Mize was an amazing player. Not only did he lose years to the war, but he was kept in the minors too long, which was common at that time (check out Lefty Grove's stats; they were basically owned by the minor league clubs). He was the only guy to have over 50 HRs and less than 50 strike outs.
And I agree, the voters did take his military service into consideration, and if you parsed his missing years into his record, and and then add Votto's last years into his stats, the difference becomes huge. I know it's just numbers, but Votto's OPS and BA will probably drop below .900 and .300. It won't help, especially being from Cincy.
A lot of players who could have been in the Hall never got a chance to even be in the bigs, of course, mostly from the Negro Leagues.
"One problem with people who have no vices is that they're pretty sure to have some annoying virtues."
goreds2 (02-07-2020),Kingspoint (02-07-2020),M2 (02-07-2020)
Board Moderators may, at their discretion and judgment, delete and/or edit any messages that violate any of the following guidelines: 1. Explicit references to alleged illegal or unlawful acts. 2. Graphic sexual descriptions. 3. Racial or ethnic slurs. 4. Use of edgy language (including masked profanity). 5. Direct personal attacks, flames, fights, trolling, baiting, name-calling, general nuisance, excessive player criticism or anything along those lines. 6. Posting spam. 7. Each person may have only one user account. It is fine to be critical here - that's what this board is for. But let's not beat a subject or a player to death, please. |