In eight of these seasons, the player in question went on to win the MVP.  The only four who did not were Yastrzemski in 1965, Schmidt in 1982, Walker in 1999 and Lynn in 1975.  Schmidt’s failure to win the MVP in 1982 is largely because he had won it the previous two years.  In the early 1980s, Mike Schmidt was a fantastic player, baseball’s greatest third baseman ever at the top of his game.  However, many of the voters, rightly or wrongly, were reluctant to make him the MVP three years running.  Larry Walker’s 1999 season was a very good year, but he only played 127 games and played his home games at Coors Field.  Walker is the only one of the group who managed to lead his league in OBP and slugging, but due to his extreme home field advantage, not OPS+.  In 1965, Yaz was a great player, but he only played 133 games and did not excel in the field. He lost that MVP to a more deserving candidate.  Zoilo Versalles who played standout defense at shortstop while hitting well for a shortstop of his era on a pennant winning team.

Lynn’s failure to win the MVP in 1979 is more puzzling.  To understand this it is useful to look at three seasons from the late 1970s.  In addition to their slash numbers, I have also included home runs and RBIs as well as stolen base and caught stealing numbers.

.296/.371/.530 36, 139 22/12

.315/.370/.600 46, 139 7/5

.333/.423/.637 39, 122 2/2

The numbers above suggest that the seasons are ranked in ascending order.  There are other things to consider.  The second two played in a hitter’s park, while the first played in a pitcher’s park.  Additionally, the first two players spent most of their time at corner outfield positions, first base and DH, while the third player was a Gold Glove center fielder.  Conventional triple crown numbers, slash numbers and traditional defensive measures all suggest that the third season was the best.

The third season, Fred Lynn’s 1979 was probably the best of the three, but was the only one of the three that did not lead to an MPV award.  The first season was that of Don Baylor who was the 1979 MVP.  Baylor was a good player for a long time, but he was nowhere near as good as Fred Lynn in 1979. Lynn outhit Baylor, got on base more, slugged better, played a more important defensive position better and even hit more home runs.  Baylor had a good season, but the only things he did better than Lynn was drive in a few more runs, steal more bases and play on a better team.  Actually, Lynn played on a better team as his Red Sox won 91 games while coming in third, but Baylor’s 88 win Angels managed to win the division.  The middle line was that of Jim Rice the previous year when he won the MVP.  Rice’s 1978 season was, at the time, considered the best by an AL slugger in a long time, but his teammate had an even better year the following season.

The 1979 MVP race in the AL was strange because Baylor won so handily despite not leading the lead in a any major offensive category other than RBIs, contributing almost nothing on defense and, although nobody used the term at the time, not even finishing among the top ten in the league in WAR.  Baylor’s election, by a margin of 347-241 over second place finisher Ken Singleton was one of the most extreme cases of the MVP simply going to the top RBI man on a division winner.

Major awards are frequently won by candidates who are not the most deserving, but 1979 was significant because it effected the narrative of Lynn and his teammate Rice.  This narrative in turn had a strong impact on Hall of fame voting decades later.  For fans of baseball in the 1970s, Lynn and Rice are linked as they were rookies together in 1975 and carried their Red Sox team to the World Series that year.  Lynn won the MVP and Rookie of the Year honors that year.  Three years later, in 1978 Rice emerged as the leagues best slugger and won the MVP.

The Lynn narrative is that he peaked in his rookie year and was never a great player after that, while the Rice narrative is that he went on to become the league’s most feared player.  Neither of these narratives are true.  Lynn peaked in 1979, continued to be a star into the early 1980s, and a useful player into the mid-1980s.  Rice, for his part, was a top hitter for many years, but the best and most feared hitter in the AL, during most of Rice’s career was George Brett.  Brett, by the way, like Lynn hit for a higher batting average, OBP and slugging percentage while contributing more than Baylor on defense in 1979.

