I also posted my opinion in the thread on the vote in the "Talkin' Baseball" section, but I find myself in the odd position of feeling like I should now defend Dawson after saying I don't think he should be in the HOF. The following doesn't mean I've changed that opinion, but in the interest of being fair and balanced:

Dawson: one great season and in Wrigley Field at that does not equal the Hall Of Fame.
Since Dawson had least 3 seasons in Wrigley that are virtually indistinguishable from each other as a batter (1987, 1988, and 1990), that statement seems hard to support. In addition, those 3 seasons fit right in with his seasons in 1980-82 playing for Montreal. I'd be hard pressed to pick one season out of those 7 that was significantly better than the others offensively. And considering the full range of skills in addition to batting, those Montreal seasons were probably better than his MVP year. But having said that, I'm not sure any of those seasons were "great," exactly, in the Mickey Mantle sense of the word, just awfully darn good.

But an On base percentage of .323? Well nuff said about that.

Yes, that was always Dawson's weakness, no getting around it. And it is a big weakness.

I am old school Batting Average matters
But it isn't the only thing that matters, and it isn't even the most important thing that matters. And even at that, if you don't adjust for home park and the era that the player played, it would be kind of like comparing the times of runners when one runs on an indoor artificial turf track slanted slightly downhill and the other runs on a level loose dirt track.

Fred McGriff's stats dwarf Dawsons in every category except Stolen Bases

"Dwarfs" is a ridiculous exaggeration but there's no doubt that McGriff was a significantly better hitter than Andre Dawson. And if they had spent their careers playing some mutated form of baseball in which players weren't expected to play defense, that would be the end of that. But as much as I thought McGriff was a very good player, it is impossible to ignore the difference between a fine-fielding center fielder vs. an average (if that) fielding first baseman. Considering the whole package--hitting, baserunning, defensive value--I'd take Dawson over McGriff. But neither one of them are obvious HOFers compared to Raines or Blyleven. By the HOF monitor and HOF standards numbers on Baseball-Reference.com, they are almost identical in their HOF credentials, both being right around the "Average HOF" level and "Likely HOF" cuttof.

Jeter's OPS are better than Dawson's and he is a shortstop.
Actually, once you adjust for home park and time period, their career OPS's are almost identical: Dawson's career OPS+ is 119, and Jeter's is 121, a difference that is not statistically meaningful. And Jeter has a few years left to play so his career averages haven't gone through his decline phase yet. But as you correctly point out, Jeter plays shortstop so his offense has been better than Dawson's, compared to replacement value at the position--at least if you want to make the defensive adjustment both ways, on the McGriff side of Dawson the same as on the Jeter side of Dawson. But Jeter is almost certainly going to be an early ballot HOFer, so saying Dawson wasn't as good as Jeter doesn't say a lot. A lot of current HOFers don't have credentials as good as Jeter's.