04/25/24
January 06, 2015
Four players voted into the baseball Hall of Fame:
Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, and Craig Biggio.
posted by grum@work at 02:21 PM on January 06, 2015
Percentage change from last year (for returning nominees):
Biggio +7.9% Piazza +7.7% Bagwell +3.4% Raines +8.9% Clemens +2.3% Bonds +2.1% Smith +0.3% E.Martinez +1.8% Mussina +4.3% Kent -1.2% McGriff +1.2% Walker +1.6% McGwire -1.0% Mattingly +0.9% Sosa -0.6%
New strong candidates for 2016:
Ken Griffey Jr.
Trevor Hoffman
Jim Edmonds
Wild guess for election in 2016:
Mike Piazza
Jeff Bagwell
Ken Griffey Jr.
posted by grum@work at 02:33 PM on January 06, 2015
Annual rant:
Anyone that gave a vote to [players listed with less than 10 votes] should lose their voting privileges. With a limited number of ballot spots, and a large number of legitimate choices, wasting a vote on [name] shows a lack of respect for the position they are in.
posted by grum@work at 02:37 PM on January 06, 2015
Missed some players in the "changes" list:
Schilling +10.2%
Trammell +4.3%
posted by grum@work at 03:01 PM on January 06, 2015
Who the heck voted for Aaron Boone?
posted by werty at 03:21 PM on January 06, 2015
Glad to see things trending up for Raines (second-largest bump behind Schilling, it appears).
posted by holden at 03:30 PM on January 06, 2015
Anyone that gave a vote to [players listed with less than 10 votes] should lose their voting privileges.
My only surprise is Erstad only got a single vote. The Raines and Trammel ones bug me but at least they are trending up.
Who the heck voted for Aaron Boone?
Probably Dan Shaughnessy.
posted by yerfatma at 03:55 PM on January 06, 2015
grum@work: Annual rant:Anyone that gave a vote to [players listed with less than 10 votes] should lose their voting privileges. With a limited number of ballot spots, and a large number of legitimate choices, wasting a vote on [name] shows a lack of respect for the position they are in.
Actually, I disagree slightly. With 10 ballot positions a year there's more than enough bandwidth to promptly fill the Hall with the deserving- provided they didn't waste that space by omitting names out of principle. I'm less concerned by the "Hey old pal, I'll throw you one vote as a charitable act" that gets old professional colleagues like an Aaron Boone a vote here and there just to say it happened, than I am by some ballots intentionally leaving off players who were by any measure "inarguable", which only forces subsequent years to be that much more crowded.
I think there are 549 ballots, and yet 15 actual, professional watchers and cataloguers of baseball said of Randy Johnson "Not quite enough, maybe next year, son", and 49 said the same of Pedro fucking Martinez?!? I get that Pedro and Randy were not their stellar selves in those last 3 or 4 seasons, but who in their right mind has a ballot, looks at Randy Johnson and sees things like:
- 309 wins *(22nd)
- 4800+ strikeouts (2nd)
- 10.91K/9IP career (1st)
- 5-time Cy Young including 4 in a row (2nd)
- 10x All-Star
- 9x strikeout champ
- World Series champion and World Series MVP
- A no hitter and perfect game, one in each league
- 20K game
- No PED or similar controversy or scandal
- Quite a few more single game, season, or career accomplishments too numerous to recount
... and says "Eh, that's not Hall of Fame material". I mean, Jesus tapdancin' Christ!!! I'd challenge any of those voters to find me 4 pitchers in the last 30 years- since 1985- who were even arguably "better" than Johnson. I can think of only three who wouldn't get you laughed out of the room: Clemens, Maddux, and of course fellow electee this year with a whopping 91.1% of the vote, Pedro.
So how does his incredibly storied career not merit 100%? To hell with that stupid tradition, I say if you fail to include a player who otherwise received 95% of the vote twice in any year, you lose your voting privileges next year automatically. Fail to include 95%-ers in 2 out of 4 years, you lose privileges for 5 more years.
I'd make a similar detailed rant about Pedro who was at his peak arguably the single most effective and dominant pitcher in history... but as a lifelong Red Sox fan, I'd probably get so emotional I might punch a wall before I got finished typing it up. I mean, at least he's in the Hall; I might have straight up murdered the first BBWAA member I saw if he somehow didn't make it this year. :)
posted by hincandenza at 05:37 PM on January 06, 2015
who in their right mind has a ballot, looks at Randy Johnson and sees things like . . .
