2019 Baseball Hall of Fame Thread

[CBT 1288]

To be fair, Polanco has a higher career WAR than Harold Baines. 

[Beau Vine 55027]

8 minutes ago, Jive Turkey said:

the guy ranked 227 in career WAR is the first ever unanimous inductee.  huh.

if he wore any uniform other than pinstripes, he would not have that honor.

 

[petscii 1190]

Just now, Beau Vine said:

 

I don't really care about HOF  stuff actually, but  I'm totally down for the get Tim Lincecum in camp.  I need something pointless and futile to be angry on the Internet about.

[Beau Vine 55027]

 

[henrygandorf 29201]

5 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

 

weird.  i would've thought the opposite.  people are proud to vote for ped cases and folks who didn't are ashamed?  oh well.

[Beau Vine 55027]

It still blows my mind that Vizquel got more votes than Sheffield and Rolen combined.

[Beau Vine 55027]

1 minute ago, henrygandorf said:

weird.  i would've thought the opposite.  people are proud to vote for ped cases and folks who didn't are ashamed?  oh well.

This is the 7th year on the ballot and the 7th time the voting has been like this.  

[henrygandorf 29201]

1 minute ago, Beau Vine said:

This is the 7th year on the ballot and the 7th time the voting has been like this.  

i would've assumed it was constant.  i don't really pay much attention to the process or the pissing matches.  baseball writers...

[Beau Vine 55027]

Stark somehow already has an article up:
 

Quote

Mariano Rivera was a baseball miracle.

He threw a pitch the entire planet knew was coming. He threw it nearly every time he wound up and fired. He threw it when he was ahead in the count. He threw it when he was behind in the count. He could have thrown it wearing a blindfold.

And how did that work out? That pitch turned him into the greatest relief pitcher who has ever set foot on a baseball field. That’s how. It obliterated literally hundreds of bats. It put gleaming rings on the fingers of the last Yankees dynasty of the 20^th century. And on Tuesday, it performed its final baseball miracle.

It didn’t merely lift Mariano Rivera into the Hall of Fame. It transformed him, remarkably, into the first unanimous Hall of Famer, a man who collected 425 votes on 425 ballots.

The late, great Roy Halladay will join him in Cooperstown next July. So will Edgar Martínez and Mike Mussina. It was the sixth consecutive Hall of Fame election in which the baseball writers elected multiple players – equaling the longest streak in history.

But that wasn’t all we should take away from this historic evening. So here come Five Things We Learned from the 2019 Hall of Fame Election.

1. Mariano’s landslide makes a historic statement

He was the closest thing we’ve seen to perfection on a pitcher’s mound. So it’s only fitting that Mariano Rivera would become the first player in the history of his sport to achieve perfection on the Hall of Fame ballot.

But that wasn’t the only statement made by Rivera’s stunning vote total. We didn’t need this election to remind us that he was the Greatest Closer of All Time. But maybe we did need it to remind us that the gap between him and every other closer who ever lived is wider than the George Washington Bridge.

In fact, what this election told us, quite clearly, is that the gap between Rivera and whoever ranks as the second-greatest closer in history is wider than the gap between anyone and the second-greatest anything in history. Take a look.

Mariano’s vote percentage: 100%
Goose Gossage’s percentage*: 85.8%
MARGIN OF GREATNESS: 14.2%
(*-second-highest percentage by any closer)

So how does that compare to the gaps between the first and second-highest totals at other positions? Glad you asked. Here is that leader board:

POSITION	TOP VOTE PCT.	RUNNER-UP	DIFF.
Catcher	Johnny Bench, 96.4%	Yogi Berra, 85.6%	10.80%
First base	Jim Thome, 89.8%	Jeff Bagwell, 86.2%	3.60%
Shortstop	Cal Ripken Jr., 98.5%	Honus Wagner, 95.1%	3.40%
Center field	Ken Griffey Jr., 99.3%	Ty Cobb, 98.2%	1.10%
Third base	George Brett, 98.2%	Chipper Jones, 97.2%	1.00%

One addendum: I didn’t include DH because of the difficulty in defining “what’s a DH.” But even if I had, the difference between Edgar Martínez’s total and the percentage for Frank Thomas, the only other Hall of Famer who spent more than 50 percent of his career in the role, wouldn’t be in the same area code as 14 percent. (Thomas was elected with 83.7 percent.)

