Bobby Abreu (16), Sammy Sosa (21), Larry Walker (23) and Vladimir Guerrero (24) had about the same totals in my formula. However, I have Abreu over my hall of fame limit of 750 and the other three below it. The main difference is I didn’t give Abreu a steroids penalty and I did give the other three a penalty.
Sosa is easy. He was one of the players called before Congress and there was plenty of suspicion about him as he hasn’t been elected. The been elected by the writers so they must not have used steroids, right? Well that is a darn good question.
Let’s take Larry Walker. Some say Coors Field was his steroid. However, my formula does take into account ball park effects to various degrees, depending on how each of the formulas consider them. So, I didn’t penalize him for Coors Field. Walker did have his 3 greatest homerun seasons and his four greatest seasons according to WAR in his 30s. However, his best seasons homerun seasons came after he moved to Coors Field. Walker said he played the game clean, but so did Frank Thomas who I penalized. Walker also was hurt a lot and some people take steroids not to get hurt, so he might be innocent. However, since I was tough on Frank Thomas, I felt I had to be tough on Larry Walker. However, I have no problems with Walker being elected to the Hall of Fame as he is still over 700 points.
Now on to Vladimir Guerrero. Looking at his record and the writeups I made a mistake. I’m taking away Guerrero’s penalty for steroids and moving him up in the rankings. I moved him up to 18th in right field and 153rd overall. He moved up from 204th. Now my Hall of Fame has 181 players (who had at least 750 points) as I originally had, plus the 19 I selected before or 200 total. I lowered Kevin Brown as I read, he was highly suspected of steroids and did further research and did find out he probably took steroids. He went from 36th place as a pitcher to 52nd place.
My original goal was to have 200 players, as it is 1 percent of the total of MLB players at the time. Now MLB includes the Negro Leagues. That adds about 2,400 players, which means 24 more players. However, that means 24 should come from the Negro Leagues.
Abreu looks like he had a typical career. He was an above average fielder in his 20s and a below average fielder in his 30s. He had 5 or 6 WAR every year from age 24 to 30 or 7 years. He never had 4 WAR after that. However, did the power surge he had from age 26 to 28 come from being in his prime or because he used steroids. As you can see it is easy to question players in that era. However, since he had his good years when he was younger and wasn’t a big power hitter I don’t think he was a steroid user and he belongs in my Hall of Fame.
