There seems to be a lot of other stuff you also don’t care about. Like performance.
Thought I would run out of slots, but I didn’t. The following are no-brainers for me:
Bagwell
Raines
Trammell
Edgar
Bonds
Clemens
Piazza
Biggio
I would also have no problem seeing Larry Walker or Curt Schilling get in. Rafael Palmeiro and Bernie Williams are borderline but still a hell of a lot more deserving than Jack Morris.
How can you go Mattingly and Murphy and not Piazza, Bagwell, or Biggio?
It’s going to be really interesting to see if there are any players deserving of consideration that don’t get renewed for next year’s ballot.
Ah yes, the Clark/Whitaker Award
Whole lot of deserving candidates this year. Only going to get worse next year, with Glavine, Mussina, Maddux, and Frank Thomas.
I take Suburban Plankton’s attitude toward PED use in this era. BTW, what is the Hall’s official stance on amphetamines?
Anyway, in alphabetical order: Bagwell, Biggio, Bonds, Clemens, Lofton, Martinez, Raines, Schilling, Trammell, Walker.
Would’ve added at least Piazza and Palmeiro if I wasn’t limited to 10 choices. Pretty sure that Piazza will get in next go-around, whereas I’m not sure that Trammell or Raines would. If you want to take off Walker and put on Piazza, I’m fine with that. The only "no-question, he must be on there"s for me are Bonds and Clemens. A Hall without one of the top 3 position players and one of the top 10 pitchers of all time (should the number be even smaller?), just seems strange to me.
Obviously I’m not giving penalty points for alleged PED use…
I don’t believe the Hall has an official stance on anything, other than how much admission tickets cost.
Bonds will be an interesting test-case. His career line from 1986 to 1999 (his last “clean” season):
.288/.409/.559, .968 OPS (163 OPS+), 2010 hits, 445 home runs, 460 stolen bases, 1299 RBI, 1455 runs scored, 100.5 bWAR, three MVPs, 8 gold gloves, and 8 All-Star appearances.
I believe this line is clearly HoF worthy. Thus the question becomes: Are voters going to penalize him for the PED use itself? They won’t have the ever-so-convenient “we can’t tell how much of his performance was due to PEDs” excuse, since Bonds’s use is rather well documented.
Gray Ghost, why Lofton over Piazza? Positional scarcity aside, I think Piazza was clearly a better offensive player (and Lofton was no slouch).
I’m a little surprised I only found nine to vote for:
Bagwell, Biggio, Clemens, Bonds, Edgar, Walker, Trammell, Raines, Piazza.
I’m probably being a little inconsistent in not voting for Palmiero, but I see I’m not alone there.
Bernie Williams was one of my favorite players, and is very underrated, but still nowhere near deserving.
I’ve gone back and forth on Lofton, but lean toward no at this point. Schilling’s a little short as well for me.
The most surprising thing on this ballot is realizing that Damian Miller played long enough to get on. I had no idea he was around for 11 seasons - I only really remember him from the 2001 DBacks.
Going off of memory here, but I remember Lofton’s defense, for his position, being much better than Piazza’s. I vaguely remember (which is why I shouldn’t have a BBWAA ballot for this sort of thing) Piazza being below average behind the plate, didn’t call a good game, wasn’t known for his framing, that sort of thing. And he had in common with Lofton, average to poor arm strength for the position. Anyone know, offhand, his percentage of guys he threw out trying to steal, and how that compared to the league? (Nevermind, just found it: per this post at Yahoo—caveat emptor—he had a 23% success rate. You also could look at the bottom of his fangraphs listing, cited below. Anyways, 23% strikes me as bad.)
But, as you note, Piazza was just so good with the bat that you could forgive any lapse in D, so long as he was at least passable. Am I mis-remembering? Now, with guys like Joe Mauer, etc, the idea of a catcher just being amazing at the plate isn’t that novel, but I remember a lot of people being blown away by Piazza’s offense. (Despite guys like Fisk and Bench showing the way. I mean they didn’t play that long ago.) Are the various offensive corrections between eras being overapplied in Piazza’s case? You’d think that 427 HR and .945 Slugging over 7700 PA would earn you more than a 63.2 oWAR.
OTOH, I remember Lofton, with his speed, being just absolutely stunning in the field. And on the basepaths. Though his arm strength later became a universal pejorative, I don’t remember that portion of his game in his prime, being abysmal. (Though he certainly wasn’t any Dave Parker. Which is good in many areas, I guess, though I still am stunned at Parker throwing people out at the plate, on the fly, from deep right field.) I guess I’m biased more towards defense than is helpful for winning baseball games. (One of, what-used-to-be, my favorite baseball pieces of memorabilia is a baseball signed by Bob Boone.)
Looking at fangraphs, and their WAR calculation has them just about tied. They allot -62.9 FRAA for Piazza, and 114.5 for Lofton. Quite a spread.
Regardless, both should get in; I just left him off due to space. And, truthfully, because when I played with Munch’s link, and sorted WAR and JAWS (whatever the hell that is), Lofton was higher on the list.
For shits n’ giggles, here’s the top 20 from the list, sorted by fangraph’s calculation of WAR: (I’d link, but I don’t know how to pull this list from their db; I just copied the WAR total from each of their individual pages.)
