Jorge Posada and the 10-player limit

Jorge Posada didn't draw the magical 5 percent of the vote from the writers, so he's off the Hall of Fame ballot for future elections.

This is unfortunate. Posada is, in truth, a highly qualified candidate. But he's hardly the only such to be one-and-done with the writers. So too were Kenny Lofton and Jim Edmonds; Bernie Williams got only two turns on the writer's ballot. And that's just three center fielders.

There are a couple of issues involved here:

• The oversupply of highly qualified candidates on the ballot and
• The 10-player limit for the writers.

Not every voter fills out the 10 slots, but far more do now than were even five years ago, in part because five years ago the writers weren't electing anybody, and there was beginning to be a sense that some other means of selecting inductees would be needed. More writers voting for 10, or even eight, candidates instead of two or three means more opportunity for players to get elected -- or even to stay on the ballot.

Ten slots for a ballot with 34 names (as was the case this year) sounds ample, but a goodly number of writers said they saw 17, or 18, players worthy of strong consideration for those slots. Posada may have been No. 15 on somebody's list, and thus left off, but that doesn't mean they thought him unworthy of a vote -- just less worthy than 10 others.

Abolishing, or at least raising, the limit has been proposed repeatedly and gone nowhere. I suppose the downside to easing the restriction is encouraging frivolous votes, like the one vote Tim Wakefield got this year. But I would be willing to bet the frivolous votes (and there are a handful every year) come from voters who (a) don't fill all 10 slots anyway and (b) will stop casting them when the votes are made public, as will be the case beginning next year.

And the benefit of making it easier for the likes of Posada and Edmonds to stick on the ballot a few more years seems to outweigh the drawback.

Hall of Fame thoughts: catchers (Jorge Posada)

The great Joe Posnanski recently pointed out, in writing about the presence of Jorge Posada for the first time on the writers' ballot, something I was vaguely aware of but had not really put together in my brain:

Six catchers -- only six -- whose careers began after World War II have been elected to the Hall of Fame by the writers. They are, more or less chronologically, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, Gary Carter and Mike Piazza. Only one of those six (Bench) went in on the first ballot.

The writers have been stricter on catchers, Pos postulates, than on other players of other positions. I think he's right. I think the writers have, for generations, applied the offensive standards they use for outfielders in weighing the candidacies of catchers, while still demanding the higher level of defense from catchers that they do for middle infielders.

Heck, Ted Simmons was a better hitter in his prime years than Jim Rice or Tony Perez. But Simba caught, while Rice pretended to be a left fielder and Perez butchered third base before moving to first, and the position beat the brilliance out of Simmons. He was essentially done -- as is the case with almost all outstanding hitting catchers -- by age 30.

Catchers don't rack up the numbers that outfielders and first basemen do. They can't. It's not physically possible.

Posada played 17 years with the Yankees, but two of them at the start were cuppa coffee and another seven were two-thirds time at best. That cuts him down to nine seasons as the clear primary catcher. He was the best hitting catcher in the league for a few years, until Joe Mauer arrived, and then he was the second best hitting catcher in the league for a few years. He was never a stellar defensive backstop, but his teams sure as hell won a lot anyway. His highest finish in the MVP voting was 2003 (third behind Alex Rodriguez and Carlos Delgado); I remember thinking at the time that I would have voted for Posada. 

Had I a Hall of Fame vote, Posada would get one. Simmons would have too, easily, and Bill Freehan. Posnanski says Posada falls outside the established parameters for Cooperstown catchers, that he's closer to Simmons than to Piazza, and I agree on that. If Simmons doesn't belong, Posada doesn't either. But I think those standards are overly strict.

Jorge Posada vs. Ted Simmons

Jorge Posada hit 275
career home runs.

The word during the weekend was that Jorge Posada has decided to retire rather that try to extend his career with some team other than the New York Yankees.

Which raises the immediate question with a (minimum) five-year wait for an answer: Should he go into the Hall of Fame?

My immediate answer is yes. He had a 17-year career as a key component of a great team. I think the 1996-2001 Yankees have be best claim of any squad as the greatest dynasty in baseball history. It deserves more plaques in the Hall that "just" Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.

And then I thought of Ted Simmons.

Simba and Posada strike me as similar players. They weren't great defensive catchers, but they were good enough to stick behind the plate, and at the dish they were definite pluses for their lineups. Both were switch hitters; neither was reckoned the best catcher in his era, but Simmons was a contemporary of Johnny Bench, and Posada's career overlapped with Ivan Rodriguez and Joe Mauer.

Ted Simmons hit 248
career home runs.

Simmons made nine all-star teams in his 21-year career and finished in the top 10 of MVP voting three times; Posada made five all-star teams and had two top-10 MVP years. Posada's career slash stats look better than Simmons', but the 1970s (Simmons' era) was a much tougher time for hitters.

Posada's career OPS+ --on-base plus slugging, adjusted for park effects and compared to his league -- is 121, meaning that he was 21 percent above league average. Simmons' OPS+ is 117.

Simmons appeared on just one Hall of Fame ballot, in 1994, and got just 3.7 percent of the vote. That's not necessarily the biggest travesty of recent balloting, but it's up there.

Posada will be a worthy inductee when his time comes. I don't know that he's all that much more worthy than Simmons.

Don Kelly and Jorge Posada

At this moment, Thursday's game was scoreless. When
Don Kelly finished his swing, the Tigers had the lead,
and they never gave it back.

Don Kelly first came to my attention in 2009 as the conduit for a piece of Metrodome magic — a misplayed fly ball that ignited a five-run rally that gave the Twins a win over Justin Verlander and the Detroit Tigers.

