Andruw Jones' career has hit a wall. In 2007 he hit .222 with a .311 on-base percentage. In the early going this season he is hitting .167 with a .274 on-base percentage.
Jones was recently regarded as a likely Hall of Famer. All he had to do was keep up decent production numbers into his mid 30s and keep playing solid defense in centerfield. His career path matches up favorably to several Hall of Fame hitters. Frank Robinson is the most similar hitter to Jones through age 30. Eddie Matthews, Johnny Bench, Al Kaline and Duke Snider are all in Andruw's top 10 most similar through 30.
Through 2006 Jones had been above average offensively, posting an OPS above 93 every full season in the big leagues and failing to achieve 100 only twice. Also, of course, conventional wisdom is that Jones has been one of if not the best defensive outfielder of all time — something the statistics support.
In light of Andruw's recent performance with the bat and the fact that the stats seems to show his defense isn't quite as great as it once was, what do we make of his Hall of Fame chances?
If we ignore career path and just look at career similarity scores, Jones doesn't look all that impressive with the bat, at least when we're talking Hall of Fame. His closest match is Rocky Colavito. Number two is Ron Gant. Number three is Reggie Sanders. A solid group, but nothing special.
However, Andruw probably was never going to make the Hall of Fame on the merits of his hitting alone. As we all know, Andruw is regarded as an amazing fielder, or at least was in his prime. Jones has won a Gold Glove every season since 1998. His career range factor per game is 0.78 points above the league average for players at his position. His range factor per nine innings is 0.57 points above the league average.
Now the question becomes did Andruw perform at a high level for a long enough period? Andruw was a solid hitter for 10 seasons. If we judge by range factor, his defense didn't start to drop off from outstanding to solid until around 2004-2005. That's seven or eight seasons as an elite fielder, and of course he spent most of that time as a centerfielder.
I suspect when Andruw retires most voters will naturally look at players like Bill Mazeroski and Ozzie Smith when evaluating Andruw's worthiness. Smith played for 19 seasons and was never close to Andruw with the bat. Mazeroski may have been worse than Smith with the bat and played 17 seasons.
Mazeroski is probably the most similar to Jones if we are looking at overall value. Mazeroski is regarded as the best defensive second baseman of all time and played 100 games in a season in 13 seasons. Because of his offensive downturn, it's looking more and more possible that Jones may not contribute to his teams beyond a decade or so.
But does Mazeroski have an edge on Jones defensively, and is that edge enough to offset Jones' offensive contributions? I don't think so. If a player is a Ron Gant/Reggie Sanders type hitter for ten years and a Bill Mazeroski/Ozzie Smith type fielder for seven or eight seasons, I would consider that player a Hall of Famer.
Of course, the voters love milestones and Jones already has 368 homers, over 1,000 RBI and runs scored and close to 1,700 hits. Even if he's a subpar hitter for the next couple seasons, he'll likely add to those numbers. Plus the voters will remember his glove and his Gold Gloves. He likely won't get in on the first ballot but my guess is he'll eventually get in with relative ease.
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/8...-case-for-Hall
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Originally Posted by HoustonGM
