woohoo! My vote just put Tim Raines in!
I voted for Bonds, Clemens, Trammell, Raines, Biggio, Bagwell, Lofton, Walker, Martinez and Piazza.
My understanding is that the charges relied heavily on Brian McNamee, but not exclusively. Didn’t Andy Pettitte originally implicate him too? And isn’t the official Clemens family line that it was his wife who took the HGH, NOT Roger, although there was absolutely no imaginable medical reason for her to do so? Yup, here’s a story on it: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-06-09/news/32145231_1_debbie-clemens-hgh-youth-drug.
Also, while I remember McNamee’s testimony as having some definite flaws, I also remember it being very detailed–more than just a “he said” kind of thing, more difficult to ignore or to sweep away. Maybe I’m wrong.
I guess you could argue that Clemens hasn’t been **shown **to have used PEDs the way some others have. But I have a really hard time believing he didn’t, and I suspect the bulk of voters for the HOF will draw very little distinction between him and, say, McGwire or Bonds.
But if you have other information, I’d be interested in seeing it.
So it seems that enough of the voters are going to be self-righteous, punitive assholes to keep all the “steroid users” (placed in quotes because Bagwell is being so labeled despite not having any legitimate steroid connections) out of the Hall this year.
I say punitive because Bonds has a HoF resume even before he started using, so clearly writers are of the opinion that it’s their job to punish those naughty cheaters rather than ensuring the best candidates get into the Hall.
And the 56th voter just put Tim Raines in the SDMB Baseball HOF! Subsequent voters could, of course, negate this, but I am also surprised that Raines is the leading vote-getter. Is there PED suspicion around Bagwell? Think Biggio is overrated despite the big milestone 3000 hits? No love for Piazza being a horrible defensive catcher? What gives?
Seriously? Ok, in response to Lee Smith he said:
[QUOTE=RickJay]
No, because I think releif pitcher are overrated.
[/QUOTE]
And that was his entire initial statement on the matter. I asked for clarification to determine that he (and others) weren’t discounting all relief pitchers because of the position they played. He has since expanded on that to clarify that Rivera is HOF worthy, despite being a relief pitcher. Good enough for me.
Bags has weak PED suspicions.
Yes. Overrated is very different than not liking. Really.
Anyone with 2 or fewer votes falls off the ballot.
Not going to happen. Dale fell off a cliff at the end of his career..
62 voters now and Raines fell back out.
In the real world, I think Biggio and Piazza are locks. Bonds and Clemens won’t get in this year, if ever. Schilling will be an interesting case. I suspect his journey will be similar to that of Jack Morris’s (2nd in HOF voting last year at 66%). Year by year he’ll rack up more votes, but he has no chance of getting in on the first ballot. For the record, I think Schilling has a stronger case than Morris.
I’m a big Piazza fan, but I admit it wouldn’t surprise me (or necessarily disappoint me) if he didn’t make it in on the first ballot, which the voters seem to have A Thing about. There’s no question in my mind he should make it soon thereafter. But what annoys me is how often I hear or read about Piazza being “under the cloud” of PED use.
I could see Piazza being delayed a year or two in order to accentuate the fact that in the end, he’s a great hitter who worked to be a passable catcher, not a great catcher who was also a great hitter, a la Johnny Bench. If the voters want to use the “first-ballot” card to emphasize that despite the HR numbers, Bench > Piazza, fine. But to base it on PED suspicions on the same level as Bonds, Sosa and McGwire is just silly.
I think most or all of that “cloud” comes from a combination of his rapid rise from nowhere in the midst of what we now call Steroid Era, and the fact that his claim to fame is purely derived from his offense. He was drafted by the Dodgers only in the 62nd round as a favor to his father from Tommy LaSorda, yet five years later was the 1993 Rookie of the Year and became a perennial All-Star based on his power hitting. At a position he only picked up in the minors, too.
In contrast, Chipper Jones was getting a rose-petal carpet into Cooperstown even during his last season playing in 2012. But he was the first overall draft pick, making his story one of “five tool golden boy makes good”. Piazza’s story, on the other hand, is “originally nobody thought of this guy either as a hitter or as a catcher, and suddenly he’s ROY and a multiple-time All-Star at the position while racking up offensive records”. That used to be a feel-good story, but now in this context it gets the addition of “…all in the early to mid 1990s? Hmmm!”
There was also one writer who wrote about seeing “what looked like acne on his back” on Piazza in the locker room once in the 1990s or early 2000s, Murray Chass I think. That’s it. One time, one guy says he saw something that may not even have been “back acne”, and which may also mean little or nothing in the context of PEDs unless you make it out to be so. Meanwhile, take a look at pictures of Piazza as he developed in the minors and throughout his career: there was no sudden, massive and mid- or late-career spurt in muscle growth, no thick neck and bloated face, no marked spike upwards in sustained offensive performance, no lack of (or even a reversal of) a decline in hitting production around the early 30s. To me, THOSE are the hallmarks of steroid use. Piazza didn’t show any of that.
It’s gotten so ridiculous that Tyler Kepner of the NY Times recently wrote an article about the impact of PED suspicions in this year’s HOF ballot that grouped Piazza with Bonds, Clemens and Sosa because unlike Craig Biggio, none of them have had their respective teams hold a celebratory press conference about their candidacy. (Implication: “I guess those teams know something they can’t say out loud.”) But really it’s the Astros’ action that stands out. Who celebrates a player’s HOF ballot inclusion? Did the A’s have a conference for Rickey Henderson BEFORE the vote?
From what I’ve read of Chass’s prior work, this does not seem out of character for him, and is why I don’t seek out his material. It’s sad and funny that crap like his works. It draws eyeballs to the Times, and to the Times’s website, which is the point, not whether his opinions are well thought out or supported by evidence.
