Disclaimer: before I get destroyed as I’m a Cards fan and thus, I surely must be biased. I’d feel the same if McGwire had been anywhere else at the time. He was a key player in the home run race that ‘brought baseball back’ and that’s my basis for it.

I don’t care that guys did steroids. Players I like used them. Players I didn’t like did too. But throughout this whole conversation, amongst accusations, McGriff is discussed and someone who is pure and clean, despite acknowledgement from many that “everybody (or many, anyway) did them.”

McGwire v. Deer:
353 more home runs, 814 more RBIs, 70 points higher OBP, 146 higher slugging, 53 higher OPS+, 50 more WAR

McGwire v. Kingman:
141 more home runs, 204 more RBIs, 94 higher OBP, 110 higher slugging, 47 higher OPS+, 45 more WAR

McGwire v. Fielder:
264 more home runs, 406 more RBIs, 49 more OBP, 106 higher slugging, 44 more OPS+, 48 more WAR

Going by WAR, the average difference between Mark McGwire and any of the players you mentioned is a Bernie Williams.

Repeat: Cecil Fielder + Bernie Williams career values = Mark McGwire.

I never would’ve thought I’d be saying this yesterday, but McGwire belongs in the hall. It’s not hard to see why when you actually sit down and look at the facts.

Shoeless Joe belongs in the Hall without question. Pete Rose I believe should go. In good conscience he can’t be left out while other “cheaters”/ i.e. roid/PED users are allowed in.

Why though? What does one have to do with the other (steroids vs gambling)? The only comparison is the baseball forbid both, and it’s questionable how truthful that is regarding the former. What’s not in question is that gambling has been expressly forbidden for the longest time, Rose knew about it, disregarded it, lied for years and then only came clean after he wrote a book about what he did.

As I mentioned before, give him four full (for him) season’s worth of homerless ABs, and he’s still one of the fastest ever to 500 HR. I don’t even have to ask if it’s that discrepant. It’s not even close to that. Go ahead and take in to account that not everyone was cheating so the discrepancy is low. Go ahead and triple it and project that out. I’d bet McGwire’s still one of the 3 fastest to 500 HRs.

Shoeless Joe belongs in the Hall without question. Pete Rose I believe should go. In good conscience he can’t be left out while other “cheaters”/ i.e. roid/PED users are allowed in. And as Craig indicites in his post and I’ve said repeatedly in comments above Re: McGwire, those situations are so muddled with shades of grey that there’s no way to keep them out.

Take their actions into consideration, but don’t make them an automatic DQ for them. If you want to leave Pete Rose the gambling man out of the hall, that’s fine, just put a * next to his plaque if you must. But Pete Rose the player belongs for what he did on the field. Without question.

However a HR ratio the differs by such an absurd margin cannot be solely attributed to his steroid use during an era others were proven to be doing the same. He was good, very good. HR, BB, OBP and everything else included. Attributing his BB rate solely to his HR total and steroid use is neglecting the fact that he was a fearsome hitter even with steroids out of the picture. He only had 155 IBBs in his career. Discounting the rest takes away from his patience as a hitter, which is rare in power hitters these days (See: Howard, Ryan).

But let’s not let facts and stats get in the way of a good debate or anything.

He reached 500 HRs in over 2000 ABs fewer than anyone else (yes, “anyone” also includes those who used steroids, though you don’t seem willing to accept that). It’s a ratio that significant that forced teams to walk him. Yes, that clearly had to have been impacted by roids, but by how many ABs really?

He only had 5 real seasons with outlier HR totals (over 45). He averaged 535 ABs per season in his career. So let’s just for a moment assume he’s the only member of the 500 HR club that gained any sort of performance enhancing advantage, which is already a huge stretch. Even if we tack on 4 SEASONS worth of homer-less ABs for him, he’s STILL one of the fastest ever to 500 HRs on a per AB basis. How much more evidence do you need that roids aren’t nearly the factor you’re making them out to be?

That’s all I needed to read.

I took the overall WAR from Baseball Reference for all players, not position players – and 4th was his highest finish in that category.

As previously mentioned, I agree he was a great player, and elite for a 5 year stretch. BUT…..he was not even the best player in the NL at any point, let alone all of MLB.

Regardless, it’s splitting hairs. I hope he ends up in Cooperstown someday.

I’m saying he wouldn’t have been so accomplished if he hadn’t used steroids. Lower HR totals, lower OBP, lower SLG, lower OPS. That’s all. I’m not saying he sucked. I’m not saying he would have been a career minor leaguer. I cited other factors (balls, park dimensions). I’m not defining his entire career by steroids. Likewise, you can’t proclaim it a nonfactor. That’s all.

1983 NL 5.5 (5th)
1984 NL 5.8 (5th)
1985 NL 6.5 (4th)
1986 NL 5.7 (3rd)
1987 NL 6.1 (6th)

You’re right that he wasn’t the “best” player in his league, but he wasn’t very far off. And his highest finish was 3rd, not 4th,

Also, MVP votes are nearly worthless as evidence of anything. Particularly when evaluating a player whose skills, as noted by Craig, are the sort that tend to be undervalued/overlooked.

Rose broke the one sacred rule in baseball, lied about it for years until he could make a profit on coming clean. Why people champion his cause is so far beyond me.

What? Dude, he took steroids. He walked a lot because people didn’t want to pitch to him because he hit the ball far..because he took steroids. Had he not taken steroids, he would not have hit the ball as far, therefor would not walk as much. Would you pitch to a guy without power who strikes out at his clip? Yes. You would. The statistics are not independent of each other.

Except the entire basis of your claim is that because he took steroids, he hit the ball far, so people walked him. Then how do you explain having a sub-400 SLG%? He hit 22 HR and 22 2B in ’91 and was IBB 3x. Derek Jeter beat those numbers twice in his career and almost a 3rd time. No one accuses him of steroids.

So what’s more likely, that he took steroids late in career even after he established himself as a guy with a great eye who could pulverize the ball if he connected, and put up six straight years of almost a .650+ SLG%, or a guy who took steroids his whole career and had wildly different numbers until they stabilized in ’95?