Ulf the Unwashed:
I have a problem including Clemens with the “known” group. What was the evidence against him, other than the word of someone with credibility issues of his own? He was acquitted of the perjury charges associated with his denial of steroid use. Obviously, that’s not proof that he DIDN’T take, but I’d think it at least puts him in the “alleged, not proven” category.
My ballot:
Barry Bonds
If you aren’t going to elect one of the top five players ever, what exactly is the point?
Roger Clemens
Ditto.
Jeff Bagwell
I think people forget how much of a pitchers park the Astrodome was and how astounding Bagwell numbers were despite that. Add in the defense and baserunning and Bagwell isn’t just a hall of famer, but one of the top 5 1b of all time.
Craig Biggio:
People like to talk about players who did the little things well, but usually they are things like sacrifice bunts and productive outs, which aren’t actually all that helpful. Biggio, in his prime, was a master at getting hit by pitches and avoiding double plays. He was even more valuable than his stats would appear to say at first glance, and the stats aren’t too shabby,
Mike Piazza:
He would have a case if he was a dh. Instead he was a catcher, the hardest place to find offense.
Mark Mcgwire:
I don’t really consider taking steroids when he did against the rules (it was illegal like blocking the plate is illegal), and without that he is an obvious choice.
Curt Schilling:
A player doesn’t deserve to make the hall due to one really good postseason start, but for a borderline player, a really strong postseason record can make the difference. That is Schilling.
Tim Raines:
I don’t really have a strong opinion myself, but enough smart people think that he is an obvious choice, that I’ll go with it. He was really good at not making outs, which is pretty useful.
Rafael Palmerio,
A tougher choice since he did actually fail a test, but his consistent achievement is enough for me.
Sammy Sosa:
My last choice, and I can be convinced to go another way with it. I think this is a vote more for the specific skill than the overall player.
People who got votes from others
Edgar Martinez:
He falls a little short, but I might change my mind one of the years. I need to look more into the affect of dhing on a batter’s performance.
Larry Walker:
He played in the crazy mile high offense era, and didn’t play enough to overcome that.
Jack Morris:
Unlike Schilling he isn’t borderline, nor does he have as much postseason success.
Lee Smith:
Pretty good reliever who happened to close a lost
Alan Trammell
Close. Will have to look at him again some time. Feels like he was good in a weak era rather than great.
Fred Mcgriff:
Standard for 1b is just too high.
Don Mattingly:
Peak way too short
Dale Murphy:
Peak a little too short
Bernie Williams/Kenny Lofton
Never quite great enough
Roberto Hernandez
Umm okay
Sandy Alomar
4 votes? Really?
Who argued for eliminating all relief pitchers?
Because he was a great pitcher. The only reason Morris is in the conversation for "best of the 80s (other that the rather arbitrary endpoints) is that the 80s (in the AL) wasn’t a particularly strong era for pitchers.
Is anyone “obviously” clean?
Yook-“obviously” is obviously in the eye of the beholder.
If either of those players gets in, it’ll be because of their number of saves, which means nothing statistically, and not because of their actual pitching performances, which mean something. And as far as the saves go, they’re a dead heat.
A “weak era” for what? It couldn’t have been for shortstops because Trammell was playing the position at the same time Cal Ripken, Robin Yount, and Ozzie Smith were.
Anyway, I realize YMMV with regard to Trammell. I chose him because I think he more than held his own with the other top shortstops of both his era and all-time. Also, there should be at least one player from the 1984 Detroit Tigers in the HOF. It would seem supremely odd for a team that got off to a 40-5 start on their way to a World Championship to not have a single player enshrined at Cooperstown.
With 52 votes cast, we have no hall-of-famers. Interesting.
NDP:
As dominant as they were that year, how outstanding could their offensive performances have been if the MVP award went to their closer?
Perhaps the real story of the 1984 Tigers is Sparky Anderson’s managerial genius, and he is in the Hall of Fame.
Well, I guess if you care about save totals, that would matter. I don’t.
Rivera is the the effective pitcher, inning for inning, in the entire history of baseball who has played a significant number of games. Hoffman isn’t. Hoffman’s a very good pitcher, but he is not substantially better a pitcher than Tom Henke was.
And that’s without considering playoff performance. Sure, Rivera had the advantage of being in the playoffs every year, but the fact remains his playoff performance is without comparison to anyone else, ever; he got that chance and he utterly dominated. To my mind it’s the equivalent of adding on a Cy Young-winning season, maybe more.
I grant everything you just said but the bottom line is this: the closer’s role is a largely irrelevant position defined almost exclusively by the pitcher’s ability to rack up saves, a largely irrelevant statistic. In that critical regard, Rivera and Hoffman are virtually indistinguishable and, to my mind, that means you have to either accept them both into the Hall of Fame for doing what closers are expected to do better and more than anyone else or you have to dismiss them both for doing something that doesn’t make any statistical difference to a team’s record.
