HOF Ballot

[klavier]

Tim Raines
Ivan Rodriguez
Vladimir Guerrero
Trevor Hoffman
Jeff Bagwell
Larry Walker
Gary Sheffield
Fred McGriff
Lee Smith

[Rasmuth]

Would love to see Mussina get in.

on a related note, I emailed a heartfelt letter to the Commissioner of Baseball's office, rendering my opinion that it's time to end the nonsense with Pete Rose and let him get in the HOF while he's still alive.

Didn't even get a response acknowledging my communication. Just another disconnect.

[TheMaus2]

Originally Posted by Rasmuth

Would love to see Mussina get in.

on a related note, I emailed a heartfelt letter to the Commissioner of Baseball's office, rendering my opinion that it's time to end the nonsense with Pete Rose and let him get in the HOF while he's still alive.

Didn't even get a response acknowledging my communication. Just another disconnect.

Well, it's actually the BBWAA's fault for keeping him ineligible.

[Splitter24]

Originally Posted by TheMaus2

Well, it's actually the BBWAA's fault for keeping him ineligible.

Incorrect. The Hall of Fame itself sets the criteria for eligibility. One of which is:

E. Any player on Baseball's ineligible list shall not be an eligible candidate.

The Commissioner would have to remove him from the ineligible list, or the Hall of Fame would have to remove the rule (which they won't).

[TheMaus2]

Originally Posted by Splitter24

Incorrect. The Hall of Fame itself sets the criteria for eligibility. One of which is:

E. Any player on Baseball's ineligible list shall not be an eligible candidate.

The Commissioner would have to remove him from the ineligible list, or the Hall of Fame would have to remove the rule (which they won't).

I stand corrected.

[Jason Moyer]

Since I presumably would not be allowed to just put Tim Raines on it 10 times, I'd probably go with the top-10 in JAWS since they're all deserving and no one else really sticks out to me:

Bonds
Clemens
Schilling
Bagwell
Mussina
Walker
Martinez
Raines
Ramirez
Rodriguez

[CONN CHRIS]

Murray Chass intentionally turned in a blank Hall of Fame ballot | HardballTalk


If this guy doesn't have ballot credentials pulled, maybe it is time to just stop bothering.

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by CONN CHRIS

Murray Chass intentionally turned in a blank Hall of Fame ballot | HardballTalk


If this guy doesn't have ballot credentials pulled, maybe it is time to just stop bothering.

"Hey look at me!".

[kq76]

Originally Posted by CONN CHRIS

Murray Chass intentionally turned in a blank Hall of Fame ballot | HardballTalk


If this guy doesn't have ballot credentials pulled, maybe it is time to just stop bothering.

I'm of two minds of this. First, I see too many worthy hall of famers, in my mind at least, that I think it surely must be impossible for someone to think there are no worthy hall of famers on the ballot this year. However, if someone truly thinks there are none worthy in a year then who am I to judge that they're wrong.

That said, it doesn't seem that Chass believes the latter. It seems he's only doing because his voting annoys people he doesn't like, "How could I relinquish my vote knowing how much it annoys you? I plan to vote a year from now even if I just send in a blank ballot.". For that, he should have his voting rights pulled.

I have some questions about the process:

1) What exactly happens when you abstain? I saw Olney abstains because he says that somehow increases the chances of worthy guys getting in. That doesn't make much sense to me. If anything, I think it only helps the guys you weren't going to vote for (maybe there are more than 10 guys you want to vote for?) who are in danger of falling off the ballot. I suppose some of the guys who fall off the ballot now might have had a chance 10 years from now given how many most people vote for now. But I have difficulty seeing how he's helping the cause of the guys he believes are the best of those he belives belong.

Apparently Olney wants the system to change. How? Does he want voters to have an unlimited # of votes?

2) I understand the Hall "purges" the voting rights of writers who haven't written baseball in 10 years. What do they count as writing? Do blogs count, do forum posts count? There certainly aren't many newspaper baseball writers anymore and while there are lots of online baseball writers, I wonder how they determine who among them get votes now.

3) How do we feel about this purge? I'm not sure not "writing" about the sport for 10 years should necessarily mean you should lose your ballot. Presumably a lot of those writers follow baseball until the day they die. And while I read that this purge was meant to make the voters more in tune with who deserved to be in the hall of fame, I'm not sure it does because it seems like we now have more writers who have only been covering baseball for a little over 10 years when the careers of many of the players they are voting on started long before these writers started covering baseball. Yes, a lot of them probably followed baseball since they were kids, but I'm not sure I want my hall of fame decided by people who saw most of these players' careers when they were children.

I'm not sure what a better solution would be, but I think I might rather take away a voter's rights at a certain age, say 75 (before a lot of us presumably start to lose our minds), and require them to be a certain age before they get the right to vote, say 45 (that would ensure they saw most if not all of the eligible players' careers past the voter's age of 10, factoring in a 10-20 year career, the 5 year waiting period, and 10 max years on the ballot).

This is a great article which says how far more than just writers should be voters and how the purge is more about trying to get some PED users into the Hall than it is about trying to remove voters like Chass and others whom many people feel shouldn't get to vote.

[swampdragon]

Honestly, if you're a small Hall voter, and you're not voting for steroids users, this is a pretty thin crop. Raines hasn't gotten in despite multiple chances, Pudge and Bagwell have both been tied to steroids, although the ties are unproven, and Vlad probably isn't as good a candidate as Edgar Martinez, who has failed to get in despite multiple chances.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by swampdragon

... Pudge and Bagwell have both been tied to steroids, although the ties are unproven...

