It has been announced that the 2012 baseball Hall of Fame will induct just one new member, former Cincinnati Reds SS Barry Larkin. Once again members of the 1984 Detroit Tigers team were snubbed, and it looks like now Tiger great SS Alan Trammell will never be elected by the baseball writers. Even though Trammell's career stats stack up very favorably to Larkin's he does not look like enough votes will ever swing Tram's way.
Tram was named on 36.8% of the ballots this year. That is up from 24.3% last year, but this was his 11th time on the ballot, and he is still far short of being named on 75% of the ballots to be enshrined. Alan has four more tries to be named on 40% more of the ballots. It could happen but at this point it does not seem plausible. Of course the Veterans Committee could wind up enshrining him after all is said and done.
There are many arguments out there to explain why or why not Tram has so far failed to be enshrined. The staff over at NESN put it this way:
When his career is compared to the 21 shortstops already enshrined in Cooperstown, he ranks 11th in average, fourth in home runs, seventh in RBIs, tied for 10th in slugging percentage and 11th in on-base percentage. Defensively, he's twelfth in putouts, eighth in assists, fifth in double plays turned and his .976 fielding percentage ranks him a little higher than Larkin. Amazingly, no Tigers players from their 1984 world championship team are in the Hall, though manager Sparky Anderson was elected in 2000.
Grant Bisbee of SB Nation weighed in with a very different argument:
Another difference between Larkin and Trammell is that the latter had a sidekick who was also worthy of the Hall of Fame. For just under two decades, Lou Whitaker played along Trammell, making All-Star teams and hitting at a position where most teams shouldn’t have a hitter. The two rode around on tandem bikes and finished each other’s sentences, and there might have been a tendency to pretend that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.
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