Ralph Kiner had 48.1 WAR, which comes out to 4.8 WAR per season in his 10-year career. That is one of the reasons he made my Hall of Fame. Also, Ted Williams named Kiner as one of the greatest hitters of all time. He had Kiner number 20 on his list of 20. Also, right now the fourth most similar to Kiner right now is Mike Trout, which is very impressive. So, he had all the markings of a hall of famer, but career length.
Branch Rickey didn’t like Kiner and was always trying to trade him. It was a strange relationship. However, Kiner had excellent hitting ability and hit great until his back started to give out. Also, Kiner’s clutch statistics were good, so there should have been no complaints there. I just don’t understand it.
Now that I have Kiner back in my hall of fame that makes 205 players in my Hall of Fame. I had 183 automatically qualified with 825 points. Let us go over the other 22 by position and why I selected him:
Catcher:
188. Jorge Posada (Number 16 Catcher) He was an automatic for the Hall of Fame in my first rating system. I’m glad he made it. There are 16 catchers ahead of him, and I honestly consider him the next best catcher and he belongs in the hall of fame.
244. Thurman Munson (Number 20 Catcher) He was known as a leader who did everything well. His career was at least somewhat shortened by his plane crash. Of course, I think he belongs in the real Hall of Fame.
First Base: None. I had selected David Ortez before. Ortez was helped by my putting some clutch ratings in and I gave him points for his clutch post season hitting.
Second Base:
199. Willie Randolph (number 17 Second baseman) He was an automatic for the Hall of Fame in my first rating system. As was Posada I was glad he made it.
239. Joe Gordon (number 20 second baseman) I always thought he was underrated. He helped really good teams be better. The man was a great fielder and could hit for power, despite playing in fields difficult to hit in. He had 10 extra base hits in 29 World Series games. He played in 6 World Series In a 11 year career and his team won 5 of them.
Third Base:
209: Edgar Martinez (number 15 Third Base) He went up a couple of spots with the changes. The best line drive power hitter I ever watched.
Shortstop:
299. Rabbit Maranville (number 26 Shortstop) There are so many stories about this man, it might have made him underrated. There are better shortstops not in my hall but certainly not more interesting ones.
Left Field:
184. Lou Brock (Number 18 left fielder). He was an automatic for the Hall of Fame in my first rating system. One of my favorites as a kid. I believe he is underrated by a lot of sabermetric analysts. He belongs.
197. Sherry Magee (Number 20 left fielder) He was an automatic for the Hall of Fame in my first rating system. I had my doubts about him. However, he played in the dead ball era, and he was a power hitter. He probably would have done better in the 1920s. He does have a fair amount of black ink. He is actually an above average hall of fame in that area, so he is a high borderline player.
231. Ralph Kiner (Number 22 left fielder) Who this article is about. Only thing is I don’t like three of my additional players being left fielders, but that is the way it fell.
Center Field:
255. Kirby Puckett (number 24 center fielder) He sure enjoyed the game and that made him popular. I know some of it was an act, but he bought so much joy for me overall and as a Twins fan he belongs in my hall of fame.
Right Field:
196. Rusty Staub (number 22 Right Field) He was an automatic for the Hall of Fame in my first rating system. Staub had a long solid career which gathered him a lot of points. He is easily a high borderline but is overrated by the system.
Pitchers – Dazzy Vance who did a lot better with the new system, was one of my 12 additional pitchers. He passed a lot of pitchers to qualify with just the points.
198. Billy Pierce (number 45 pitcher).
202. Ed Walsh (number 46 pitcher).
207. Rick Reuschel (number 47 pitcher). Notice the first three additional pitcher are also the next three behind the 44 who had 825 points. No further explanation was needed.
227. Red Ruffing (number 51 pitcher). He was the best pitcher on the greatest team of all time.
240. Don Newcome (number 55 pitcher) He gets a bonus for being a pioneer for black athletes but also his work with alcohol addiction after his career.
246. Three Finger Brown (number 56 pitcher) He might have been the pitcher who was most matched up against better teams in his career.
280. Dave Stieb (number 63 pitcher) one of the hardest luck pitchers of all times. He was arguably the best pitcher of the 1980s.
289. Dwight Gooden (Number 67 pitcher) In my opinion his 1985 season was the greatest season of all time. He went up quite a bit when just prime was included.
310. Orel Hershiser (Number 74 pitcher) What he did at the end of the 1988 season was amazing.
357. Jack Morris (number 86 pitcher) Was somewhat overrated, but game 7 of 1991 was the most important game in Minnesota Twins history and he had 10 shutout innings to win the game.
410. Hoss Radbourn (number 107 pitcher) He barely qualified to the gray area, but winning 60 games in one year to win the pennant is just to impressive to ignore.
