Chicago Cubs great Ron Santo elected to Baseball Hall of Fame - a year too late

Chicago Cubs great Ron Santo elected to Baseball Hall of Fame

Nice. It would have been nicer if they had elected the guy a year or two ago, when he was alive to enjoy it.

Ron Santo's lifetime stats are pretty good, not spectacular, but are misleading since he had his best years in the second deadball era, when a .400 OBP with 30 homers was a major achievement. Nobody did that in the National league in 1964, for example, when Santo was the only guy to hit 30 homers with an OBP as high as .385. And Santo lead the league with .398. And there were some mighty good players in that league: Mays, Aaron, Robinson, Cepeda, Clemente, etc.

In 1967, for another example, nobody hit 40 homers, and only four guys in the league reached 30 homers. Santo was the only one of the four to finish among the OBP leaders. (And was the league's best defensive player, based on WAR.)

Based on Wins Above Replacement, in 1964-1966, Santo was the second-best position player in the NL, behind only Willie Mays. In 1967, he was the best by far, reaching a level of 10.2, which few men have every attained.

Since WW2, the position players who have reached 10.2 without steroids is a very short list: Mays, Mantle, Williams, Yastrzemski, Morgan, Musial, Yount, Ripken, Carew, Pujols, Boudreau, Schmidt, Robinson, Santo. As of today, all the guys on that list are in the Hall of Fame (or obviously will be, in Pujols' case.)

Schmidt is the only other third baseman ever to reach that level. Mathews and Brett never did, and many other A-list players at other positions never made it: Banks, Aaron, Bench, Henderson, Reggie, DiMaggio ...

In other words, Santo could play a bit. I've gone into such detail because the offensive numbers in that era are so depressed that it is not immediately obvious how good Ron Santo was. In 1967 he batted .300 with 96 walks, 31 homers and 98 RBI. That sounds ho-hum to our steroid-inflated ears, but it was actually better than Brett's big year when he batted .390 with one RBI per game.