Probably the best place to look would be in the interim years when teams had different ideas about how many starters should be in the rotation.

So those are kind of murky waters if you want to wade into them.

Rice gained a lot of votes through the whole "back when ballplayers were real men" nostalgia, so appealing to the idea that Bert's record may have been tarnished because he was a tough SOB might gain some traction.

In fact, his rookie season was his long AS game appearance, despite three other seasons with 140+ OPS+ marks (1984, 1987, 1988).

He was one of 4 1Bs on the 1982 AL squad (Cecil Cooper started, Carew and Eddie Murray were the others). The starters for the rest of his career were: Carew, Carew, Murray, Joyner, Mattingly, McGwire, McGwire, McGwire, Fielder, McGwire, Olerud and FThomas.

Way to Earl Battey Bert, however, Boss.

top WARP3 Twins's seasons:

Kirby Puckett, 1992, 11.0
Johan Santana, 2006, 11.0
Rod Carew, 1975, 11.1
Frankie Viola, 1988, 11.2
Rod Carew, 1977, 11.3
Mike Marshall, 1979: 11.5
Joe Mauer, 2008: 11.8
Johan Santana, 2003, 12.3
Chuck Knoblauch, 1996, 12.9
Bert Blyleven, 1973, 13.6

Camilo Pascual had an 11.0 as a Senator in 1959.

09/09/09.

1. Joe Morgan 101.6
2. Rod Carew 80.5
3. Lou Whitaker 70.6 (one of the HOF voters' most egregious mistakes)
4. Bobby Grich 67.0
5. Craig Biggio 66.9
6. Roberto Alomar 65.9
7. Willie Randolph 61.2
8. Ryne Sandberg 60.7
9. Jeff Kent 59.6

10. Tony Phillips 50.6 (played everywhere but 2B was probably his most natural position)
11. Chuck Knoblauch 44.2 - had a chance to be as great as Alomar/Biggio but really crapped out early.
12. Julio Franco 42.0 - another case of what position do you classify him? But his best years were at second.
13. Davey Lopes 39.2
14. Dick McAuliffe 35.2
15. Ray Durham 34.2
16. Junior Gilliam 32.3

However, I think we did have a remarkably strong group of 1B in the 90s--probably the best in history. If there are 4 of them deserving of the Hall (using the 2B standards), you have to figure that, using that standard throughout history, there would be many fewer already in the Hall. Without running the numbers, presumably 1-2 per decade, as opposed to the 4 we are looking at, in addition to a large swath of HoVG--all those guys you and I talked about.

I wonder if some of that is the maturation and acceptance of the DH position.

I don't think the stats really back that up. If I just set the bar for first basemen where it is for second basemen, then even McGwire would miss the cut and strictly of the '90s first basemen in the discussion, you would have just Thomas, Bagwell, and Thome. (And probably Palmeiro.) Even just four people at the same position for the same decade is a pretty large concentration, it seems to me. We've got, say 90 years of players who played from 1900 to 1990 and have been Hall eligible, and 27 first basemen made the cut--and as you mention there are some pretty questionable VC choices in that group. That would give us 3 1B/decade, so 4 would be above average. If you look at third basemen, it's more like 2 3B/decade, so by that standard, to have 4 players from one decade would be very high. Considering the 3 1B/decade rate, adding Edgar, McGwire, and McGriff to the group would give us a fairly absurd 7 1B from the '90s, with Pujols, Thome, Giambi, Helton, and Delgado on the horizon--for 12 1B/DH over 2 decades. That really doesn't feel right to me.

I think the main issue is that the bar is set really low if you are a first baseman. I think this is probably because hitting value is obvious and fielding value is less obvious. If all of your value is concentrated in hitting, then it is easier to reach big, round counting stats even if your overall value was just the same as a better defender who didn't get the big, round counting stats. And the big, round counting stats are easy to defend in a newspaper column. (This is essentially the same reason that Mauer gets the shaft as compared to Morneau. Morneau's got better big, round numbers than Mauer, so consequently the writers focus more on him.)

