Like all sweet dreams, it will be brief, but brevity makes sweetness, doesn’t it?
— Stephen King, 11/22/63

Two weeks ago, I posted a study of the top “one-and-done” positional players in Red Sox history and the player who rose to the top of every statistical category we studied – WAR and OPS+ – was Adrian Beltre. It was almost no contest, as the former third baseman prove himself valuable at the plate and in the field.

Today, I came across an article posted today at Sports On Earth written by Howard Megdal entitled “We should appreciate how good Adrian Beltre really is.” In between references to the multitude of injuries he has played through over his career and the theory that race is a reason that his grittiness has been overlooked by the mainstream baseball media when compared to white ballplayers, I found a few notable excerpts:

Using Baseball-Reference.com’s Wins Above Replacement, Adrian Beltre rates seventh among all third basemen. Ever. Here’s the list of third basemen better than Beltre, per WAR: Mike Schmidt, Eddie Mathews, Wade Boggs, George Brett, Chipper Jones and Brooks Robinson. All but Jones are in the Hall of Fame, and he will surely follow. All of them, including Jones, are household names among baseball fans…

For most of his career, his glove has been as impressive as anyone — third highest defensive WAR in baseball history by a third baseman, only trailing Buddy Bell and Brooks Robinson. A normal Beltre season will allow him to pass Bell this year, and leave only Robinson ahead of him.

At this stage, Beltre is not a lock for the Hall of Fame. Per Baseball-Reference.com, his Hall of Fame Monitor score is 89 and his Hall of Fame Standards score is 40; the average is 100 and 50, respectively. However, his JAWS score of 58.5 places him eighth among third baseman, and the average of 13 current Hall of Fame players at this position is 55.0. At age 35 and with least two more years guaranteed with the Rangers, so long as he continues to maintain his average OPS+ of 136 and raises his WAR another ten points, his chances should improve greatly.

Adrian Beltre’s time with the Red Sox proved brief, but that year was just a microcosm of what has been a truly remarkable baseball career, one that someday should culminate into election to the Hall of Fame.

To date, only one person has received this honor who has not met these criteria; Johnny Pesky, whose number 6 was retired in 2008, was recognized for more than 60 years of nearly uninterrupted time with the franchise as a player, a manager, coach, and instructor.

There is also one player who meets these criteria but whose number is absent from the façade in right field: former third baseman Wade Boggs.

Boggs so impressed the Red Sox organization during his rookie season in 1982 that they shipped third baseman Carney Lansford, who had won the American League batting title in 1981, to the Athletics after the season. He then proceeded to win batting titles in four of the next five seasons, amassing a team-record 240 hits in 1985. That year also marked the first of twelve consecutive All-Star selections for the Red Sox third baseman.

In franchise history, Boggs is third in career wins against replacement (WAR) behind only Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski and ninth in defensive WAR. His batting average is second behind Williams, his on-base percentage is third, and his OBP is ninth. More than two-thirds of his career 3,010 hits came with Boston. His average OPS+ with the Sox was 142, sixth in franchise history, and only once in 11 seasons with Boston (his last) was his OPS+ below 100.

Boggs went on to play another seven seasons, split between the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. After calling it a career after the 1999 season, he was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2005 on his first ballot with 91.9% of all eligible voters selecting him for induction.

So why has one of the most prolific players in franchise not received the honor that only seven other players in team history have received? The team did honor Boggs in 2004 with induction into the Red Sox Hall of Fame and, for a time, no player wore his number 26 between 2005 and 2011. He has also made appearances for the team as recently as when the Red Sox invited all living former members of the team to take the field in honor of Fenway Park’s 100th anniversary in 2012.

According to Boggs, the team has told him explicitly that because he did not finish his career in Boston, he is ineligible. It is true that, at one point, the Red Sox also required a player to finish his career with the Red Sox for his number to be considered for retirement, but that rule was relaxed once Carlton Fisk, who finished his career with the White Sox, was elected to the Hall in 2000.

Some would believe that the Red Sox and Boggs did not part on good terms and that the relationship was further soured when he choose to accept a contract offer from the Yankees, a division rival. Others, including former teammates, would argue that he was more concerned with his personal statistics and less so with the success of the team, though he vehemently denies these allegations. In addition, his extramarital affair with Margo Adams and the resulting palimony suit  brought a lot of negative attention to him and the Red Sox.

All that said, there is no denying that Boggs is one of the best players ever to wear a Red Sox uniform and, had he spent his last seven seasons in Boston and put up the same numbers, his number would have unquestionably been retired the same year that he was inducted into Cooperstown. It’s time to let bygones be bygones; Red Sox ownership, one that has done so much to mend fences with former players, should make it their mission this year, as the Red Sox bask in the afterglow of a world championship, to give Boggs the one final honor he deserves that is long overdue.

Last week, David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox was named as the recipient of the 2013 Silver Slugger Award for the designated hitter position. It marked the sixth time in the past ten seasons that “Big Papi” has won the award, and the second time in the past three seasons. It extended his record for the most awards at that position, ahead of former players Paul Molitor and Edgar Martinez; his six awards also ties him with Red Sox legends Wade Boggs and Manny Ramirez for the most in team history.

Never was Big Papi’s offensive production more apparent and more valuable this season than in the Fall Classic, when he batted .688 (11-for-16) with two home runs, six RBI, seven runs scored, a .760 on-base percentage, and a 1.188 slugging percentage while making just five outs in six World Series games. He also tied a series record by reaching base in nine straight appearances, which helped him to easily walk away with the 2013 World Series MVP award.