So how dominant a force was Mariano Rivera? So dominant that he was still blowing away the competition five years after he threw his final pitch. Amazing.

2. Roy Halladay – last first-ballot starter for a decade?

He was the most bittersweet story of an otherwise beautiful night. It had been 83 years – since Christy Mathewson, back in 1936 – since any player had been elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot but wasn’t alive to celebrate the magic of that moment.

Now, tragically, we can add Roy Halladay to that unfortunate list. So there will always be sadness mixed with the elation of what should have been the most joyous night of Halladay’s career. But Halladay’s 85.4 percent vote total serves as an everlasting reminder of just how bright his light shone over 10 brilliant seasons, from 2002-11.

On a pure baseball level, it also caps an astonishing run for the great starting pitchers of the late ’90s and the first part of this century. Halladay became the sixth starter elected on the first ballot just in the last six elections. (The others: Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martínez and John Smoltz.)

We’ve never seen anything quite like that before. We may never see anything quite like it again. Prior to 2014, there had been just seven starters elected on the first ballot in the previous 78 years! And the most first-ballot starters elected in any previous decade was four, in the 1990s (Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver, Jim Palmer.)

So here’s a question to kick around: Who’s the next starting pitcher who will get elected on his first appearance on this ballot?

With all due respect to Tim Hudson and Cliff Lee, it’s hard to see any starter with a shot at first-ballot glory who is looming on this ballot in the next five elections. So you know what that tells us? That the next man to earn this honor is still pitching.

CC Sabathia is 38, with 246 wins and a Cy Young on his baseball-reference page. So he’s a possibility.

But I’d bet my mortgage on Justin Verlander, a guy with five top-three Cy Young finishes who will turn 36 next month. Except Verlander talks openly about pitching until he’s 40. If he does, he won’t show up on our Hall of Fame ballots until 2028 – or beyond.

Could it really be a decade before we see another first-ballot starter on the podium in Cooperstown? Absolutely. There was a 15-year gap between Ryan and Maddux/Glavine. There was a 17-year wait between Warren Spahn and Palmer. There was even once a 26-year gap between the first Hall of Fame class (Walter Johnson and Mathewson) and Bob Feller.

So those long gaps are, in fact, the norm. What we’ve seen since 2014 is the exception. But a very cool one indeed.

3. Coming In 2020 – Schilling/Walker’s Unlikely Induction Day

Boy, how long ago does the 2014 Hall of Fame election seem?

Mike Mussina (20.3 percent) barely missed getting elected that day – by 313 votes! Now, amazingly, he’s a Hall of Famer.

Meanwhile, if you’d predicted that Larry Walker was a Hall of Famer waiting to happen back then, well, let’s just say you didn’t have much company – seeing as how he got precisely 58 votes (10.2 percent).

And long before voters were snubbing Curt Schilling for his Twitter exploits, they were snubbing him for far more inexplicable, pitching-related reasons – so he was still trying to figure out where he was going to find those 262 additional votes (and 45.8 percentage points) he was going to need to get to Cooperstown.

But that was five long years ago. And the world has sure done some fascinating spinning since then, hasn’t it? You know what we can safely predict, given the results of this election? Walker and Schilling are about to follow Mussina into the Hall – and very possibly in a joint induction extravaganza a year from now.

Walker is suddenly rocketing up the ballot on the Tim Raines Express. Just two years ago, he was at 21.9 percent. He’s now, incredibly, at 54.6 percent. Since the dawn of the modern voting system in 1969, no player has ever gone from under 22 percent to getting himself elected in just a three-year span. But given Walker’s almost unprecedented momentum – and that next year is his final go-round on the ballot – he’s an excellent bet to go where no candidate has gone before.

And finally, there is Schilling. Two years ago, his candidacy seemed to be in massive trouble. You know how hard it is to make 31 votes disappear in one year without throwing a single pitch? But that’s what Schilling did, thanks to the miracle of social media.

