Mark Whicker: Mauer’s first ballot Hall of Fame election raises questions
Longtime Minnesota Twins catcher and three-time American League batting champion Joe Mauer was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility on Tuesday. Photo: Wikipedia
January 24, 2024
By Mark Whicker
Canadian Baseball Network
It would be unfair to enforce the Dave Parker Rule, at every Hall of Fame election.
Parker was unquestionably the best player in baseball in the late 70s and early 80s, a Pittsburgh colossus who was a 99th-percentile guy in each of the Five Tools. Parker was snubbed for 15 years by Hall of Fame voters, however, and has had no better luck with the Veterans Committee, probably because of his association with a cocaine dealer. We can discuss comparative morality at another time, but the Dave Parker Rule is simple: If a Hall of Fame candidate isn’t demonstrably better than Parker, he shouldn’t get elected.
You could use the same standards when measuring today’s candidates against Steve Garvey or Dick Allen, as well. If you did, there would be an empty podium, most years. But even without such a severe qualification, the staircase to the gallery of plaques has become much shallower and more accessible. That process continued Tuesday when Adrian Beltre, Todd Helton and Joe Mauer were elected.
Beltre was an appropriate first-ballot selection and one of the best 30-and-over third basemen who ever lived. Not only did he put up 3,166 hits, he had 32 home runs and 104 RBIs when he was 37. He also was an impeccable defensive player and a recognized leader, and even played in an era when the Dodgers actually lost free agents to other teams — Seattle, in his case.
Helton had a .953 OPS, 23rd all-time, and had five consecutive years of 1.000-plus. He also picked it well at first base and had 2,539 hits. Helton took full advantage of Denver’s Coors Field, with a .607 slugging percentage at home, but other Hall of Famers have exploited their surroundings as well, and Helton’s road OPS was a distinguished .855. He had to wait until his sixth year on the ballot, which seems about right.
Mauer is the one who kicks up questions, even in Minnesota, where he was born and raised and played his whole MLB career.
He and Beltre were the 59th and 60th first-ballot HOFers in history. Among those who weren’t first-ballot picks were Joe DiMaggio, Rogers Hornsby, Whitey Ford, Lefty Grove, Eddie Collins and Grover Cleveland Alexander. And for a while Mauer seemed destined for the instant call. By the time he was 26 he had won three batting championships, a “slash” Triple Crown and an MVP award, and he did it as a catcher who stopped the running game cold.
He was a Paul Bunyan figure, having committed to Florida State as the nation’s best high school quarterback, and he was following deep snowprints in St. Paul. Minnesota’s capital city had already produced Jack Morris, Paul Molitor and Dave Winfield.
Then Mauer had to move away from catching because of concussions, thanks to foul balls crashing into his mask. Then he was thrown backwards by bilateral leg soreness, brought on by a virus. Most critically, Mauer’s days of excellence ended at about the same time he signed a contract that paid him $23 million annually for eight seasons. He got MVP votes in only one season after that, finishing 19th in 2012. The definitive catcher had become a middling first baseman.
In the end, he hit .306 with 2,135 hits and an .827 OPS. The injuries were unfortunate, as they were for Grady Sizemore, Tony Conigliaro, David Wright and a host of others. It certainly wasn’t an outrage that Mauer was elected, but it’s curious that he got in so quickly and without much examination. Normally you need more than half a career.
The Hall of Fame stands for connecting generations, but how will our descendants judge why some are in and some are out. The Elmer Gantry wanna-bes within the BBWAA membership and the Veterans Committee will continue to frown upon Barry Bonds, Pete Rose, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez. That’s just reality.
The NFL suspended Paul Hornung and Alex Karras for the entire 1963 season for their involvement in gambling. They still are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and deserve to be, even though the gateway to Canton is far wider than the one to Cooperstown.
It might not be a trend yet, but Hall of Fame voters are much kinder and gentler these days — i.e., they voted for Helton but turned down Keith Hernandez and Don Mattingly. Granted, the voting group changes with each year. But, beginning in 2017, it elected 11 Hall of Famers in a three-year period.
Some of it is recency bias. Some of it is the result of more intense campaigning by the fans of a particular player. Some of it is just the stat-comparison game: If Bert Blyleven is in, shouldn’t Mike Mussina be in, too?
And an underrated factor is the movement to have voters identify themselves, a bow to the altar of “accountability.” Voters live in fear of being char-broiled on social media, but I can attest that such sticks and stones break no bones, and they recede after 24 hours anyway. Was Mariano Rivera, as great as he was, the most logical candidate to be the first unanimous Hall of Fame election when Willie Mays and Hank Aaron weren’t? Of course not, but nobody wanted the media inferno that would descend on anyone who left him off. You see this in the awards voting, in which voters have no right to be anonymous. That is why Shohei Ohtani, a million games out of first place, gets unanimous MVP approval.
That is also not to say Joe Mauer is not a Hall of Famer or that his election was a national outrage. Far from it. It is to question what voters are prioritizing these days, and whether a player with such holes in his career shouldn’t have been subject to a multi-year evaluation. One would hate to see the Hall of Fame be reduced to Guys We Like. But one would love to use the Field of Dreams method of agical reality, just for one day, and have the Snubbed play the Anointed at Doubleday Field, with Dave Parker batting third.