Bill Simmons once suggested a means of decluttering the various professional hall-of-fames. His idea was to construct buildings that were essentially pyramid shaped, so that the elite of the elite would be housed on the top floor, the next tier would be on the floor under that and so on until the ground floor was populated by those who were just barely good enough to get in (or maybe never should have been there in the first place).
This was on my mind when I came upon a stat called JAWS, which attempts to quantify the worthiness of a player for the Hall of Fame by averaging his career WAR and his 7-year peak WAR. Here are all of the players who had above-average JAWS for all HOFers (although not all of them are currently in the HOF):
C: (HOF avg 43.1), 1. Johnny Bench (61.0), 2, Gary Carter (59.1), 3. Ivan Rodriguez (54.0), 4. Carlton Fisk (52.9), 5. Mike Piazza (51.2), 6. Yogi Berra (48.2), Bill Dickey (45.0), 8. Mickey Cochrane (44.5)
1B: (HOF avg. 54.2), 1. Lou Gehrig (90.0), 2. Albert Pujols (80.4), 3. Jimmie Fox (77.9), 4. Cap Anson (67.8), 5. Roger Connor (65.5), 6. Jeff Bagwell (63.9), 7. Dan Brouthers (63.3), 8. Johnny Mize (59.9), 9. Frank Thomas (59.5), 10. Jim Thome (57.2), 11. Rafael Palmeiro (55.2), 12. Willie McCovey (54.6)
2B: (HOF avg. 56.9), 1. Rogers Hornsby (100.2), 2. Eddie Collins (94.1), 3. Nap Lajoie (83.8), 4. Joe Morgan (79.7), 5. Charlie Gehringer (65.6), 6. Rod Carew (65.4), 7. Bobby Grich (58.6), 8. Frankie Frisch (57.4), 9. Ryne Sandberg (57.2)
3B: (HOF avg. 55.0), 1. Mike Schmidt (82.5), 2. Eddie Matthews (75.4), 3. Wade Boggs (73.6), 4. George Brett (70.8), 5. Chipper Jones (65.8), 6. Adrian Beltre (64.1), 7t. Ron Santo (62.1), 7t. Brooks Robinson (62.1), 9. Paul Molitor (57.5), 10. Scott Rolen (56.8), 11. Edgar Martinez (56.0), 12. Craig Nettles (55.1)
SS: (HOF avg. 54.7), 1. Honus Wagner (98.2), 2. Alex Rodriguez (91.2), 3. Cal Ripken (75.8), 4. George Davis (64.5), 5. Robin Yount (62.1), 6. Arky Vaughn (61.8), 7. Ernie Banks (59.6), 8. Ozzie Smith (59.4), 9. Luke Appling (59.1), 10. Bill Dahlen (57.7), 11. Allen Trammell (57.5), 12. Derek Jeter (57.0), 13. Barry Larkin (56.6), 14. Bobby Wallace (56.0), 15. Lou Boudreau (55.8). 16. Joe Cronin (55.2)
LF: (HOF avg. 53.3), 1. Barry Bonds (117.6), 2. Ted Williams (96.2), 3. Ricky Henderson (84.1), 4. Carl Yastrzemski (75.8), 5. Pete Rose (61.9), 6. Ed Delahanty (59.0), 7. Al Simmons (57.2), 8. Tim Raines (55.6), 9. Goose Goslin (54.7), 10. Manny Ramirez (54.6)
CF: (HOF avg. 57.2), 1. Willie Mays (115.0), 2. Ty Cobb (110.0), 3. Tris Speaker (97.9), 4. Mickey Mantle (87.2), 5. Ken Griffey Jr. (68.8), 6. Joe Dimaggio (65.5), 7. Duke Snider (58.2)
RF: (HOF avg. 58.1), 1. Babe Ruth (123.9), 2. Hank Aaron (101.3), 3. Stan Musial 96.2), 4. Mel Ott (80.3), 5. Frank Robinson (80.0), 6. Roberto Clemente (74.4), 7. Al Kaline 70.7), 8. Reggie Jackson (60.3), 9. Harvey Heilmann (59.6), 10. Larry Walker (58.6)