Now, though, he has finally regained all those lost votes and surged beyond 60 percent for the first time. So he can start thinking about that induction speech – because you have to go back 30 years (to Jim Bunning) to find any candidate who got at least 60 percent of the vote and had at least three more shots on the ballot, as Schilling does, who didn’t eventually get elected by the writers. And even Bunning later got elected by the Veterans Committee. So Schill, don’t touch that Twitter!

4. We’ve never had this many voters think this much alike

On one hand, it’s a major breakthrough for modern voterkind that Mariano Rivera finally busted through the dopiest “tradition” in sports – the one that said that no player could ever be elected unanimously because Babe Ruth/Willie Mays/Ted Williams/Pick Your Favorite Legend weren’t unanimous. Or whatever that was about.

Seriously? Enough already!

I think the Rivera vote paves the way for Derek Jeter to also get elected unanimously next year. And then we can dispense forever with all future Stupid Voting Tricks. Hopefully.

But here’s the other side of that story, and one I wonder about. If it feels as though more voters than ever are thinking more alike than ever, that’s true!

There are many ways to measure that. But here are just a few:

• Rivera is the fifth player just since 2014 to reel in at least 97 percent of the vote. That had happened only seven times in all the previous Hall of Fame elections combined.
• Rivera was the ninth player in this decade to collect at least 90 percent of the vote – and the 14^th just since 2002. Once upon a time, in a very different age, only eight players got 90-plus percent in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s combined.
• And if you don’t include the star-studded first Hall election ever in 1936, we’ve already had almost as many players reach 90 percent in this century (14) as in the entire 20^thcentury (16)!
• Finally, we saw five different players amass 60 percent of the vote or more in this election. Hard to believe that makes six straight years in which at least five players cleared the 60-percent barrier. Did you know that before that run, there had only been four elections in the last half-century in which at least five players got that many votes?

So what does that tell us? That we live now in an age where there are more large-Hall voters than ever … And that, thanks to social media, the Hall of Fame debate takes place on a bigger (and louder) stage than ever … So we have more people in our ears, trying to define what a Hall of Famer looks like, than we’ve ever had … And thanks to the PED era, the ballot is also more clogged with worthy candidates than ever, even though we’ve now elected 20 just since 2014.

I don’t think we even know yet if this trend is a good thing, a bad thing or barely a thing at all. But whatever it is, it’s obviously a sign that there is now more pressure on voters to cast “the right ballot” than there has ever been – because thinking outside that box invites more abuse than at any time in the history of Hall of Fame voting.

Personally, I enjoy these debates. But I don’t know any voters who would say they love a great barrage of public abuse. For some reason!

5. Look out for the 2022 Bonds And Clemens Grand Finale 

Yeah, I saved these guys for last. I always do. They’re a ring of the Hall of Fame circus unto themselves – and always will be.

Once, there was a time when I thought Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were inching steadily toward an almost certain election. Now, though, I think the word that best describes where they are, after seven appearances on this ballot, is no longer “election.”

It’s “inching.”

The biggest takeaway from Tuesday’s results isn’t their vote totals – 59.5 percent for Clemens, 59.1 percent for Bonds. It’s the invaluable exit polling of Ryan Thibodaux that tells us these two guys are making virtually no headway with returning voters.

They may be attracting 87.5 percent of the votes cast by first-time voters. But according to Thibodaux’s breakdown of 56.3 percent of the vote, they each added just three votes from first-time voters since last year. And considering they’re going to need to find more than 70 additional votes apiece, that’s a sure-sign that virtually this entire electorate is dug in on how it feels about them – one way or the other.

So you know where this is heading? To a 2022 grand finale. That’s where. It will be the last year on this ballot for Bonds and Clemens. And it will arrive in the first year on the ballot for two guys named Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz. Perfect.

In other words, the Bonds-Clemens debate may be bogged down in the same old swamp for the next couple of years – but 2022 will be the year when we can all start screaming at each other again. How do we really feel about the greatest players of the PED Era? We’ll have no choice but to figure it out by then, will we?