The following is a breakdown of the six seasons that Ortiz has won the award:

According to Louisville Slugger, sponsors of the award: “Coaches and managers of Major League teams vote for the players they feel are the best offensive producers at each position in the field in both the American and National Leagues. They base their selections on a combination of offensive statistics including batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage, as well as the coaches’ and managers’ general impressions of a player’s overall offensive value.”

Born on 27 September 1919, the same day that legendary player Babe Ruth hit his last home run for the Sox, Pesky amassed an eye-popping 205 hits, tops in the majors, and batted .331, second only to teammate Ted Williams, as a rookie in 1942; his efforts were enough to place him third in voting for the American League MVP.  Pesky returned three years later in 1946 along with Williams and Dom DiMaggio to help his team finish first in the American League with a record of 104-50. His time away from the diamond had not diminished his skills; he led the league with a league-leading 208 hits and batted .335 that season, the third best average in the American League, to finish fourth in the MVP vote.

He again led the league with 207 hits the following year and finished his Red Sox career with 1277 hits, a .313 average, and an OBP of .393.  In 1995, he was named an inaugural member of the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame.  Pesky, who as a coach mentored other prolific Red Sox hitters like Wade Boggs and Nomar Garciaparra, also had the distinction of having his number retired by the Red Sox in 2008 and a Fenway Park feature, the Pesky Pole, officially named after him.

With regards to the number of All-Stars named from Boston in a given season, the 1946 squad includes eight All-Stars: Williams, Doerr, Dom DiMaggio, Boo Ferriss, Mickey Harris, Johnny Pesky, Hal Wagner, and Rudy York. Three times, the Red Sox sent seven players: 1977, 1978, and 2002. Twice, they sent six players: 1949 and 2007. Only ten times has the requisite single representative been named from Boston, most recently as 2001 when perennial All-Star outfielder Manny Ramirez was sent to Safeco Field in Seattle to represent the Red Sox in his first season with the club.

The Hall hails these results and those of recent BBWAA ballots as proof that it has set higher standards for induction, meaning that punching your ticket to immortality won’t happen if you don’t meet considerable merit. Then there are those who believe the Hall has suddenly become an elitist organization that has set the level of expectations for membership too high. Whatever the case, it is quite obvious that, for too long, the metrics used to decide whether a candidate should be elected have been inconsistent and this, in turn, has only added to the confusion. Obviously, there is more to being worthy than just wearing your heart on your sleeve for twenty-plus seasons; you need to have numbers, honors, and a show of consistency to pad that resume. Yet there are players out there with all that who still find themselves on the outside looking in through locked gates while believing that they have what it takes to be given the key.

Jim Rice, to me, is a perfect example of a former player who is more than deserving of having his plaque alongside the greats of the past. For well over a decade, the former Red Sox great was a constant force at the plate, averaging nearly .304 with 29 home runs and 106 RBI. He also finished in the top five in the AL MVP vote six times during that stretch, winning his only award in 1978 when he stroked 46 home runs and drove in 139 RBI, best in the league that year, while hitting .315 and finishing less than twenty points behind league-leader and future Hall of Fame inductee Rod Carew. Unfortunately, there are two things that seem to hurt Rice; one, that he struggled in his last three seasons at the plate, and two, that he was never a favorite of the writers, who saw him as callous and aloof.

Rice is not the only player that has been mysteriously locked out; Bert Blyleven is another example. The former pitching great finished his career with 287 wins and an ERA of 3.31 and was 5-1 in the post-season with two World Series rings to his credit. He won fifteen or more games in a season ten times and is fifth all-time in strikeouts with 3701. Blyleven’s problem seems to be that he played most of his career for teams that never received much media attention, like Minnesota and Cleveland. Had he pitched in Boston, New York, or Los Angeles, some believe he would be a lock.

There are plenty of other examples, too. Kaat won 283 games as a starter, pitched three seasons in which he won 20 or more games, and collected 16 consecutive Gold Gloves at his position (tied with Hall of Fame great Brooks Robinson for most ever in a row); why is he still not there? Andre Dawson’s career numbers include 2774 hits, 438 home runs, and 1591 RBI, and he collected Rookie of the Year honors, an MVP award, and eight Gold Gloves during his career; why is he still absent? Jack Morris won 15 games or more in 13 seasons and also collected three World Series rings and a World Series MVP award; does he not deserve this distinction?

Nonetheless, the fact remains that there will always be nominees, often times a sentimental favorite, who fail to make the cut; both fortunately and unfortunately, the popularity of a player cannot be the measuring stick to decide if they will get the nod. Often, numbers are thrown around that define whether a candidate is an automatic entry, such as 3000 hits, 500 home runs, and 300 wins; these are all numbers that, of the tens of thousands of players that have put on a major league uniform, only a few have matched in a solid baseball career. So when a player has failed to amass these numbers, then you must dig deeper into his statistics and determine whether he has performed at a level in his career that makes him a worthy candidate.

As someone with a great interest in the history of the game, the Hall of Fame is an embodiment of its remarkable heritage. For a player to have his name preserved for years to come as a representation of baseball excellence is one of the highest accolades in sports; therefore, voters have a responsibility to make these choices based on standards that are evenhanded and constant. Until the Hall begins to demonstrate some consistency and fairness in its selection process, it will be difficult for those outside this circle to understand why some legendary players are still waiting for the call from Cooperstown.