Eli Cash - contributing reporter
Our next case is Lonnie Mills. A favorite of some but still has a ways to go with the voters. S56 saw him gain 7 votes, and just this season he lost one - going down to 6. That means he needs 11 more votes to get in but still have a few seasons to go. His test score of 67 says he should be in, but his Monitor score leaves him on the outside looking in. The Hall has ZERO catchers in and perhaps everyone is waiting for Kyle Crain's career to be finished to become the first one, but just like with Lee Schlitter we'll provide the information and you can decide for yourself if he deserves your vote.
Here's the quick rundown of his stats and any awards he may have won, we've also listed his own team at the time and which current franchise they are now known as.
Count 'em, that's 8 straight seasons above 3.7 WAR and all but one were above 4.3! Only playing in 130ish games a year, he obviously needed some reason, but his 162 game average was 172 hits, 88 runs, 30 hr, 101 rbi and ended his career with a .307 batting average. As you can see his wRC+ has him worth nearly double the replacement player for his prime years. His WAR ranks him 20th among the 350 players we've logged. He's first among catchers, topping Al Samuel who I think should have made it in during his voting days. He's #37 All-time in BB.
Among (logged) Catchers he's #5 in Runs, #6 in Hits, #8 in HR, #7 in RBI. He had 9 All-Star appearances, and 8 Silver Slugger awards, 5 of them at Catcher with the other 3 at DH. He was the Home Run Derby champ in S40 and won a World Series title in S48 with Colorado Springs. He caught 1,017 games at catcher with 657 serving as the DH, and 127 in Right Field.
For comparison, here are our logged Catchers. Green highlight indicates a top 20 Overall in that category. Orange highlighted player name indicates active players. Spreadsheet is a work in progress as we backlog players, Test and Monitor scores as well.
