Former Braves players with Hall of Fame cases who did not get voted in

With Andruw Jones being the talk of the town with the HOF vote this week, it seems like a perfect time to reflect on notable for players of the Atlanta Braves franchise who had solid careers but could not quite get the votes needed to be enshrined.

The purpose of this exercise is not to argue who should or should not be in, because at the end of the day it is subjective to those members of BBWAA. What we can do is see how these players have faired in comparison to their peers.

It is easy to say “well if player X is in, then this player should be in”. Let’s get away from that line of thinking for a minute and look more at averages. There have been some fun tools to be able to do this over the years. You can find them easily on Baseball Reference.

We could spend an entire article just explaining these measurement tools, but let’s keep it short and sweet. If you want further explanations on the measurements, you can see them here. In a nutshell, black-ink is league leading stats. Gray-ink is similar but accounts for being in the top ten. Both of these are slightly flawed since it is easier to lead a league before the leagues expanded.

There is the Hall of Fame Monitor test that tries to assess how likely a player will get in, with one-hundred being a “good possibility”. Then, there is the Hall of Fame Career Standards Test which another test used by accumulating points based on key stats. The average HOFer is fifty. Another newer test is to look at WAR. Love it or hate it, we can still use it as a piece of the puzzle.

Let’s look at some former Atlanta Braves that did not quite make the cut but had solid careers.

Dale Murphy

Murphy is likely the first player to come to mind with his two MVP awards, and cemented Braves legacy. Murphy finished his eighteen-year career with a slash of .265/.346/.469 with a 46.5 bWAR and two HRs shy of four hundred.

Looking at the measurement tools we talked about earlier, we see how he measures up to other HOFers.

• Black-Ink: thirty-one (average HOFer has twenty-seven)

• Gray-Ink: one-hundred-forty-seven (average HOF has one-hundred-forty-four)

• HOF Monitor: one-hundred-sixteen (likely HOFer is one hundred)

• HOF Standards: thirty-one (average HOFer is fifty)

• Murphy is 27^th all-time among CFers in bWAR with 46.5. There are nineteen primary CFers in the HOF and they average a career 71.3 WAR.

Murphy was eligible back when players could stay on the ballot for fifteen years and remained on the ballot all fifteen years. His highest percentage was in year fourteen with 23.2 percent. He also has been on the Veterans committee ballot three times but was not elected.

Kenny Lofton

It may be a stretch to put Lofton on this list because he only played the 1997 season with the Braves, but it was a solid season for the Braves in the peak of his career. Lofton played seventeen seasons where he accumulated 68.4 bWAR showing his five-tool presence. His final career slash-line of .299/.372/.423 is impressive. His voting may have been hampered due to lack of power in an age where power was a huge deal. He only hit one-hundred-thirty.

Now to look at how he measures up to other HOFers.

• Black-Ink: thirteen (average HOFer has twenty-seven)

• Gray-Ink: sixty-two (average HOF has one-hundred-forty-four)

• HOF Monitor: ninety-one (likely HOFer is one hundred)

• HOF Standards: forty-three (average HOFer is fifty)

• Lofton is 10^th all-time among CFers in bWAR with 68.4. There are nineteen primary CFers in the HOF and they average a career 71.3 bWAR.

Lofton’s value was not flashy in the time frame he played. Defense was typically put on the backburner by voters. That is not to say he should have been a HOFer, but it is a shame that he fell off the ballot on his first year of eligibility while accumulating the tenth most bWAR as a CFer.

Jim Whitney

If you don’t remember this name, it is okay. No one on planet earth was alive when he played. He played for Boston way back from 1881 till 1885. Boston would eventually become what is now the Atlanta Braves. Whitney was a two-way player that pitched and played 1B and OF. In only ten seasons he accumulated 56.0 bWAR to include one of the best single seasons of all-time in 1883 where he had a 11.4 bWAR season. For his career he pitched 3496.1 innings with 1571 strikeouts, 2.97 ERA, and a 1.147 WHIP. With the bat he had just over twenty-three-hundred PAs while slashing .261/.313/.375.

His bat alone was not great, but factor in his pitching and was extremely valuable.

• Black-Ink pitching: twenty-eight (average HOFer has forty)

• Gray-Ink batting: nineteen (average HOF has one-hundred-forty-four)

• Gray-Ink pitching: one-hundred-sixty-one (average HOF has one-hundred-eighty-five)

• HOF Monitor pitching: one-hundred-eleven (likely HOFer is one hundred)

• HOF Standards pitching: thirty-one (average HOFer is fifty)

• HOF Standards hitting: six (average HOFer is fifty)

• As an SP he is 101st^th all-tim in bWAR.

Obviously, he is unique since he was a two-way player so these measurements are not one-for-one. That being said, it is a bit puzzling that he did not get more HOF love. He was an early player, so this was well before the voting process we know today. He was never on a ballot.

Darrell Evans

Evans was one of the more underrated players in Braves history. In his twenty-one-year career he spent nine seasons in Atlanta. For his career he had a slash line of .248/.361/.431 while accumulating 58.7 bWAR along with four-hundred-fourteen HRs.

He clearly did not win over voters due to his low batting average, but he did have a solid career. Here is how the two-time all-start stacks up.

• Black-Ink: eight (average HOFer has twenty-seven)

• Gray-Ink: eighty-two (average HOF has one-hundred-forty-four)

• HOF Monitor: forty-two (likely HOFer is one hundred)

• HOF Standards: forty (average HOFer is fifty)

• He is 22^nd all-time among 3B in bWAR with 58.7. There are eighteen primary 3B in the HOF and they average a career 68.9 bWAR.

He fell off the ballot in the first year he was eligible with 1.7 percent of ballots.

Joe Torre

Alright, so technically Torre is in the HOF, but not as a player. Torre could be argued to be the best catcher the Braves have ever had while 33.3 of his career 57.7 career bWAR and with the franchise. That being said, He did play some 1B with them as well but was primarily a catcher at this time with the franchise.

Torre finished his career with slash of .297/.365/.452 with two-hundred-fifty-two HRs. He stacked up as a solid career while comparing him to his peers.

• Black-Ink: twelve (average HOFer has twenty-seven)

• Gray-Ink: seventy-one (average HOF has one-hundred-forty-four)

• HOF Monitor: ninety-six (likely HOFer is one hundred)

• HOF Standards: forty (average HOFer is fifty)

• He is 26^th all-time among 1B in bWAR with 57.6. There are twenty-five primary 1B in the HOF and they average a career 64.9 bWAR.

Torre is an interesting case because he basically split his career between catcher, which is a premium defensive position, and 1B which is the opposite. He also spent some time at 3B as well (23.3 percent of his time) , and four games in the OF. If he could have stayed at catcher for his entire career, it would have been interesting to see if the voting would have been different.

Torre was on the BBWAA ballot as a player all fifteen years reaching his highest rate of 22.2 percent on the final year. He was eventually voted in as a manager in 2014.

There are many more interesting players that played for the Braves at some point that never made it. Put some in the comments!