The biggest winner from the 1979 MVP vote, at least from the historical perspective, was not Baylor, but Rice.  The 1979 vote also contributed to Lynn lasting only two years on the Hall of Fame ballot, while his long time teammate, despite very comparable career offensive numbers, got elected to Cooperstown. Rice had a career OPS+ of 128, while Lynn’s in around 1000 fewer plate appearances was 129, but Rice was a left fielder and DH while for most of his career Lynn was a good center fielder.  Lynn’s career and Hall of Fame chances were derailed by injuries, but the difference in how they were treated by Hall of Fame voters is nonetheless stark.  Had Lynn won the MVP in 1979, which he deserved, he would have been viewed differently by baseball writers when it came time for the Hall of Fame voting.  He may not have gotten elected, but the logic of keeping Lynn out while putting Rice in would have been harder to defend.  Moreover, Had Brett won that MVP award, which he deserved more than Baylor and almost as much as Lynn, the story of Rice being a more feared hitter than Brett would have gotten less traction, because Brett would have been a two-time MVP, thus damaging Rice’s Hall of Fame chances.  Instead, Baylor won the MVP allowing the logic of the Rice Hall of Fame narrative became more powerful over time.

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These debates are often quite intense and quite fun, but they also raise the question of whether or not this matters.  Does it really make a difference who gets elected to the Hall of Fame and who is stuck on the outside looking in?  Obviously, the question of who gets elected to the Hall of Fame does not matter to people who do not care about baseball, but for baseball fans it is different.  The Hall of Fame plays an important role as the keeper of baseball’s institutional memory, so players that are in the Hall of Fame are better remembered than those who are not.

Additionally, those players who are elected to the Hall of Fame, see their stature and reputation grow.  The very good players who just miss the Hall of Fame are, within a generation or two, often forgotten by all but the most passionate fans.  Hall of Famer Jim Rice, will almost certainly be remembered as having been better than teammates Fred Lynn and Dwight Evans who were probably better players, but never made the Hall of Fame.  Similarly, Lou Whitaker, Bobby Grich and Ryne Sandberg were all second baseman who played around the same time.  Grich and Whitaker were at least as good as Sandberg, but are already forgotten by all but their most ardent Hall of Fame supporters, while Sandberg has a plaque for every visitor to Cooperstown to see.

Therefore, what is at stake in Hall of Fame voting is how the game’s history gets passed down from one generation to another.  This is further complicated by the vague and differing definitions of what makes a Hall of Famer, specifically the relationship between narrative and numbers in evaluating players.  Jim Rice, for example, got an increase in support because of his great 1978 season and the false, but broadly accepted narrative that he was the most feared hitter of his generation.

This dynamic is most relevant with regards to borderline Hall of Famers.  Tony Perez is one such Hall of Famer.  Perez, was a slugging first baseman who also played a little at third base and spent most of his career with the Cincinnati Reds.  During that time he hit .279/.341/.463 for an OPS+ of 122.  Perez had a long career with 10861 plate appearances and won election to the Hall of Fame due also to his 379 home runs and 1,652 RBIs.  Perez was viewed as a good, but not necessarily great player when he was playing, appearing in 7 All Star games and finishing in the top ten in MVP voting once.  Baseball Reference gives him 50.5 WAR, while Fan Graphs gives him 67.8 WAR.  These numbers are not great for a Hall of Famer, but there are many worse players in the Hall of Fame.

Darrell Evans was almost an exact contemporary of Tony Perez, as the two players careers overlapped from 1969-1986.  Evans, one of the most underrated players in the game’s history, may or may not have been better than Perez.  Evans’ slash numbers were similar .248./.341/.431 for an OPS+ of 119.  Evans came to bat about 150 times fewer than Perez and, significantly for Hall of Fame voters, had about 200 fewer RBIs, while hitting 35 more home runs.  However, Evans spent his prime playing for some offensively challenged Brave and Giant teams while Perez spent his prime batting in the middle of the Big Red Machine.  Evans was a more valuable defender as a third baseman who played a little at first, while Perez did the reverse.  Baseball Reference awards Evans 6.8 more WAR than Perez while Fan Graphs gives them both the same amount of WAR.

Perez may have been a better player than Evans, but from the numbers that is not clear.  Perez’s election to the Hall of Fame has made that argument irrelevant.  It is the former teammate of Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench and Pete Rose who will be remembered as the all-time great, while one time teammate of Johnnie LeMaster, Jack Clark and Ed Halicki as well as Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker and Herny Aaron will not be remembered at all.  Election to the Hall of Fame has turned a very small difference in career value into one which will be remembered by most fans as significant and indisputable.  Fans of Darrell Evans can, presumably, understand that their man is not quite worthy of the Hall of Fame, but the election of Tony Perez makes it harder to stomach.  Replace Evans and Perez with Dennis Martinez and Jack Morris, who is likely to get elected next year, or Tim Raines and Jim Rice, and the reason the Hall of Fame matters should be even more clear.

