yeah Rollins and Utley were a big part of Howards gaudy RBI numbers. You got Chase on first and Jimmy on 3rd and Ryan rolls one over you know Chase ain't letting that double play happen.
ARod is a totally different case from B&C. ARod actually failed enforceable tests. He, unquestionably, broke the rules. B&C did not. They were following the OFFICIAL rules, even if they went against the nature of the rules.
I was thinking about this, and think the offensive leveling for positions are something like this (highest bar to lowest bar)…
Yeah I think Utley's chances to make it depend on how much weight voters put on his "prime" years. If you rank his WAR3, WAR5, WAR7 against 2nd basemen all time he ranks 6,7,and 8. But those 4 years in LA didn't do much outside of dilute his lifetime stats like OPS and stuff. I'd like to see him make it but I could see it go either way.
I never looked at all the positions in detail but that seems like a good rough chart. You can kind of see the progression when guys come up from the minors and it usually plays out about like that. Catcher is it's own thing because a lot of guys just can't do it so I'll put that to the side.
Precisely why I all but ignore lifetime rate stats. Why should a guy be penalized for continuing to play because he just loves the game? Rickey was a shell of his all-time self for the last 10 years or so. That did detract from his awesomeness, imho. That ADDED to it, since he loved the game so much he was going to play as long as someone would give him a jersey.
