did someone say that bonds was an average player? even before he started getting big and hitting homeruns he was one of the best baseball players of all time. that's why this whole steroid thing really doesn't make sense (even though it's probably true).
and shef? another great player before roids...

First of all bagwell was rookie of the year when he came in, he was much smaller then but to earn that honors you can tell that he has always been able to hit the ball. While I agree playing in the astrodome hurts your homerun numbers you have to think of it as for every homerun that he looses on the warning track of the astrodome, he gains a blooper inbetween the infield and the outfield or in the huge gaps between fielders. So while you can say it affected his Homeruns you have to look and see it probally helped his BA, RBIs and hits

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First of all bagwell was rookie of the year when he came in, he was much smaller then

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I hate when people look at some pictures and say he was small, and now he's big, so he must have used steroids. It's not really hard to gain 25-30 pounds of muscle, especially when you have access to the best trainers in the world. I'm not saying he's for sure clean, but you can't just say he gained weight, so he juiced.

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While I agree playing in the astrodome hurts your homerun numbers you have to think of it as for every homerun that he looses on the warning track of the astrodome, he gains a blooper inbetween the infield and the outfield or in the huge gaps between fielders. So while you can say it affected his Homeruns you have to look and see it probally helped his BA, RBIs and hits

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I doubt there was any effect on his average because for every extra hit he got in the gap, he probably lost two at bats because of all the extra foul territory.

as mentioned earlier, the Dome did not affect his HR totals....

From '91-'99
Home: 126 HR in 2324 ABs (1 per 18.44 AB)
Road: 137 HR in 2435 ABs (1 per 17.77 AB)

It didn't hurt his XBH, BA, or SLG either
Home: 301 XBH, .303 BA, .546 SLG
Road: 297 XBH, .305 BA, .540 SLG

He hit EXACTLY the same at the Dome as he did on the road

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[This message has been edited by AgRyan04 (edited 3/29/2006 12:26a).]

Jason Stark just said on Mike/Mike that he was a sure thing. Best first baseman of the divisional play era.

defense
leadership
only 400/200 first baseman

IMO, no sane person can look at his numbers and say he does not deserve to be in. All we have seen in this thread to say he is not deserving is conjecture and antecodotal evidence of nothing.

bagwell HOF no

Bagwell should be in the HOF when eligible.

2207: thanks for proving a point.

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If Bags doesn't play this year, so it'll be 2010 before he's even a candidate.

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If Bags was the juicer he potentially might have been, he'll be called out by then. And if he is called out, this whole discussion is moot.

I thinking larger than Bags being individually busted. If he is singled out, he's done for. But I'm talking about everybody of this era. If power numbers drop across the board over next 5 years, it will be attributed to steroids. Then everybody's numbers are suspect. (they already are, that would just confirm it) But I think the HOF bar would be raised to level that Bags doesn't make it.

Yes - he should get into the HOF. And yes - I think he, Biggio, and Caminiti did steroids together.

"In the long run, we get no more than we have been willing to risk giving." Sheldon Kopp

Bagwell is definitely a Hall of Famer. From 1993-2000, he was the best 1B in the NL. If someone comes forward with proof (Bonds style in a book), then he might not ever get the votes.

The Hall is a timing issue in many cases with voters as evidenced as to why Sandberg took until his 3rd ballot I believe to get in. Sandberg is certainly a better 2B than Joe Morgan despite the fact Morgan absolutely hates Sandberg. And, I am not a Cubs fan. In my opinion, Bagwell was as good an OVERALL 1B as Sandberg was as an overall 2B.

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Sandberg is certainly a better 2B than Joe Morgan

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Not to derail the Bagwell talk or rile up Cub Fan, but this is just a ridiculous statement.

From the great Rob Neyer:

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Here are the top 10 second basemen in major-league history:

10. Frankie Frisch
9. Charlie Gehringer
8. Ryne Sandberg
Considering that Sandberg wasn't elected to the Hall of Fame until his third appearance on the ballot, it's far from insulting to suggest that he's "only" the eighth-greatest second baseman. Nevertheless, I'm sure somebody will find this ranking offensive. After all (somebody just told me the other day), Sandberg hit more home runs than Morgan, he hit for a higher average, he won more Gold Gloves and his on-base percentage wasn't that much lower, was it?

Yes, it was. Morgan batted just .271, but his .392 on-base percentage was a whopping 48 points higher than Sandberg's. As for Sandberg's advantage in the power department, that's mostly a park effect. Morgan, in his career, slugged .427 overall; .434 at home, .420 on the road. Sandberg slugged .452 overall … but his .412 slugging percentage in road games was actually lower than Morgan's. And Sandberg's career, though it did overlap somewhat with Morgan's, generally came in a more hitter-friendly era. Bottom line: Morgan's hitting stats were significantly more impressive than Sandberg's and he played significantly more games. And Sandberg's superior fielding simply doesn't come close to balancing those advantages for Morgan.

7. Roberto Alomar
6. Nap Lajoie
5. Jackie Robinson
4. Craig Biggio
3. Rogers Hornsby
2. Eddie Collins
1. Joe Morgan
There's not a lot more to say about Morgan, except this: No, his percentages don't match Hornsby's, and his career totals don't match Collins'. But does anybody want to argue that the quality of play in Morgan's era wasn't better than the quality of play in Collins' and Hornsby's eras? That's something you can figure out, just walking down the street or going to the store.

