Ron Santo is in the HOF

[MarquisDeSade]

Thanks to the Veterans Committee:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/baseball/mlb/12/05/ron.santo.hall.of.fame.ap/index.html?sct=hp_t2_a4&eref=sihp

[Minty Fresh]

Meh.  I never watched him play but I heard he was good. 

As long as he doesn't get in as a broadcaster.

[zimm_da_kid]

The hall of fame is supposed to be for the elite of the elite of the elite.  Santo was an amazing player but I think the standards for the Hall are getting way too low.

[DPMOmaha]

The hall of fame is supposed to be for the elite of the elite of the elite.  Santo was an amazing player but I think the standards for the Hall are getting way too low.

Best 3rd baseman in the national league for a decade.  If that doesn't get you in, what does?  It's a shame it had to come to this.  He should have been in years ago and for him to be put in the hall posthumously is an insult to him, the game and the Cubs.  He should have been in, he knew it and it's embarrassing he's not alive to experience it.

[MarquisDeSade]

He should have been in, he knew it and it's embarrassing he's not alive to experience it.

QED.

Santo was an amazing player but I think the standards for the Hall are getting way too low.

You can't be for real.  They didn't let that azzclown McGwire in and they've stuck to their guns in keeping one of the greatest players ever out of the HOF (Pete Rose).  Who, specifically, can you point to that hasn't been worth of the HOF?

[blue911]

White Sox fans are rejoicing

[JCA-CrystalCity]

3d base is way under represented in the HOF.  Only 10 prior to Santo.  The fewest of any position.  He is not Schmidt, Brett, or Boggs offensively, but the superb glove, multiple all star appearances, and very good offense clearly support his case.  Part of his problem was that he was an OPS guy before the voters were aware of the importance of things other than batting average.  The .277 BA is not impressive, but a 15 years career OBP of .362 certainly is, was top 10 in HR every year from 1963 to 1969, and was top 10 in total bases for 5 consective years, too. BR-WAR loves him, too.  This was a well deserved selection.

[welch]

I saw Ron Santo, and he was good, but the Hall of Famers on that team were Ernie Banks and Billy Williams, who are already in the Hall. Williams is not so famous now, but you get a sense of his quality from Baseball Ref: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/willibi01.shtml

[tomterp]

3d base is way under represented in the HOF.  Only 10 prior to Santo.  The fewest of any position.  He is not Schmidt, Brett, or Boggs offensively, but the superb glove, multiple all star appearances, and very good offense clearly support his case.  Part of his problem was that he was an OPS guy before the voters were aware of the importance of things other than batting average.  The .277 BA is not impressive, but a 15 years career OBP of .362 certainly is, was top 10 in HR every year from 1963 to 1969, and was top 10 in total bases for 5 consective years, too. BR-WAR loves him, too.  This was a well deserved selection.

Jay Jaffe, Baseball Prospectus, agrees.

12/3/2010
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=12525

It's with great sadness I heard the news of Ron Santo's passing. He died on Thursday due to complications from bladder cancer at the age of 70, having waged a courageous battle with diabetes for his entire adult life, enduring dozens of surgeries and ultimately losing both legs to the disease.
 
I'm too young to have seen Santo play during his 15-season career (1960-1974), but I have heard his work in the broadcast booth (he worked as a color commentator for the Cubs since 1990). More notably, as Baseball Prospectus' resident Hall of Fame expert, I've written about him countless times, campaigning on his behalf as worthy of enshrinement in Cooperstown. A nine-time All-Star and five-time Gold Glove winner during his 14 years with the Cubs, Santo was an outstanding two-way player who hit .277/.362/.464 with 342 homers in a career that was played during an era when offense was at its nadir. He led the NL in walks four times in a five-year span, led the league in OBP twice (1964 and 1966), and bopped 30 homers in four straight years (1964-1967). He ranked in the top 10 in MVP voting four times, and in the top five twice, though he never won an award.
 
That he did all of this in a time before insulin pumps and other means of treating his disease — which he took great pains to conceal until 1971 due to fears he would be forced to retire — is remarkable. Following his career, he established the Ron Santo Walk to Cure Diabetes, and ultimately raised over $50 million for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
 
At times, Santo has ranked as the single best eligible hitter outside the Hall of Fame according to JAWS. The adjustments to our metrics have bumped him down a bit; he's the best eligible third baseman, sixth among eligible hitters, behind Barry Larkin, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell, Roberto Alomar and Bobby Grich according to last December's build, with pitcher Bert Blyleven topping the list and the ineligible Pete Rose ranking third. Nonetheless, he's still well above the positional standard:
 
(Big chart with ranking showing Santo well above other HOF 3rd basemen such as Brooks Robinson, and other non HOF types such as Matt Williams, Chipper Jones and Edgar Martinez.  Did not paste well)
Despite Santo strength as a candidate by both traditional and sabermetric reckonings, both the BBWAA and the various iterations of the Veterans Committee repeatedly bypassed him in the Hall of Fame balloting. In his first year of eligibility (1980), he received just 3.9 percent, not enough to stay on the ballot. Five years later, he was among a handful of players whose eligibility was restored by a review committee following widespread complaints about overlooked candidates. Allen, Curt Flood, Harvey Haddix, Denny McLain, and Vada Pinson were among the others who received second chances, though nearly all fell off the ballot soon enough. Santo stuck around, but he didn't even clear 40 percent of the vote until his 15th and final year on the ballot. Since then, he's fallen short in four VC votes as well, most recently receiving 60.9 percent in the 2009 VC balloting.
 