Well now they have this "Voting for other deserving guys because they know Pedro/ Randy/ Whomever is already in" defense to hide behind. I don't understand why the ballot needs to be limited to 10. Looking at grum's list I see 10-12 guys I would vote for and I bet I could make the case for 15 of them. That assumes we set the PED issue to one side which we won't, but in the abstract there will be years when more than 10 players are deserving and the problem with "He'll get there . . . eventually" is a large chunk of the voters are morons who are influenced by stupid stuff and so players who aren't clear first ballot choices have a tendency to hang around and even drop down after that first year.
posted by yerfatma at 07:21 PM on January 06, 2015
I think there are 549 ballots, and yet 15 actual, professional watchers and cataloguers of baseball said of Randy Johnson "Not quite enough, maybe next year, son"
That's easy to figure out.
Let's say five of them simply submit blank ballots because they feel the entire era is tainted because of steroids.
Another five of them leave Johnson off the ballot because (as yerfatma explains) they want to use the spot for a player that "needs it more".
I'm sure there are four of them that feel that he shouldn't get a unanimous election because "If Ruth/Mantle/Mays/DiMaggio/etc didn't get 100%, then this guy surely doesn't" and makes it a self-fulling prophecy.
Finally, one of them probably simply forget to include Johnson on their ballot because they are old/senile/lazy. You don't think that happens? One of the MLB writers admitted that he forgot to check off Raines last year, even though he meant to give him a vote.
posted by grum@work at 08:07 PM on January 06, 2015
... all of which I (and probably you) would agree are reasons to suggest those voters no longer be eligible.
posted by hincandenza at 08:15 PM on January 06, 2015
One other thing:
professional watchers and cataloguers of baseball
Some of the voters have been retired from sports writing for over 40 years, and some of them don't even watch baseball that much. In fact, one of the voters from Montreal is neither involved in sports OR writing, he's the political cartoonist for the Montreal Gazette (Terry Mosher, aka Aislin).
posted by grum@work at 08:17 PM on January 06, 2015
I have to wonder whether things would be better if each player only got one shot, but voters could pick as many as they wanted. Maybe with a higher percentage of votes needed. Like, say, 90 percent of votes are needed, but then no one is playing games about "Well, he's not first ballot worthy..." or "I'm gonna use one of my finite votes for this other guy because he's on his last year of eligibility..."
posted by Etrigan at 08:19 PM on January 06, 2015
(I know practically nothing about the history of HoF voting, so if things like that were done in earlier years and had their own set of problems, my bad.)
posted by Etrigan at 08:20 PM on January 06, 2015
... all of which I (and probably you) would agree are reasons to suggest those voters no longer be eligible.
Of the four reasons I listed, I think #1 (steroid taint) is the most defensible, even though I think it is the one I'd fight most against. If you've got a moral stand, take it. But don't let me catch you making an exception because that player who gave you the great interview/quotes is now on the ballot.
#2 (strategic voting) might be the most honourable one if you are more concerned with "in/out" rather than "percentage of vote" for determining worthiness. Most people don't remember the percentage of votes a player got when they were inducted, only that they were inducted. Of course, this only matters if you feel that there are more than 10 candidates that deserve to be enshrined, in which case you shouldn't be wasting your votes on the Boones/Percivals on the ballot...
#3 (no unanimous votes) is just stupid, and almost always will be violated by the same writer when a favourite player comes up. It should be interesting to see how those writers vote when Jeter hits the ballot for 2020.
#4 (oops!) is the least defensible, and really should get people dropped from the voting list. They added a "registration" piece to the voting (you had to actively sign up, instead of having the ballot just mailed to you) and hopefully that reduced the ancient retired writers who only pay attention to baseball when the ballot arrives each year.
posted by grum@work at 08:25 PM on January 06, 2015
Like, say, 90 percent of votes are needed, but then no one is playing games about "Well, he's not first ballot worthy..." or "I'm gonna use one of my finite votes for this other guy because he's on his last year of eligibility..."
It's almost impossible to get 90% of people to vote on something, so you'd end up with a TINY hall of fame. I'll point out that Cy Young received less than 50% of the vote on his first ballot. While it was a "super class" to choose from (the first vote), we are talking about Cy Young here...
posted by grum@work at 08:39 PM on January 06, 2015
I'll point out that Cy Young received less than 50% of the vote on his first ballot.
But everyone knew that he'd get another chance, right? I genuinely don't know, but either way, that was then, and this is now.
