Palmeiro vs. other First Basemen of his Era.

In my last article "Rafael Palmeiro in Hall of Fame? Of course." I showed that Rafael Palmeiro can be mentioned in the same breath as Willie McCovey, and therefore is better than about half of the current Hall of Fame first basemen, which makes him an easy Hall of Famer.

To counter this though, I get arguments that Palmeiro wasn't the best first basemen in his era, and because of this, he should not get voted into the Hall of Fame. I decided to compare him to the other first basemen of his era, to see if this was true.

The first basemen I used in this comparison were:

Jeff Bagwell (through 2004)
Mark McGwire
Fred McGriff
John Olerud (through 2004)
Mark Grace
Will Clark

Here are their stats [AVG/OBP/SLG, OPS, HR, Hits (ranking in OPS)]

Jeff Bagwell: .297/.408/.542, .950 OPS, 446 HR, 2289 Hits (2)

Fred McGriff: .284/.377/.509, .886 OPS, 493 HR, 2490 Hits (4)

John Olerud: .295/.399/.465, .864 OPS, 248 HR, 2189 Hits (6)

Mark Grace: .303/.383/.442, .825 OPS, 173 HR, 2445 Hits (7)

Mark McGwire: .263/.394/.588, .982 OPS, 583 HR, 1626 Hits (1)

Will Clark: .303/.384/.497, .881 OPS, 284 HR, 2176 Hits (5)
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Rafael Palmeiro: .298/.372/.517, .889 OPS, 551 HR, 2922 Hits (3)

According the the OPS ranking, Palmeiro is the third best first basemen of his era.

Now the question is, "Should his ranking in his era effect his bid to the Hall of Fame?" My answer is no.

Palmeiro still put up the numbers, and still hit 551 HR; both of which have nothing to do with Jeff Bagwell, and Mark McGwire (the two 1B ranked higher than Palmeiro).

A player with Palmeiro's career numbers shouldn't be criticized because there happened to be two first basemen playing at the same time as him, who were better.

Now I could understand the argument of not putting Palmeiro into the Hall of Fame because of him not being the best first basemen in his era IF he weren't better than about half of the current first basemen already in the Hall of Fame, but he IS. (see last article "Rafael Palmeiro in Hall of Fame? Of course.")

So again, it is clear that Palmeiro should be inducted into the Hall of Fame. And, of course, so should Jeff Bagwell and Mark McGwire, who were even better than Palmeiro.

Sidenote: I decided not to use Frank Thomas in the comparison because he WILL enter the Hall of Fame as a DH. If I did use Thomas, who did play some first base, his numbers looked like so:

Thomas (through 2004): .308/.429/.567, .996 OPS, 436 HR, 2113 Hits (1)

Thomas would have been the best player of them all.

Thank you for reading.

Frank Bundy III

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions, please do not hesitate to email me at frnkbndy@yahoo.com.