Larry Walker

It looks like Larry Walker will be retiring. I took a look at the case for Walker in the Hall of Fame here.

One more thing I wanted to take a closer look at was Walker's defense. He won 7 Gold Gloves. He are the outfielders who won the most Gold Gloves:

12 Roberto Clemente
12 Willie Mays
10 Ken Griffey
10 Al Kaline
8 Paul Blair
8 Barry Bonds
8 Andre Dawson
8 Dwight Evans
8 Garry Maddox
7 Jim Edmonds
7 Curt Flood
7 Andruw Jones
7 Larry Walker
7 Devon White
7 Dave Winfield
7 Carl Yastrzemski

This doesn't include 2005 which hasn't been announced (Andruw Jones may have 8 by Christmas). Couple observations from this list.

1. 5 of the people on the list are already in the Hall of Fame and two or three more are probable (Griffey, Bonds if baseball writers are afraid to stap on a pair of balls and Andruw Jones who is 28 and already has 300 HR). Will Walker end up like a Dwight Evans or an Andre Dawson and be a guy who was good at the plate and in the field but still not be good enough for the Hall?

2. I didn't realize that Yaz had so many Gold Gloves. Shame on me.

3. I honestly never heard of Paul Blair (or if I did I blanked it out)

I'm still on the fence regarding whether Larry Walker is a Hall of Fame player but I do want to look at all the evidence.