The early votes indicate that they both have a good chance of getting in, which surprises me for Pudge at least because I thought a lot more people were down on him. By that same link it looks like Raines has an excellent chance (phew!) while Vlad (yay!) and Hoffman have outside chances. And although it's his 8th year, it looks like Martinez just might make it eventually as he currently has 67.9%.

Yeah, the numbers will likely only go down as people who don't publicly release their ballots probably don't so they don't have to face backlash for voting for fewer than the max, but the early votes are at least somewhat of an indicator that we might see a few make it this year.

[MorseMoose]

I don't get how a writer can leave Raines off for 10 years and then all of a sudden decide, "Well, it's his last year, let's put him in." IT's not like it says in the HOF that a guy was a 15th ballot HOF guy. We know it, but once your'e in...you're in. Why make a guy wait just because he's not QUITE as impressive.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by swampdragon

Honestly, if you're a small Hall voter, and you're not voting for steroids users, this is a pretty thin crop.

I agree here because I could not vote for steroid users to enter Baseball's Hall of Fame.

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

I agree here because I could not vote for steroid users to enter Baseball's Hall of Fame.

Who's a "steroid user" though? Where do you draw the line? The problem is that we'll never know the actual extent of it, so where does that line get drawn? Those who failed a test are obvious. Those who were in the Mitchell Report too. Bonds and Clemens are pretty apparent, along with McGwire and Sosa, but after that it seems to get a bit murky with too much innuendo. Then there are the guys with absolutely no suspicion surrounding them who did it.

Was 50% of the league using? 60? 70? My stance is to take the best of the era and put them in regardless of proof/innuendo/whatever because they were competing against an unlevel playing field, and I'll never be able to sort out the cheaters from the clean guys with 100% accuracy. I wholeheartedly understand not wanting to give the highest individual honour a player can receive to a player who cheated the game, but I just can't elect myself judge/jury/executioner because I don't feel qualified to make these judgements. Maybe folks see that as a copout, but I see it as reality. Neither trying to be an ass, nor to attack your point of view, just saying rather than seeing the era in black and white, I'm seeing a whole bunch of gray.

[The Game]

Originally Posted by actionjackson

Who's a "steroid user" though? Where do you draw the line? The problem is that we'll never know the actual extent of it, so where does that line get drawn? Those who failed a test are obvious. Those who were in the Mitchell Report too. Bonds and Clemens are pretty apparent, along with McGwire and Sosa, but after that it seems to get a bit murky with too much innuendo. Then there are the guys with absolutely no suspicion surrounding them who did it.

Was 50% of the league using? 60? 70? My stance is to take the best of the era and put them in regardless of proof/innuendo/whatever because they were competing against an unlevel playing field, and I'll never be able to sort out the cheaters from the clean guys with 100% accuracy. I wholeheartedly understand not wanting to give the highest individual honour a player can receive to a player who cheated the game, but I just can't elect myself judge/jury/executioner because I don't feel qualified to make these judgements. Maybe folks see that as a copout, but I see it as reality. Neither trying to be an ass, nor to attack your point of view, just saying rather than seeing the era in black and white, I'm seeing a whole bunch of gray.

So you would put Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, Big Mac, Sosa, Raffy & Manny in?
I say keep out that main suspects and let the veterans committee put them in if they are HOF worthy. Piazza got in and he was under suspicion. Bagwell looks like he will get in and he was under suspicion. MLB Network believes the others will get in soon as well.

[Jason Moyer]

Originally Posted by swampdragon

Honestly, if you're a small Hall voter, and you're not voting for steroids users, this is a pretty thin crop.

You have to be fan of a pretty small HoF if you don't think the second greatest leadoff hitter of all time is deserving of enshrinement. Or one of the top 10 first basemen of all time.

[Jason Moyer]

Originally Posted by The Game

Bagwell looks like he will get in and he was under suspicion.

When was Bagwell linked to PEDs?

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by Jason Moyer

When was Bagwell linked to PEDs?

He goes under the innuendo cloud. Perhaps fair, perhaps not. He's a HoFer for me, but like I said I see a whole lot of gray instead of black and white when it comes to any baseball from 1987ish forward and the HoF. Others see it quite differently and that's fine. I'm not going to get worked into a stew about it. I've stated what I feel about it and why I feel that way, and I leave it to others to decide how they see it. What I don't understand is the Jon Heymans of the world who see fit to vote for Bonds but not Clemens. That makes less than zero sense to me, but it's his interpretation of a very difficult time for baseball.

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by The Game

So you would put Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, Big Mac, Sosa, Raffy & Manny in?
I say keep out that main suspects and let the veterans committee put them in if they are HOF worthy. Piazza got in and he was under suspicion. Bagwell looks like he will get in and he was under suspicion. MLB Network believes the others will get in soon as well.

Yes to all of them because I think their numbers warrant it. I will never know (and neither will anyone) just how widespread the issue was, so it doesn't make sense to me to separate the cheaters from the clean players. It happened. It's still happening. If I ever get to Cooperstown, I want to see every era represented because every era has some dirt (1871-1946: no black players, 1950s-2010ish: amphetamines, 1980s-present: the steroid era etc). It's not perfect and it never will be, but I want to see the best from each era in there.

[Déjà Bru]

Based on this mini-survey of writers, if representative of the whole, Vlad and Trevor are in and Jeff, Edgar, Tim, and Ivan each have a good chance. It could be a big class of inductees this year.