With Jim Thome’s 600th home run on Monday night, the ensuing Hall of Fame debate about the slugger was more or less inevitable. Most people, myself included, see a guy with 600 home runs and a long, long run as an elite big league power hitter and assume that that makes for a slam dunk Hall of Fame case, but there’s some fear that the older, more crotchety portion of the BBWAA (read: the portion that gets to vote for the Hall of Fame) will slap him with the dreaded “compiler” label and make his election difficult (if you’re unfamiliar, a “compiler” is a player that used a long career to put up big counting stats despite never being a great player, and who probably hung on too long at the end to fatten things like hit totals, home run totals, strikeout totals, win totals, etc.).
This morning on Twitter, my friend and former colleague at FanHouse, Matt Snyder (who now blogs about baseball for CBS) was bemoaning the potential that Thome could get hit with this label and after he and I talked about it a bit, I think I hit on the reason that it’s hard for some people to recognize Thome’s greatness: he’s played for five teams, but he’s never stayed in one place long enough to develop a real signature moment to associate with his career. He played more years in Cleveland than anywhere else, but all he’s remembered for there is being on two World Series losers and spurning his adopted home town for more money in Philadelphia. Since leaving, he’s hit 266 of his 600 homers, but he’s never stayed anywhere long enough to be anything except a loveable homer-smashing oaf. He hit his 400th homer in Philadelphia, his 500th for the White Sox, and his 600th for the Twins, never winning a World Series at any stop or staying long enough in one place to build any sort of legend. He’s going to go into the Hall of Fame as an Indian, but there’s no Indian fan today that’s happy about it.
Contrast that with some similar players from the bygone era when players stayed in one place for most of their careers. Harmon Killebrew had one good year after his 31st birthday and his last three years were terrible, though the first 14 years of his career match with Thome’s pretty closely. But he was The Killer! He made his legend as a hulk in a Twins jersey, not a nomadic first baseman/designated hitter. Urban legend says he’s the guy on the MLB logo! Willie Stargell retired with the exact same OPS+ as Thome has today (147), but without the power numbers (he played his first seven years in the vast expanse of Forbes Field and that likely cost him his shot at 500 homers). Stargell was a first ballot Hall of Famer, though, because he was Pops, the Pittsburgh legend. Ernie Banks only made it to 500 homers because he played at least two years too many and he was never better than an above average hitter after his 30th birthday (OPS+ from age 31 through the end of his career: 106), but who would keep Mr. Cub out of the Hall of Fame?
I’m not arguing that Killebrew or Stargell or Banks are unworthy Hall of Famers, because they all more certainly earned their places. But if they did, Thome has as well. He’s 40 years old, but he’s still mashing taters like a young man. He turned 31 in 2002 and since then he’s hit .269/.396/.561 (an OPS+ of 146) with more than half of his 600 homers. Why would anyone want to penalize him for this? If he played from 1971 through 1991 instead of 1991 through 2011+ and he’d have been able to spend his entire career with the Indians, I suspect he’d be a slam dunk for the Hall. Baseball hasn’t worked like that for a long time, though, and guys like Thome, who do one thing well enough to deserve big paychecks, but who many people are slow to give that big payday to after his 35th birthday, are going to bounce from team to team as they get older. It’s not Thome’s fault the game has changed and it’s not fair to penalize him for it.
