CF : Your Personal Suburbs of the HOF

[dgarza]

What I'm looking for is your personal Top 10 very best players who would still not make your own personal HOF.
These are players who were very good and deserve strong HOF consideration, but not good enough for you to view them as HOF level players.
They can even be current players whose careers are not quite HOF careers yet in your eyes.
They can be real HOFers who you don't think should be.

This is the CF edition.

[leecemark]

1) Paul Hines
2) Dale Murphy
3) George Gore
-----------------Hall of Fame cutoff
4) Jimmy Wynn
5) Fred Lynn
6) Wally Berger
7) Cesar Cedeno
8) Jimmy Ryan
9) Willie Davis
10) Amos Otis

[dgarza]

Cy Williams
Mike Donlin
-------------HOF Line
1. Ginger Beaumont
2. Wally Berger
3. Earle Combs
4. Fred Lynn
5. Jim Edmonds
6. Brett Butler
7. Cy Seymour
8. Kenny Lofton
9. Dom DiMaggio
10. Lloyd Waner

[leecemark]

--Combs and Waner are in the Hall. They shouldn't be, but they are. Of course, if you'd put Donlin in then they - and a few hundred more - should be in your queue.

[dgarza]

--Combs and Waner are in the Hall. They shouldn't be, but they are.

That's the point.
This isn't about the best of players not in the real Hall, it's about the best of those who shouldn't be in the Hall no matter how good they were.

I think you maybe confusing it with the idea behind your SOC series. Perhaps I could have used a different term than "suburbs" so that there wouldn't be confusion, but I figured that term worked well.

[dgarza]

-----------------Hall of Fame cutoff
4) Jimmy Wynn
5) Fred Lynn
6) Wally Berger
7) Cesar Cedeno
8) Jimmy Ryan
9) Willie Davis
10) Amos Otis

Do you have 3 more?

[Paul Wendt]

Mike Griffin,
Roy Thomas,
Fielder Jones

What are you hoping to learn? It isn't easy to interpret someone's list of borderliners. Is Wally Berger above or below the list? And Andre Dawson, is he somewhere in right field?
Those are rhetorical questions. The intellectual demands of drawing up any such list may be beyond me regardless of how it is specified.

For reference here is time at CF (full seasons equivalent) for 28 players
- in the leecemark Suburbs of Cooperstown (21)
- inel = ineligible for that project (4) - not to mention Hall of Fame members
- s = supplementary selections, not in the suburbs (3)

mlb seasons at centerfield - 28 of suburban interest
13.6 Paul Hines
10.5 Vada Pinson (s)
10.5 George Gore
10.0 Fred Lynn ____ all-time #30
9.7 George Van Haltren
9.1 Roy Thomas (s)
9.1 Cesar Cedeno
9.1 Cy Williams
8.3 Fielder Jones
7.6 Terry Moore (s)
7.2 Jimmy Wynn
6.9 Jimmy Ryan
6.7 Dale Murphy
6.6 Andre Dawson
6.4 Tommy Leach ---- all-time #101
6.0 Wally Berger
5.3 Eric Davis
5.1 Al Oliver
5.0 Benny Kauff (inel)
4.9 Reggie Smith
4.9 Bobby Murcer
4.6 Happy Felsch (inel)
3.7 Lip Pike
3.7 Pete Browning
2.8 Rickey Henderson (inel)
2.7 George Hall (inel)
2.6 Charley Jones
2.2 Mike Donlin

And here is the same for the top thirty, 1871-2006

mlb seasons at centerfield - 30 all-time leaders
17.8 Willie Mays
17.6 Tris Speaker
14.4 Steve Finley
14.3 Ty Cobb
13.8 Willie Davis
13.6 Paul Hines (HOM and BBF HOF only)
13.3 Ken Griffey
13.2 Doc Cramer
12.8 Richie Ashburn
12.6 Brett Butler
12.5 Marquis Grissom
12.4 Dummy Hoy
12.1 Kenny Lofton
11.8 Bernie Williams
11.6 Amos Otis
11.5 Edd Roush
11.2 Paul Blair
11.1 Mickey Mantle
10.9 Devon White
10.8 Lloyd Waner (Cooperstown only)
10.8 Max Carey
10.7 Clyde Milan
10.5 Mike Griffin
10.5 Joe DiMaggio
10.5 George Gore (HOM and BBF HOF only)
10.5 Garry Maddox
10.5 Curt Flood
10.5 Vada Pinson
10.2 Duke Snider
10.0 Fred Lynn

The top thirty (major leagues only) include 10 members of the Cooperstown Hall of Fame, 11 members of the Hall of Merit and the BBF HOF. The differences are Lloyd Waner in Cooperstown, Paul Hines and George Gore in the two internet halls.
Those 12 players are highlighted (bold).
Note how many of the other leaders played into the 21st century including some still active.

[brett]

Do people here consider Jim Edmonds to be clearly over the line. I figured he would eventually get my support but he ended with only about 1800 games and I constantly read that his defense looked good, but that as far as effectiveness he was not much above average.

Is Andrew Jones clearly over the line?His career OPS+ is lower that that of Otis,
who played 200 more games and was a top baserunner and usually graded as an A on defense.

Is Andre Dawson a centerfielder?

[nerfan]

Amos Otis
Fred Lynn
George Gore
Andre Dawson
Jimmy Wynn
Jim Edmonds
Dale Murphy
Cy Williams
George Van Haltren
Bernie Williams

[Bothrops Atrox]

I think CF is one of the positions the voters have gotten pretty close to being right. Gore, Van Haltren, Hines and Murphy are good cases, but I don't see any glaring omissions.

[jjpm74]

Should be in the HOF:

George Van Haltren
George Gore

Gray area candidates:

Lip Pike
Wally Berger
Andre Dawson
Paul Hines

Outside looking in:

1. Dale Murphy
2. Dom DiMaggio
3. Fred Lynn
4. Vada Pinson
5. Jimmy Wynn
6. Fielder Jones
7. Mike Donlin
8. Cy Williams
9. Jim Edmonds
10. Reggie Smith
Lloyd Waner

[RuthMayBond]

What I'm looking for is your personal Top 10 very best players who would still not make your own personal HOF.
These are players who were very good and deserve strong HOF consideration, but not good enough for you to view them as HOF level players.
They can even be current players whose careers are not quite HOF careers yet in your eyes.
They can be real HOFers who you don't think should be.

This is the CF edition.

If I understand, my 10 best CF who I would NOT put in my Hall (not sure if that's what everybody did)

1.Wynn
2.Ryan
3.DaMurphy?
4.Averill
5.Lynn
6.Roush
7.Butler
8.WDavis
9.Puckett?
10.Pinson

[brett]

1) Jim Edmonds
2) Hack Wilson
3) Andrew Jones
4) Jimmy Wynn
5) Andre Dawson
6) Dale Murphy
7) Bernie Williams
8) Cesar Cedeno
9) Fred Lynn
10) Jimmy Ryan

I would put Puckett in-not because he is better than the top 4-6 on this list, but because of his specific set of seasons and an abrupt ending. He didn't have the partial seasons that wreck the continuity in a player's career. He had a decade+ of very good hitting years while playing centerfield well.