One of the hallmarks of the annual Hall of Fame debates is the comparison to players already enshrined. It can be a very good exercise in determining the merits of a particular player, especially because after so many years, there are now a lot of players in the Hall of Fame. There are plenty of players at every single position. There are pitchers. There are power hitters, average hitters. There are great fielders. One area where the present Hall of Fame lacks in providing a good comparison is the Closer situation.

As Wendy Thurm’s post indicated in evaluating Lee Smith’s candidacy*, it is difficult to judge because the only full-time relief pitchers in the Hall of Fame are Rollie Fingers, Goose Gossage and Bruce Sutter. Hoyt Wilhem is not an apt comparison, having retired in 1972 with 500 more innings pitched than even Rollie Fingers. Wendy reached the conclusion that Smith was better than Sutter, not as good as Fingers and Gossage, and put Smith just on the other side of the Hall of Fame. It feels like the right call, but if Sutter is in the Hall what exactly is the standard for relief pitchers?

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Jose Bautista is in the midst of a historic year. Jose Bautista will in all likelihood not make it into the Hall of Fame.

Much has already been said about the unique career arc of Joey Bats, with a particular focus on how ridiculous the number’s he’s putting up this season really are. Through Sunday the Blue Jays had played in 85 games. Jose Bautista has accumulated 5.8 fWAR over that time. Extrapolating that pace (and also taking into account a proportional number of missed games the rest of the way) over the course of the year would give Bautista about 11.1 fWAR.

That is a really large WAR number. In the history of baseball only 37 position players have recorded a season of 11.1 fWAR. Albert Pujols has never amassed such WAR in a single season; Hank Aaron never came close to that.

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Recently, David Appelman introduced all of us to the Automated WAR grids. When I clicked into the WAR grids section, the top-25 all-time leaders in recorded MLB history was illustrated as the sample grid. I took some time to let the awe set in, admiring the absolute dominance of the true legends of the game who seem to transcend even the Hall of Fame.

One of the first things I noticed was that every one of them at least matched 100 career WAR. I got to thinking about which players we watch today that we may someday see on this elite 100+ WAR list. There were 19 players active in 2010 that have accumulated 50 career WAR or better. At the top we already see ARod at 120, the only current player who we know for certain fits into that super-elite status. After ARod there is Pujols, who has racked up 81 WAR to date and will likely only need 3 more seasons to join the club. The rest of the players on the list are all guys who are at least in their late 30s and many of them are on the cusp of retirement and/or are in dramatic decline. Realistically, there were only two other players who I thought may have an outside shot at 100 WAR: Jeter and Ichiro.

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This was originally posted on WahooBlues.com

When the Baseball Writers Association of America announced Wednesday that Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven had been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, two worthy inductees who had waited too long were granted entrance to Cooperstown. But to judge the voting process solely by the selections of two worthy candidates would be to ignore the massive problems with the way the BBWAA does business.

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If some of you have been active in following your Hall of Fame voters, you probably read this post on Jon Heyman discussing his ballot. He spent the majority of this piece stating why he didn’t vote for Bert Blyleven, and then he explained why he voted for Jack Morris instead. I promise this is not intended to be a “Vote Blyleven, not Morris!” post, because I’m more interested in something else. Heyman claims that Morris had a bigger impact in his games than Blyleven. Well then, what happens if I never experienced this impact?

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Note: Article was originally submitted to Bleacher Report on March 22nd, 2010, before the beginning of the 2010 season. For a link to the piece, visit Joe Regan’s bleacher report article.

As anyone who has read examples of my past writing can attest, I tend to focus a lot of my historical analysis pieces on the Hall of Fame. Today, I will divert myself from that path a little bit to argue my Hall of Fame case for a great in our generation whose contributions have been highly underrated: Scott Rolen.

A lot of words come to mind when discussing Rolen: grinder, a “veteran presence,” scrappy, gritty. I hear these a lot. One thing I do not hear a lot, for whatever reason, is “great.”

A quick look at his hitting numbers, for example, do not scream “great.” In 14 seasons, and 7,382 PAs, Rolen currently sports a line of .284/.370/.498, with 283 HR, good for a 124 OPS+/128 wRC+ . His HR total is good for 146th all time, behind players like Garret Anderson and Miguel Tejada, and he has never led his league in any statistical category, from the “old school” categories of BA, RBI, and hits, to the more analytical categories of OPS, OPS+, and others. Sounds like a classic “good, not great” player, correct?

I disagree completely. His 128 wRC+ puts him in the same category rate-wise (albeit sans-full decline stage) as Paul Molitor and Tony Perez. Molitor, if you recall correctly, spent a good chunk of his career as a DH, while Perez spent over two-thirds of his career at first base. Rolen, on the other hand, has played every inning of his career at third base.

Positional differences, obviously, is not enough. While fangraphs approximates an average third baseman to be worth 1.5 WAR per 600 PA more valuable than an average defensive first baseman with the same batting numbers, this does not address the fact that Perez had a longer career. Heck, Perez is not even the issue here. The issue is Rolen.

Everyone’s favorite new “quick reference” defensive statistic is UZR. Also, most everyone (myself included ) recognizes Adrian Beltre to be a fantastic defensive 3B. UZR reflects this, rating Beltre at +104.5 UZR at 3B since 2002, and a +13.9 UZR/150.

Scott Rolen? 102.1 UZR, 15.5 UZR/150.

I think most people would acknowledge that Rolen can flash leather. I doubt too many would think he is as good as Adrian Beltre.

Total Zone (which can be found on the player pages of Sean Smith’s website ) is not quite as gung-ho over Rolen as UZR, but at +93 since 2002 (and +141 overall), it’s close. The aforementioned Beltre is rated at +79 since 2002, and +96 overall. While I am not prepared to state that Rolen is a better defensive 3B than Beltre, any system that recognizes Beltre’s elite abilities, and then also states Rolen shares said abilities, is a perfectly credible system to me.

So what we are left with is a good hitting, great fielding player at a position that is in the middle of the defensive spectrum, and we are tasked to determine his place in history. Once again, Sean Smith provides a great point of reference for us, which his top 500 positional listing. At 94, we find our subject, Scott Rolen. Behind him are, well, a lot of all-time greats.

One could argue that Rolen still needs to post good seasons to make it to The Hall. Fine. According to Rolen’s fangraphs page , his CHONE projection rates him to be a +3.0 WAR player in 2010 (which is solidly above average). Even if Rolen breaks down rapidly (to the tune of +3.0, +2.0, and +1.0 seasons), that would push him up on Sean Smith’s rankings to Brooks Robinson status.

Maybe he did not peak well enough? Peaks are important, but I would argue that Rolen had many outstanding seasons. According to his baseballprojection.com page, Rolen did not post a season of sub-4.0 WAR baseball from 1997-2004. 4.0 is usually considered the level of an all-star player. At age 34 in 2009, he posted a +4.8 (according to Sean Smith’s system), yet another terrific season.

To further emphasize “excellence,” one can use a “junk statistic” called WAE, or “Wins Above Excellence,” calculated by subtracting four from every individual season’s WAR total, and defaulting to zero if the number is less than four.

Using Sean Smith’s WAR totals, Rolen’s WAE clocks in at 19.9. The aforementioned Brooks Robinson? A WAE of 15.3. Looks to me that Rolen passes the “excellence” test.

I have already written that the Hall of Fame should measure players more about the way they help their team win, rather than the hype they generate. Fact of the matter is, Rolen is a great baseball player, and I hope when his name hits the ballot (perhaps in 2019? 2020?) that the BBWAA evaluates his career correctly.