There appear to be many reasons for those snubs. Both voting bodies have shown a repeated tendency to underrate players whose value is enhanced by high walk totals and strong defense; Raines, Trammell and Grich are all similarly left out in the cold despite being well above the standards. Furthermore, the Cubs' perennial failure to win a pennant — particularly in 1969, when they blew a nine-game mid-August lead — appears to have been held against him, though teammates Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Ferguson Jenkins are all enshrined.
 
Santo's early demise as a player hurt him as well. The Cubs tried to deal him to the Angels in 1973, but he became the first player to invoke his Ten-and-Five rights, a Collective Bargaining clause which said that a player with 10 years of major league service, including the last five with his current team, could refuse a trade. At 33 and coming off an All-Star season, Santo didn't want to move to the west coast, so the Cubs arranged to trade him across town to the White Sox. Because the Sox already had a solid third baseman in Bill Melton, Santo was shifted to second base, a position where he had just a few games of major league experience. The move was a disaster; he hit just .221/.293/.299 and then hung up his spikes, leaving his career hit total (2,254 hits) a bit light for the tastes of those who don't properly appreciate his walks and other value-enhancing traits.
 
The real issues for Santo's repeated snubbing may be more personal. He was a fierce, emotional competitor who apparently rubbed some people the wrong way, particularly with his 1969 postgame ritual of leaping and clicking his heels together, which may have particularly alienated New York-based BBWAA voters. The Chicago Tribune's Phil Rogers quotes Nolan Ryan, who was a 22-year-old swingman on the upstart Mets team which surpassed the Cubs, and who as a Hall of Famer would have had the opportunity to vote for Santo as part of the expanded Veterans Committee (since abolished), as saying, "We didn't think much of that. In those days, people just didn't do those kind of things.'' If that's what's keeping him out, it's a horse**** excuse, hardly worse than Reggie Jackson admiring his home runs, to say nothing of the celebrations of today's players.
 
By all accounts, Santo was a boisterous, positive person who took life's disappointments — including the Cubs' repeated failure to win a pennant even after his playing days — in stride. As Rogers eulogized:
 

Ron Santo is entering a new league, the highest level of all. And there he will never again be betrayed by his passion, his perseverance, his enormous love of life, the joy he found amid more pain and heartache than any dozen men should have to endure.

 ...Santo was never quite sure where to direct his disappointment, but he knew that somebody had screwed him out of his spot in baseball's Hall of Fame, the one he should have reveled in alongside teammates Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Fergie Jenkins. It was only natural that slight would trouble him as he celebrated a game that he had loved, even as it changed from small-time enterprise into a $7-billion corporation, complete with phonies and drug cheats, like the two he watched match each other home run for eye-popping home run in the summer of 1998.

 From Santo's mouth to your ear, seldom was heard a discouraging word, and that's not a bad measure of the man. No matter the heartbreak, no matter the disappointment, no matter the physical challenge, No. 10 always took comfort in one of the greatest truths about baseball: Tomorrow there's another game.
 
Santo isn't on the current Expansion Era ballot whose voting results will be revealed on December 6, but he will be eligible next year, as part of the so-called Golden Era ballot covering the 1947-1973 period. It will be a bittersweet day if he gets elected given how badly the grumpy old men have repeatedly blown it.
 
That said, today it's more important to remember the positive achievements in the man's life, both on the field and off. He was a stellar ballplayer and more importantly, a courageous human being who shared both his love of the game and his battles with life's challenges with the world. He will be greatly missed.
 
 
 

[tomterp]

And Jay Jaffe post election for Santo:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=15609

Overdue Justice: Cooperstown Finds Room for Santo
 
by Jay Jaffe
 
One of the creepier truths of the music industry is that death is a good career move. The attention surrounding the passing of an artist brings new attention to his or her body of work, offering not only a chance for critical reassessment but also commercial gain — at least for whomever is left behind to enjoy its benefits. Such a parallel may be the most charitable way to assess what happened to Ron Santo, who one year and two days after his passing, and 37 years after the end of his career was finally elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame via the Golden Era ballot, whose voting results were announced on Monday morning at the Winter Meetings in Dallas.
 
The nine-time All-Star, five-time Gold Glover and Cub icon was unjustly snubbed by the BBWAA, receiving just 3.9 percent of the vote when he debuted on the 1980 ballot; he was dropped for failing to reach the minimum five percent, but granted a second chance five years later when he was among a handful of candidates whose eligibility was restored by a review committee. He never came close to election via that route, topping out at 43.1 percent in 1998, his final year of eligibility. He had been the top vote-getter in various iterations of the Veterans Committee balloting in 2005, 2007 and 2009, receiving 60.9 percent of the vote the last time around, when the voting body consisted of all living Hall of Famers.
 