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With Montero, who had been expected to take over as the Yankees full time DH in 2012 gone, much speculation has begun about who will fill that role for the Yankees.  One of the reason’s Montero was expendable is that Alex Rodriguez, who will be 36 years old next season with seven years remaining on his contract, is expected to take over more of the DH duties as he continues to slow down in the field.  Because Montero was not going to push Rodriguez off the DH spot, he had less value to the Yankees.  One problem with making Rodriguez the full time DH, or using Rodriguez and fellow aging star Derek Jeter as the teams’ primary DHs is that Edwin Nunez, a light hitting utility infielder would fill in at short and third depending on who was the DH on a given day.  Giving Nunez 450 or so plate appearances will not bolster a strong but aging Yankee offense.

This is the simple analysis, but it overlooks one more significant and potentially significantly more troubling possibility.  Unless he turns around his current rate of decline, Rodriguez will no longer hit well enough to be a full time DH in 2012, not to mention 2013 and beyond.  When the Yankees overpaid to extent Rodriguez’s contract, they must have assumed he would not be able to play 3rd base into his early 40s, but that he would at least hit enough to be a productive, and very lucratively compensated, first baseman or DH beginning in his late 30s.  This assumption, however, may be proven wrong.

In 2007, when he was 31 years old, Rodriguez hit .314/.422/.645 good for an OPS+ of 176 and an MVP award.  It was one of the best season’s in Rodriguez’s career.  Since 2008 he has posted OPS+ of 150, 138, 123 and 116 while never playing in more than 140 games, an achievement he had exceeded in every year but one since 1996.  An OPS+ of 120 from a player who splits his time between third base and DH, while no longer enough to place Rodriguez among the game’s elite, still has a lot of value.  An OPS+ of 120 from a full time DH has less value, but is still useful.  However, an OPS+ of much less than that from a full time DH, particularly one who will be as well compensated as Rodriguez, is not enough.  Moreover, if his numbers continue to decline, Rodriguez would become a drag on the team’s offense just as he would become the team’s full time DH.

The Yankees can put this problem off for the short term by adding a left-handed bat to platoon with Andruw Jones at DH for 2012, but for the medium term, all they can do is hope that Rodriguez gets healthy and becomes an impact hitter again.  The Yankees are developing into a team where the two most important hitters are no longer Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira, but Curtis Granderson and Robinson Cano.  Montero was poised to join Grandreson and Cano in the heart of the next iteration of the Yankee offense, but that is not going to happen now.  Instead, Pineda will join CC Sabathia in what almost overnight has become one of the AL’s top pitching rotations.  This is part of the transformation of the team from an offense heavy team to one with an aging offense, a few players, like Russell Martin, who don’t hit much, and excellent pitching.  It is not yet clear which of these approaches will be more successful, but for the Yankees being aware of these changing dynamics, and the declining centrality of Rodriguez, Teixeira, and even Jeter is critical.

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Rivera is the second member of the team’s vaunted core four, which also included Jeter, Rivera and Andy Pettitte, to retire.  The core four was always a bit of a misnomer because it seemed a slight against Williams who starred on four Yankee championship teams, spent his whole career with the Yankees and played alongside Posada, Jeter and Rivera for as long as Pettitte, who had a three year hiatus with the Houston Astros, did.

Nonetheless, the core four is now down to two players, Jeter and Rivera.  There is almost no precedent for the joint career arc of these two players.  2012 will be their 17th year together.  It is unusual for any two teammates to spend 17 years playing together, even more unusual if these players are Hall of Famers, as Jeter and Rivera are certain to be, and even more unusual if these two players are both among the greatest ever at their position, as Jeter and Rivera are.  Both Jeter and Rivera made their debuts in 1995, but came to the big leagues for good in 1996.  Moreover, both Jeter and Rivera were in the Yankee minor league system, at various different levels between 1992-1995.

Jeter and Rivera were very different players and personalities, but together they have defined the Yankees since 1996; and for the Yankees this era will always be identified with them.  For Yankee fans, having two extraordinary players play together for their entire careers has been something very special.  Seeing one all time great play his entire career for one team is rare, but seeing two players do it together for this long is almost never occurs.  For fans of other teams, however, it is also a reminder of the inequality in baseball.  Every time either of these stars were seeking a new contract, the Yankees quickly and unambiguously outbid any possible competition, making it easy for Jeter and Rivera to choose to remain Yankees for their entire careers.

