Upon further review, Torii Hunter should be in the Hall of Fame

When Joe Mauer retired in 2018, I reassessed whether he should be in the Hall of Fame.

I tried to set aside both biases I developed regarding Mauer.

The first bias: As a local kid who became the first pick in the draft, became the first American League catcher to win a batting title, won two more batting titles, won an MVP and, for the first seven years of his career, built one of the greatest résumés ever for someone who played his position, he had set himself up to be a first-ballot inductee and to be one of the greatest of all Minnesota sports stories.

The second bias: His injuries and offensive decline tainted his résumé and limited his progression toward the kind of statistical mileposts that get players into the Hall.

After wiping clean my mental slate, I recognized that Mauer, despite his injuries and decline, was a historically great catcher who, like Kirby Puckett and Tony Oliva, shouldn’t be penalized because of ailments that damaged his longevity.

It’s time I took another look at another longtime Twin.

I got to know center fielder Torii Hunter after the Twins drafted him in 1993, and I covered him throughout his career.

My perception of Hunter was that his fielding was Hall-of-Fame caliber, but his hitting fell just short of giving him a résumé worthy of enshrinement.

It’s time to reset.

When watching MLB Network the night Mauer was informed of his election into the Hall, this statistic flashed on the screen: “Andruw Jones and Torii Hunter are two of the seven players in MLB history with 350+ HR and 9+ Gold Glove Awards.’’

In addition, Hunter is one of 15 players in baseball history to reach 2,400 hits, 350 home runs, 150 stolen bases and 450 doubles. He was an All-Star for three different teams.

Despite being a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America since 1993, I no longer vote for the Hall of Fame or seasonal awards.

I stopped voting for awards such as MVP and Cy Young because players began negotiating bonuses tied to those awards, and I didn’t think it was ethical for me to cast a vote that would affect how a player I covered was compensated.

I stopped voting for the Hall of Fame because, having known Bert Blyleven for all of the years in which he was fuming about not having been elected, I didn’t think it was my place to determine his worthiness.

Because I no longer vote, I refrain from criticizing those who do. It’s a tough, thankless job.

But those who do vote should keep an open mind about candidates.

Because I don’t spend a lot of time researching candidates anymore, I allowed my gut feeling about Hunter to create an assumption that he fell short of the standards of the Hall of Fame.

The statistical profiles above indicate that I was wrong.

Hunter was one of the greatest fielding center fielders of all time. He constantly risked injury and battered his body running into walls and diving in gaps, yet was remarkably durable and highly productive.

I think what has hurt Hunter’s candidacy is that he played for the Twins, a team that was rarely televised nationally and had little postseason success during his stay, a team that always seemed to be searching for one more middle-of-the-order bat.

There is always a gap between perception and reality.

Once it’s time to decide whether a player is worthy of the Hall of Fame, anyone with a vote should try to forget about their perceptions and embrace statistics, and the context around those statistics, that tell the true story.

The statistics tell us that Hunter was one of the greatest center fielders ever. That should place him in the Hall of Fame, along with Billy Wagner, Jones and Gary Sheffield.

This year, Hunter was listed on just 7.3% of the voters’ ballots.

That stunning stat from MLB Network alone should have inflated his vote total tenfold.