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For those of you with Insider: http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=neyer_rob&id=2118649

And now back to Bagwell HOF talk...

Ryan, great numbers on the home vs. away production. But don't you agree that the Dome cost Bagwell at least 5 HR's a year. That is the difference between 450 and 500. I think everyone will agree that 500 is the magic number for a power hitter as far as the HOF is concerned. I remember so many warning track outs in the Dome that would have been gone anywhere else. Either way, as I life long Astros fan this is a terrible end for the best player in franchise history.

Kramer: "Well I must say, this all sounds capricious and arbitrary."

Dean Jones: "Your fly is undone."

I actually wouldn't agree with that.

At best you could take his numbers and say that he played all of his home games on the road (where he hit 1 HR every 17.77 ABs).

That would give you

(Home ABs)/(Road HR/AB Ratio) = Max HR total

(2324)/(17.77) = 130.78 HRs

He hit 126 over his career in the Dome so techinically it cost him a total of 4.78 HRs over the entire 9 season span that he played there.


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[This message has been edited by AgRyan04 (edited 3/30/2006 10:36p).]

The only reason I don't think Bagwell should be a first ballot HOF is because I want to see him go in with Biggio.

Wow- I dodn't realize Bagwell's numbers in the Dome were so similar to his on the road. But, to quote Hank Aaron on Jimmy Wynn when he beat him out by 2 in the last week for the HR title in the 60s(can't remember the year), "Jimmy's the real home-run king, he hit all those in the Astrodome."

But about Bagwell, I don't see how you could leave him out. He is great defensively, great offensively, very smart baseball player, probably the best baserunner I've ever seen accounting for mistakes on the path and smarts on the path, rather than speed (so don't give me a list of fast guys to counter- that's not what I mean). Plus, I always hear dips**t Dan Patrick talking about DH Frank Thomas is a given, look at his numbers. Bagwell has the same numbers (very close across the board) and he is also a gold glover and great baserunner, clearly the best 1st baseman of the era

Bagwell doesn´t stand out in any one category but both offensively and defensively his stats show he is one of th the most complete players of his generation. Offensively no one has put together a package of production, average, slugging, runs, rbi, steals, that is better that Bagwells production. He´s gotta be in. He not only played a lot of games in the dome, he also played on a lot of offensively challenged lineups. He has got to go into the hof.

I'm fairly sure that offensively challenged lineups is pretty low on the list of things HOF voters consider

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Sorry AgRyan, but if you are going to sit there and tell me that Bags would not have hit more homeruns in a park like Wrigley than in the Dome, you got a problem there. The Dome was one of the toughest parks to hit a homerun in, if Bags played elsewhere, his home run numbers would have been higher. (Colorado?!). The fact that he could put up such big numbers in the Dome is amazing. Your stats are good, but they don't tell the whole story.

I don't know the stats, and I am not going to try and look them up, but it seems to me that most players usually put up much higher numbers at home than on the road...so the fact that Bags had the same numbers is maybe fact that the Dome was holding his numbers down..I would expect his numbers would be much higher in his home park than on the road.

Of course he would have hit more HRs if he played all of his home games at Coors. What I'm saying is that over a sample size of 4000+ ABs he hit virtually exactly the same number of HRs that he did at home. His road games are like a neutral course and over 2000+ ABs things even out pretty well.

I know he hit a lot of fly outs to the warning track in the dome, I probably saw him play 140-150 games there, but the odds are that he hit a lot of fly outs to the warning track in lots of other parks too....just happens that we as fans tend to remember what we saw (which in most cases were home games).

I also don't agree that a guy is supposed to have higher numbers at home than on the road. It's certainly likely, but it's not a given. In many cases that is true but it's clearly not the case in this situation.



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I posted this on another Bagwell thread awhile ago.

Answer this question honestly...Is Fred McGriff a Hall of Famer? I'd guess the majority of you would immediately say 'of course not' or 'He was a steady and productive player but not worthy of HOF'.

Then look at the stats. Bags and McG are very similar. Each player has edges in some categories, but not enough that you can make a call. Their careers are close to identical.

Bagwell’s numbers are much better than McGriff’s. In the 3 categories Bagwell trails him in, a per year analysis shows how much better Bagwell was.

McGriff (19 years) v. Bagwell (15 years)

Homeruns: 493 (26/yr) v. 449 (30/yr)

Hits: 2490 (131/yr) v. 2314 (154/yr)

Runs: 1346 (71/yr) v. 1517 (101/yr)

Stolen bases: 72 (4/yr)v. 202 (13/yr)

Doubles: 441 (23/yr) v. 488 (33/yr)

Triples: 24 (1/yr) v. 32 (2/yr)

RBIs: 1550 (81/yr) v. 1529 (102/yr)

Avg. .284 v. .297

BB: 1305 (69/yr) v. 1401 (93/yr).


Bagwell is much better.

[This message has been edited by BMX Bandit (edited 3/31/2006 2:19p).]

I couldn't find a very good picture, but any athlete that be as successful as he was and do it with a mullet deserves to be in the HOF



[This message has been edited by agrugger (edited 3/31/2006 2:26p).]