Hall of Fame Poll: Alan Trammell

Would you vote Alan Trammell into the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Next on the ballot is Mike Timlin....who was a good player for a long time, but come up some short of a Hall of Fame career. He played for 18 seasons, put up a 3.63 ERA, in 1058 games (number 8 on the all time list) with 141 saves. He never made an All-Star team, which seems unfair. On the plus side, he has 4 World Series rings, 2 of them came from the Jays. He was on the mound at the end of the 1992 World Series, and made the throw to Joe Carter, to get Otis Nixon out.

Alan Trammell was a terrific shortstop. There were some good ones in the AL in the 1980s. Trammell, Cal Ripken and Robin Yount changed the way the position was looked at. Before those three, teams tended to go with good glove, bad bat players at short. Those three showed you could have a good glove and a good bat. Ripken and Yount are in the Hall of Fame. Trammell isn't, yet.

Trammell hit 185 home runs, drove in 1023 and stole 236 bases in a 20 year career, all with the Detroit Tigers. His career batting line was .285/.352/.415. You can find his career numbers here.

He was named to 6 All-Star teams, won 4 Gold Gloves and 3 Silver Sluggers. His career WAR is 66.9, 101st on the career list. Bill James had him ranked as the 9th best SS of all time in his New Historical Abstract. He, more than likely, would have dropped a couple of spots in the 10 years since James wrote that.

He played most of his 20 year career with Lou Whitaker (a fine player, if not quite at the same level as Trammell). Off the top of my head I can't think of another pair of middle infielders that played together for most of 19 years.

This is Trammell's 13th time on the ballot, last year he appeared on 33.6% of the Writers' ballots.

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