I am surprised that Ken Boyer is not in the hall of fame. In fact, for a long time, I thought he was in the hall of fame. He was even around after his career which is a help. He spent 11 of his 15 years with the Cardinals and all of his good ones with the Cardinals. He had 8 all star like seasons with them in 9 years. In each of those seasons he was mentioned in the MVP voting actually winning one. He also won five gold gloves. He isn’t hurt by his sabermetric stats as he has well over 60 WAR.
His career was short. It was ironic that he helped lead the Cardinals to the World Series title in 1964, was named MVP and was on the top of the world, then he never had another good season. From age 35 on he was a mediocre ballplayer. His career stats while solid don’t look great. His rates went down in his last 5 years. He didn’t really build on those first 10 years with the Cardinals and that hurt him. However, he was a great player in his prime and wouldn’t mind seeing him elected to the hall of fame.
Now many of you are wondering why I have Boyer ranked 15th and 16th in my title. The ranking of 16th is my new one. I have up dated my ratings for four positions, catcher, first base, second base and third base. I think I will discuss my player with both ratings as I don’t know if one is better than the other. I just made different assumptions in some areas when calculating the formula. Most players didn’t move too much. Some current players moved up because I did the calculations through the 2021 season now. As I am working on this project my articles will concentrate on the Negro Leagues for now.
