Tino Martinez, John Olerud, Bret Boone Win Future Humiliation

Bobby Higginson and B.J. Surhoff – two guys who, incidentally, were named in countless Mariner trade rumors back in the day yet somehow never wound up coming north.

My memories of the late 1990s and early 2000s may be a bit hazy now, but I seem to recall that the Mariners had separate deals in place to acquire Juan Gonzalez and Raul Mondesi at one time or another, but the deals fell apart at the last minute due to ownership objections (I think the Tigers owner nixed the Gonzalez deal).

His fWar is 62, which seems just about enough to make it into the HOF. Isn’t the standard held to be around 60 WAR? He also has the career longevity of 16 years, which seems to aid his case. Furthermore, he has two seasons with an fWAR above 8 and another 7 above 3, suggesting he is was not just merely very good for a long time. Beyond that he also has another 2 seasons with a WAR of 2.9. He appears to have a good sabremetric case for being included to me.

In terms of the actual BBWAA voting, I think there is reason to believe he has a decent chance to make it in(obviously not the 1st ballot though). Olerud had an excellent defensive reputation despite attaining only 3 gold gloves. He also almost had a career OBP of .400, which might help counter his lack of HRs in the voters eyes. Moreover, he is one of a few very rare cases of a player skipping the minors altogether since the 1980s. He will be hurt by only having 2 all-star selections( his 1998 exclusion is just puzzling). However, this will be diminshed by the 2 world series victories with the Jays.
 
Olerud might actually be a great barometer to see if the BBWAA association has moved on from purely traditional counting stats to something slightly more advanced.

I most definitely think of Lenny Harris:

Career OPS+ = 80
Career WAR = -0.9
Positions played = 8
Teams played for = 8
Seasons played = 18

So…Willie Boom Boom has a chance at making it on the ballot if he plays 15+ years?

And now the real fun begins. Palmiero should recieve the McGwire treatment and possibly worse because of the positive test. Bagwell if he had not played in the steroids era is a no doubt first ballot guy with 85-90%, in my opinion. So the question is; Will the voters penalize Bagwell, who was never linked to PED’s, because of the era in which he played? My gut says they will. My gut also says that Walker is harshly penalized for the Coors Field effect. He seems like a guy who should do better than Edgar in his first year and I honestly think he does worse by a healthy margin, probably with votes close to those of Fred McGriff.