There is something to this, but it is also an oversimplification.  In recent years, a number of teams have sought, with some success, to keep their home grown stars together, but not for quite this long. The  Astros, for example, where able to keep Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell, who was originally a Boston Red Sox prospect, together during their entire careers.  Moreover, in order to retain Hall of Fame talent, a team has to be able to develop it.  The Yankees did this very well in the early 1990s developing two certain Hall of Famers and three other borderline candidates within a period of about five years.

Jeter and Rivera, despite Jeter’s poor performance during much of 2010 and the first part of 2011, have also been very good old players.  Thus, while it is possible to argue that they have been overpaid in recent years, and will be overpaid during the next few years, they won’t be overpaid by much.  Jeter still produces reasonably well for a shortstop and Rivera is still one of the top closers in the game.

Ironically, while loyalty to Jeter and Rivera, as well as Williams and Posada, albeit to a different extent, may have been grounded in things like engendering fan loyalty and avoiding the negative press which would have happened if any of these players had gone to another team, these decisions all helped the Yankees.  Between 2002-2008 when all four of these players, except for Williams after 2006, were still with the Yankees, being extremely well paid, and showing signs of age in some cases, the Yankees never won a World Series.  However, it would be difficult to argue that any of these players cost the Yankees that opportunity.  On the contrary, they all contributed during these years.  In fact, the failure of the Yankees to resign Andy Pettitte after 2003, might have cost them a chance to win championship in on of the three seasons, 2004-2006, while Pettitte was gone.

In 2011, Jeter’s 3000th hit and Rivera’s record breaking 602nd save were among the major stories for the Yankees.  This year will be filled with similar milestones as Jeter and Rivera secure their positions on various all-time and Yankee lists, but the era that they have defined is almost over.  The Yankees have the resources and the savvy to keep contending, but it will be a lot tougher without a core four staying together for more than a decade.

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Jones, however, transitioned quickly from elite defender and star center fielder to being a free agent bust with the Los Angeles Dodgers as he hit .158/.256/.249 in 2008 after signing a big free agent contract with the Dodgers.  Beginning with the Texas Rangers in 2009, Jones reinvented himself again, this time as a useful veteran role player, a job he did well for the Yankees last year and for the Chicago White Sox in 2010.

When looked at as a whole, Jones has had a good career but not a great one, making him, at first glance, a weak candidate for the Hall of Fame. There were many important things he did not do well. His lifetime batting average of .256, buoyed by a reasonably high strikeout rate of 1,677 strikeouts in 8,395 plate appearances, has kept his career OBP at just below .340. While this is better than recent inductee Andre Dawson’s OBP, it is well below what should be expected from a Hall of Fame outfielder.

Jones was essentially a two dimensional player. He played defense and he hit home runs, but he did those things very well. Currently, Jones is one of only four players to have won ten Gold Gloves and have hit at least 400 home runs. The other three, Ken Griffey Jr., Willie Mays and Mike Schimdt, are all inner circle Hall of Famers or soon to achieve that status.  Jones is obviously not comparable to any of those three players; and his membership in such an august club is more of a statistical quirk than a measure of his true value.

A closer look at Jones’ career could still suggest that he could be a strong Hall of Fame candidate. Only sixteen players have won ten or more Gold Gloves. Of this group eight, Johnny Bench, Roberto Alomar, Brooks Robinson, Schmidt, Ozzie Smith, Roberto Clemente, Al Kaline and Mays, are already in the Hall of Fame and an additional five others, Greg Maddux, Ivan Rodriguez, Omar Vizquel, Griffey and Ichiro Suzuki, will be strong Hall of Fame candidates. The players who will not make it to the Hall of Fame despite their ten or more Gold Gloves, are Jim Kaat and Keith Hernandez. Gold Gloves are obviously not the only, or even the best defensive metric, but they are a good indicator of how a player was perceived; and Jones was perceived as the best fielding outfielder in the game for the decade from 1998-2007.

Jones’ accomplishments as a power hitter are not nearly on par with his defense, but he was a reliable slugger for much of his career. Currently, he has 420 home runs, but with even members of the 500 home run club facing difficult odds of being elected to the Hall of Fame, 400 home runs is much less of a ticket to Cooperstown than it may have been in the past. Nonetheless, the correlation between 400 home runs and election into the Hall of Fame is still strong. Of the 45 players with at least 420 home runs 23 are already in the Hall of Fame. Of the remaining 22, 21, including Jones, are still eligible to be elected to the Hall of Fame. The one exception is Dave Kingman. Of those 21, only three or four players, Juan Gonzalez, Fred McGriff and Carlos Delgado and possibly Jason Giambi, will face trouble from voters due to issues other than steroids. The remaining players are either likely inductees — like Griffey, Jim Thome and Frank Thomas — or players whose candidacies will be dogged by the steroid issue — like Mike Piazza, Manny Ramirez or Mark McGwire.

