Dave Parker on HOF ballot

[getfoul]

The HOF has become a waste of time, sadly. Anyone with a functioning set of eyes and half a brain who watched MLB while Dave Parker, Harold Baines, and Ted Simmons played would tell you it's insane that the latter two are in while the first is not.

Dave Parker at one time was arguably the best all-around OF in baseball. You'd be hard pressed to come up with one or two guys from 1975-85 who were better at all facets of the game. Ted Simmons was a very good player who did it for a long time. Nobody ever thought of him as the best at his position.

I'm fed up with the HOF.

Like I mentioned before...the Small Hall is done. They might as well put in a lot more players and just let history sort out who was the top 1% and who was in the next percentage point.

Personally, I would make a list of the top 40 players by WAR to debut in each decade. Then have a panel of say, 200 voters...various backgrounds- writers, HOFers, Jaffe types, vote for the ten players that should be cut. Then the ten players from each list that have the most votes are eliminated from future consideration, and the other 30 are your HOF players from each decade...most are already in. Then the rest either have a local ceremony for induction or they bring in some to Cooperstown for the regular ceremony.

[RedsBaron]

Through 1979, the season in which he turned age 28 in June, Dave Parker appeared to be well on his way to the HOF. He was a great player up through that season, winning two batting titles and an MVP award. From 1975 through 1979 Parker's seasonal WAR scores were 6.3, 3.7, 7.4, 7.0 and 6.7, a total of 31.1 WAR and an average per season of 6.2.
However his career fell off a cliff. In his age 29 through age 33 seasons, 1980-84, Parker's seasonal WAR scores were 1.6, 0.1, 0.6, 0.2 and 1.0, for a total of only 3.5 WAR, a seasonal average of 0.7 WAR.
Was it injuries, weight gain, cocaine use that caused his collapse? I do not know, but I do know he collapsed.
Dave Parker finished his career with 40.1 WAR, 49th all time among major leaguers who primarily played right field.
I like Parker, I cheered for him when he was a Red (he did rebound greatly and improve in his second season with the Reds in 1985), his illness is terrible--but why should he be in the HOF while Dwight Evans [ 67.1 WAR], Reggie Smith [64.6 WAR], Bobby Bonds [57.9], and Jack Clark [53.1 WAR] are not? I'm not necessarily saying that Evans, Smith, Bonds and Clark should be in the HOF, but if they do not meet HOF standards why does Parker?