Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Players With Three Or More Consecutive Seasons With 7+ WAR

One idea I have about the Hall of Fame is that worthy players should have at least some significant peak value. Maybe something like 3 straight MVP caliber years. Baseball Reference suggests that a WAR of 8 or higher is an MVP type season. So I lowered it just a bit to 7. This would actually make for a very restrictive Hall. I found only 36 players in this group. They are listed below.

The co-leaders are Henry Louis Aaron and Henry Louis Gehrig. Their two streaks were exactly 30 years apart. Gehrig's was 1926-37 and Aaron's was 1956-67. Some great players did not make it, including Frank Robinson and George Brett (who are definitely Hall of Famers, probably in anyone's book). Ron Santo had 4 straight years, 1964-67. Jackie Robinson had 5 straight from 1949-53. That is incredible. Andruw Jones and Jim Edmonds are two of the more interesting surprises.



2 comments:

  1. Very interesting group of names. Andruw Jones must be on the list for his incredible defense. Edmonds was a very underrated player in his prime who should someday merit HOF consideration.
    Good stuff,
    Bill

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  2. Thanks for dropping by and for mentioning me on Twitter. Jones did get alot of his WAR from defense. Here are his numbers for WAR/defensive WAR from 1998-2000

    7.2/3.8
    7.0/3.6
    7.9/2.4

    He led the NL in defensive WAR 6 straight years from 1997-2002. He is 2nd in career defensive WAR only to Brooks Robinson. Two of those years above are in the top 8 all-time in.

    Edmonds never made 2.0 in defensive WAR in his three seasons, although he did have one year later in his career of 2.4.

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