Jones’ career is not over. While he will not win any more Gold Gloves, it is conceivable that he could play 3-4 more years and finish with 450 home runs while not driving his rate numbers down. If he does that, his Hall of Fame candidacy will look even better. Jones played in a high offense context, which helped his home run numbers, but Hall of Fame voters may be inclined to give non-steroid users a pass on that issue. Jones may not truly deserve to be enshrined in Cooperstown. His career OPS+ of 111 is too low, but his 60 WAR are more than several Hall of Famers. However, few who fielded as well and few who hit as many home runs have been kept out; and everybody who did both those things as well or better than Jones is in.

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The Yankees are by no means a team without holes.  After Sabathia, their starting pitching is spotty at best.  Their offense, while still very strong, is aging.  Mainstays like Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira and possibly Nick Swisher and Russell Martin are in the decline phases of their careers.  The Yankees have also not been involved in any major trades.  This is partially because so many of their contracts, like those of Rodriguez, Teixeira or pitcher AJ Burnett are very hard to move, but also because of a strong reluctance to trade Jesus Montero, Manuel Banuelos or any other of their top prospects.  Similarly, the Yankees have not gone after any of the top free agents.  Prince Fielder and Albert Pujols were less appealing to the Yankees because they have Teixeira under contract at first and expect to move Rodriguez into the DH slot in the coming years.  Jose Reyes would have been a good fit on paper, but moving Jeter off of shortstop is not going to happen until the captain himself makes that decision.  The Yankees also evinced a healthy reluctance to offer pitcher CJ Wilson a long term contract.

While individually all these decisions make sense, the result is that other than probably upgrading from Posada to Montero at DH, this team is unlikely to be any better than the one that was knocked out of the playoffs in the first round in 2011.  Unlike other teams, the Yankees never take a year to rebuild, so it should be assumed that they are seeking to contend again in 2012.  To do this, the Yankees could slightly upgrade their offense at a corner outfield position or add a few bats off the bench, but the most useful thing they could do is add a starting pitcher.

While the Yankee ownership has indicated that it does not want to add a lot of payroll this off-season, precedent shows that a slow start will cause the ownership to revisit that notion during the season; and a bad year will lead the team to spend a lot of money in the off-season.  The Yankees should not so much be concerned about adding payroll as about adding big long term contracts that will force them to pay top dollar to aging players three or more years from now.  This is the problem they will face with the contracts belonging to Teixeira, Rodriguez and now Sabathia beginning sometime around 2014.

The Yankees do not need an ace as they already have one in Sabathia, but they need a solid number two starter.  Their pitching rotation is set now with Ivan Nova, Freddy Garcia, Phil Hughes and AJ Burnett following Sabathia, but none of these other four pitchers are a real number two starter.  Having five starters on the roster and having a good five man rotation are not the same thing.  Currently the Yankees have the former, but not the latter.

The Yankees can best fill their need by signing a proven pitcher to a short, preferably one year, contract.  This would allow the team the possibility of phasing in pitching prospects like Banuelos or Dellin Betances while not tying up much money beyond 2012.  In most cases, it is hard to fill a specific need of this kind, but this off-season is different.

The most obvious way the Yankees can bolster their pitching and limit their long term financial commitment is to sign Roy Oswalt to a one year deal.  That one year would not be cheap, probably in the $12-$15 million range, but Oswalt could be worth it.  Oswalt is probably no longer the ace he once was, but he is only one year removed from an ERA+ of 146 and leading the NL in WHIP.  Even last year, although his 9-10 win loss record was not impressive, his peripheral numbers were good.  He struck out 93 while only issuing 31 unintentional walks.  It is easy to see Oswalt as the number two starter on the Yankees behind Sabathia.  While this would not give the Yankees a top of the rotation comparable to the San Francisco Giants, Philadelphia Phillies or Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, it would probably give the Yankees a respectable number two who could keep them in a game against a good playoff team.

