We interrupt the frantic news of the winter meetings to bring you a brief message on another important happening in the baseball world, the election of Hall of Famers. The special 12-member committee to consider pre-1943 players chose Joe Gordon to be enshrined.

Gordon was indubitably an outstanding player, averaging 5.6 RC/G in his 11-year career cut short by World War II. But is he deserving of the Hall?

We take what one might call a conservative corrective approach to the Hall of Fame, which could be summarized as ensuring that the most deserving candidates go in before anyone else does. To illustrate the point, let’s look at all the players who played as many games at second base (or a combination of second base and a tougher position, shortstop) and earned as many Win Shares as Gordon. We’ve listed each player’s Hall of Fame status (in, out, not eligible).

*includes 238 games at shortstop

Using Win Shares, which, granted, isn’t the final word on whether someone should be in Cooperstown, it’s clear that two of the best second basemen of all-time, Biggio and (cough) Alomar, should be in when eligible. But Lou Whitaker is an amazing oversight. And if Gordon is good enough to get in, doesn’t Larry Doyle at least deserve serious consideration? That’s to say nothing of Bobby Grich and Willie Randolph, both of whom have more WS than Gordon. That’s not an argument for Randolph and Grich so much as it an argument for waiting on Gordon until such oversights as Whitaker and the perennially jilted Ron Santo are corrected.

This entry was posted by Pip on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 12:27 am and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.