Barry Bonds 168.0
Roger Clemens 145.5
Curt Schilling 86.1
Jeff Bagwell 83.9
Raffy Palmeiro 74.2
Larry Walker 73.2
Tim Raines 70.6
Mark McGwire 70.6
Craig Biggio 70.5
Edgar Martinez 69.9
Alan Trammell 69.5
Mike Piazza 66.8
Kenny Lofton 66.2
Sammy Sosa 64.1
Fred McGriff 61.0
Jack Morris 56.9
Bernie Williams 47.5
Dale Murphy 47.3
Don Mattingly 45.8
Lee Smith 29.0
Fangraphs loves the long ball, it seems. Anyone’s vote change?
I left out the “known PED users.” I don’t know that I can really justify this, and I suspect in a couple of years someone from among the Bonds/Clemens/McGwire axis will be selected–it’ll be just too weird to ignore them all. But for now, I’m sticking to my no-PED stance. We’ll see what happens next year.
In my mind, Biggio, Bagwell, Raines, Trammell, and Piazza are clear choices. (I’ve heard rumors of PEDs with regard to Piazza and especially Bagwell, but nothing resembling evidence in either case.)
I also voted for Walker and Morris, though tomorrow I might feel differently. I think both were terrific players; today, anyhow, I think they both belong. (FYI, I was always a supporter of Bert Blyleven’s candidacy.)
Beyond that–well, I loved the DM boys (Mattingly and Murphy), loved watching them play, but they were not good enough for long enough for the HOF. Bernie Williams was a lot of fun to watch too, and I remember noticing him when I saw him play in AA ball, but again, not good enough, not long enough. I’m partial to Steve Finley too, similar reasons at a lower level, but I wouldn’t vote for him.
Edgar Martinez sure could hit, and Lee Smith sure could save games, but I don’t love the idea of putting a full-time DH in the hall unless he’s head and shoulders above just about all other hitters, DH and otherwise, and Martinez wasn’t, and the same for relief pitchers and Smith.
I never thought of Kenny Lofton as a great player when he was active; I’m always surprised to look at his stats and see how good he was. Still, not good enough. Curt Schilling, for me, is the other way around. I remember him being a truly dominant pitcher at times for the Phils and Orioles, and we all remember his exploits in Arizona and Boston, but somehow when I look at his career stats it doesn’t reflect greatness. He was very good, of course, and I suspect he’ll be inducted sooner rather than later, but he doesn’t make my list.
Fred McGriff’s stats should probably impress me more than they do. Same with Palmeiro, but of course he’s already on my dump list due to PEDs.
Beyond those guys, and the PED folks I am perhaps unfairly ruling off, I don’t take the rest of these candidacies seriously.
23% is bad. That said his defense was otherwise okay. There’s a lot more to being a catcher than stopping basestealers.
With the bat he was as good a catcher as has ever played the game. Even if you correct for his high-offense environment he was a better hitter than Bench, Berra, anyone.
Going with my gut because I didn’t have time to look at all the stats again, I voted for Bagwell, Raines, Smith, Martinez, Piazza and Biggio.
Now that I’ve read the thread, I would probably add Larry Walker.
In the past I have voted for Jack Morrisin these things, and I’m still on the fence with him, but he was my 7th guy and I felt like 6 was enough. I was also on the fence with Schilling, too.
[QUOTE=RickJay]
Lee Smith
No, because I think releif pitcher are overrated.
[/QUOTE]
Is that really the only reason? Will Rivera and Hoffman be left off your ballot, too?
Hoffman certainly will be left off of mine. Rivera is unique, and I think I would vote for him.
Lee Smith is no Mariano Rivera (quick comparison: career ERA+ - Smith 132 Rivera 206!!).
Basically I just discount saves. Show me tons of extremely effective innings and we can talk, or some unique characteristic (Eckersley being a starter, Rivera being uncommonly good and his post-season resume).
I don’t mean Smith was as good as Rivera, but if the only reason for not voting for Smith is disliking relief pitchers, then you eliminate Rivera. If you want to argue Smith didn’t have the stats, that’s fine. I would disagree, but that’s a different conversation than eliminating all relief pitchers.
That only works if you call thumbs fingers. If you really want to be obtuse (and I do), I’d say Alfonseca has 2 thumbs plus 10 fingers, Brown has 2 thumbs plus 6 fingers, so 10 is 67% more than 6.
Back to topic, I’d go Raines, Trammell, Walker, and Williams.
I still don’t understand why Ray Guy never gets in. So what, he played an unpopular position. He’s deserving.
I don’t want to speak for RickJay, but I think what he means is that the statistic that is unique to relief pitchers (saves) is overrated. Basically that there is nothing all that impressive about racking up high career saves totals - you shouldn’t get extra credit above and beyond your normal pitching stats for that.
So if you remove saves from Lee Smith, you get a pitcher with 1289 IP, with a 3.03 ERA (132 ERA+). That’s good, but not good enough considering the low IP count. Schilling, for example, had 3261 IP with a 3.46 ERA (127 ERA+). Give me too pitchers with the roughly the same ERA+ and I have to think that the one that pitched 2.5 as many innings is more worthy of the Hall of Fame.
Rivera is different though, in that he was way more dominant. So while you still only have 1200 IP, it was with a 2.21 ERA (206 ERA+). With those numbers I can overlook the low innings total. Eckersley goes the other way - due to his time as a starter and the different reliever usage he actually pitched over 3200 innings.
I’ll put it one other way - you know who is right behind Lee Smith on the career saves leaderboard? John Franco. He pitched 1245 innings of 2.89 ERA (138 ERA+). Do you think John Franco should be in the Hall of Fame?
Surprised at the delta between Raines and Lofton…