If the Yankees don’t sign Oswalt now, they will very likely face the same problem regarding starting pitching in 2012 that they faced in 2011.  If this scenario unfolds, as the trading deadline approaches this season, the Yankees will be forced to trade one of their prospects for less than what that prospect is worth now.  Signing Oswalt then is not only a way to immediately bolster their pitching staff, but it is also a way to help prevent Yankee management from panicking next July.

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2011 was Rollins best year since 2008.  In 2011 he hit a decent .268/.338/.399 with good defense, but in 2009 and 2010 he combined to hit a disappointing .248/.304/.406.  If Rollins puts up numbers like that in 2012-14, he will be of little value to the Phillies.  The Yankees resigned Jeter after an off year in 2010 where he posted an OPS+ of 90 and hit .270/.340/.370.  These were pretty weak numbers for Jeter, who has been a better hitter than Rollins throughout his career, but still no worse than Rollins in 2009 and 2010.  However, in 2010, when the Yankees resigned him, Jeter was, unlike Rollins today, only one year removed from formidable numbers and strong finish in the MVP voting.

Jeter’s contract, which could cost the Yankees about $56 million is significantly bigger than what the Phillies will pay Rollins over the next four years.  Rollins contract, if it is extended, will be for only about $41 million over the next four years.  The precise amount of money, however, is not the most important part of the contract.  Both players will earn enough money in each year of their contract that, between their contracts and their stature with their respective teams, they will be very difficult to trade or even to bench.  Additionally, both will probably have to be moved out of the leadoff spot during the course of their current contract.  Rollins probably, due to his inability to draw walks, should not be batting leadoff now; and Jeter is no longer the premier leadoff hitter he once was.  Viewed exclusively through the prism of cost, Jeter’s contract is worse than Rollins, but $14 million more over four years is not a big difference for the Yankees.  Both contracts will be difficult to move; and both players will be greatly overpaid for their services for much, if not all, of the duration of these contracts.

Thus, while Jeter’s contract may be worse than Rollins’s, it is a difference of degree not of kind.  There are other similarities between the contracts as well.  Both players are beloved by the fans of their teams and have spent their entire careers with one team.  Additionally, neither player received much interest from any other team before resigning.   Jeter’s contract demands were sufficient to make it extremely unlikely that he would sign with anybody other than the Yankees, while there were very few reports of Rollins being seriously courted by any team other than the Phillies.

The decision to sign Rollins is defendable because the Phillies need a shortstop and have no obvious choices other than Rollins.  Nonetheless, they are an aging team that despite excellent pitching in 2010 and even better pitching in 2011, have lost in the playoffs in recent years to teams they were expected to beat.  Much of this has been due to an offense that is led by stars like Rollins, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard who are neither as healthy nor as productive as they once were.  Signing Rollins does little to address this and by committing more money to a popular, but past his prime player, may create real problems for the Phillies over the next few years.

It is striking that while after Jeter resigned last year, the baseball blogosphere was teeming with criticism of the Yankees, the Phillies have not been targeted in this way for the Rollins signing.  This is not surprising given the role the Yankees play in the collective baseball consciousness, but the Phillies are also a big market team which has now been forced into another big market mistake.

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Although a number of other players on the ballot, notably Jack Morris, Don Mattingly and Lee Smith have their supporters, I am not convinced that any of them are good enough to be Hall of Famers.  Mattingly’s peak was too short, Morris was a very good pitcher for a long time, whose candidacy rests too heavily on one great game.  Smith’s major credential seems to be that his career was perfectly timed for him to hold the save record until better pitchers such as Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera obliterated his record.  Smith was not as good as either the fireman of the Rollie Fingers-Goose Gossage-Bruce Sutter ilk or the best one inning specialists such as Hoffman, Rivera or Dennis Eckersley.

The two returning players who caused me the most pause were Larry Walker and Dale Murphy.  The argument against Walker depends on how much of his hitting is attributed to playing in Coors Field.  Walker was a significantly better hitter in Coors Field, but he hit with the Cardinals and Expos as well as with the Rockies, and accumulated an OPS of .865 when playing away from home.  Given the length of Walker’s career, in which he only came to the plate 8,030 times, and having played the less demanding defensive positions throughout his career, Walker no longer makes the cut for Cooperstown.  There are a number of very good hitters coming up in the next few years so voting for Walker, an inferior hitter to, for example, Edgar Martinez, would open up the Hall of Fame for too many otherwise borderline candidates such as Jason Giambi or Vladimir Guerrero.  Had Walker had a longer career, hit better on the road or contributed more defensively he would still get my vote, but this year he comes up a little short.