If we decide then that there is no place in Cooperstown for the greatest hitter and pitcher of their generation, then we’ll have one kind of Hall of Fame – a shrine that is willing to ignore the feats of all-time greats to make a statement, even if we all admit we’ve no doubt already elected players from that era who used the same substances Bonds and Clemens used.

But if we decide in 2022 that you can’t have a Hall of Fame that excludes the man who hit more home runs than anyone in history and the pitcher who won more Cy Youngs than any pitcher in history, we’ll have a different kind of Hall – more history museum than cathedral.

The PED debate has been leading to that moment for more than a decade now, since Mark McGwire first appeared on the ballot in 2007. It will finally reach its dramatic crescendo in 2022, thanks to Bonds and Clemens.

Hey, great … And then we only have nine more years to figure out what we’re going to do about A-Rod.

 

[Biff Tannen 45786]

Wait a minute.  Is that 100% not counting the 3 abstainers?  Was that not also the case for Griffey?

[dcar00 14631]

1 hour ago, henrygandorf said:

weird.  i would've thought the opposite.  people are proud to vote for ped cases and folks who didn't are ashamed?  oh well.

i bet if you look at it along age of voter it probably lines up.  would be interesting to see.

[dcar00 14631]

37 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Wait a minute.  Is that 100% not counting the 3 abstainers?  Was that not also the case for Griffey?

no, there was at least one old guy that said he had and will never vote for a guy his first year or something like that. 

[dcar00 14631]

Glad Mussina got in.  he's the most deserving of the 4 I think. it's pretty meh 2 SP's, a Reliever and DH.  ESPN is relieved they can talk non stop about 100% Rivera and the Halladay tragedy.  the abstainers are chickenshits and should have their vote revoked.

I think Pettitte is done unless Clemens makes it in.  Rolen and Helton will probably get close by the time they are done but how can you put in Helton but not Walker.

 

 

[Sundodger 66]

Edgar Martinez vs.: 

Mariano Rivera - .579 avg, .579 ob%, 1.053 slg  
Mike Mussina - .307 avg, .337 ob%, .627 slg  
Roy Halladay - .444 avg, .474 ob%, .722 slg

[ztejas 43777]

Saw this thread pop up. I'm by no means a know it all on baseball history, I try to brush up when I can, but I love looking at old numbers because you can compare eras to each other better than almost any other sport. 

If any of you are fans of baseball reference (first, if you aren't, you should be) they do a daily "stathead" email where they feature guys from the past and do things like breakdown their odds at making the Hall, look at why or why they might not get in, include some career stats. 

Here's a screengrab from one of the emails this week:

It's pretty cool if you're skimming through your morning inbox with a cup of coffe - good way to break up the bullshit spam mail and work email you don't care about. You can sign up for it here, even comment on what you'd be interested in receiving: https://stathead.com/

I know this sounds like I work for them or some shit but just thought it pertinent to the thread and something some of y'all might enjoy. 

*Especially cool during the season because it will give you a snapshot of "top performers" from the previous days games. Good way to keep up with who's doing what without rummaging through a bunch of box scores. I love it for hoops. 

Edited January 23, 2019 by ztejas

[ztejas 43777]

2 hours ago, Jive Turkey said:

the guy ranked 227 in career WAR is the first ever unanimous inductee.  huh.

if he wore any uniform other than pinstripes, he would not have that honor.

You're probably right, that doesn't mean he shouldn't be a first ballot HOFer. Some of his career numbers are just silly...

[formermav43 4606]

Imagine if the Pro Football Hall of Fame had a system like Baseball, and Jerry Rice, Jim Brown, and Johnny Unitas weren’t unanimous selections. But then 100% went for Kevin Faulk because he was the best 3rd down RB ever.

[henrygandorf 29201]

39 minutes ago, formermav43 said:

Imagine if the Pro Football Hall of Fame had a system like Baseball, and Jerry Rice, Jim Brown, and Johnny Unitas weren’t unanimous selections. But then 100% went for Kevin Faulk because he was the best 3rd down RB ever.

if winning a football game required that you put in a 3rd down back at the end to close it down under a ton of pressure, and faulk was the best ever at it, including finishing the most nfl games successfully and being the best 3rd down back in playoff history on his way to five superbowl wins, then yeah, i would assume he'd get into the nfl hof no problem. 

definitely an apples to apples argument.  thumbs up. 

