Manny Machado Is Building The Quietest Hall Of Fame Resume Of His Generation

Denis Poroy. Getty Images.

I recently put this tweet out after Manny Machado hit his 350th career home run:

I thought it was pretty innocuous. I'm calling Machado a future Hall of Famer and that he should probably get more respect and attention. Machado has been very good for a long time but it is rarely one of the first names mentioned when people start naming the best players in the game.

I think most people understood what I was saying but it's Twitter so there is a group of people that are always looking for a fight. A lot of people felt the need to tell me that Machado was going to the Hall Of Fame (I know, hence the tweet). Another group said his HOF resume isn't quite at all.

I think the interesting argument is if Machado isn't the quietest HOFer of this generation, then who is? Guys like Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge are in leagues of their own. If we're talking about active Hall Of Famers, I'd put Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander in a different camp as well.

Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Bryce Harper have similar cases to Machado but because of post-season success or just being more in the limelight, I feel like they are all players with bigger profiles.

I saw Jose Ramirez mentioned along with Paul Goldschmidt as guys who are smaller names than Machado, which may be true? Goldschmidt does have an MVP and playing with the Yankees will only help his name recognition. If Ramirez can get to 2,000 hits, I think he should get in. He already has a 54.8 WAR, a career slugging percentage of .506 and shows no sign of slowing down. Plus, third base is the least represented position in Cooperstown. But has Ramirez been underrated for so long, that he's become a bigger name? Sort of like Felix Hernandez, who ended up almost being overrated because said he was underrated for so long.

(By the way, King Felix was awesome but only had 169 career wins and had 20.6% of the Hall Of Fame votes last year.)

Let's not lose sight of the greater point which is how great Manny Machado has been. He currently has 1,976 hits and 352 home runs. He's also signed for 8 more years so he's getting to 3,000/500. Mike Schmidt, George Brett and Adrian Beltre didn't get to both of those numbers. If you count A-Rod as a third baseman, he did it but that's the list. It would just be Machado. Those two milestones don't even take into effect how great he has been in his career defensively. 

I know it's not breaking news that Manny Machado is awesome but it's also perfectly OK to sometimes remind ourselves of how great the best are while we are watching them.