That season ended with the Twins beating the Tigers in the memorable Game 163, so that was no small failure.

But Jim Leyland, Dave Dombrowski and Company kept Kelly around. He's a Swiss Army Knife of a player — plays defense in the corner outfield positions (and with regulars Delmon Young and Magglio Ordonez  around, Leyland has plenty of use for defensive substitutes), is an infield option, provides a left-handed bat -- heck, he even pitched for one out and caught six innings this season.

And on Thursday night, for Game 5 of the ALDS, Leyland wrote him into the starting lineup in Yankee Stadium, hitting second — and Don Kelly hit a first-inning home run. He made plays at third base, he made plays in right field.

In September 2009, I didn't think Kelly was long for the majors. Today, there's a generation of Tigers fans unlikely to forget him.

---

Jorge Posada hit .429/.579/.571
in the ALDS. If those are his final
games, he went out well.

An image from the TBS broadcast that will linger for a while: As soon as Alex Rodriguez struck out to end the Yankees season, the entire dugout turned away from the field and headed back to the clubhouse.

Everybody except Jorge Posada, who continued to stare out at the Tigers celebration.

This is probably it for Posada. He's 40 years old now -- a well-used 40. His contract is expired. His play has diminished to the point where he had become a platoon DH. The Yankees have no real use for him anymore, and it was widely believed early in the season that the higher-ups were hoping to prod him into retirement.

He swallowed his considerable pride (the bitterness of that menu being considerably sweetened by the $13 million or so the Yankees paid him) and stuck it out.

I don't know that he's all that interested in playing for somebody else, especially for the kind of money a platoon DH should get (roughly a tenth of what he made this year). If he does, it will be odd to see him in a different uniform.

His has been a unique and high-level career. The Yankees have had a string of stellar catchers over the generations. By my reckoning, he's the third-greatest catcher they've had, and he's worthy of the Hall of Fame.

The Catcher Project: Jorge Posada

Born: 8-17-71

Career: 1995-present

Hall of Fame: Not eligible

Career highlights: Regular or quasi-regular catcher for four World Series winners, two other pennant winners; has played almost a season's worth of postseason games. Finished third in MVP voting in 2003, sixth in 2007. Five 90-plus RBI seasons. Five All-Star teams.

Career slash line: .277/.379/.480

Find his stats here

Games caught after age 30 season: 702 and counting. Age is last season as regular: 37 and counting. Win shares after age 30 season: 140 and counting. Win shares since age 33 season: 72 and counting.

Jorge Posada was not blessed with top-grade defensive skills behind the plate, but he gets the job done — and he has always been able to hit. This will be his age 38 season, and as spring training opened last week his manager (and former co-catcher) Joe Girardi said he was looking for 115 games or so behind the dish for Posada: "He's caught a lot of ballgames in his life. We want to make sure that he's strong and healthy all year long."

Most of those games came after age 30. Posada reached the majors to stay in 1997 and spent three seasons essentially splitting the job with Girardi, who was a defense-first catcher. Posada took over the job fulltime in 2000 and had a streak of eight straight seasons of 130-plus games-caught seasons.

He had significant injury problems in 2008 and was limited to 100 games caught last season, so 115 this year might be pushing it. Still, he has been one catcher who has performed well deep into his 30s — and as with Fisk, the fact that he wasn't pushed hard in his 20s may well have something to do with that.

Pitching inside works both ways

The Yankees and Blue Jays had an on-field skirmish Tuesday night. The condensed version, if you don't want to bother with the Daily News' link above:

Toronto took an early lead; the Yankees hit a couple of Blue Jays hitters; Toronto relief pitcher Jesse Carlson threw a pitch behind Jorge Posada; Posada, after scoring a run, threw a forearm at Carlson; and there they go.

A few points here, some of them specific to the incident, some in general:

1) Plate umpire Jim Joyce blames Posada for the brawl, calling the forearm a cheap shot.

2) The Yankees pitching staff leads the majors in HBP, 7.6 percent more than the runner up Phillies. No. 6 in HBP is closer to No. 2 than No. 2 is to No. 1.

Put another way: No team with A.J. Burnett (9 HBP), Joba Chamberlain (12) and CC Sabathia (7, including the one that ended Carlos Pena's season) on its roster has any right to complain about opposing teams buzzing its hitters.

3) "They started it" may sound childish, but it's still true on an emotional level.

4) The Yankees — and the Red Sox and Cardinals, for that matter — tend to react to an opposing team playing well by trying to physically intimidate them. The Rays last season had a number of incidents with both the Yanks and BoSox. At their core, the Yankees, Red Sox and Cards are bullies.

5) There are a LOT more HBP than there used to be. In 1976 (picking a year at random) the average AL team was hit 31 times, the average NL team just 26. The low in the majors this year is 33.

Why is that? A few factors:

1) Hitters have learned that — contrary to what was thought 30 years ago — that they can hit the opposite way for power. They crowd the plate and even dive over the plate to do that. This makes it more difficult to get out of the way.

2) The tendency of some umpires to follow the catcher outside almost encourages hitters to crowd the plate and dive. If the ump is calling strikes on pitches three or four inches off the plate, they have to.

3) Hitters wear more protective padding than they once did. Everybody has ear flaps now (it's mandatory). There are elbow pads, hand pads, forearm guards. Again, that encourages them to set up closer to the plate.

4) Baseball's powers want umpires to be assertive about warning against brushbacks/purpose pitches. This, I think, has the opposite effect of making "deep inside" pitches more of a surprise.