[CO Horn 167]

The problem is not Rivera being unanimous, but the fact that no other player has been unanimous. There are easily 100 that should have been unanimous.  That is the real travesty. Give me one reason that Maddux, Gwynn, Ryan, Seaver, etc. were not unanimous. 

[formermav43 4606]

9 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

if winning a football game required that you put in a 3rd down back at the end to close it down under a ton of pressure, and faulk was the best ever at it, including finishing the most nfl games successfully and being the best 3rd down back in playoff history on his way to five superbowl wins, then yeah, i would assume he'd get into the nfl hof no problem. 

definitely an apples to apples argument.  thumbs up. 

Well I didn’t say he shouldn’t get in. I was talking about him being unanimous compared to other, MUCH more valuable players who were not.

But you basically just described Adam Vinatieri’s credentials. So I guess that’s a better comp, thanks. 

Edited January 23, 2019 by formermav43

[henrygandorf 29201]

1 minute ago, formermav43 said:

Well I didn’t say he shouldn’t get in. I was talking about him being unanimous compared to other, MUCH more valuable players who were not.

But you basically just described Adam Vinatieri’s credentials. So I guess that’s a better comp, thanks. 

and the best kickers are in the hof, up to and eventually including vinatieri i'm sure.  you were taking someone who was the best (i assume) at one weird, specific aspect of the game.  rivera isn't the best baseball player ever, but closer is a position, and he's the best at it.

the reason others weren't unanimous is because the group of writers who vote are petty, shitty little children who want their 15 minutes.  the only positive is that some of the shittier, pettier ones have either lost their vote or up and died finally.  shit, closers weren't even taken seriously in the eyes of the hof until what, 10 years ago?

[formermav43 4606]

1 minute ago, henrygandorf said:

and the best kickers are in the hof, up to and eventually including vinatieri i'm sure.  you were taking someone who was the best (i assume) at one weird, specific aspect of the game.  rivera isn't the best baseball player ever, but closer is a position, and he's the best at it.

the reason others weren't unanimous is because the group of writers who vote are petty, shitty little children who want their 15 minutes.  the only positive is that some of the shittier, pettier ones have either lost their vote or up and died finally.  shit, closers weren't even taken seriously in the eyes of the hof until what, 10 years ago?

Closer isn’t a position. Pitcher is a position. Closer is a specific usage of a pitcher-like a 3rd down RB. Hence the comparison. 

[henrygandorf 29201]

7 minutes ago, formermav43 said:

Closer isn’t a position. Pitcher is a position. Closer is a specific usage of a pitcher-like a 3rd down RB. Hence the comparison. 

try telling the arbitration attorneys this.  the game has changed.

[formermav43 4606]

Just now, henrygandorf said:

try telling the arbitration attorneys this.  the game has changed.

If anything, its in the process of changing away from overvaluing closers. Valuing the 9th inning with a 3 run lead compared to other, higher leverage situations is purely arbitrary. You’re an Astros fan, you’ve seen for yourself the way they use their bullpen.

[Goo Punch 4275]

 

[Mileslong 4753]

This must be the sparest class of all time. Also, If this new generation of writers are going to start voting for roided up players to get in then they need to vote Rose in as well.

[Beau Vine 55027]

29 minutes ago, Mileslong said:

This must be the sparest class of all time. Also, If this new generation of writers are going to start voting for roided up players to get in then they need to vote Rose in as well.

Worst take ever.

[Mileslong 4753]

Worst take ever.

Hot sports opinion, what’s wrong with it?

[WBT 20776]

15 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

 

The PED apologists are much more zealous about attacking the other side.  I don't blame the guys that don't want to put up with that shit.

In general I'm fine with votes not being public.  Some people are going to have strange opinions but I think it's better than having the mob trying to browbeat people into conformity.

