Reyes and the Hall of Fame

Just for fun, I've been playing around with the numbers and trying to see how I would construct a baseball Hall of Fame, from scratch, and I just went through the shortstop section. My observation was that twice the career numbers of Jose Reyes would compare really well with a lot of Hall-caliber shortstops throughout history. If we doubled Jose's career so far, he'd have 2600 hits, 444 doubles, 198 triples, 162 home runs, 1470 runs scored, and 740 steals in 8906 at-bats and 9680 plate appearances. He'd be second all-time among players with at least 40% of games at short in triples, behind Honus Wagner; 11th in doubles; 11th in hits; hell, he'd be 20th in home runs! He'd be eighth all-time in runs scored, seventh in extra-base hits, seventh in total bases. All while being just 14th in plate appearances. And, oh yeah, something else: he'd be first, all-time, in stolen bases, seventeen ahead of Honus Wagner, and nearly 100 steals ahead of third-place Bert Campaneris.

In other words, Twice Jose Reyes would be an all-time great offensive shortstop. And guys like Alex Rodriguez, Ernie Banks, and Robin Yount, who began their careers as shortstops but then switched positions mid-way through their careers, are included in the rankings above. Run the threshold to, say, 70% of career games as a shortstop, and he becomes a top-5 all-time shortstop. Now, granted, the man does not have the defensive numbers that someone like Ozzie Smith, or really most of the Hall of Fame-caliber shortstops, put up throughout their careers, but defensively at least he's no Derek Jeter (the second-worst defensive player all-time according to baseball-reference, and the 7th-worst according to Fangraphs). And remember, all of this is assuming he can just double his career so far. That career has seen only five healthy, productive years out of the nine he's played. And there's also some evidence (see: his 2011 National League batting championship) that he's gotten even better than he used to be. It makes sense: 28 is typically the age when players enter their prime.

The point is, there's every possibility that Jose Reyes will be one of the greatest offensive shortstops of all time, not to mention the best speedster ever to play the infield. If the Mets know what they're doing, they'll make sure this offseason that when he gets his plaque, it's got the Mets' logo on his cap.