This time, Santo received 15 of 16 votes from a smaller committee of Hall of Famers (conspicuously including teammate Billy Williams this time around), executives and writers, one that bore more resemblance to the Veterans Committees prior to 2003. Twelve votes were needed to reach the requisite 75 percent; he was the only one of the 10 candidates to gain entry, with Jim Kaat receiving 10 votes, followed by Gil Hodges and Minnie Minoso each with nine, and Tony Oliva with eight. Of the other five candidates, worhty executives Buzzie Bavasi and Charlie Finley both received fewer than three votes, as did Luis Tiant, Allie Reynolds and Ken Boyer.
 
As with Bert Blyleven, my JAWS system has consistently recognized Santo as a top candidate for election since I first turned my attention to him, back in March 2005; at times he has ranked as the single best eligible hitter outside the Hall. In the most recent iteration, the system recognized him as the third baseman with the fourth-highest peak in history, behind only Mike Schmidt, George Brett, and Wade Boggs, a whisker ahead of Eddie Mathews. He falls a bit short of the position average in term of career WARP and JAWS score, but still ranks seventh among all third basemen. Considering that just 11 hot cornermen were in the Hall, the fewest of any offensive position, and that the JAWS standard is significantly higher there than at all but one other position, there's a good argument to be made that the standards need a bit of tweaking to correct for the smaller sample size; given the feedback I've received, I believe that I will go forward with the changes outlined last week when I turn my attention to the BBWAA ballot.
 
Nonetheless, that Santo is not around to enjoy the honor personally does make his election a bittersweet moment; who wouldn't have wanted to hear his acceptance speech? When combined with the snub of Minoso — who exceeds the peak standard in left field by a good margin and falls just short in career and JAWS despite losing prime years of his career to matters far beyond his control (first the color line, then an Indians team which stashed him in the minors for two seasons before his blazing 7.2-WARP rookie season at age 25) — the results prompted BP alum Christina Kahrl to quip, "This is an example of when the process works?"
 
Despite the tardiness of the result, the overdue justice should provide some amount of relief and closure to his family and friends, not to mention a Cubs fan base so inured to disappointment. This was clearly an honor that Santo wanted, to the point that some of his critics accused him of campaigning for the honor. I've gone into detail for the potential reasons behind his slight more than once among the links above, so I won't crowd this piece further except to say that anything not focused upon his dominance of his position over a span longer than a decade was a horse**** excuse for excluding him from Cooperstown. That he accomplished what he did while battling diabetes in a day before insulin pumps — to the point of hiding it, out of fear he would be forced to retire — only makes his accomplishments even more amazing.
 
As sad or even heartbreaking as it may be that Santo didn't live to hear the official news, he had to know in his heart that he was worthy of the honor, as all of us who have supported his candidacy have for so long. We all head the way of dust eventually, ballplayers and nonballplayers alike. Few of us are lucky enough to have a bronze plaque detailing our top accomplishments left behind for posterity in the museum of record, even posthumously. Ron Santo will get his bronze plaque in Cooperstown now, and for that we can be thankful. I look forward to hugging a Cubs fan or two as we raise a glass of strong beverage in his honor this evening at the Winter Meetings.

[welch]

I liked Ron Santo, too, because I was a Cubs fan. Went to college in Chicago, where I discovered that the Cubs were the Washington Senators of the National League. Early in the 1967 season the Cubs looked good, looked very good, and we were hopeful, giddy.

Then the Cubs went down to St Louis and lost a series to the Cards, came home and lost another. It seemed like Bob Gibson pitched every game, although maybe Steve Carelton and Nelson Briles (? this is from painful memory) kicked in some innings. [In trurth, you could take the 1967 Gibson and the 2008 Nats pitching and be competitive.).

It seemed like every game, around the sixth or seventh inning, down a run or two, Kessinger led off by grounding out weakly. Glen Beckert would get a hit, Bily Williams would do something spectacular, old Ernie banks would line a double to right center, and we would wait for Santo win it. And good old Ron Santo would pop out. Randy Hundley would strike out, and the Cubs would lose.

So...speaking as a former part-time Cubs fan, I can understand why Cubs fans would have pushed Santo for the HoF sooner if the team had won something. It always came back to the Cardinals, and Curt Flood and Roger Maris, who was a tough ballplayer...not the HR champ, but a guy who won games. I think St Louis also had Orlando Cepeda, another good player who came through in the crunch. We cheered for Santo, and then sagged.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

Ron Santo - 1967:

.300 / .395 / .512, 31 HR, 98 RBI, gold glove. led league in walks (96) and sac flies (12).  10.2 BR-WAR (tops in league).  Was not an all star.  3d in runs scored.

[welch]

That's why we expected Santo to come through...but. The stats don't show the afternoons at Wrigley, the clear skies, the heat, the hope, and the disappointment.

[MarquisDeSade]

...the disappointment.

Nothing can properly capture that.