Edited January 23, 2019 by WBT

[WBT 20776]

Glad Mussina finally made it in.  Halladay is borderline but probably deserving.  He only made it 1st ballot because of the crash.  I don't think DHs and 70 inning a year pitchers should be hall of famers.

[WBT 20776]

15 hours ago, Jive Turkey said:

if he wore any uniform other than pinstripes, he would not have that honor.

ESPN is already lobbying for Jeter to be the second

[Beau Vine 55027]

17 minutes ago, WBT said:

Halladay is borderline but probably deserving.  He only made it 1st ballot because of the crash. 

Halladay finished in the top 5 of Cy Young voting 7 of 9 years in the middle of his career. The two years he didn't -- injuries limited him to 40 total starts.  Not sure how you call that "borderline."  He was basically Justin Verlander.  

[WBT 20776]

His peak was absolutely HOF worthy.  My concern was with his longevity at only about 2700 innings.  Borderline was probably overstating it.  I think he should have gotten in eventually but 85% on the 1st ballot doesn't seem warranted.

[shnsajax 3592]

ESPN is already lobbying for Jeter to be the second

Jester is closer to a third year HOF than a unanimous HOF.

Also since voters hate Rolen, he had a WAR of 70.2 compared to Jeter’s 72.4 and Jeter played 700+ more games.

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3861]

Lulz at people bitching about Mariano.  Better at delivering his team a ring than anyone in history.   I'd say he and Randy Johnson were the clearest examples of guys you knew were a HOFer while they were playing in a decade.  Go to his baseball reference page.  If you see gold in important columns, you are looking at a HOFer.

[Hank Chinaski 6324]

1 hour ago, WBT said:

The PED apologists are much more zealous about attacking the other side.  I don't blame the guys that don't want to put up with that shit.

In general I'm fine with votes not being public.  Some people are going to have strange opinions but I think it's better than having the mob trying to browbeat people into conformity.

I'd prefer for all ballots to be public, but I agree that the backlash the voters would have to deal with would be ridiculous, so I get some of them not wanting to deal with that. 

The main thing is that I'd prefer voters to be active baseball writers. There are too many voters who aren't even close to the game at this point. 

 

[wood 11637]

12 minutes ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

Lulz at people bitching about Mariano.  Better at delivering his team a ring than anyone in history.   I'd say he and Randy Johnson were the clearest examples of guys you knew were a HOFer while they were playing in a decade.  Go to his baseball reference page.  If you see gold in important columns, you are looking at a HOFer.

I think Rivera is fully deserving. I'm just blown away he's the first unanimous HOFer. How was Junior not unanimous, just for starters? There are several guys for whom it's absolutely mind-bottling that any so-called sportswriter would think they shouldn't be in the HOF on the first shot.

[wood 11637]

12 hours ago, CO Horn said:

The problem is not Rivera being unanimous, but the fact that no other player has been unanimous. There are easily 100 that should have been unanimous.  That is the real travesty. Give me one reason that Maddux, Gwynn, Ryan, Seaver, etc. were not unanimous. 

Exactly.

[Pato del Muerto 52972]

12 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

if winning a football game required that you put in a 3rd down back at the end to close it down under a ton of pressure, and faulk was the best ever at it, including finishing the most nfl games successfully and being the best 3rd down back in playoff history on his way to five superbowl wins, then yeah, i would assume he'd get into the nfl hof no problem. 

definitely an apples to apples argument.  thumbs up. 

Winning a baseball game doesn’t require that, either. Closer is a recent phenomenon for baseball. 

[WBT 20776]

31 minutes ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

Lulz at people bitching about Mariano.  Better at delivering his team a ring than anyone in history. 

 

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3861]

1 minute ago, WBT said:

 

lulz.  excellent retort.

 

Also, spare ass Luiz Gonzalez hitting 50 homers has to be exhibit 1 into a discussion of the effectiveness of 'roids.

[ztejas 43777]

1 hour ago, WBT said:

ESPN is already lobbying for Jeter to be the second

Well... Jeter probably has a better case at being unanimous than Rivera. (not saying either of them should be/should have been)

That said, here are some Rivera tidbits from wiki:

A thirteen-time All-Star and five-time World Series champion, he is MLB's career leader in saves(652) and games finished (952). Rivera won five American League (AL) Rolaids Relief Man Awards and three Delivery Man of the Year Awards, and he finished in the top three in voting for the AL Cy Young Award four times. 