Dale Murphy is an intriguing Hall of Fame candidate.  In some respects he is like Mattingly.  Both had peaks during which people assumed they would be Hall of Famers, but both declined substantially after these peaks.  Mattingly from 1984-1989 (.327/.372/.530 (OPS+147) was a slightly better hitter than Murphy was during his six year peak from 1982-1987 (.289/.382/.531 OPS+145), as well as over the course of his career.  Murphy, however, played longer and contributed more defensively, mostly because of his position.  Murphy was also perhaps the game’s best center fielder between Willie Mays and Ken Griffey Jr.  Murphy is a strong Hall of Fame candidate who, like Larry Walker, would not be among the worst players elected to the Hall of Fame, but his peak was not enough to outweigh his long years of decline.  Moreover, soon after Murphy’s peak, a cadre of center fielders including, Griffey, Kirby Puckett, Bernie Williams and Jim Edmonds emerged.  All of them were better players than Murphy.

If I had a vote for the Hall of Fame, I would drop Walker from my ballot, but would not add Murphy, so the returning players who would get my vote are Bagwell, Larkin, Martinez, McGriff, Raines and Trammell, as well as first time candidate Bernie Williams.

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Lopez and Williams were also both key parts of winning teams, but were often overshadowed by their teammates.  Lopez was the catcher on a team most famous for its pitching, while Williams never drew the attention of teammates like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Roger Clemens or Jason Giambi.  They were both, however, excellent players and key contributors to their winning teams.

Although Lopez has not received much Hall of Fame consideration and will probably not get many votes, he is a stronger candidate than many realize.  Between 1997 and 2004, he was one of the top catchers in baseball, although never in the class of contemporaries like Ivan Rodriguez or Mike Piazza.  However, even that good run was offset by poor years in 2001 and 2002.  Lopez was not as good a hitter as Jorge Posada, who will also have a tough time getting elected to the Hall of Fame, and other than being a pretty good playerfor a number of years, did not rack up any Hall of Fame credentials.  If I had a vote, Lopez would not get my vote.

The arguments against Williams are clear.  He was not great defensively, was never one of the best hitters in the game, was surrounded by better players and did not play much past his prime.  The arguments in favor of Williams candidacy are less obvious, but also very powerful.  Williams was a very good hitter who had a very long prime.  Between 1995-2002, a period of eight years, he hit .321/.406/.531, good for an OPS+ of 142.  He did this while playing a key defensive position decently.  Although he retired at age 37, thus truncating the decline phase of his career, he remained a useful player until the end hitting .281/.332/.436 during his last year with the Yankees.

Another way to assess Williams candidacy is to determine how many center fielders in the history of the game had clearly better careers.  The list is shorter than one might initially think.  Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Duke Snider, Mickey Mantle, Ken Griffey Jr., and Jim Edmonds are on the list, but after that it is hard to find a better all around center fielder.  Many other players were better with the glove, a few like Dale Murphy were better power hitters and some good leadoff men, like Richie Ashburn played center field, but it is not obvious that any put together better careers than Williams.

One way to see this is that Williams played 1,924 games in center field during a career where he posted an OPS+ of 125.  In the history of the game, only eight players have played 1,700 or more games in center field with an OPS+ of 115 or better.  Three of these players, Williams, Griffey and Edmonds are not eligible for the Hall of Fame.  The other five are all in.  Williams’ numbers are far behind those of Cobb, Mays, Speaker and Mantle, but are better than Edd Roush’s and a cut behind contemporaries Griffey and Edmonds.

One player noticeably missing from this list is Hall of Famer Duke Snider, who was a better player than Williams but only played 1,589 games in center.  Another more intriguing omission from this list is Dale Murphy.  Murphy is himself subject to much Hall of Fame debate.  Murphy’s eight year peak, from 1980-1987 is very comparable to that of Williams, during these years Murphy hit .284/.374/.517 for an OPS+ of 140.  He was also a better fielder and base stealer than Williams.  Murphy, however, had a more severe decline.

