Yankees and the Hall of Fame: Graig Nettles
by James Vlietstra
***
I am reviewing the credentials of a ton of former Yankees and highlighting their careers. Many of their accomplishments have been forgotten.
Even if some are not future Hall of Famers, it's good to remember what they did accomplish.
Together, we can discuss if we believe that they are deserving of being included in the Hall Of Fame or not. I hope you read along and give me your opinions.
Today we are going to be looking at...
Graig Nettles:
During his 22 year career, he played for six different franchises. 11 of those years were with the Yankees.
His 68.0 WAR ranks 84th among position players and is higher than Robbie Alomar and Craig Biggio.
He had six seasons above 5.0+.
He was a six time all star, two time Gold Glove winner, and two time World Series winner.
His 390 home runs is an American League record for 3B.
When he retired, he ranked 24th all time in homers. Currently he is 65th.
He had 2,225 hits, 1,193 runs, 1,314 RBIs, 1,088 BBs, and 3,779 TBs.
In 1994 he got 8.3% of the vote. His totals slowly dropped until getting only 4,7% in 1997, and removed from future ballots.
Baseball Egg has a scoring system in which they rank the Top 100 players all time by position.
Nettles ranks 15th among Third basemen. Of the 17 players in the HoF listed primarily as a Third baseman, only 9 have a WAR higher than 68. Those 9 are also ranked ahead of him. The other 8 have a lesser WAR and a lesser ranking. Of the 5 players who rank ahead of him, 3 (Ramirez, Arenado and Machado) are still playing. The other two, Buddy Bell (#10) and Ken Boyer (#14) are deserving but earned a lesser WAR.
Graig Nettles ranks firmly in the Top 10-12 Third Basemen of all time. He ranks in the middle of all Third sackers…
As a Yankee fan I’m biased but his stats would suggest he belongs in the Hall regardless of my bias!💯👍😄
Definitely a HOFer. I always argued with my friends that Nettles was a better defender than Brooks Robinson and no one will ever convince me otherwise.
An absolute Hall of Famer.
My arguments (some of them at least) will be on a podcast from a few years ago coming at 2:00 p.m.
he stayed too long at the fair,
but that's not much of a fault,
it's indicative of his passion
as well as the less lavish salaries paid players at the time.
while he played for the Yankees, he was very, very good and very, very resolute