As one of the other posters mentioned, I have also named my dog after Murphy. When I told my wife why I picked the name, she was all for it. Unfortunately, she wasn’t as enthusiastic about Horner. There’s a dog up the street from me named Murphy and I’d bet anything he was named after Murphy too. (As an aside, I wonder how common that phenomenon is. Are there dogs in Minnesota named Blyleven?)

To give you some idea how popular Murphy was when I was a kid, part of the admissions process for my high school was to write an essay on your hero. My all-time heroes are my dad, my grandfather and Dale Murphy. Of course, Murphy had a little more star power than my father and grandfather so I wrote about him. Later I found out from one of the English teachers that about half my class had picked Murphy as the subject of their essay.

People often point out how quickly Murphy’s career declined, but what they fail to mention is that he carried some terrible teams while playing almost every day for an entire decade. That, coupled with being brought up as a catcher, led to the onset of chronic knee problems. And to literally add insult to injury, when the Braves traded him, it was to Philadelphia and Veteran’s stadium, which had one of the worst, if not the worst, playing surfaces in all of baseball.

I submit that if any of the following had occurred, if Murphy had a better supporting cast of players around him for most of his career, if he had played in one of the major media markets (the Braves were still in the NL West back then so almost half their games started after 10 EST), if he had the luxury of DH-ing the latter stages of his career, or if had been traded somewhere with a grass surface, then there would have been no question about Murphy’s candidacy for the Hall.

Finally, if Murf never makes it to the Hall, then they should just eliminate character, integrity and sportsmanship as voting criteria, because if they don’t help him, they won’t help anyone.

my vote this year (in approximate order of merit) would’ve been Henderson of course (29 times to cancel out 28 dimwits and give him a uninamous vote???), McGwire, Blyleven, Raines, Trammell.

Dale Murphy, a great role model, paragon of character and integrity? Certainly. But the Hall of Fame recognizes a deranged hardass like Ty Cobb instead… on the field, I think the five I picked outclass Murphy … and Dawson does too, though I would not put him past the 75% limit.

Those five.

“Baines has Rice beat in every important offensive category but batting average .298 to .289.”

Well, slugging percentage is kind of important, and Rice beat Baines by nearly 40 points. And steals are kind of important, and as slow Rice was, he still managed nearly twice as many steals (at a much better success rate) as Baines. Triples are important, and Rice had about 60% more of those than Baines. OPS+ is really important, and Rice’s 128 mark was better than Baines’ 120. And, of course, since Baines played about 750 more games than Rice, comparing just career totals is misleading. Per 162 games, Rice had more hits, doubles, triples, homers, RBI, runs and runs created than Baines, while drawing almost as many walks and posting a better batting average and slugging percentage.

“Neither had any defensive game.”

No, Baines had no defensive game, playing almost 60% of his career games as a DH and being a subpar defender in the others. Rice played 75% of his games in the field, and was a decent defensive player for much of his time. Overall, Rice wasn’t a great defender, but he was perfectly adequate until his mid-30s, while Baines was a defensive liability almost from the first day he walked onto a major league field.

“Baines is only 144 hits from 3,000? The difference between being in the Hall of Fame for Harold and 5.9% is 144 hits?!?!”

Well, that assumes that getting 3,000 hits should be an automatic ticket. So far it has been, but that string will break with Rafael Palmeiro and arguably should have broken with Lou Brock. Hanging around forever until you pass a magical milestone shouldn’t, in and of itself, be a ticket to Cooperstown, IMO.

“2,866 big league hits and you get treated by the writers with a 5.9%?”

Look at it this way…in light of the fact that some guys who were vastly superior ballplayers to Baines (Lou Whitaker, Bobby Grich, Will Clark, Ted Simmons, Jose Cruz, Darrell Evans, etc.) were all dumped from the ballot after just one year, Baines should consider himself lucky to still be hanging on through three elections.

Neither had any defensive game.

Baines is only 144 hits from 3,000? The difference between being in the Hall of Fame for Harold and 5.9% is 144 hits?!?!

2,866 big league hits and you get treated by the writers with a 5.9%?

[heavy sigh]

I really don’t want to go down the path of analyzing double plays, because that’s not really the point of Joe’s post. Suffice it to say that looking at DPs as a percentage of PAs without examining DP opportunities, is next to worthless. To illustrate, the year Rice set the record for grounding into 36 DPs he faced 202 DP opportunities. Do you know how many full seasons Dave Winfield would have had 36 or more double plays if he’d ever been presented with 202 opportunities to do so? Four. How about Cal Ripken? Try SEVEN. Speaking of Ripken, do you know how many DP’s he’d have hit into in 1985 if he’d faced the same number of DP opportunities as Rice did that year? Forty-one. Needless to say, citing gross double play totals without giving the context in which they were tallied is utterly misleading.

(All data from BaseballProspectus.com)