Re: Joe Torre/Gary Carter HOF

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Attezzobal10) writes:

>Is one of the edges Carter has the fact that he caught for virtually his
>entire career, whereas Torre eventually made the transition to the
>corners? Just though I'd bring this up for a possible discussion. 

That's obviously _the_ critical factor.  A good hitting catcher is a lot
more valuable than an equally good hitting 3B, and in a completely
different class from an equally good hitting 1B.  You can get some idea of
this by looking at the most comprable players list on
baseball-reference.com.  Carter has 4 HOFers (Bench, Fisk, Berra, and
Hartnett) on his list of 10 most similar players, and they clearly include
several absolute, gold plated HOFers.  Torre has only 2 HOFers (Doerr and 
Lazzeri) on his top 10 most comprable list, and they are not among the 
elite in the HOF at their respective positions.

Also, FWIW, there's good reason to think that Carter was a better defender
_at his position_ than Torre was.  Carter won 3 gold gloves at catcher,
and might have won more; he was certainly very highly regarded as a
defender.  Torre, OTOH, was moved away from catcher at least in part
because he wasn't a great defender there, and nobody that I know of
accused him of being a good fielder at 3B or 1B.

That said, Torre's advantage as a hitter is pretty significant. 
Baseball-reference has him at a 129 OPS+ vs. 115 for Carter, which is a
large advantage.  I'm not sure if it's enough to make up for Carter's
defensive advantage, but it's certainly worth looking at.  I'd label Torre
as at least a borderline HOF candidate based just on his playing career. 
Toss in his managerial success with the Yankees, and I'd say that he
should get in on the first VC ballot where he shows up as a candidate. 

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