That's the comparison Dave Cameron made over at FanGraphs today. He looks at Berkman's late start to his career and his success up to that point as being very comparable to the Seattle Mariners designated hitter. He also concludes that Berkman is headed for a bubble candidacy for the Hall of Fame, despite never getting there with the counting stats.
↵My question, then, to you Astros fans is this. Will Lance Berkman stand out to you more in future years for being brilliant over a smaller period of time? Will the legacy of his Astros tenure be any different than Craig Biggio's, even though Bidge wasn't nearly as good in his final five to six years on the team?
↵Basically, how much does legacy matter in these things? I talked a lot last summer about how Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman came to define the Astros team in the mid to late '00s. They never really got their due as big-time faces of the franchise, but I wonder if that'll change if one or both make it to Cooperstown. At this point, they both will have to make significant contributions with another team besides Houston to get there. Will that diminish their Astros legacy? Will we still remember them as fondly? Will the team decide to retire their numbers at some point?
↵I never thought of Berkman as being comparable to Edgar Martinez, but maybe his destiny is that of a guy who's more beloved by his hometown team than by the rest of the nation. There's a place for a team Hall of Fame, with guys like Mike Scott and Terry Puhl, just as there's a place for the big guns like Bagwell and Biggio in Cooperstown. I'm just not sure where Berkman fits yet.
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