but Omar signed him to a f-in major league deal.

Seems like a solid option as the last (maybe second-to-last?) guy out of the pen. And as Mets81 said, he’s got the remainder of a $2.25MM contract going for him. If his presence came at the expense of someone of quality (i.e. Niese), I’d be upset. But I don’t think it would.

In part, because the standards for second basemen aren’t tremendously well defined. Ryne Sandberg, Joe Morgan, and Rod Carew (whose career was split about evenly between 2B and 1B) are the only second basemen to be voted in by the BBWAA since Jackie Robinson in 1962, with none voted in between Robinson and Morgan in 1990. (Was 2B such a thin position that there was really nobody good enough between Robinson’s retirement in 1956 and Morgan’s first full season in 1965? I wonder whether there may have been some guys back then who suffered from a lack of understanding of position scarcity.)

I’ll include figures for Morgan and Robinson, but I’m not really going to use them as points of comparison; Morgan is one of those guys who would be on the top floor if the Hall of Fame put the best players on the top and the most borderline inductees on the bottom, and Robinson didn’t play in the majors until he was 28. I think Alomar compares favorably to the other guys though. Using Baseball Prospectus’ WARP3 (because baseballprojection.com’s WAR database doesn’t go that far back):

Morgan: 127.4
Carew: 85.8
Alomar: 81.0
Sandberg: 75.8
Robinson: 67.9

(By the way, I think it’s crazy that Morgan only pulled in about 82% of the vote a year after Carl Yastrzemski, a very good player to be sure but not in Morgan’s class, got almost 95%. I guess that’s what playing in a big media market and winning a Triple Crown will do for you.)

But really, I think because Carew moved positions mid-career, I think you have to be comparing Alomar to Sandberg.

Alomar career raw numbers:
OBP .371
SLG .443
HR 210
SB 474 / CS 114

Sandberg career raw numbers:
OBP .344
SLG .452
HR 282
SB 344 / CS 107

Both were thought of, right or wrong, as very good fielders; Alomar has ten Gold Gloves in his trophy case and Sandberg has nine. Sandberg took a few years to get voted in and eventually squeaked by with 76.16% of the vote. Sandberg played almost his whole career as the face of the Cubs (where would the Phils trading Sandberg and Larry Bowa for Ivan DeJesus rank on a list of the worst trades the Mets have ever made? pretty far up, I’d guess), while Alomar once spat in an umpire’s face and was accused of giving his girlfriend AIDS and worked his way through seven different organizations. Looking at things that sabermetricians don’t give much credence to but BBWAA members probably do, Sandberg won an MVP award and Alomar has two World Series rings.

Based on the comparison between the two, I think Alomar should be a Hall of Famer (in part because 2Bs are underrepresented) and probably will get in, but my guess is not on the first ballot. Next year he’ll have to contend with holdovers including Andre Dawson, Bert Blyleven, Lee Smith, Jack Morris, Tim Raines, Mark McGwire and Alan Trammell (speaking of middle infielders not getting as much Hall of Fame love as they probably deserve), as well as other first-time eligibles including Barry Larkin (who IMO has the best case among all the newly eligible players), Edgar Martinez, Fred McGriff, Robin Ventura, Andres Galarraga, Kevin Appier, and sure-fire first-ballot inductee Turk Wendell.

Can you tell I didn’t have a lot to do at work this afternoon?