No, the best counter is that there isn't a shred of credible evidence against Jeff Bagwell. Nothing. If any of these writers took their case to a court, it would be thrown out. With specific regard to drawing specious links to dirty teammates, people are practicing situational bias. The list of great players who played with Caminiti, Canseco, Pettitte, McGwire, Palmeiro, ARod (guys who have admitted to or been busted for PED use) is long and distinguished. If you want to play this game, you have to implicate EVERYONE from the era. You can't conveniently pick and choose to try and prove a point. It's disingenuous. Bagwell's power was prominently mentioned on nearly all of his early scouting reports. He hit 34 doubles in 1990. His power was a surprise only to those who didn't pay attention and/or drew a conclusion and then buried their head in the sand. And his power ascension is actually in line with several prominent sluggers. I see this said often and it's so wildly inconsistent with the steroid narrative, I'm surprised how often it's brought up. I don't pretend to know a lot about steroids (and no one else who isn't a doctor/scientist should, either) - but we're pretty sure recovery is one of its biggest selling points, right? It extends careers. That’s why Bonds hitting 73 HRs when he was 36 or Clemens winning a Cy Young when he was 41 sent up red flags, yes? But somehow, Bagwell, likely in everyone’s desperate attempt to implicate the guy, is the only player who has the argument turned around on him – his career wasn’t long and fruitful into his late 30s so… he obviously did steroids. Huh? What? That’s a total disconnect. In fact, Bagwell's career arc is actually incredibly normal. He peaks at 26, maintains that peak for roughly 10 years, and then declines rapidly in his mid-30s. You know who else experiences a similar arc? Every other human being ever. Seriously. That’s NORMAL. And if you look further at his peak, Bagwell's career is mostly void of any suspicious outliers; he hit 40+ just three times in 15 seasons. He never led the league in HRs; in fact, IIRC, he only finished top 5 twice. He is consistently miscast as this power-hitting monster. He certainly had power – but it shortchanges Bagwell’s greatness to boil him down to “just a power hitter.” He was a five-tool force, especially the first 9 years of his career.
This. Until Pujols, Bags was the best NL 1B of all time. It's so ridiculous and insane that this discussion is being had four+ years into Bagwell's HoF eligibility. If Jeff Bagwell is not a Hall of Famer, neither are 40-50% of the guys in there. Especially not Frank Thomas, who *was* a one-tool wonder. It angers me because it's the perfect storm of injustice and jaw-dropping stupidity. The prototypical 'WTF'. The Hall of Fame, for me, has zero credibility--none--until Bagwell gets in.
I love this thread because of the important (baseball) info we talk about that seems to be missing from the general population of knowledge. And I hate it because I get so upset after reading it.
I got into with Lance Zierlein recently, who, as a personality, I've always liked as he's usually very reasoned, patient; not prone to hyperbole, etc. And even he distilled Bagwell down to just a power hitter, which disappointed me so much, I stopped listening to his show. Here's why it's so very wrong to do so - it eliminates a very viable excuse for Bagwell hitting lots of home runs: he was really, really, really good at playing baseball. He drew 1,401 walks in what is roughly 13 full seasons. The guy could work a count and when you can do that... you're going to hit, and hit A LOT. It's what made Pujols so goshdarn scary in his prime. Try this one on for size: in the entire history of MLB, six guys have hit at least 400 HRs, scored 1,500 runs, driven in 1,500 runs, walked 1,400 times and stolen 200 bases. And Jeff Bagwell is one of them. (The other five: Bonds, Mays, Sheffield, Aaron, F. Robinson) Those last three categories, and that company, is not by any means just a bunch of power hitters.
Yes. I've posted about this many times before, search the bbs about Stargell et al, but I'm so disgusted that it's damn hard to read opinions and articles these days. I just googled him for the hell of it, but look at this silly statistical ranking: http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/jaws_1B.shtml If you are the 4th best 1B in the modern era in a list that has Gehrig, Pujuols and Foxx in front of you, then you should be in the HOF.
I've been beating this drum for a long, long, long, long time. (BTW, in one of those '03 threads, not to brag, but I predicted Bagwell would finish with 450 career HRs... fun to look back) Anyway, as I was saying, been beating the drum for so long, I finally decided to write a 4,700-word blog post about it. It's shocking how underrated/valued Bagwell is by far too many people. In one of those old threads (I believe 2011), I was actually having to argue with someone who thought Kirby Puckett was better. Kirby Puckett!!
He and Mike Schmidt and Griffey Jr were the most all-around complete, best ballplayers I've ever seen. I'm not that old, but still....
Seriously--in this post-information age where everyone has the flippin' world in his pocket, why in the hell is the baseball world so damned ignorant about Bagwell? I don't buy "East Coast bias"--everyone knows Griffey was great. I also don't buy an Astro-hate or Houston-hate argument. That's just silly and narcissistic. But seriously--what gives? How are so many people so damn clueless?