In addition to Murphy, Kirby Puckett, who was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2001, is viewed by many as a better player than Williams, but the evidence suggests Williams was better.  Puckett was a better defender and a comparable hitter, but the illness that cut Puckett’s career short, also meant that Puckett had no real decline phase to his career.  Through his first 12 years when he was between 24 and 35 years old, Puckett hit .318.360/.477, but between ages 24-35 Williams was slightly better at .305/.398/.498.  Puckett’s career OPS+ of 124 is almost the same as Williams 125, but from ages 24-35, Williams posted a 131 OPS+.  Williams also has a slightly higher WAR than Puckett by a margin of 47.3 to 44.8.  Murphy at 44.2 is essentially the same as Puckett

Puckett’s membership in the Hall of Fame is not in of itself a sufficient argument for Williams, but it helps.  Moreover current Hall of Fame center fielders include several players: Ashburn, Max Carey, Lloyd Waner and Earle Combs who were inferior to Williams.  Williams probably will do poorly on the ballot as is somehow fitting for a player who batted cleanup and played center field for the New York Yankees while winning four World Championships and still managing to be often overlooked and underrated.  Nonetheless, if I were voting, he would be the only new player on the ballot to get my vote.

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One would expect that many teams would be courting Pujols and Fielder, both of whom are likely to remain among the best players around for at least a few more years.  The relative lack of interest in both of them indicates quite a bit about the state of baseball economics and salary structures today.  As has been the case for many years now, although all teams are free to pursue Pujols and Fielder, there are several small market teams for whom, due to their lack of revenue and payroll limitations, signing a premier free agent is not a realistic hope.  It has been a long time since the Pittsburgh Pirates, Kansas City Royals or Minnesota Twins, for example, have made a major splash in the free agent market.

This is not particularly surprising.  It is more surprising, and significant, that a number of medium sized, and even big, market teams also appear twos have taken themselves out of the running for the top two free agents.  Teams like the San Francisco Giants  have cited payroll limits and desire to use their money to keep their own players.  Others, like the Florida Marlins, have made low offers seeking to demonstrate interest to their fans, rather than to actually lure Pujols or Fielder.

Most striking is the lack of excitement Pujols and Fielder have generated from the big market teams who usually go after the best free agents every year.  The Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets are somewhat limited by ownership problems that make it tougher for them to offer big contracts to free agents.  The New York Yankees, Philadelphia and Boston Red Sox, who usually vie for the best free agents, both seem to be set at first base for the next several years and thus have less interest in Pujols or Fielder.  The Chicago Cubs, an emergent big market team, have expressed some interest in signing one of these sluggers, but they are the only big market team to be explicit about this interest.

The situations facing the Mets and Dodgers are unusual and not directly driven by baseball considerations.  The Red Sox, Yankees and Phillies, however, are in a different  situation.  All three have first baseman signed to big contracts with several remaining years.  However, with the possible exception of Adrian Gonzalez, none of these players can be expected to perform nearly as well as Fielder or Pujols for the next 5-7 years.  Mark Teixeira and Ryan Howard are inching towards becoming league average producers at first base and are not likely to ever be elite sluggers again.  Teixeira who is 31 and Howard who is now 32 have posted OPS+ of 128 and 131 respectively over the last three years.  For Pujols and Fielder these numbers are 171 and 155 respectively.  Among first baseman averaging 125 games or more over the last three years, Teixeira has the median OPS+ with Howard sixth out of 13.  The Yankees or Red Sox could put either of these sluggers at DH, but Pujols and Fielder are less valuable if they don’t play the field.  Both teams also may feel a need to keep that position open for various other aging sluggers, notably, in the Yankees case, Alex Rodriguez.

Teixeira and Howard are both illustrative of the structural problems associated with paying for past performance and giving out long term contracts.  The Yankees and Phillies will likely not even attempt to improve aging offenses by adding a top notch slugger because they are tied down by owing large amounts of money to players who are not as good as best of the current group of free agents.

Howard and Fielder will end up signing somewhere for a lot of money, but the circumstances in 2011 mean that they are not free agents in the ideal market.  Pujols could end up back in St. Louis with a big but not historic contract, while Fielder could go to a number of places, but is unlikely to get at contract that is significantly better than the one Teixeira got three years ago.  This is, to some extent, a bad break for these two sluggers, but it is also an indication the direction in which baseball economics may be moving.

The legacy of long term contracts which tend to be concentrated among the teams that generally otherwise have the most ability to pay means that the nature of competition for top free agents may have changed.  Teams, even wealthy ones, are no longer able so simply pursue the best free agents, even when they are among the very best players in the game.  This is due to existing long term contracts and increasing concern about signing more players to similar contracts.  The solution may be contracts with even higher annual salaries but fewer years.  This, of course, will probably only exacerbate the differences between the wealthiest teams and all the others.

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