Im sorry, but ive got to respecfully diagree.

Carter never progressed as a hittler, in fact he declined. His OBPs were poor, his walk to K ratio was poor....yes he hit 396 HRs and one historic WS home run, but he was never a complete hitter.

There was a very long thread about Dick Allen and the HOF some ime ago...Yes, he had iSSUES, and maybe they prevented him from played all the time.. And at times he was a great hitter, but the HOF?

Thurman Munson had started to decline hsi last two years .and its a tragedy that he died so young. If he had been THAT great, the writers would have had a special election. But Thurman Munson wasn t Lou Gehrig or Roberto Clemente...and there wasnt a special election. He got 15% his first year on the HOF ballot. which I thought was appropriate and never approached that again.

He also wasn t Johnny Bench or Gary Carter or Ivan Rodriguez. He was for about 8 years a very durable, very good hitting catcher, and a terrific competitor

Joe Carter - best World Series HR of my generation, 396 career HRs, and ten 100 RBI seasons

Dick Allen - troubled player, outstanding hitter, ROY, MVP, 4 time league leader in OPS

Thurmon Munson - I am a huge Sox fan, but I think it is a travesty that Munson is not in the HOF. He was a complete catcher. Multiple gold gloves, ROY, MVP. Career was cut short, but the guy belongs in the HOF.

Larry Walker belongs in the HOF. You could give him the Coors Field asterisk, but statistically this guys is a HOFer.

Alan Trammel - premium position, well above average productivity, gold gloves, outstanding playoffs and World Series

Barry Larkin - IMO this is a no brainer

Jack Morris - 250 wins, big game pitcher, 2 outstanding playoffs and World Series

Tim Raines - Dynamic player, outstanding speed, OBP and OPS compare very favorably with Tony Gwynn

Jeff Bagwell - I don't want to see any steroid users in the HOF. Statistically, Bagwell belongs in the HOF. I am not aware of him being a user.

Edgar Martinez - Outstanding hitter. I don't care that he only played the field in about 600 games. He is one of the best hitters I have ever seen.

In my humble opinion Lee Smith, Jeff Bagwell, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro are all Hall of Famers. The phrase "all-time great" doesn't pop into my mind when i hear the rest of the names. That said i wouldn't have a problem if Barry Larkin and/or Jack Morris got in.

Lets remember that players of ALL generations used whatever they could to get an edge.

I would vote for Raines, Bagwell and Martinez on the 2012 ballot.

The DH rule is part of baseball.....In 2009, Hideki Matsui won the WS MVP because in three games as a DH, he lit up Phillies pitchers.

Ast the beginning of his his career with the Yankees, Matsui played EVERY day for more then three years and continued a consectuve games streak that had originated with the Yomiuri Giants

Are we going to say that Matsi was a player in Japan and for the first few years as a Yankee, but after he was switched to the DH role,,,,he was no longer a player?

No............ what we can say is that because of his legs, he could not play an in the field posiiton, anymore but he still was a dangeros and productive hitter, and hitting is oNE of the things a baseball player does.

Mist prfoessional sports have players on their rosters who do something very well and those players are used to maximize whatever the rule is.....ie the strategy

3 point shooters in the NBA
Sixth men in trhe NBA
soccer style place kickers in American football
penalty killers in ice hockey
DH s in American League baseball.

As an example KC Jones, a former NBA Boston Celtics guard and coach was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. I think his career PPG average was 5.2, but he played such great defese that he was inducted

All of these specialists are PLAYERS.

Edgar Martinez was a GREAT baseball hitter.....playing an on the field posiiton or not playing...... a great hitter still has to have plate discipline, see the ball and hit it..nMartinez had an exceptionally high OBP, and hit for average and power.

Being on the bench eating sunflower seeds has NOTHING to do with great hititng, but studying video, watching pirchers for tells, and seeing and getting good pitches to drive...

has EVERYTHING to do with great hitting . and Martinez did those things.

..

I guess what I'm getting at is that if you're contributing only offensively, you have to be way, way better than anyone else in terms of offense. You want DHs in the Hall? Okay. But they, like relievers, should be extremely elite, more so than players who were asked to do more in the first place.

With closers, you measure the closer against other closers, particularly those in his own era (which is why Sutter is in - he was dominant but would be middling if he played today, maybe). Mariano Rivera is the most dominant closer of all time, bar none, and will be a first-ballot HoFer. His talent and results transcend eras.

But with DHs, you compare them not only with other DHs but with other hitters. There are no DH-centric stats, for example. So personally, I would think a DH would be worthy of Hall status if he was much better than other hitters in his era (say, again, 140 OPS+ rather than 120 OPS+), because he would have had to face less adversity (fewer opportunities for injuries).

Dan, I hate the DH rule. Really hate it. However, I will flip the other side of that coin. The non-DH does have more opportunities to screw up, but you could say that the DH has less opportunity to succeed. If a DH ends up in a bad slump, there's no way for him to make up ground in the field (no pun intended) unlike the position player. When you consider the DH's value to a team, one could argue that a even a good (let alone great) DH has been more difficult for GMs to secure than certain position players.

Since the DH is a full time position, I think it's kind of tough to compare it to a Herb Washington (a poor man's Matt Alexander) scenario. I do agree with you that it depends on what one considers a baseball player to be, but I think that a dominant DH contributes greatly to a team's success to be considered worthy for the hall, rule be damned.

You know, a lot of this simply boils down to what you consider a baseball player to be. To me, it's someone who plays in the field and who bats. If there were a specific position that did not bat, I couldn't really consider such a player to be a baseball player. Imagine if every roster had a Herb Washington. Would the best Herb Washingtons be worthy of the Hall of Fame? Probably not. They just can't be as involved as the other players.

This argument isn't one either of us will "win" - so we should probably leave it as it is. Edgar Martinez was a terrific hitter. I think that he played longer and put up better numbers because he didn't have to do what many other players had to do. Wear and tear didn't enter into the equation to the degree it did for others in his era. Somewhere, someone out there is developing a metric by which we can truly measure DHs. That is, you take their offensive stats and adjust them for the DH. Are they then still well ahead of others in their era? Then that's good enough for me. (For example, if Martinez had an OPS+ of 130 over a five year period, after adjusting for DH it sunk to 110, then he becomes merely a really good player instead of a great one over that particular timespan.)