I swear, ESPN must ask every potential baseball writer, as part of the hiring process, if they are "Big Hall" or "Hall of Fame maximalist" guys.
Cincinnati Reds blogger Chad Dodson, given a temporary perch on ESPN's Sweet Spot, is the latest to drink the Kool-Aid, this time over Jim Edmonds.
Dude, look at his numbers. Zero black ink at Baseball-Reference. Little gray ink.Yes, he was a great defensive CF (more on that below) ... but, because of injuries in part inflicted by the reckless OF play, he fell short of 2,000 hits.
You compare him to Duke Snider. And put him ahead of Andre Dawson, whom you rightfully said is an iffy HOFer.
Well, at the plate, he also compares to Ellis Burks. And Fred Lynn (with good injuries parallel). And Jason Giambi.
True, none of them have his mitt. But, of his Gold Gloves, he had one in a negative dWAR year and another at a 0.1 dWAR.
I recognize that CFs don't get a lot of respect at times from the Hall. But, that's no reason to open the barriers too much.
And, that said, I'm open to a debate on how much we should value defense in a CF versus the corner OF positions. I know B-R does positional adjusting and weights that. But, I just can't get past how much the injuries took away from Edmonds' career; it reminds me a bit of Pete Reiser.
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