Should Baseball’s Hall of Fame Be Renamed the ‘Hall of the Very Good’?

Is the baseball Hall of Fame in danger of becoming the Hall of the Very Good? The latest sign that the hallowed ground at Cooperstown is in danger of veering to the serviceable from the sublime with the election of a third baseman, Scott Rolen, to its ranks. That induction has touched off a firestorm over the meaning of greatness even as the game’s salaries and revenues soar. No disrespect is meant to Mr. Rolen. He played third base for four teams over 17 seasons, excelling at a position that teams often struggle to staff with premiere talent. His defense garnered him eight Gold Gloves, fourth most of all time. He won a Rookie of the Year award, and a World Series championship. Fans will remember the lasers he fired to first base. Mr. Rolen’s offensive numbers tells a story of a player who slugged, but did not star. His .281 batting average and 316 home runs scream solid, not sublime. He never led his league in any statistical category, and never was a most valuable player. He was only intermittently durable. There are few third basemen in the Hall, but by any measure Mr. Rolen will not be at the top of the list.The Hall’s newest member does have a case. “Analytics,” or advanced metrics that spot value beyond traditional statistics, tilt in his direction. A measure called “defensive value” places him second all-time at his position. Another statistic, “Wins Above Replacement,” rates him as the seventh-best third baseman of the second half of the 20th century. It is not as if Mr. Rolen waltzed to Cooperstown. He tallied 76.3 percent of the ballots cast by baseball scribes, clearing the 75 percent threshold by just five votes in his fifth year of eligibility. Those writers have been choosy in recent years, electing just one player last year — David “Big Papi” Ortiz — and none the year before. When Mr. Rolen’s bronze bust is unveiled, it will mark far from the least deserving citizen of baseball’s Elysian Fields. William “Bill” Mazerowski hit the home run that won the 1960 World Series, but was otherwise just serviceable. Philip “Phil” Rizzutto was a beloved Yankee but not an epochal player. Joseph “Ducky” Medwick had a better nickname than career. If it was once true that Cooperstown was an old boys’ club where certain eras and teams were rewarded in an outsize fashion, the rise in the popularity and sophistication of analytics could spell a whole new class of favorites that come as a surprise to the fans in the bleachers. George Herman “Babe” Ruth will be worthy no matter the metric, but edge cases — like Mr. Rolen’s — could shift. Mr. Rolen joins the recently elected Fred “Crime Dog” McGriff as the 2023 Hall of Fame class. Mr. McGriff was another close call, a sweet swinger who accumulated impressive numbers but like Mr. Rolen never appeared to dominate the sport. For every Mariano Rivera — a clear cut immortal — there is a Mr. Rolen or a Mr. McGriff, playing a nearly impossible game just shy of greatness. The honor appears to have surprised Mr. Rolen most of all. He told the Washington Post that when he received the phone call from Cooperstown, he admitted that “there was actually never a point in my life where I thought I was going to be a Hall of Fame baseball player.”

Should Baseball’s Hall of Fame Be Renamed the ‘Hall of the Very Good’?

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