Ron Santo played third base for 15 seasons. He was a 9-time All-Star, 5-time Gold Glove winner, never played for any team outside of Chicago (Cubs 1960-1973, White Sox 1974), and recently celebrated 50 years as a member of the Cubs organization.

Santo did not make the HOF during the normal ballot process. He reached a high of 43.1% in 1998, his last year of eligibility. He also has not been elected by the Veterans Committee in 4 times on the ballot.

Let's take a look at Santo's credentials and have a poll.

For Ron Santo in the Hall of Fame:

• Career OPS+ of 125, which is 9th-best among third basemen (minimum 1200 career games)
• Other top-10 rankings among third basemen include homers (9th) and RBI (9th)
• His career WAR of 66.4 is 75th among position players and 7th among third basemen.
• Among position players from 1964 to 1967, Santo had the 2nd-best WAR in MLB:

  Rk	Player	WAR/pos
  1	Willie Mays	34.2
  2	Ron Santo	34.0
  3	Hank Aaron	29.4
  4	Dick Allen	28.7
  5	Roberto Clemente	28.4
  6	Frank Robinson	26.4
  7	Brooks Robinson	24.5
  8	Carl Yastrzemski	24.1
  9	Jim Fregosi	22.8
  10	Tony Oliva	22.5

  Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
  Generated 8/23/2010.

  Santo missed beating Mays by a pinch and was well ahead of many other superstars.

• Over that same period (1964-1967) Santo was 3rd in OBP, 6th in SLG, and 5th in OPS, as well as 6th in homers and 4th in RBI.
• He got MVP votes in 7 different seasons and accumulated 147 in black ink.

Against Ron Santo in the Hall of Fame

• The biggest mark against Santo is that he didn't make it to the HOF (at least not yet) despite appearing on one ballot or the other 19 different times. He was also among the players given a reprieve in 1985, brought back to the ballot after falling off in 1980 while receiving less than 5% of the vote.
• The next-biggest mark against Santo is that he was very good but not among the best of all-time. As the arguments in his favor above show, he was a top-10 third baseman but towards the bottom of that group and even during his excellent peak period he wasn't the best player in baseball. He led the league in OBP twice, walks 4 times, and triples once, but that's it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 at 7:30 am and is filed under Hall of Fame, Polls. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.