New York Yankees Fanatics

If you may have missed the news, the report has come out yesterday that New York Yankees catcher Jorge Posada is expected to announce his retirement from baseball in the coming weeks. Here is the link to the report here on CBS Sports.com: http://www.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/
entry/22297882/34234132/6.

It is a shame that the final year of Jorge's career will be remembered for declining productivity and the clash with management. However, that is a very small miniscule blemish on what was a very good career that produced numbers worthy of enshrinement in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.

Using Baseball-Reference.com's similarity scores, four of the top ten most similar players to Posada in baseball history are currently in the Hall of Fame.

The above is a quote from the linked article provided earlier in this post. What this tells me is that Jorge as it stands right now has a 40% chance of getting in to the Hall of Fame. However there are other factors that I think that will give him more of a solid push.
One major factor is the fact that he was a major contributor to the Yankees dynasty teams of the middle and late 1990's and the perrenial playoff contenders of the 2000's and was not just some guy along for the ride.
 
Another factor is that his career OPS+ is better than that of the last two catchers inducted into the Hall of Fame (Carlton Fisk and Gary Carter). That is something that can not be ignored when determining Hall of Fame worthiness.

One final factor that I am looking at is that he already has the vote of a major writer. In today's edition of the New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica has already stated that he will vote for Posada when the time for such a vote into the Hall of Fame comes up. Regardless of what you may think of Mike Lupica, he is a very powerful brand name among sportswriters and will definitely influence and swing alot of votes Posada's way. Will that be enough to get Posada in remains to be seen, but it definitely will not hurt his case.

Whether he gets in or not all I can say to Jorge is thank you for the all of the great memories that you have provided over the years. Enjoy retirement and I look forward to seeing back at The Stadium for Old Timers Day in the very near future.

Category: MLB