but not much. His defense in St. Louis was -27 during his time there. If we turn that to zero and add the -8 runs/162 difference between a 1B and a DH, there isn’t a significant uptick in his value. I just don’t think that, at least with Rally’s data, pure hitters who do nothing else have as much value as a lot of people would think. Between his baserunning, defense, and position, you can shave ~18 wins from McGwire’s career value.

Its not very clear that that’s the point in the article. All of those guys could be Hall of Famers (beside Walker probably, because of Coors) so I’m not sure why we would assume McGwire was on top.

We’ll never induct every player, but we will leave out a lot of players that would have a higher WAR and been considered HOF type players had they played in a different era. Had Omar Vizquel, a borderline HOF SS in this era, played from 1950-1970, he’s a sure fire HOF player and he probably has a career WAR much higher than it is in his current era, simply because the replacement level at SS was lower back then than it is now, with HR hitters like Tejada manning his position. Look at the SS from that era that are in the HOF and then compare their stats, both offensively and defensively, with Vizquel. When you do that he looks like a sure fire HOF player, and he won’t be because of the amount of great offensive SS that played in his era. His numbers compare very favorably to Ozzie Smith’s, and he’s been the best defensive SS in the game for most of his career — he just played in the juiced ball (and player) era, so we don’t appreciate him as much.

For instance, take Pee Wee Reese. His career numbers aren’t any better than those of Dave Concepcion or Alan Trammel, yet he is in the HOF and those guys are on the outside looking in, and probably will remain that way. In Reese’s era, he was the BEST SS in the game for most of his career. In seasons where he played more than 130 games, he missed the all-star game exactly 3 times in 12 seasons. If you put him in today’s game, it’s hard to find a season where he would be clearly the best player at his position, let alone for 10 years in a row.