Our friend John Erardi at the Enquirer analyzes Barry Larkin’s chances for HOF induction in 2011:
Voting analyst Bill Deane expects Barry Larkin to fall short of the Baseball Hall of Fame this year.
A minimum of 75 percent of the vote is required for election
Deane projects that Larkin will get a modest bump to 53 percent and continue to track strongly for eventual Hall of Fame induction.
The Baseball Hall of Fame vote will be announced Wednesday.
I hope he’s wrong, but fear that he’s correct. The most interesting thing to me in the article are some of the stats:
Larkin’s career batting average of .295 was 39 points (15 percent) better than the average shortstop’s (.256).
Larkin was also the only shortstop to steal 50 bases in any season in the ’90s, and was safe 83.1 percent of the time, the fifth-best stolen base success rate among those in the 200 stolen base club.
Larkin created 488 more runs during his career than the average shortstop. That ranks fourth all-time behind only Honus Wagner, Arky Vaughan and Derek Jeter, who just passed Larkin in 2009.
“Among shortstops who started their careers since the end of World War II, just seven other men even got halfway to 488,” Stark wrote.
Larkin’s career on-base percentage of .371 was 54 points (17 percent) better than the average shortstop’s .317.
Larkin’s career slugging percentage of .444 was 83 points (23 percent) better than the average shortstop’s .361.
Larkin’s OPS (on-base plus slugging ) of .815 was 137 points (20 percent) better than the average shortstop’s (.678). The only two shortstops in the past 35 years who had an OPS that much better than the rest of their generation, wrote Stark/Gleeman, were Alex Rodriguez (31 percent) and Nomar Garciaparra (25 percent). And “both of them moved to other positions before end-of-career declines shrunk those gaps,” wrote Stark.
Larkin’s OPS is higher than all but five shortstops in the modern era who logged more than 5,000 at-bats at that position. Among the other shortstops who Larkin exceeds in OPS are Cal Ripken, Robin Yount, Miguel Tejada and Ozzie Smith.
Read the article, it’s worth your time. Do you think Barry will be voted in this season?