Um, OK.

You are right about one thing.  There is some stupidity that's self evident in this thread.

How is "the voters said Edgar doesn't belong in the Hall, so he's clearly not worthy" equivalent, in your mind, to "gay marriage doesn't hurt anyone so it should be allowed."  I never saw BL post "the SCOTUS voted that same sex marriages must be legal, so they have to be good."  That's the equivalent of your statement.  The fact that you can't even see the difference points to exactly how incapable of independent rational thought you really are.

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/27/2015 4:02:00 PM (view original):
You oversimplification seems to suggest that every player approach each AB seeking a walk.   Correct?

Theoretically that would be great, but it's not reasonable.  I mean ideally, everybody would approach every plate appearance seeking a HR, but pitchers aren't exactly cooperating with that.  If walks rose too high across the board, you'd see more pitchers compensate by throwing more strikes, and hitters would have to adjust by swinging more.  You have to take what you're given.  If a pitcher throws 4 balls in a plate appearance, then a perfect hitter will draw a walk.  Every time.  Because even a perfect hitter can't homer every time, and can't guarantee that a swing will put him on base.  Pitchers have too much influence on the outcome of plate appearances.

I can see how there's room to debate greenlighting guys on 3-0 counts.  I think there are some hitters who hit well enough on those pitches to justify letting them swing.  But I don't see any reason to ever say any batter should walk less.  At the end of the day, every hitter in the history of the sport has been more productive in plate appearances ending in walks than in plate appearances not ending in walks.  And nobody does as well on balls out of the zone than they do on balls in the zone.  The only way to really avoid walking is to swing at borderline and worse pitches.  Those aren't productive pitches to be swinging for.

There are times when a hit is better than a walk.   Well, almost always a hit is better than a walk.   IMO, a hitter, at least a very good one, should be swinging when he sees a pitch he thinks he can handle(which, if he's like everyone with a little ego who has picked up a bat since Little League, is a lot of them).    That said, there are certainly times a hitter should keep the bat on his shoulder.    My argument has always been that Martinez was a damn good hitter and I think the Mariners would have benefited a little more if he had taken a few less pitches.    I say the same about Frank Thomas.   And Paul O'Neill would get under my skin as a Yankee for taking strikes.  Every pitch taken is not a ball out of the zone.    Sometimes they take strikes.   And sometimes they shouldn't.

Somehow or another, that morphed into "He walked too much".   Hell, I might have even worded it that way in one of those very annoying 58 page arguments with BL before I had the good sense to block him.   It's not that he walked too much.   He took too many strikes.

Not all strikes are hittable.  Relative to his contemporaries, Edgar Martinez didn't strike out very often.  It wasn't until his final year in the Major Leagues that he totaled 100K in a season.  The same could be said for Frank Thomas, who K'ed a little bit more than Edgar Martinez, but not all that much for a power hitter in the Steroid Era.  Swinging doesn't necessarily improve your overall productivity.  Griffey liked to swing, and he struck out far more often, walked a lot less, and didn't get on base at a rate commensurate with his massive talent.  I'll take the Edgar Martinez approach.  In the long run, I think you're going to have a lot more success taking pitches you don't think you should swing at than you will swinging at them.

Individually, maybe.   But the team wasn't sending 9 Edgar's to the plate.   Teams need their better hitters actually hitting instead of passing it to the next guy.

He had 2,200+ hits, what are you people talking about?

Edgar Martinez and the HOF.   Having trouble keeping up?

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/28/2015 6:37:00 AM (view original):
Individually, maybe.   But the team wasn't sending 9 Edgar's to the plate.   Teams need their better hitters actually hitting instead of passing it to the next guy.

I highly doubt that Edgar swinging at pitches he doesn't like is better than Jay Buhner or Jr. or A-Rod.  Or Ichiro.  Or Olerud.  Or, for that matter, Carlos Guillen, Bret Boone, Omar Vizquel, or anybody else hitting around him in the middle of the order at any point.

And he's certainly not better than Edgar walking.

OK, maybe Edgar didn't like enough pitches.     Repeating myself from the countless arguments, I prefer my good hitters to hit.    Let Jay Buhner walk.

If Raines and Bagwell don't get in the Hall, I won't know what to do with my life.

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/28/2015 6:37:00 AM (view original):
Individually, maybe.   But the team wasn't sending 9 Edgar's to the plate.   Teams need their better hitters actually hitting instead of passing it to the next guy.

The Joey Votto argument.

Posted by d_rock97 on 7/28/2015 4:55:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/28/2015 6:37:00 AM (view original):
Individually, maybe.   But the team wasn't sending 9 Edgar's to the plate.   Teams need their better hitters actually hitting instead of passing it to the next guy.

The Joey Votto argument.

The stupidest part of mike's argument is that Martinez did hit.

He hit a lot.

He also, like almost every other great hitter in the history of baseball, walked a lot. 

I don't like calling people's opinions stupid, unless they are undeniably stupid. Some people don't like walks. Adam Jones gets like 10 walks a year. He thinks it more productive of him to swing the bat. He's pretty successful too