Hell, the press HATED Jim Rice, and he still got in eventually, and Kent has a stronger case.

Jim Rice's induction is an aberration and I think everyone involved realizes that on some level. He was around 30% for the first five years he was in the ballot, and apparently he had an amazing season in 1999, because on the 2000 ballot, he went up to about 50%. Rice pretty much oscillated between 50% and 60%, and then on the 2006 ballot--the one after the Congressional hearings on steroids--he shot up to 65%. Eventually the "most feared hitter" meme showed up and he wound up making it in. (There was probably some anti-stats sentiment that helped push him over the top.)

I think the better comparison is Bert. A lot of people seem to have thought he was a jackass, and had he pandered more to the media, he probably would have gotten better press, and many fewer people would say things like "I saw him pitch and he never seemed like a dominant pitcher."

and at least the equal of Orlando Cepeda

You can't really set the bar at Orlando Cepeda, or you would really have a huge rush of entrants into the Hall. His PEAK was around 58 and his JAWS score is around just 73.5. If that's the bar, then Don Mattingly and I'm sure a ton of other guys could make it in. There could have been some non-performance reasons to put Cepeda in--and the Hall of Fame is not the Hall of Merit--but the bar really has to be higher than that.

I mean, I could make a strong case, I think, for Fred McGriff, who you didn't even mention.

McGriff scores 60.8/106.6/83.7--about the same as Edgar--and would be in if you use the current low bar for 1B, but would be below my bar of McGwire. Palmeiro, who you mentioned, is at 63.1/130.1/96.6 and was the bigger omission on my part. His peak wasn't anything special, but Palmeiro was pretty much Eddie Murray, who also deserved to go in.

As for Edgar...very tough. I generally agree with your thought that we don't want a flood of 1B/DH types in the Hall--but a question is raised. To wit: did we just have a historical level of great firstbasemen whose careers centered around the 1990s? I mean, there are all those guys you listed, plus Palmeiro, plus Fred McGriff who you didn't mention. Regardless of how many of those guys get into the Hall, that's a pretty remarkable group. Was it due to steroids? I doubt it, but what do I know?

Great baseball players aren't evenly distributed through history. I don't like the idea that just because a deserving player happened to play at the same time as a lot of other great players, that he doesn't get in. I mean, I could make a strong case, I think, for Fred McGriff, who you didn't even mention. The guy had an excellent, extended peak (look at his 1988-1994), had many other good seasons, was very durable (basically full seasons for 15 straight years), was excellent in the post-season, is better than modern 1B entrant Tony Perez, and at least the equal of Orlando Cepeda, but my guess is he won't come close to getting in.

As an aside, what's interesting is that there are a number of really mediocre firstbasemen in the Hall already--some of the weakest enshrinees. Guys like George Kelly, George Sisler, Jake Beckley, Jack Bottomley probably don't belong, and really shift the standards of firstbasemen,

Some people think they are bullet-proof.

Points from Giambi for that deodorant commercial, and being a Yankee.

Both have fairly loud whispers about PED usage

A guy on XM today (I think it was Holden Kushner) was talking about how Kent was one of the first players to speak out against PEDs and was considered "clean."

This is a good example of why arguments about steroids should be thrown out except for instances like Palmeiro, who was caught, or Giambi. It's ridiculous to try to guess who was using and who wasn't. And if they were all using steroids, then they were all playing on a level field.

And as far as Palmeiro, that still seems fishy to me. He would have to be the dumbest jock in the world to get caught like that, or he was set up just as he claimed.

Grich's seven best WARP3 seasons: 11.8, 11.6, 11.0, 10.7, 10.5, 9.7, 8.9 = 74.2
Career = 123.9.
JAWS = (74.2+123.9)/2 = 99.05

so, shouldn't he be in the discussion?