Hall of Fame thoughts: Derek Jeter and Larry Walker

Derek Jeter

Does it really matter who the one person is who didn't vote for Derek Jeter in this year's Hall of Fame balloting?

I am not among the righteously indignant who needs to know the answer to the question. I also don't care why that person didn't vote for Jeter. All that really matters is the former New York Yankees shortstop got 99.7 percent of the vote, easily clearing the 75 percent threshold for election, and there's certainly no shame in that.

Maybe I'm not bothered by this because I was never a huge Jeter fan. Don't get me wrong: The guy is the best offensive shortstop I've seen in my lifetime, bar none. Through the years, I simply got tired of ESPN analysts insisting that Jeter was a great defensive player, when he was merely adequate at his position.

Again, nothing wrong with being adequate. But it's not unfair or wrong to say Jeter didn't stand out for his defense.

What set him above the crowd was his bat. In the past century, Jeter's 96.3 offensive WAR is the best among shortstops by a wide margin -- Robin Yount's 83.1 is second.

Jeter had eight 200-hit seasons. No other shortstop in my lifetime has had more than four. Jeter had nine seasons of 120 OPS-plus or better. He batted .300 or better 12 times. No other shortstop in my lifetime has batted .300 more than six times. (There are three that have done it six times: Nomar Garciaparra, Alan Trammell and Alex Rodriguez.)

Jeter's career OPS-plus is 115. That's even better than Cal Ripken Jr. (112), who is the second-best offensive shortstop I've seen in my lifetime.

So, yeah, Jeter was an easy Hall pick because he was just tremendous, historically great, with a bat in his hands. Just don't try to tell me how allegedly awesome he was with the glove. I won't buy it.

Joining Jeter in the Hall is Larry Walker, the former Montreal Expos, Colorado Rockies and St. Louis Cardinals outfielder. This was Walker's 10th and final time on the ballot, and here's the thing that's so curious about his election: Only four years ago, he received just 15.5 percent of the vote.

This week, he cleared the 75 percent threshold by six votes. That's a slim margin, but it counts. It's just kind of strange how people didn't think Walker was a Hall of Fame four years ago, but now they do. He's still the same man; his career accomplishments have not changed.

Walker is a three-time batting champion who finished his career with a .313/.400/.565 slash line. He was the National League MVP with the Rockies in 1997, when he hit .366 with a league-best 49 homers and 130 RBIs. He also won the Gold Glove in right field that year, one of seven times in his career he earned that honor.

The main knock on Walker? He played a lot of his career at the offensive paradise known as Coors Field in Denver. No doubt that career .965 OPS benefited from the thin mountain air, but the thing is, Walker's .865 career OPS on the road is still higher than several notable Hall of Famers, including Ken Griffey Jr. (.860), Dave Winfield (.841), Eddie Murray (.838), Rickey Henderson (.836) and Tony Gwynn (.835), among others.

Would I have voted for Walker? Ehh, probably. I think playing in Montreal and Colorado for most of his career hurt his profile. If he had played in an East Coast media market, chances are he wouldn't have been waiting 10 years to get into the Hall.

Trivia time at the National Baseball Hall of Fame

So, I might have mentioned in a previous post that I played a trivia game at the Hall of Fame.

Here's how it worked: There was an auditorium of people at the Hall in Cooperstown, N.Y. -- the room was maybe 40 percent full -- and the first person to answer a trivia question was invited down "into the hot seat" to play the game.

The first question thrown out to the audience was, "Who was the Orioles starting pitcher the day Cal Ripken Jr. broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive games streak?" I correctly answered "Mike Mussina," and into the hot seat I went.

I was asked to pick a partner, and my girlfriend, Jen, did not want to play. So I asked for a volunteer, and fortunately, a Dodgers fan who really knew his stuff said he would join me.

The game consisted of nine "innings," each featuring one multiple choice question. As the innings progress, the question get increasingly difficult.

The question you see in the picture is the "first inning," and as you can see, that one was a layup. We answered easily. It obviously got more difficult. The toughest question I answered was, "Name the only player in baseball history to go 7 for 7 in a nine-inning game."

The answer is Rennie Stennett, but it was tricky, because the other choices were great players, such as Wade Boggs. You may think a player such as Boggs would have had seven hits in a game at one point, but he did not. Stennett did Sept. 16, 1975, against the Cubs, despite his modest .274 career batting average and .665 career OPS.

At any rate, this Dodgers fan and I advanced to the eighth inning before we got tripped up. We did not know who holds the record for most doubles in a single season. We thought it was Joe Medwick. It was Earl Webb, who had 67 doubles in 1931.

It's too bad, because we would have won had we gotten that question right. The "ninth inning" question was about the 1959 World Series, which was White Sox vs. Dodgers. Both the White Sox fan (me) and the Dodgers fan (my playing partner) knew that Larry Sherry had won two games and saved two games for Los Angeles in that six-game series.

I collected my parting gift, a program from the 2019 Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

There were two other people who got to play after me. A father-and-son combination, both of whom were Mets fans, made it through all nine innings and won the big prize -- a bat autographed by the 2019 Hall class. Had I had the same group of questions, I would have won -- I knew all nine that they correctly answered.

The third pairing was a couple of Yankees fans, and they lost in the fifth inning because they did not know that John Wathan owns the single-season record for stolen bases by a catcher.

At least they did a lot worse than me.