I don't think they're clueless in terms of his candidacy. I really don't. There are absolutely some Hall of Very Good voters remaining, unfortunately. But my experience is that a vast majority of voters think his numbers are worthy. The obstacles are PEDs, of course, and an overstuffed ballot. And it's the later that doesn't really get a lot of discussion (because we're too busy being upset, which is understandable). But let's take a step back and look at it objectively - if you could somehow successfully remove PEDs from the equation... where do honestly rank Bagwell on last year's ballot? Bonds and Clemens are clearly ahead of him. Martinez and Johnson are better, too (IMO) - they're certainly *as good* (if you prefer Bagwell). Piazza is worthy; Biggio is worthy. I think you could make terrific cases for Raines, Schilling, Smoltz - there are people that swear Mussina is worthy. And we can't forget that with no PED issues, McGwire, Sosa and Palmeiro's candidacies all come roaring back to life and they all have legitimate worthiness. I think there are a lot of voters who think he's absolutely worthy, but have him ranked 8, 9, 10+ on their ballots and given the amount of talent on the ballot, that's not terribly egregious. That's why the BBWAA electing seven the past two years is really encouraging. If you look at next year's ballot, he pretty easily rises to top 3-4 (if we're still not collectively voting for "proven" PED users). And it looks like Piazza is going to knock down the "suspected PED" wall that's holding him and Bagwell, almost exclusively, back. Finally, the number of worthy candidates coming on in the next three years looks nothing like the past two years, which have been insane, in terms of first-ballot talent. Griffey, Chipper and Thome are likely choices - and none of them, not a one, posted numbers appreciably better than Bagwell's. PEDs remain the biggest obstacle. But we're coming up on 10 years since the guy last dug into the batter's box; 24 years since his MLB debut. And there remains not a shred of evidence. I think a fair portion of the anti-PED voters wanted to wait/punish him a bit, give his story time to conclude. He'll be back in the game this spring, Biggio is going to shine a spotlight on him this summer... I think a lot of them will start reconsidering him starting this year. My guess is that he'll jump significantly in 2015.
Hey Now... Is there any way to know how the new rules concerning voter eligibility might affect Bagwell in 2016? I'd have to think it would have a positive effect with writers that have been inactive for 10 years or more becoming ineligible.
Not definitively - but when has that ever stopped us - let's irresponsibly speculate! Voters are not required to reveal their ballots but roughly 60% do anyway. The general school of thought is that the remaining 40% aren't being secretive as much as they likely comprise the largest segment of voters who don't currently have an active media outlet (or immediate connection to MLB) to publish/post their selections. And as such, under the new rule, most assume a lot of the voter turnover will come from this group. And if so, that's great news for Bagwell, who always does significantly better in public ballots (62%) than he does in the "private" ones (48%). I've long suggested he'll jump ~10% this year and cruise into the Hall of Fame in 2017... assuming he can stay out of trouble - (What's that? He's grabbing a woman's breast on TV.....?)
Are they married? That's the hand doctor's ex-wife, right? Honestly, the grope isn't really a big deal; it's that you don't normally do silly stuff like that sober and, well... There's a reason the Astros don't invite him to a lot of events... The primary concern, of course, is his health and well-being. From a strictly HoF perspective, though (which is far less important), a clean Bagwell is far more electable. Too easy for stupid writers to draw a straight line from alcohol to PEDs.
I believe they're married now. I tried to talk with him at a charity event earlier in the year. He couldn't stand still without swaying. Had to sit down mid conversation. His new wife (yes, crazy hand doctor ex) was laughing at his condition... Which led him to start yelling at her (like "rage" yelling). Was very awkward... Got out of that situation as fast as I could (which is not something I would have wanted to do as I'm a huge fan of his...on paper).
As he is for most, Bags is my all-time fav. Biggio is right there as 1.b and I'm cool with him being 1.a because he's my fav. also. But Bagwell, I love home run hitters. He won an MVP. But equally cool, all of the times Biggio was willing to get plunked. I really wish he had gotten the record, he was so close. Anyways, Bags should be in the Hall. The way he and Biggio carried this team for 15-20 years. They never got the title but how many players carry their team that long? And while non-Astros fans may not care, we Astros fans care on a personal level that they've never donned another jersey other than the Astros. I think that's pretty special and worthy of consideration from an Astros fans perspective. I can see why Bags would be lumped in with the roid users but since he was never actually connected, he should be in. He was all class when Biggio got in and I hope he'll get his turn.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">2016 Hall of Fame ballot released, with 15 newcomers, including Griffey, Hoffman <a href="https://t.co/ElaDPvOscO">https://t.co/ElaDPvOscO</a></p>— BBWAA (@officialBBWAA) <a href="https://twitter.com/officialBBWAA/status/663763320701366272">November 9, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Griffey Bagwell Piazza Schilling Mussina Clemens Bonds Raines Martinez Walker That is my imaginary ballot. Bags really needs to see a big jump here. Needs to get over 60% and preferably in the 65+% range. I'll also be interested to see how people vote on Hoffman. I don't think he belongs in the HOF, but writers will look at those 600 saves very hard.
The thing that should bother people the most about Bagwell not being in the Hall of Fame is Frank Thomas being a FIRST BALLOT hall of famer.
It bothers me more that Piazza is so much closer. The same speculation applies to him, and with all due respect, Piazza was an inferior player to Bagwell in pretty much every measurable respect.