Closers are not “largely irrelevant.” They are, in general, overrated; but relief pitchers are an important part of a team. Poor relief pitching has brought low many a supposed contender.
What’s important to keep in mind is that relief pitchers are less important than starters because they throw so many fewer innings. That’s why stuff like Gagne’s MVP was a joke, his impact wasn’t close to MVP caliber. But a pitcher such as Rivera who throws a significant number of high-quality high-leverage innings has undeniable value.
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
Why, so you can pick things up, of course.
My initial response was aimed at RickJay, who said he didn’t vote for Lee Smith because he doesn’t like relief pitchers.
With regard to relief pitchers and DH’s, why evaluate those positions differently than others? The standards for offensive production from middle infielders and catchers are typically lower than corner infielders and outfielders. Players are usually rated against other players at their position. So why not evaluate Lee Smith and Edgar Martinez based on how they compare with other closers and DHs? Smith, for a good period of time, was the career saves leader. He certainly compares favorable to Bruce Sutter. Martinez is generally considered the greatest DH yet.
Well, for DHs, there are very few career DHs out there worthy of consideration - usually players’ defensive abilities decline and are relegated to the DH slot, and can be evaluated on their entire contribution, rather than just as a DH. There’s no particular reason to evaluate relievers just to other relievers, when their stats are just as relevant compared to starters as well. Just because the Save exists doesn’t mean they need to be looked at in a vacuum.
This is one of those odd times when I agree completely with your premise (saves are meaningless) but disagree entirely with your conclusion (that you either accept both Hoffman and Rivera or neither).
It’s seems plainly obvious that Rivera was significantly more valuable at what matters (pitching effectively regardless of the inning) than Hoffman was. Hell, as Rick pointed out Rivera is, per inning, the single most effective pitcher ever that has a serious number of innings pitched. Hoffman just doesn’t compare. Nor do Smith, Sutter, et al. The only reason Eck compares is that he has something like twice as many IP.
I agree on Martinez - he would not be a terrible benchmark for DH. It really depends on what standard you want for DH. If it’s “better than 1B” then Martinez may not quite make it. If It’s “comparable to corner OF” then he probably does.
However, Sutter is a bad benchmark for closers, IMO. We can play the “so-and-so is in and he wasn’t better than my guy, so you have to include my guy” game forever. But if you do that the Hall will get very, very large.
I do think that your thinking more closely mirrors BBWAA, and Smith, Hoffman, and Rivera will all be voted in (largely using the “better than Sutter” criteria).
But then why differentiate offensive stats for various position players? Or are you actually not in favor of that? Because if you don’t differentiate closers from starters and you compare the best of the best, say Clemens to Rivera, the results are pretty inconsistent. ERA+, for example, is probably going to skew high for closers (Rivera=206, Clemens=143). WAR, on the other hand, will skew very low for closers (Rivera=2.93/yr, Clemens=5.55/yr).
So, it’s easy to say Rivera is the greatest closer of all time because of how he compares to other closers, but it’s difficult to judge him among all pitchers.
::For the record, Lee Smith’s ERA+ and WAR/yr are 132 and 1.55. Trevor Hoffman’s are 141 and 1.5.
With 55 votes now, we’re still not electing anyone. But I am completely shocked that the leading vote-getter is Tim Raines with 41.
I mean, I can understand the lower vote totals of Clemens and Bonds, but I’m surprised that Raines has a higher total than Biggio, Piazza and Bagwell.
My point is that Rivera and Hoffman (and every other professional closer) are paid the big bucks to pitch the ninth inning and seal the deal which I think most of us can agree on, is a job that doesn’t matter statistically. If a team with the lead in the ninth will win 95% of the time, regardless of who gets the nod to pitch that inning, what difference does it make if the guy has a career ERA of 2.21 or 2.87? The results – team victories – remain the same and both Rivera and Hoffman have been, to this point, about equally good at performing that task.
Yeah, it is difficult - but it’s not impossible. And that’s even more true when you’re not looking at the best reliever in the history of the game - which is the point. It’s easy to identify the top 5 or so closers of all time. It’s hard to put them in context with pitchers across the history of the game - which is the whole point of the HOF. So why shouldn’t we discount a huge portion of closers once it’s pointed out that having an extremely limited number of innings means they just didn’t contribute all that much across their careers?
No. The closer’s role is to help teams win games by preventing runs. Trying evaluate this using saves, a stat you yourself dismiss, is extremely dumb. Rivera was far better at this than Lee. That’s why his HoF case is much stronger.
If you’re going to dismiss saves, ignore them in the evaluation.
He didn’t say anything like this either.