All this Hall of Fame debate and discussion that has been
going on and not one time have we mentioned one of the pillars of the Yankees
dynasty in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, Jorge Posada. Posada was a
switch-hitting second baseman turned catcher for the New York Yankees that
spent 17 seasons with the organization. Did he do enough in those 17 seasons to
warrant getting into the Hall of Fame eventually? Let’s take a look.
Posada was a five time All-Star during his playing career
while also finishing in the Top 10 in the AL MVP vote twice. Posada has a
Silver Slugger Award sitting on his mantle while hitting over 20 home runs in
seven separate seasons which is pretty impressive when you consider he was
doing this as a catcher, a position not well known for their offensive prowess
throughout the years.
When discussing Posada and his candidacy for the Hall it’s
easy to simply look at his home run numbers or sabermetric stats like WAR
across the board but I find that to be a bit unfair. I would prefer to compare
him to players at his position with those stats instead as I make the case for
or against him so using WAR I see that Posada had a higher WAR than Hall of
Fame players Roy Campanella, Roger Breshnahan and Rick Ferrell. Posada is also
8th all-time in home runs for catchers with five of the seven
players in front of him in that department already in the hall. Only Lance
Parrish and Pudge Rodriguez, who enters the ballot for the first time this
year, have more home runs than Jorge and are not currently in the Hall of
Fame.
Posada was a four-time World Series champion in six attempts
in the Fall Classic not counting the 1996 season when he was just a September
call up and had himself a second career while in the postseason as a whole.
Posada has played in the second most games in the postseason and ranks fourth
in hits and ninth in RBI all-time in the postseason.
Will Posada make the Hall? Eventually, I think so. Yes.
Especially in a “dirty” era. Will it be in 2017 though? No, probably not.
Unfortunately.
