One of the things we discovered when looking at the third basemen from the 1970s and 1980s was that they did not quite get to the Hall of Fame median in the index. This is obviously where things get tricky. They were all certainly better than some of the players in the Hall of Fame. However, that doesn’t mean that any of them should necessarily be Hall of Famers.
The same will true of the earlier third basemen. Now, earlier is loosely defined as playing a majority of their careers before 1980 or all of their careers before that point.