With just two years remaining on the Hall of Fame ballot, the Atlanta Braves brass — namely Bobby Cox, Phil Niekro, Pete Van Wieren, and John Schuerholz – are making last push to get former Braves’ slugger Dale Murphy into the Hall.

Schuerholz went as far as even writing a letter to voters in hopes it persuades them to vote for Murphy. Here is the letter courtesy of MLB.com:

Dear Hall of Fame Voter:

As you prepare to vote for the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2012, please accept this letter in support of Dale Murphy.

The Atlanta Braves organization is extremely proud of Dale’s outstanding accomplishments during an extraordinary 18-year Major League career, 15 of which were spent with the Braves.

Not only on the field, but off the field as well, Dale represented himself and the city of Atlanta with the class and professionalism consistent with the ideals of Major League Baseball and the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Even today, he continues to be one of our game’s greatest ambassadors.

On the following two pages, please review Dale’s remarkable accomplishments produced over what the Braves family feels is a Hall of Fame career. On behalf of our organization and Dale individually, I thank you for your consideration.

Murphy was a career .265/.346/.469 hitter with 398 career HR’s in 18 Major League Seasons. He won back-to-back MVP awards in 1982 and 1983 and finished in the top-10 in NL MVP voting two other times.

Murphy was one of the most feared hitters in the 80′s and when I was a kid, Murphy was the man. I also remember him having the quickest hands of any hitter I ever saw. He would just flick his wrists at the last minute and the ball would go 400 feet. It was amazing.

I will also say he is the one member of the back-to-back MVP club that gets very little respect.

Take a look at the back-to-back MVP club. They are all Hall of Famers and Frank Thomas will be in the HOF. Only Murphy and Roger Maris aren’t in the Hall and there is a big campaign now to get Maris into the Hall. Yet, no one mentions Murphy.

And I think there is a reason for that. Murphy played for 18 seasons and really, only six of them were HOF worthy. Those six seasons were from 1982 – 1987 when he averaged 36 HR’s a season and a .913 OPS. He put up some monster seasons during that time frame, including a 1987 season in which he hit 44 HR’s and had a .997 OPS.

However, you take out those six seasons from his career and you got a guy who averaged 15 HR’s a season and a .732 OPS. And his last four years were brutally bad. That’s not impressive at all and never sits well with HOF voters.

Another factor is that Murphy barely played on any winning teams and for the most part, the Braves were a joke when he played for them. Murphy had 11 career postseason PA’s. That was back in 1982. The only exposure Murphy had on the National scale (yes, the Braves were on TBS back then, but a good majority of the country didn’t have cable yet) was the All Star Game.

Take a look at Murphy versus Dave Parker, Dwight Evans, and Maris.

Source: FanGraphs — Dwight Evans, Roger Maris, Dale Murphy

As you can see, Murphy didn’t have a better career than any of those other players and none of those players are considered Hall of Famers. They are in the very good category.

I appreciate the fact that the Braves organization is trying to get Murphy into the Hall. That’s pretty cool. But at the end of the day, their efforts won’t matter.

Murphy was a great Brave for six years, but not a Hall of Fame player.

You can follow The Baseball Index on Twitter @ baseballindex

By The Baseball Index