but I think Whitaker is more deserving than Morris. Comparing them to players currently in the hall, Whitaker compares pretty favorably (both defensively and offensively) to Ryne Sandburg, and his offensive performance is WAY better than Bill Mazeroski’s, though Maz does have an advantage defensively.

Frankly, Morris simply doesn’t compare well to any current HoF’ers, at least in my opinion. The best comparison I can find for him is Catfish Hunter. Also, there are at least two AL pitchers not already in the HoF that are better than Morris: Jim Kaat and Bert Blyleven. Of course, that’s mostly my opinion. Plus, I always liked Sweet Lou better than Morris.

on Trammell though. It’s a shame that he’s not getting more consideration than he’s been getting. If you look at RC/G (how many runs per game a lineup of nine Trammells would score), he compares very favorably to Ripken and Yount, and he blows Smith away:

Trammell- 5.23
Ripken- 5.21
Yount- 5.25
Smith- 4.11

That metric, at least, shows him in a virtual dead-heat with Ripken and Yount. Throw in the fact that he’s better than Yount defensively, and only a little worse than Ripken, and I think it’s pretty clear that Trammell belongs in the Hall.

Baseball Reference is a great starting point

Take particular note of their Hall of Fame standards statistics (Gray Ink, etc.) Those should help you a lot. As you can see, Trammell is well above the standards for the bottom of the Hall of Fame, but he’s still in the bottom third among Hall of Famers.

For the ‘84 Tigers, I would suggest you describe Gray Ink and how it doesn’t apply very well because ’84 was post-expansion. Then use the Hall of Fame Monitor and Hall of Fame Standards tests.