After a breakthrough season in 1996 as a setup man, he became the Yankees' closer in 1997. In the following seasons, he established himself as one of baseball's top relievers, leading the major leagues in saves in 1999, 2001, and 2004.  

An accomplished postseason performer, he was named the 1999 World Series Most Valuable Player (MVP) and the 2003 AL Championship Series MVP, and he holds several postseason records, including lowest earned run average (ERA) (0.70) and most saves (42).

Pitching with a longevity and consistency uncommon to the closer role, he saved at least 25 games in 15 consecutive seasons and posted an ERA under 2.00 in 11 seasons, both of which are records. His career 2.21 ERA and 1.00 WHIP are the lowest in the live-ball era among qualified pitchers.

Edited January 23, 2019 by ztejas

[Goo Punch 4275]

 

[Pato del Muerto 52972]

I will say that my wife has an old friend from high school that played AA ball with rivera and says he’s a great person. Would visit him when the Yankees played in Arlington. 

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3861]

38 minutes ago, ztejas said:

After a breakthrough season in 1996 as a setup man,

I recall that.  I believe he was setup man for Wetteland, who I've not heard from in a while.  Wonder what he's up to.

[pacman 7441]

How does Berkman not get 5% to at least keep him on the ballot?

 

On Rivera, you all know it matters, he was very popular among writers throughout his career.

Edited January 23, 2019 by pacman

[Beau Vine 55027]

2 hours ago, WBT said:

His peak was absolutely HOF worthy.  My concern was with his longevity at only about 2700 innings. 

I get it, but I also don't think you can require longevity out of starting pitchers any more.  Maddux and RJ were unicorns.  If Kershaw retires today, I think he's in first ballot with only 2100 innings.  If Verlander retires today, he's in at about 2700 innings.  Same with Greinke.  

I think this has a lot to do with Mussina's rise in recent years.  It started to dawn on voters how difficult it is to throw 3500 above-average innings.  I think the most incredible fact to bring up about Mussina is that in his last season he went 20-9, 3.37 and finished 6th in Cy voting...AND WAS THE OLDEST GUY IN THE LEAGUE.  That's ridiculous.

[Guest Lobo]

1 hour ago, pacman said:

How does Berkman not get 5% to at least keep him on the ballot?

 

On Rivera, you all know it matters, he was very popular among writers throughout his career.

Berkman hurt by many factors, chief among them only played 12 full seasons.  Yes, he had injuries but the writers are gonna demand more longevity and/or production from a guy who played a dozen full seasons at 1B and LF.  If he was a C or SS, that'd be one thing.  1B/corner OF that doesn't get 2,000 hits, doesn't get 400 hr's, doesn't hit .300 for a career-that's a tough sell at his position(s) .   But yeah, he raked in the 2000's and I thought he'd hang around for 2-3 years on the bottom of the ballot.  Enjoyed watching him play.  

[strangulation! 1716]

3 hours ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

lulz.  excellent retort.

 

Also, spare ass Luiz Gonzalez hitting 50 homers has to be exhibit 1 into a discussion of the effectiveness of 'roids.

1996 brady anderson would like a word with you

[Beau Vine 55027]

2 hours ago, Lobo said:

Berkman hurt by many factors, chief among them only played 12 full seasons.  Yes, he had injuries but the writers are gonna demand more longevity and/or production from a guy who played a dozen full seasons at 1B and LF.  If he was a C or SS, that'd be one thing.  1B/corner OF that doesn't get 2,000 hits, doesn't get 400 hr's, doesn't hit .300 for a career-that's a tough sell at his position(s) .   But yeah, he raked in the 2000's and I thought he'd hang around for 2-3 years on the bottom of the ballot.  Enjoyed watching him play.  

Bingo.

Also, he also has almost no black ink on b-r, never won an MVP, finished 6th in RoY voting (can an Astros fan explain how Mitch Melusky finished higher than LB in RoY voting???)