Womack: Will Clark’s complicated Hall of Fame case
From SABR member Graham Womack at The Sporting News on October 12, 2016:
Put another way, according to the stat converter on Baseball-Reference.com, if Clark had played his entire career with the Red Sox from 1927 to 1941, he’d have hit .327 lifetime with 307 home runs and 1,410 RBIs. Those kinds of numbers in those days got players into Cooperstown easily.
Clark, who’s on the veterans ballot for the first time this year with the Today’s Game Committee, could be an eventual Hall of Famer.
“I think in certain regards, I’m a Hall of Famer,” Clark told Sporting News in a recent phone interview. “I’m a career .300 hitter. You don’t do that by accident and especially hitting in the ballpark that I hit in. And then 1,200 RBIs, and most of my RBIs tied up the ballgame or put us ahead. They were clutch RBIs. I’m not one of those guys that drove in a lot of runs when it was 8-0.”
But there’s also a reason or two that he drew just 4.4 percent of the vote his only year on Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s ballot for the Hall in 2007 and why he’s still on the outside looking in, 15 years after last playing.
Read the full article here: http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/news/will-clark-hall-of-fame-case-stats-chances-giants-rangers-cardinals-orioles/1rr1dhq801sni1j6yfrfevfggp
Originally published: October 12, 2016. Last Updated: October 12, 2016.