Best Position Players Not in the Hall of Fame

For this post, I decided to take a look at the best players who, so far, have not been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Although there's no single statistic that can accurately and objectively measure a player's worthiness in the Hall of Fame, I decided to examine the WAR (wins above replacement) statistic, which takes into account how valuable a player has been to his team over the course of his career, when compared to a "replacement player," a hypothetical player whose ability is about the same as that of a typical minor league call-up or readily available free agent. So, if a player has a WAR of 50, he would have, statistically speaking, enabled the teams that he was playing for to win about 50 more games over the course of his career than if those teams had gone with a marginal major league player/minor leaguer.

For the purposes of this list, I have selected the top 10 players who are eligible for the Hall of Fame (retired for 5 years and not on any ineligible list, i.e. Pete Rose and Joe Jackson), but have not yet been elected. The list is as follows:

10. Rafael Palmeiro 1B 1986-2005 (66)
9. Ron Santo 3B 1960-1974 (66.4)
8. Alan Trammell SS 1977-1996 (66.9)
7. Edgar Martinez DH 1987-2004 (67.2)
6. Larry Walker OF 1989-2005 (67.3)
5. Bobby Grich 2B 1970-1986 (67.6)
4. Barry Larkin SS 1986-2004 (68.9)
3. Lou Whitaker 2B 1977-1995 (69.7)
2. Bill Dahlen SS 1891-1911 (75.9)
1. Jeff Bagwell 1B 1991-2005 (79.9)

Not surprisingly, half of the players on this list have been on the Hall of Fame ballot only once or twice so far. it often takes years for even highly qualified candidates to make it, so some of them will likely be in soon. A few however, such as Palmeiro and Bagwell, might have some trouble because of steroid questions. More surprising is the lack of support for players such as Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, and Bobby Grich. Although their stats compare favorably to other middle infielders, I think part of the problem for them is that they did not play for big market teams, so their achievements often went unnoticed. I would have a hard time imagining them not being in the Hall of Fame had they played for New York, Boston, St. Louis, Los Angeles, or Chicago.