Is Edmonds a future Hall of Famer?

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By Joe Sheehan, BaseballProspectus.com

Jim Edmonds, Hall of Famer.

What's your first reaction to that? A quiet nod? A horrified recoil? Something in between?

I've been playing with this idea for a while, mentioning Edmonds as my personal choice as a "stealth" Hall of Fame candidate whenever asked for one. Like stathead favorites Bobby Grich or Dwight Evans, Edmonds has been a much more valuable player than the general public perceives, because he does things like walk, hit doubles and play defense. Those traits don't impress as easily as high batting averages, big homer totals and BBWAA hardware do; however, Edmonds has his share of points in those categories as well.

Of course, neither Grich nor Evans is in the Hall of Fame. Neither came close, actually, in part because the recognition of their value came a bit too late to do them any good. When Edmonds becomes eligible, though, we'll be able to put the full sabermetric tool kit to work in evaluating his credentials. Today is a peek at that process.

BP's Jay Jaffe has developed a tool for evaluating Hall of Fame candidates against the established standards of the Hall, a system he dubbed JAWS. Last winter, Jay's assessment of the outfielders on the 2006 ballot included the average career line of the Hall of Fame center fielders. That line, and Edmonds' career stats through 2005, follow:

At 36, Edmonds is within shouting distance of the career performance of the average Hall of Fame center fielder. His peak falls well short of the average peak; that's not surprising, given that "peak of Hall of Fame center fielders" include the greatest seasons of some of the greatest players in baseball history. Put together, Edmonds' JAWS score places him below the average, but close enough that he's already a legitimate candidate.

By comparison, the three center fielders on the most recent Hall of Fame ballot had JAWS scores of 78.6, 76.3 and 54.1 (Dale Murphy, Andre Dawson and Willie McGee, respectively). Two of those players, Murphy and Dawson, are among the most hotly debated Hall cases, and both spent a significant part of their careers playing outside of center field, something Edmonds hasn't done. Dawson didn't play an inning in center field after 30, and Murphy was done as a center fielder at 33.

Raw stats aren't the only thing that earn a player a spot in Cooperstown. We can measure Edmonds' relative strength among his peers by looking at some tools introduced by Bill James. Black Ink denotes how often a player led his league in a category, while Gray Ink indicates times in the top 10. The Hall of Fame Standards and Hall of Fame Monitor tests evaluate the players' career by points systems designed to loosely gauge his chances of making the Hall.

Black Ink: 0 (Average Hall of Famer: ~27)
Gray Ink: 60 (Average Hall of Famer: ~144)
Hall of Fame Standards: 37.6 (Average Hall of Famer: ~50)
Hall of Fame Monitor: 83.5 (Likely Hall of Famer: > 100)
(All of the above information comes from the indispensable Baseball-reference.com)

Edmonds' figures in these areas are not impressive. As with the JAWS figures, he falls below the standards of the average Hall of Famer, but within a range that makes him a candidate for induction. It's worth noting that modern players have a much harder time racking up Black Ink and Gray Ink, due to the large leagues in which they play. It's considerably more difficult to lead a 14- or 16-team league in anything than it would be in an eight-team league, and that has nothing to do with a player's greatness. This can be a tricky concept to convince people of; some otherwise savvy commentators can refuse to give this notion its due, thereby shortchanging modern players and/or overrating players who played in smaller leagues.

While the modern sports media overrate "soft" factors by a factor of about a million, it's reasonable to take a step back and consider a player's career through means other than stats. For that purpose, James devised a 14-question survey, dubbed the "Keltner Test" after Indians third baseman Ken Keltner, to work through the problem of where a player stood in the Hall of Fame discussions. Here's that list for Edmonds: