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2019 Baseball Hall of Fame Thread

Beau Vine

By Beau Vine
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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29198

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mussina was great.  seemed like at least 2-3x per season he'd get into the 8th or 9th with a no-hitter but i don't think he ever pulled one off.  he had that type of stuff more often than not.  pettitte definitely had the benefit of pitching for great teams and accumulating a ton of playoff stats when the postseason expanded.

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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

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It is odd how through no fault of their own two guys just get thrown into a Hall of Fame voting bag and are pitted against one another.  

Pettitte was too delicate, IMO.  Barely averaged 6 innings/start in the postseason, where his fans most ardently point to as to why he belongs in Cooperstown.  And it's not because of the "yeah, but you had to get the ball to Rivera."  Rivera didn't come in for 3 innings.  

Mussina was one of the rare few pitchers of his era that was as strong in the 8th inning as he was in the 3rd inning, and not have to rely so heavily on the specialized setup men of the day.  He deserves to get in sooner rather than later, I think Pettitte is gonna have to wait at least 3-4 more years.  Plus, I realize injuries played a role, but Pettitte kinda hobbled out of the game the last four years of his career.  Mussina went out like a fucking boss---was easily one of the Top 3 starting pitchers in the AL in his final season in 2008.  And I never put much stock in this measure, but the writers are always talking about how a guy compares at his position to other dominant forces of his era.  Pettitte finishes Top 5 CYA 4 times in careers, Mussina did it 9 times.  And for all the great Yankee teams and Torre filling out rosters, Andy makes it to the all-star game just 3 times.  I don't care much about that shit, but writers bring that kinda shit up all the time.  

This thread is making me respect Mussina a helluva lot more than I did mostly because I can't stand the Yankees.  

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dcar00

dcar00 14469

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the pettitte v mussina situation is due to steroids and the fact that Mussina has been on the ballot longer.    Mike Mussina should have been in long ago and is a better pitcher than pettitte.

without the steroids I have no doubt pettitte would be in, in the next 5 years.

pettitte's other problem is how do you vote for him but not clemens.

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dcar00

dcar00 14469

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On 12/13/2018 at 9:45 AM, JimmyHoffa said:

I would put Walker in before Baines

Walker hit .322 his last year for the Expos

.298 in his half a year with the Blue Jays

and .289 his last year in the league with the Cards

 

any sane person would but baines got in through one of these era "committees" that were created.  sure they might correct some serious wrongs in the voting but now they are being used to devalue the HOF.  which was really the on HOF that had any real standards.  

Also, steroids has created the view that guys like baines should be HOFers because they didn't do steroids.  the problem with baines is that there are 10 guys right around his era that should be in over him by any objective measure.  especially when so much of his career is as a DH.

 

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54498

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Let's start with a legal term and stipulate that Mariano Rivera is the greatest closer in baseball history.

Even so, I am not voting for him for the Hall of Fame, and three people come to mind as part of the reason why — Craig Kimbrel, Adam Viniateri and Taylor Dakers.

Kimbrel, of course, was the Red Sox' closer last year, and his performance in the postseason was an abomination. When he pitched, Boston's victories felt like defeats. In 10-2/3 innings he had an ERA of 5.90, and permitted 19 baserunners.

He was also 6 for 6 converting saves — a perfect record.

In the Patriots' 32-29 Super Bowl victory over the Carolina Panthers on Feb. 1, 2004, Vinatieri kicked a field goal with 9 seconds left to provide New England with its margin of victory, a play that was described as "clutch" and "game-winning."

However, Vinatieri missed a 31-yarder in the first quarter and had a 36-yarder blocked in the second.

On Nov. 16, 2008, in Springfield, Dakers — a second-year goalie for the AHL Worcester Sharks — stopped a mere 11 shots, most from near the blue line — in a 3-0 victory to record the first shutout of his professional career. Asked after the game how excited he was, Dakers replied, "To be honest with you, any living member of my family would have had a shutout tonight."

The point being that The Save — the baseball kind — is the lowest-hanging fruit on the game's statistical tree. Closers are its naked emperors.

Kimbrel was perfect in his postseason saves because saves are so easy to come by. Had Vinatieri made either of his two earlier field goal attempts in 2004, the score would have been exactly the same, but because he made one later rather than sooner, it made everyone forget the two previous failures.

Just because something happens at the end of a game doesn't make it intrinsically more important that happens at the beginning.

And Dakers' shutout? Just about any living major league pitcher can record a save, that's how easy they are to come by.

The Closer has evolved into a role created to justify a statistic. Don't take my word on that. There are higher authorities who speak to it.

One is Terry Francona, whose managerial skills are likely to take him to the Hall of Fame.

Francona's creative use of his bullpen in the Cleveland Indians' postseason ventures may be a first step towards destroying the Cult of the Closer, and when asked about it at the annual Boston Baseball Writers dinner in 2017 he said, "The way salaries are structured, I don't blame guys for wanting to close games. This is how Cody Allen's going to make some money. He was every bit as important to us when he was pitching the seventh and eighth as he is now pitching the ninth."

Francona later added, "If the (save) rules were changed, you might start seeing guys used differently."

Ditto former St. Louis Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, who once told baseball writer Derrick Goold, "...There are contracts involved. There are personal statistics that help drive personal achievement as far as salaries go. For us to be completely oblivious to that I think is a mistake as well."

Rivera was 82-60 with a 2.21 ERA and 652 saves, all but 10 of his 1,115 games a reliever. For most of those games, though, he was presented with "clean innings," tools designed to make it as easy as possible for the closer. He didn't have to face batters a third, or even a second, time around. He rarely came in with men on base. He didn't have to conserve energy and pitches to stay in the game for as long as possible to allow the closer to get a save.

He was great in the ninth inning, agreed, but if he was that great why not bring him with the bases loaded and nobody out in the seventh or eighth? Why not use him as a starter?

Baseball is a game of exposure. The more you play, the more accurate your numbers. The opposition figures out your weaknesses. You get tired and fight through injuries. Closers don't have to deal with that. As Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez once told me two years ago, "If I had been a reliever, I'd still be pitching. With my training program and conditioning, how I kept in shape, I could have gone for a long time.

"I'll tell you one thing — I was a reliever for one year (1993) and I was never tired that year."

Rivera never won an ERA title because he never pitched enough innings — about 70 a season on average — to qualify. Would you award a pennant to a team that only played 70 games no matter how good its record in those games? A hitter who batted .400 in 300 plate appearances would not be recognized as the batting champion, would he?

What is different about closers? Why do they get a hall pass when it comes to the numbers?

Because what they do is the last thing you remember about a game (see Vinatieri above). Chris Sale lived a dream when he was on the mound for the last out of the 2018 World Series, but it's fair to say that David Price's seven innings as a starter had a lot more to do with Boston winning than Sale's one.

Managers, Francona once said, are judged by how they use their bullpens. He was also fond of saying that momentum is tomorrow's starting pitcher, never mentioning relievers. He is right — the baseball public is focused on what happens at the end of the game and woe to the manager who screws it up no matter how exemplary his job performance is otherwise.

Imagine if Buck Showalter never manages another major league game. His distinguished career may best be remembered for his failure to use Zach Britton in a playoff game in 2016. Closers don't make managers good, but they can make them look good, or bad. That's a perception, though, and not a reality.

Pete Palmer, a renowned sports researcher, analyzer and statistician, had a piece in last spring's Baseball Research Journal about relief pitching strategy. He discovered that in games where a team is ahead but more likely to lose because of the score and runners on base — a true save and not some statistical creation — the team saves leader (closer) now comes in about 5 percent of the time.

Palmer cites a research paper by Dave Smith — "The Myth of the Closer" — which concludes that in the last 100 years of Major League Baseball, the likelihood that a team that leads going into the ninth inning will win has not changed.

Ergo, who needs a closer?

All of that said, nobody I've talked to about this agrees with me on Rivera. Francona, Matheny, Martinez — they would all no doubt cast Hall of Fame ballots for Rivera if they could vote. Even Palmer writes that Rivera is a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame. The class of 2019 will be revealed Jan. 22.

My thought on the Hall of Fame is that it is more than numbers, that its members must have the kind of presence that would make somebody buy a ticket — not hometown fans, but general baseball fans — just to say they saw him play.

Rivera fits that description. He is a larger-than-life performer whose character is impeccable. He has had a long career, albeit in a role I do not value, a role I equate with a PAT kicker in football or a shootout guy in hockey.

If Rivera had been that seventh- or eighth-inning guy who came in with the bases loaded and wound up with 100 saves and not 652, would he be Hall of Fame material?

Maybe, but I don't think so.

Without a doubt, though, Rivera is going to be elected to the Hall of Fame on this ballot, so whether or not I vote for him is irrelevant.

With baseball becoming increasingly dependent on analytics, I think that closers will eventually evolve out of fashion, but the opposite could happen. Maybe new research will determine them to be the most critical components of a pitching staff.

I could be wrong about all of this, and everyone I have the debate with says, "I see your point, but Rivera is different." Maybe he is and I'm just missing something.

Rivera could be the first Hall of Famer elected unanimously. I think I'm right about closers, but not so much that I would deny Rivera a chance to be the first unanimous Hall of Famer.

Thus, I'm not voting this year. A submitted blank ballot is "no" vote for every candidate, so I'm doing a Switzerland and not sending one at all.

https://www.telegram.com/news/20181222/bill-ballou-mariano-rivera-not-getting-this-writers-hall-of-fame-vote?template=ampart&__twitter_impression=true

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formermav43

formermav43 4606

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1 hour ago, WBT said:

I agree with him about modern relievers.  I wouldn't vote for any of them.  Kind of bullshit to write that and then not vote.  If you don't think he deserves it, don't vote for him.

Yep. I think the idea that a guy who played 70 innings a year should be a unanimous hall of famer is asinine. So have the guts to not vote him in.

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54498

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Mariano Rivera is tied with Robin Ventura for career wins above replacement. He’s pitched 24% of the innings Greg Maddux pitched in his career. The notion he’s a unanimous Hall of Famer is insane.”

— Tweet from Michael Needham, Chief of Staff for Marco Rubio

Let’s go back to the beginning, to the last week of January, 1936, when the committee in charge of the very first Baseball Hall of Fame vote was doing the official count. It was exciting. There were 226 baseball writer votes to count, and the committee members knew that any player on the 51-person ballot who got 75 percent of the vote was going to the be inducted into this Hall of Fame that was being built for baseball’s centennial celebration.

Who would get in? Christy Mathewson? Tris Speaker? Cy Young?

There were two players everyone knew would get in. And so, inside the room, there was a side bet on those two: Who would get more votes — Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth?

As the first 100 votes were counted, that bet seemed pointless: Cobb and Ruth were named on all 100 ballots. They were unanimous. Well, of course they were. Ruth had only just retired but he was one of those rare players who was a legend in his own time. Come on: 714 home runs? Who could vote against that? And Cobb? He hit .366 for his career! He hit .400 three different times! The baseball literati of the age believed that Cobb, not Ruth, was the greatest player of them all.

So things were going along as expected.

Then it happened: A ballot was counted that did not have Babe Ruth on it.

“The committee was amazed,” the Associated Press reported. “Vote counting stopped momentarily for a discussion on how anyone could leave the Great Ruth off of the list of immortals.”

Well, the committee members thought, it could have been an oversight. There would be many oversights in the years and votes ahead. But soon after the first non-Ruth ballot, they counted a second one. Then a third.

Still, Cobb’s vote record remained clean. And then it happened: They came across a ballot without Ty Cobb’s name. The committee stopped counting again. They tried to make sense of it again. Finally, they went on.

They would see quite a few more quirks as they counted, including one ballot that did not have Ruth or Cobb on it (or Tris Speaker, for that matter). But by then, the committee members had stopped being surprised.

In the end, four people did not vote for Ty Cobb.

Eleven did not vote for Babe Ruth or Honus Wagner.

Twenty-one did not vote for Christy Mathewson.

An astonishing 37 did not vote for Walter Johnson.

The shock quickly moved on to celebration. These five were not elected unanimously, no, but they were elected convincingly, by acclamation, and they were the first class of the Baseball Hall of Fame. People cheered across America. And the four people who failed to vote for Ty Cobb were forgotten.

But those four writers set the stage for the perpetual play that never ends.

No one has ever been elected unanimously to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

AP_18225842842223-1024x760.jpg
 
The inaugural Hall of Fame class. Front row: Eddie Collins, Babe Ruth, Connie Mack, Cy Young; rear row, Hans Wagner, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Tris Speaker, Napoleon Lajoie, George Sisler and Walter Johnson. (AP Photo / File)

OK, well, wait a minute. That last sentence, you know, that “No one has ever been elected unanimously to the Baseball Hall of Fame” sentence, it isn’t quite true. Lots of people have been elected unanimously. Heck, Lee Smith was elected unanimously this year. Yes, that was a veteran’s committee ballot, and — no exaggeration — dozens and dozens of people have been elected unanimously on veteran’s ballots, from Joe Torre (as manager) to Josh Gibson to Kenesaw Mountain Landis. So we need to define our terms here.

So maybe it is more right to say that no player has ever been elected unanimously by the Baseball Writers Association of America.

Except … that’s not exactly true either. In 1939, just months after Lou Gehrig played his last game and then pronounced himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth, the Baseball Writers voted unanimously to suspend the rules and just place Gehrig in the Hall of Fame without an election. It wasn’t exactly a vote, but it was unanimous.

Anyway, at that point, nobody cared at all about a player getting voted in “unanimously.” That wasn’t even a thing. The Hall of Fame was so new, the voting so haphazard and confusing, that unanimity wasn’t on anybody’s radar.

So when did Hall of Fame unanimity become an issue? Well, it has been an evolution. It was a pebble rolled down a mountain in 1936 by that first schmo who left Ty Cobb off his ballot, probably by accident. Then it rolled and rolled, getting bigger and bigger, until it became so large that it makes Senate Chiefs of Staff fret about Hall of Fame injustice.

1953: The (non-)election of Joe DiMaggio.

After Gehrig’s special election, there wasn’t a player who could realistically garner unanimous support … until Joe DiMaggio retired in 1951. Oh, did the New York writers idolize Joe D. He was, to them, the ideal player — stoic, graceful, silent and (as they often told you) he never once missed a cutoff man or threw to the wrong base. He hit in 56 consecutive games in 1941, and believe it or not there was some talk in that moment of inducting him into the Hall of Fame automatically just for that achievement.

There have been many efforts, at different times in baseball history, to create a “Go Directly to Cooperstown, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200” card. This really came to a head in 1953 when the influential writer Joe Williams pushed a proposal that anyone who hit .400 in a season or threw a perfect game would automatically be put into the Hall of Fame. The proposal was approved and promoted by Commissioner Ford Frick himself. It was eventually spurned by the writers, but it was a real thing for a while there.

Anyway, in 1953, DiMaggio had been retired for about a year, and some of the New York writers had this notion that the Yankee Clipper, like Gehrig, ought to go in into the Hall of Fame unanimously. There was no possibility of a Gehrig-like special election — DiMaggio was quite healthy and, at the time, together with Marilyn Monroe — so instead the New Yorkers badgered their fellow writers incessantly. It backfired. DiMaggio got just 44.3 percent of the vote.

The post-election fireworks were something to see.

“Maybe Marilyn Monroe has more admirers in the BBWAA than she suspects,” wrote the New York Mirror’s Dan Parker, suggesting that jealousy cost DiMaggio.

“Had not the sportswriters in New York taken the stump on behalf of DiMag there’s a slim possibility he might have made it,” St. Louis writer Robert L. Burnets wrote. “The writers in New York will speed his entrance into the Hall if they’d just quit telling the rest of us how we should vote.”

“What it amounted to,” New York World-Telegram’s Bill Roeder said, “was the baseball writers told Joe DiMaggio to wait at the doorstep until they’re good and ready to let him in.”

Here’s the thing: If the current rules had been in place so that DiMaggio did not appear on the Hall of Fame ballot until he had been retired for five years, there’s a chance that he would have been elected unanimously. It’s not likely, but there’s a chance.

But the five-year rule didn’t come into effect until after the DiMaggio mess — it’s basically the Joe DiMaggio rule — and so this whole thing became a fiasco. DiMaggio should not even have been on the next year’s ballot, but he was grandfathered in and again failed to get elected.

The embarrassed writers finally put him in in 1955, setting up the “Hey, if Joe DiMaggio wasn’t good enough to get elected unanimously…” argument that would be repeated again and again for more than 50 years.

1962: Feller falls 10 votes short; Robinson barely makes it.

The Hall of Fame class of 1962 — Bob Feller and Jackie Robinson — is remarkable for many reasons. Many people at the time thought Feller had the stuff to become the first unanimous inductee into the Hall.

The aforementioned Joe Williams made the case:

“Feller’s credentials are so overpowering, his election to the upstate pantheon should be unanimous. The Cleveland fireballer was incontestably the greatest pitcher of his generation. If the war hadn’t taken four prime years off his career, chances are he would have upped his 266 total by another 90 to 100 victories.”

Feller didn’t quite get there. He fell 10 votes short, which probably didn’t make the writers feel too bad considering that on the day of the announcement, Feller’s story lambasting the Hall of Fame was printed in the Saturday Evening Post.*

*Feller’s big argument was that the Hall of Fame voters didn’t respect modern players enough, but he also spent a lot of time focusing on Satchel Paige. Feller lived an interesting and contradictory life; he spent the last 25 years of it sort of being the living embodiment of the “Hey kids, get off my lawn” guy.

But say this: He was an absolute one-man wrecking crew for trying to get Satchel Paige elected to the Hall of Fame. Ted Williams gets a lot of (deserved) credit for using part of his 1966 Hall of Fame speech to make a Hall plea for Paige and Josh Gibson and other great Negro Leagues players. But credit where credit is due — Feller was doing it earlier. He didn’t just write about it in the Saturday Evening Post at that moment when he had the stage, he gave dozens of interviews after he was elected where he talked as much about Paige’s greatness as his own.

Then there was Jackie Robinson. If the vote were held now, Robinson undoubtedly would be elected unanimously. But in 1962, there was no chance at all. “Too many people don’t like me,” Robinson said. Joe Williams, in the column referenced above, made it clear that Robinson might make it but in large part because of sentimentality and the desire not to be called a racist.

“There are other eligibles who rate ahead of Robinson, Allie Reynolds, Red Ruffing, Marty Marion, Luke Appling to name names that quickly come to mind,” he wrote. “But since he does qualify on merit, substantial if not superlative, failure to elect him would almost certainly be attributed to unwholesome motives.”

Imagine someone thinking Marty Marion was a better player than Jackie Robinson.

GettyImages-82107059-1024x691.jpg
 
(Musial: Focus on Sport / Getty Images)

1966 and 1969: Williams and Musial

Before the election results were revealed in 1966, The Sporting News sent out a query asking Hall of Fame voters to anonymously reveal their ballots (they were kind of an early-day Ryan Thibodaux.) They got 26 responses.

Twenty-five of them voted for Ted Williams.

One did not.

“The one writer who bypassed Williams in the poll,” The Sporting Newsexplained, “did so because of a personal grudge that he will never forget.”

The funny thing is that in 1966, nobody seemed to blame that writer. Nobody thought that Williams, who had warred with reporters all his career, had any shot at being named unanimously. After Williams received 93.4 percent of the vote (only 20 writers didn’t vote for Williams), there was story after story about the magnanimousness of the writers for looking past their personal feelings and still voting for the man.

“This is a wonderful day for me,” Williams said. “I can’t think of anything a ballplayer would want more.”

While nobody thought Williams would be elected unanimously, lots of people thought Stan Musial might be. In many ways, 1969 is the watershed moment of our story. If anyone was going to get elected unanimously, it was baseball’s Perfect Knight, the most beloved player of his time and the National League hit leader, Stan the Man.

When the year began, Red Smith himself — the most beloved and persuasive sportswriter of his or perhaps any time — made the case that Musial deserved to be the first unanimous choice. He was probably the first to make a big deal out of the character issue. He wrote that Cobb and Ruth fell short of unanimity because of their flaws as people:

“Since it is inconceivable that Cobb or Ruth could have been passed up by oversight, chances are there were voters in 1936 who felt that the Hall of Fame should not be a memorial to a man who got into fistfights and carried a knife, and others who disqualified Ruth because he was a glutton who drank whiskey and used naughty words.”

And then Smith made the point that Musial had none of these shortcomings.

“This is a more permissive age, yet even by the puritanical standards of 1936, Musial would qualify,” Smith wrote. “He has always been trustworthy, loyal, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Furthermore, he hit more baseballs safely than any man except Ty Cobb.

“If he isn’t chosen unanimously, it will recall the case of the football coach who, dangerously ill, received a message reading: ‘By a vote of 4-3, the faculty board of athletics wishes you a speedy recovery.’”

Smith started a trend. A couple of days later, the AP wrote a story that said, “More than 200 veteran members of the BBWAA figure to make Stan Musial their unanimous choice to be enshrined in the game’s Hall of Fame.” The New York Times’ Arthur Daley dedicated a full column to the subject.

“It’s unthinkable that any of the Lodge Brothers would be so derelict in his duty and so blind to the obvious that he would fail to include Musial on his ballot,” Daley wrote. “But there are rock-heads and dopes in every organization.”

Yes. There are indeed rock-heads and dopes. Not only did Musial not get in unanimously, 23 writers left him off their ballots — more misses then Ted Williams. Musial took it in stride, as you would expect: “I wasn’t worried about that,” he said happily. “In this country the majority rules. And that’s a great thing.”

Mantle and Mays

In 1974, Mickey Mantle missed by 43 votes. The Sporting News was apoplectic.

“The Mick’s credentials are so overwhelming,” they wrote in an editorial, “that it’s hard to understand why 43 writers failed to include his name on their ballots. … More likely, there are some writers who are dead set against anyone being named to Cooperstown unanimously.”

They then pointed out the obvious: The longer this went on, the less likely it would be for any player to become the first unanimous selection.

“It’s appalling,” they continued, “that some people feel what has not happened before should not be accomplished now. That kind of thinking would take us back to the horse-and-buggy days. … Certainly, it’s deplorable that Cobb and Ruth were not named on every ballot in 1936, but the sins of the writers of that period should not be repeated by other BBWAA members.”

But they were repeated. Again and again. In 1979, Willie Mays came up for election. Who in the world would not vote for Willie Mays? The familiar headlines appeared in newspapers: “Will Mays be a Unanimous Choice?”

But by now, everyone knew the answer before the election even began.

“Could anyone in any election today get a unanimous vote?” asked Jack Lang, the BBWAA’s longtime secretary. “There are always the dissidents.”

There were 23 dissidents on Willie Mays, same as for Musial (though Mays had a higher percentage because there were more voters). Three of the four writers who covered Mays in New York did not vote for him, though one later said, pathetically, that he simply had forgotten to put Mays on his ballot.

“If Jesus Christ was a candidate for the Hall of Fame,” Lang grumbled, “I don’t believe he’d get a unanimous vote from the 12 Apostles — if they were writers.”

No, it wasn’t a great look. The Sporting News went for blood by putting a box in its “Voice of the Fan” section:

“We realize that nobody has ever been a unanimous selection in Hall of Fame balloting. However, we offer space in Voice of the Fan to any of the 23 writers who would like to explain their reasons for ignoring Mays. Letters, though, should be limited to approximately 100 words.”

It goes without saying that no one took up the offer.

Henry Aaron and others

There was something different about Henry Aaron’s case for unanimity: He openly went for it. The other players had (publicly) said that it didn’t matter if they were chosen unanimously, that it was just an honor to get elected, and all the right political words. But Aaron, who had endured so much on his way to 755 home runs and the all-time record in total bases, who carried himself with such dignity, didn’t see it that way.

He didn’t campaign for himself, or anything like that. But in his mind, someone had to be elected unanimously. And he didn’t see why it shouldn’t be him.

“If you talk about what happens between the white lines, I broke records,” he said. “I don’t see how anyone could not vote for me. If a player deserves to be in by unanimous vote, he should be accorded that honor.”

Aaron came closer than anyone had since the first ballot. He fell nine votes short. The BBWAA hid the identities of the nine who didn’t vote for him — but in a rather pitiful effort to show that it wasn’t pure racism that drove those votes, they released one non-Aaron ballot that did check off African-American great Frank Robinson.

They didn’t even try to explain what sort of logic it would take for someone to vote for Frank Robinson and not vote for Hank Aaron.

After Willie Mays and Hank Aaron fall short of unanimity, what’s even left? Sixteen people didn’t vote for Cincinnati Reds great Johny Bench, which led his old teammate Pete Rose to say: “I ask myself, ‘How could someone not vote for him?’ They’ll say, ‘Well even Babe Ruth wasn’t unanimous.’ But that don’t make it right.”

A lot of people speculated at the time that it would actually be Rose who would be the first unanimous choice. As you know, that didn’t quite work out. But Rose does play a fairly big role in our story. In 1992, Tom Seaver was up for election. And that was the same year that Rose was supposed to be on the ballot but was pulled by the Hall of Fame, enraging the BBWAA.

Seaver was more or less the perfect candidate. He was the pitcher of his time, a 300-game winner, a three-time Cy Young Award winner, the star of the storied Miracle Mets, one of the biggest stars across all sports in the 1970s. There wasn’t a knock on him. And he came so close to doing it. He got 425 out of 430 votes, 98.8 percent, the highest percentage in BBWAA Hall of Fame history up to that point.

The five misses? Well, that’s where Pete Rose came in. Three of the misses came from Paul Hagen, Bob Hertzel and Bob Hunter, who sent in blank ballots to protest the fact that Pete Rose was left off the ballot. If you send in a blank ballot, it’s like voting no on everybody.

The other two misses? Pure BBWAA madness. One was from an old New York Times writer named Deane McGowan, already retired, who left off Seaver because he refused to vote for any player on the first ballot.

The other was a writer named Bud Tucker, who had just gotten out of open heart surgery when he filled out his ballot and simply overlooked Seaver’s name.

I want you to think about these voters the next time anyone writes about the sanctity of the BBWAA never voting in a player unanimously.

On and on it went. Steve Carlton then finished 20 votes shy. Mike Schmidt in 1996 fell 16 votes short, one of those from a writer who enthusiastically wrote about his belief that Schmidt was a jerk who treated kids and teammates badly.

In 1999, Nolan Ryan fell six votes shy and George Brett nine votes shy.

And then came Cal Ripken.

Present day: Ripken to Mariano

So who should have been elected unanimously? If you look through the 20th century at the players who sparked conversations about unanimity, you come up with 15 names (not counting Gehrig and Roberto Clemente, who were both elected by special ballot).

The fifteen, as mentioned throughout this piece, are:

  1. Ty Cobb
  2. Babe Ruth
  3. Joe DiMaggio
  4. Bob Feller
  5. Ted Williams
  6. Stan Musial
  7. Mickey Mantle
  8. Willie Mays
  9. Henry Aaron
  10. Johnny Bench
  11. Pete Rose (with an asterisk)
  12. Tom Seaver
  13. Mike Schmidt
  14. Nolan Ryan
  15. George Brett

Then came a new century, and in 2008 the candidate was Ripken. Nobody could think of a single reason to not vote for Cal. Lookit: He broke Gehrig’s record. Two-time MVP. Gold Glove shortstop. Plus there were those crediting him for saving baseball after the 1994 strike.

“He’s got a shot,” Brooks Robinson said of Ripken being unanimous.

“I don’t know what criteria you could use to decide not to vote for him,” Ripken’s old teammate Mike Flanagan said.

“If anybody has a chance — or close to it — I think it’s Cal Ripken,” writer Peter Schmuck said.

It wasn’t Ripken. There wasn’t even any suspense about it. A day before the election came out, a writer named Paul Ladewski went public with the fact that he sent in a blank ballot because he didn’t have enough information to consider the merits of players from the steroid era. He insisted that he didn’t suspect Ripken of using, but, hey, he couldn’t be sure.

Ladewski wasn’t the only one. Ripken fell eight votes short.

Lately, the unanimous candidates have been pouring in, fast and furious. In 2014, Greg Maddux seemed to have a shot. He fell 16 votes short. This time the writer who broke the ice before the vote was even announced was MLB.com’s Ken Gurnick, who sent in a ballot with only Jack Morris because Morris was the only player he felt absolutely sure didn’t use steroids.

The next year, Randy Johnson felt 15 votes short in 2015.

The next year, Ken Griffey just about did it. By 2016, the aforementioned Ryan Thibodaux had long been posting his popular Hall of Fame ballot spreadsheet. For the first time, people could follow Hall of Fame voting in real time. And that meant people could see that Griffey had a real chance. Every single person who publicly revealed a ballot voted for Griffey.

But Griffey didn’t quite get there. He fell three votes short. Three … anonymous … votes … short.

That got a little bit ugly. Numerous people demanded that the three come forward and explain their vote. The BBWAA made a strong pitch to make all votes public (a pitch the Hall of Fame itself denied). But perhaps the least appetizing part of it all was that what should have been a joyful Griffey Hall of Fame celebration moment was tempered a bit because nobody could quite make sense of those three who left him off the ballot.

Thing is, if you look at the history of it all: It isn’t surprising that Griffey fell short. The surprising part is that he got so close. What did Griffey have that Maddux, Ripken, Johnson and other recent immortals lacked?

Part of it was his charisma, sure, the joy he inspired, the coolness factor.

But I think another part of it is this: Many people (most people?) are sick of this non-unanimous garbage. You look back on it now: It’s embarrassing. Four schmoes don’t vote for Cobb? The BBWAA screws up the DiMaggio vote? A few writers for odd, unknown, probably petty reasons don’t vote for Musial, Mays or Aaron, Ripken, Griffey or Maddux?

This isn’t a tradition. No, it’s an accident of randomness, negligence, stupidity and personal vendettas.

It is a sham. And more and more people seem to know it.

All of this finally brings us back around to the top quote from Michael Needham about Mariano Rivera that got the Twitterverse worked up for a while. Needham doesn’t seem to be saying Rivera should not go to the Hall. His later tweets suggest that while he thinks including closers in the Hall is dubious, Rivera should be an exception because he was so great.

What Needham (and plenty of others) have questioned is this: Should Rivera as a closer be the first to be unanimous?

One answer to that question is no, of course he shouldn’t be first. As stated: Ty Cobb should have been first. Joe DiMaggio should have been first. Ted Williams … Stan Musial … Willie Mays … Henry Aaron … Jackie Robinson … Tom Seaver … Cal Ripken … Greg Maddux … Ken Griffey … all of those guys and more should have been first. But they weren’t.

And there’s no going back to get any of that right.

Rivera did his job better than anyone in baseball history. He has the best ERA+ of any pitcher in baseball history. He has the most saves, if you care about saves. He’s fifth all-time in Win Probability added — right between Warren Spahn and Tom Seaver — and his postseason pitching record is an absurdity, 141 innings, a 0.759 WHIP, a 0.70 ERA, and so on.

Is his Hall of Fame case as good as Maddux’s? As Seaver’s? As Johnson’s? As Martinez’s? As Gibson’s? No, not to me.

But maybe it’s better to think of it this way: Nobody closed out a game better. Nobody. In that way, maybe nobody is better suited to close out this ridiculous streak of the greatest players not getting elected unanimously.

 

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spystud13

spystud13 2371

Posted
Posted

Law’s first ballot. 

Quote

I first joined the Baseball Writers' Association of America 10 years ago, after a year of waiting, because the organization's board at the time declined my application on spurious grounds. But even then, I looked forward eagerly to this day, when my hypothetical Hall of Fame ballot would become an official one. The eagerness faded, as time rocked me to patience, but about a year ago, when the ballot became imminent, I began thinking in earnest about how I would eventually vote -- and about my long-standing promise to readers that I would reveal and explain my selections.

The logjam of qualified candidates, exacerbated by moralizing voters who are trying to keep the greatest hitter and pitcher of the last 30 years out of the Hall of Fame, meant that I had to choose a subset of names to keep my ballot within the limit of 10. Had the limit not existed, I would have voted for at least 13 players this year, possibly more. I started with the 13 I thought worthy, immediately checked off the seven no-doubters, and then worked my way through the remainder to add one, then another, and then, after two weeks with a ballot that had nine names marked but not the one that would make the ballot final, gave in and selected the 10th name -- leaving, with regrets, a few good men off of my list.

Here, in the order in which I checked them off, are the 10 names I selected for my first Hall of Fame ballot, with some explanations.

• Barry Bonds: I have seen the greatest players of my generation destroyed by sanctimony. We can put in inferior players because their friends are on the various veterans committees. We can put in Bud Selig, who oversaw a work stoppage that nearly killed the industry, then happily looked the other way while performance-enhancing drugs appeared in the game and owners counted their money. We can certainly put in Bonds, who hit more home runs and drew more walks than any other player in history, who retired with the fourth-highest OBP and fifth-highest slugging percentage in history, who won seven MVP awards (and deserved at least two more), who utterly defined the game, for better and perhaps for a bit worse, for a decade. You simply cannot tell the story of Major League Baseball from 1990 to 2010 without discussing the exploits of Barry Bonds. His exclusion to this point is pearl-clutching of the highest order.

• Roger Clemens: Much of what I said about Bonds applies to Clemens as well. By wins above replacement, he's behind only Cy Young, who benefits from 11 seasons before the modern era of baseball to boost his numbers, and Walter Johnson, the most dominant pitcher of the first 80 years of that same modern era. Clemens ranks third all time in strikeouts, took home seven Cy Young Awards and led his league in ERA and pitcher WAR seven times (not the same seven seasons, but I guess we'll take it). He pitched extremely well, and he pitched a lot, just shy of 5,000 innings, putting him in the top 10 in the post-World War II era. He's almost as essential to the story of baseball in the past quarter-century as Bonds.

• Edgar Martinez. I was voting for Edgar before the Today's Game Committee brought humiliation on both the Hall and the unfortunate Harold Baines -- voting him in as perhaps the worst position player selected in the past 40 years -- but Baines' inclusion makes Edgar's exclusion through nine ballots even more inexplicable. Martinez racked up nearly 70 WAR despite contributing nothing on defense and, as a lifetime DH, having to produce even more to get so far above the replacement level for that position. He was exceptional at getting on base, finishing 17th all time with a .418 career OBP. His career would have been more impressive had Seattle not held him in the minors so long, refusing to give him regular playing time until he turned 27 -- unthinkable today, since he destroyed Triple-A even at age 24, but it was a more ignorant time. If you think David Ortiz is a Hall of Famer, then Edgar is too.

• Mike Mussina. Moose's 83 WAR is the highest of any pitcher not in the Hall other than Clemens, and Mussina doesn't have the same baggage associated with his candidacy. He pitched extremely well in every year but one of an 18-year career, and did so while pitching entirely in the AL East during a period when that was by far the game's toughest division, something that isn't reflected even in most advanced metrics. Among pitchers in the modern era with at least 3,000 innings, Mussina's ERA+ of 123 (100 is league average) ranks 21st. Everyone ahead of him is in the Hall, on the ballot or was banned from the game (Eddie Cicotte).

• Mariano Rivera. The only pure reliever in MLB history who, in my opinion, belongs in the Hall of Fame. His Baseball-Reference WAR total of 56, which includes a boost for pitching in high-leverage situations, puts him close to the bar for Hall of Fame starters, even though he threw just 1,283⅔ innings. His ERA+ of 203 is the highest ever; his adjusted pitching runs, which estimates runs prevented above an average pitcher in the same workload, ranks 22nd all time, and everyone above or right below him was a starting pitcher. By comparison, Trevor Hoffman, voted in last year by the BBWAA, ranks 129th in adjusted pitching runs, and Bruce Sutter ranks 214th. That's without even discussing Rivera's postseason performance, encompassing 141 innings with a 0.70 ERA, which is a major reason why you can't discuss baseball of this period without including Rivera.

• Scott Rolen. Rolen's case for the Hall rests in large part on two things historically undervalued by voters: on-base percentage and defense. Rolen is a top-five defensive third baseman from the postwar era -- evaluating defense from before then is largely based on hearsay -- and his career OBP ranks 17th among third basemen with at least 1,000 games played, 750 or more at the position. Only five third basemen have 2,000 games played and an OBP higher than Rolen's; four are in the Hall (Wade Boggs, Chipper Jones, Mike Schmidt, Eddie Mathews) and the fifth, Eddie Yost, didn't do anything else particularly well.

• Larry Walker. Walker racked up 72.7 WAR despite on and off injuries that shortened his career, limiting him to 1,988 career games, and that figure reflects an adjustment for the time he spent playing with the Rockies in their hitter-friendly home parks. Walker, like Rolen, was a very good defensive player who got on base at a high clip, but he did hit for power, finishing 12th all time in slugging percentage (unadjusted for park), 66th in homers and also 45th in OBP.

• Roy Halladay. After those first seven, Doc was the next name I added after some internal debate, because he had a clear Hall of Fame peak, though his career was short -- just 2,749 innings as a starter, only eight seasons in which he qualified for the ERA title. I did not want his tragic death at age 40 to sway my thinking, nor did I want to allow the fact that I met Halladay and watched him pitch many times while I worked for the Blue Jays to lead me to favor him for the wrong reasons. His 64.3 WAR is on the border of Hall-worthy, but most of his time in the majors came pitching for Toronto in that same difficult AL East that I discussed in the Mussina comment. Halladay made 39 starts against the Red Sox and 36 against the Yankees, more than he faced any other opponents, at a time when those two teams had two of the best offenses in baseball. Doc won two Cy Young Awards, probably should have won a third in 2011, and led his league's pitchers in WAR four times, along with seven top-10 finishes in ERA. His tremendous peak and his production given the caliber of lineups he faced most of his career pushed him over the line for me.

• Andruw Jones. Like Halladay, Jones had a 10-year run of Hall of Fame-level production, and then when he was done, he was just done. In Jones' case, that was at age 30, due to a combination of knee trouble and weight gain that cost him speed, defense and power. He is still the best defensive center fielder of my lifetime, and his name remains the gold standard when scouting other center fielders and trying to evoke an image of a player who, when you look up at a ball in the air and then look down to see the fielder, is already there waiting to catch it. Jones' career WAR of 62.8, which is heavily boosted by defensive production, is probably a shade below the bar, but what boosted him for me was something else: Without Andruw Jones becoming a star in the 1990s, we don't have Xander Bogaerts, Andrelton Simmons, Kenley Jansen, Jurickson Profar, Didi Gregorius, Jonathan Schoop and all of the other players and prospects who've come out of Curaçao and Aruba since then. Jones made baseball more popular there and made young players want to play baseball. MLB can market the game globally and hold games in London or Tokyo, but nothing grows the game like a hometown kid becoming a star on everyone's TV.

• Gary Sheffield. My last spot came down primarily to three names: Sheffield, Manny Ramirez and Todd Helton. Ramirez had the highest pure WAR total, but unlike every player on my ballot, actually tested positive twice, once for a masking agent and once for testosterone. I would consider voting in a player with one or more failed PED tests, but also view that as a clear criterion we can use (as opposed to the hearsay used to indict other players, such as Bonds or Clemens, neither of whom ever tested positive for anything) to separate players on the ballot. Sheffield was a far better hitter than Helton and was one of the worst defensive players in history by any available metric, grading out poorly wherever he played. Had he spent more time at DH, would he have sailed into the Hall? If a player's bat is clearly Hall-worthy -- Sheffield is tied for 25th all time in adjusted batting runs -- should he go into the Hall regardless of his defensive ineptitude? This is where Hall voting differs, for me, from MVP voting. The latter is clear; we want the player who produced the most value for his team. With the Hall of Fame, the criteria are a bit more ambiguous, and I believe the Hall should include the best players, even those who were elite in one significant way but flawed in a smaller one. This is also the one slot where I considered the players' tenures on the ballot. Helton is in his first year, and there's a good (but not guaranteed) chance I'll get to consider him many more times, while Sheffield is halfway into his 10 years and has barely floated above the 5 percent cutoff that might take him off the ballot.

One other note on a player who did not make my ballot: Fred McGriff is in his 10th and thus final year of eligibility, with zero chance to get in after polling just 23.2 percent last year. McGriff is the classic "Hall of the Very Good" player, coming in at 52.6 WAR, an above-average player for most his career but never a star, with just a single top-five WAR finish in any season. I do expect him to sail through whatever they're calling the relevant Hall committee when his time comes, and that's fine, but I could not justify putting him on my ballot ahead of any of the 11 names (including Helton) I cited above.

 

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dcar00

dcar00 14469

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On 12/28/2018 at 6:32 AM, CBT said:

Law gets it.

yep.  the Bill Ballou guy should have his ballot revoked.  what a cop out, with the won't deny mariano being a unanimous selection.  be a man and say you don't think relievers who pitch one inning about 70 times a year should be in.  we already jumped the shark on that with Griffey and Aaron on that anyway. no one is going to bitch about a reliever not being a unanimous first ballot HOFer.

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  • 3 weeks later...
pepper brooks

pepper brooks 580

Posted
Posted (edited)
On ‎12‎/‎15‎/‎2018 at 4:01 PM, Goo Punch said:

Pettite also used steroids to recover from injury, which definitely plays a role.

he also lied about it multiple times, and was accidentally outed by his own dad on Houston radio who admitted to picking them up for Andy.  

Edited by pepper brooks
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pepper brooks

pepper brooks 580

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Posted
On ‎12‎/‎15‎/‎2018 at 6:21 PM, dcar00 said:

the pettitte v mussina situation is due to steroids and the fact that Mussina has been on the ballot longer.    Mike Mussina should have been in long ago and is a better pitcher than pettitte.

without the steroids I have no doubt pettitte would be in, in the next 5 years.

pettitte's other problem is how do you vote for him but not clemens.

especially when there is exactly ZERO evidence Clemens used other than the hearsay from a trainer trying to extort money who ended up being a source for George mitchells bullshit report.  Clemens withstood a grueling 2 year investigation whereby his entire life was investigated extensively only to turn up nothing other than hearsay and a syringe stored in a coke can.  I really hope all of you who continue to act as though he was unquestionably a user are never part of a jury.  The other side to that equation too is if you assumed somehow Clemens was actually smart enough to beat the system and come out of that investigation.  rest assured, he's not.  if he was a user it would have been proven. 

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petscii

petscii 1189

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Posted
24 minutes ago, pepper brooks said:

especially when there is exactly ZERO evidence Clemens used other than the hearsay from a trainer trying to extort money who ended up being a source for George mitchells bullshit report.  Clemens withstood a grueling 2 year investigation whereby his entire life was investigated extensively only to turn up nothing other than hearsay and a syringe stored in a coke can.  I really hope all of you who continue to act as though he was unquestionably a user are never part of a jury.  The other side to that equation too is if you assumed somehow Clemens was actually smart enough to beat the system and come out of that investigation.  rest assured, he's not.  if he was a user it would have been proven. 

So you believe his wife used steroids but he didn't?    

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pepper brooks

pepper brooks 580

Posted
Posted
24 minutes ago, petscii said:

So you believe his wife used steroids but he didn't?    

I believe there is zero evidence or proof he used, and I believe in the whole innocent until proven otherwise concept.  Luckily the jury in his trial ageed.  that is the issue here.  after an exhaustive investigation and trial there was no evidence to indicate he used.  Not sure what else there is to say about that.  We know his wife took HGH for a magazine shoot.  We know Andy used.  there was a paper trail and his dad ratting him out.  There is nothing indicating roger used.  no paper trail, no evidence, no failed tests, no sudden body composition changes, nothing.  

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petscii

petscii 1189

Posted
Posted (edited)
6 minutes ago, pepper brooks said:

I believe there is zero evidence or proof he used, and I believe in the whole innocent until proven otherwise concept.  Luckily the jury in his trial ageed.  that is the issue here.  after an exhaustive investigation and trial there was no evidence to indicate he used.  Not sure what else there is to say about that.  We know his wife took HGH for a magazine shoot.  We know Andy used.  there was a paper trail and his dad ratting him out.  There is nothing indicating roger used.  no paper trail, no evidence, no failed tests, no sudden body composition changes, nothing.  

If Andy had explained it away as his moms had used them?  If Andy had not implicated Roger would you believe Andy was innocent?

Edited by petscii
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pepper brooks

pepper brooks 580

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Posted

What does it matter. Andy was proven a liar based on a paper trail and his dad.  Roger was not.  Roger maintained he never used.  Congress decided to take the word of their former colleague who put together hit piece based on the word of a trainer trying to extort money from a former client.  Through that process it was proven that Pettitte was a liar.  It was proven the trainer was a liar and POS.  It was proven that Mitchell was a man with an agenda who put together a report based on almost nothing but hearsay.  It was not proven that Roger ever used, not proven that he lied about his use.  The jury was never even close to convicting him because there was virtually nothing there.  You can continue to eat up the nonsense and false conviction the media has fabricated if you so wish, but it is nothing more than a media driven thing.  There is no evidence nor proof after a 2 year federal investigation and trial.  That is from federal prosecutors who have a 90% conviction rate.  

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CBT

CBT 1287

Posted
Posted (edited)
3 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Placido Polanco got two votes.  Both were on ballots that weren't publicly revealed.  

 

Mike Young ended up with 9.  He had only 3 on the public ballots.

Twitter is saying 4 votes for PP. 

edit: maybe it's two. whatever, they are idiots. 

Edited by CBT
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