I'm not wedded to 90 percent, but if you're going to take away the vote limit, I feel like you'd need to raise the percent somehow to keep the numbers from exploding. Three or four a year sounds about right to me.
posted by Etrigan at 09:13 PM on January 06, 2015
I think Bill Simmons' Pyramid of Fame works, or something shaped like the Guggenheim.... you need a minimum to get in, but your vote total determines where you are. So a Jim Rice or Delgado get in, but they're clear first floor types. A Ruth or Williams? Eye of the pyramid, most exclusive. And over time, curators can move people up and down, but someone is a "Hall of Fame" player by getting in, no matter what floor. Heck, maybe all players get into The Hall by service time alone, but the Aaron Boones get minimal mention display, like the first floor is team-by-team, celebrating the history of the franchise and players of that team, from the Hank Aarons to the Moonlight Grahams.
I like it because it shifts the arguments from "How is Rice in the Hall but not Delgado/Edgar Martinez/Mike Piazza/etc" to "We'll of course celebrated luminaries of the game's history are in, we're just debating whether so-and-so is real inner circle, or more 2nd/3rd floor". Less binary, and more inclusive of the games history... while still enshrining the true elite. And if your hometown hero is in under these new rules, you have a reason to visit his plaque.
posted by hincandenza at 03:41 AM on January 07, 2015
Who the heck voted for Aaron Boone?
Who the heck is Darin Erstad?
posted by NerfballPro at 04:56 AM on January 07, 2015
Erstad won a Gold Glove at two positions (OF and 1B) and was a crucial player in the 2002 Anaheim Angels World Series win, batting .352 in the post season. He had one fantastic season as a batter (2000), but then followed up with 9 consecutive seasons of below-average hitting.
He also was the starting punter on the 1994 national college championship-winning Nebraska Cornhuskers football team.
Even Erstad himself is confused by the vote for him.
posted by grum@work at 06:54 AM on January 07, 2015
Is there a word for when you're simultaneously annoyed and amused at the same thing? I hate that someone "wasted" a vote on Erstad, but at the same time, I feel like, eh, what the hell, it's nice to see him get recognized for what was a really good couple of years.
posted by Etrigan at 08:46 AM on January 07, 2015
ESPN gives you Small Hall fans a list of the 125 best players in their opinion.
posted by yerfatma at 01:00 PM on January 07, 2015
Curt Schilling thinks he's not in the HoF because he's a Republican.
posted by Etrigan at 03:51 PM on January 07, 2015
The top comment, "Leave it to a creationist to start making shit up," covers it. I can't think of another athlete I have such mixed feelings about as a Sox fan and RI native: instrumental in winning the first Sox Series since 1918, did so in fairy tale circumstances and yet a complete cock, a bully who can dish it out but can't take it and a moron who espouses Republican beliefs while going bankrupt after sucking at the teat of the most liberal state this side of France.
Remember in high school when guys would make awful, misogynistic jokes about pretty girls saying if they only wouldn't talk? That's pretty much it. I'd rather be stuck in an elevator with Aaron Hernandez.
All that said, dude belongs in the HoF and if he hadn't been stuck on some awful Phillies teams for most of his career, he might already be in there.
posted by yerfatma at 07:15 PM on January 07, 2015
and if he hadn't been stuck on some awful Phillies teams for most of his career
Or be relegated as the second best pitcher on his team (and in the league) for a couple of years in Arizona. He finished 2nd in the NL Cy Young voting twice, while going 45-13 with a 148 ERA+ in those years. Johnson was 45-11 with a 192 ERA+.
That's a HUGE shadow to get caught in, and not winning one Cy Young award definitely stands out (since Johnson had a million of them (rough estimate) and Smoltz had one).
posted by grum@work at 10:38 PM on January 07, 2015
I copied/played with the online spreadsheet that was tracking announced HOF ballots.
There were 174 unique complete ballots (including one submitted blank ballot) out of the 226 recorded.
(I didn't count ones that were marked as partial or missing information.)
The three most common ballots were:
13 times 11 times 4 times
Jeff Bagwell Jeff Bagwell Jeff Bagwell
Craig Biggio Craig Biggio Craig Biggio
Barry Bonds Randy Johnson Randy Johnson
Roger Clemens Edgar Martinez Pedro Martinez
Randy Johnson Pedro Martinez Mike Piazza
Pedro Martinez Mike Mussina Tim Raines
Mike Piazza Mike Piazza Curt Schilling
Tim Raines Tim Raines John Smoltz
Curt Schilling Curt Schilling
John Smoltz John Smoltz
There were 19 other ballots that appeared more than once.
8 of them appeared three times, 11 of them appeared twice.
The weirdest unique ballot I found?
Lawrence Rocca submitted a ballot that had NONE of the elected players (Biggio, Johnson, P.Martinez, Smoltz), but wasn't blank.
His ballot?
Tim Raines
Alan Trammell
posted by grum@work at 12:07 PM on January 08, 2015