For the Astros, any team with a projected 2013 payroll of $32 million, and back to back multiple 105+ loss seasons, is going to find any good news they can, and scream it from the rooftops. Particularly if they’ve just been bought by a, shall we say, frugal ownership group. Jim Crane should have fallen on his knees thanking God that the McCourt disaster was going on while he was trying to buy the team. Besides, the Astros already shit-canned two of their seasons to help Craig limp his way to 3000 hits; why stop bending over backwards for him now? The 2007 one was especially heinous. 555 PA, often with him either leading off or hitting second, IIRC, with the awe-inspiring OBP of .285. Leading to a nice WAR of -2.3. And 89 losses. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
Cheer up! Fangraphs only has Biggio as -0.7 WAR in 2007!
O.K., I LOLd…
I appreciate your explaining the differences between the two systems of WAR calculation, incidentally. I am still unsure which one to trust; it may be neither, and that both are just tools for revealing some new insights into baseball performance. For example, going back to Biggio, Fangraphs has him down for a 9.7 WAR in 1997. This would make him the most valuable player in MLB in 1997, BTW. He was good—probably great, though I wasn’t living in Houston at the time, and not really following Houston—but MVP of the League? BBRef puts in at 9.3 WAR, and just behind Larry Walker, but still ahead of Barry Bonds; either of whom I would have thought would be better choices for MVP.
Still, -0.7 is bad, stinky bad. But -2.3 is utterly abominable. Isn’t the record for the modern era something like -3.1? Neifi Perez comes to mind for some reason. I’d have thought it would be hard to confuse a -0.7 player from a -2.3 player—and therefore the evaluation systems shouldn’t either—but I don’t know how WAR numbers are distributed. I wonder if Biggio’s BABIP was really low in 2007? [Nope, .300, which I read is just about league average.] I wonder then what explains the discrepancy?
That’s been “beaten” a few times. Lou Piniella had a -3.4 for the Royals. neifi never got that bad.
I’m not sure WAR doesn’t start breaking down in negative numbers, because some of them seem curious. I mean, I’ve honestly never seen a worse player in my life than Joe Carter in 1997; it was an absolute horror show. WAR has him at a modestly horrible -1.1, but it’s really hard for be to believe he wasn’t worse than Biggio ever was.
This article indicates Bonds and Clemens will fall short this year.
ETA: Maybe predicts is more accurate than indicates.
As a simulation of the math of the rules of the actual ballot (as crude as it is), so far nobody is over the 75% mark. This doesn’t bode well for the actual election-it is quite possible, given a big variation in ballots between voters, that nobody gets elected.
I voted Bagwell, Raines, Trammell, Martinez, Piazza, Schilling, and Biggio. I could go either way on Schilling, but I voted for him because I think he’ll be voted in.
Just chose eight, due to ballot fatigue as much as anything.
Jack Morris, Lee Smith, Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, Bernie Williams and Curt Schilling.
Deliberate snubs: Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens.
The steroid specter is just too dark.
I must say, I’m curious about those who voted for Sandy Alomar (5 to date) and Roberto Hernandez (2).
I wouldn’t have voted for lots of guys on this ballot, but these two seem like especially surprising choices. I’d bet lots of pretty serious baseball fans barely remember Hernandez, in particular.
Assuming that voters didn’t confuse Sandy with his more famous (and already HOF-er) brother Roberto, and that they didn’t think they were voting for Keith or Felix Hernandez instead of Roberto, what would be the reason for selecting them? Inquiring minds want to know!
Only two votes for me: Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. They clearly are first-ballot HOF’ers, even before any likely PED use.
The 1BHOF’ers are the true greatest, the best of the best. Bonds and Clemens belong in that group. Let’s not forget that baseball’s owners, fans and MLB’s leadership structure were not only complicit but also encouraging of PED use. Don’t punish Bonds and Clemens for that.
From baseball-reference.com, these are the 1BHOF’ers (pardon the formatting). Again, Bonds and Clemens belong in that group.
Player Year PCT of Vote
Rickey Henderson 2009 94.8
Cal Ripken 2007 98.5
Tony Gwynn 2007 97.6
Wade Boggs 2005 91.9
Paul Molitor 2004 85.2
Dennis Eckersley 2004 83.2
Eddie Murray 2003 85.3
Ozzie Smith 2002 91.7
Dave Winfield 2001 84.5
Kirby Puckett 2001 82.1
Nolan Ryan 1999 98.8
George Brett 1999 98.2
Robin Yount 1999 77.5
Mike Schmidt 1995 96.5
Steve Carlton 1994 95.6
Reggie Jackson 1993 93.6
Tom Seaver 1992 98.8
Rod Carew 1991 90.5
Jim Palmer 1990 92.6
Joe Morgan 1990 81.8
Carl Yastrzemski 1989 94.6
Johnny Bench 1989 96.4
Willie Stargell 1988 82.4
Willie McCovey 1986 81.4
Lou Brock 1985 79.8
Brooks Robinson 1983 92
Hank Aaron 1982 97.8
Frank Robinson 1982 89.2
Bob Gibson 1981 84
Al Kaline 1980 88.3
Willie Mays 1979 94.7
Ernie Banks 1977 83.8
Mickey Mantle 1974 88.2
Warren Spahn 1973 83.2
Sandy Koufax 1972 86.9
Stan Musial 1969 93.2
Ted Williams 1966 93.4
Jackie Robinson 1962 77.5
Bob Feller 1962 93.8
Ty Cobb 1936 98.2
Babe Ruth 1936 95.1
Honus Wagner 1936 95.1
Christy Mathewson 1936 90.7
Walter Johnson 1936 83.6