2014 MLB Hall of Fame Ballot

The Game Room
81

Just a couple of notes here. I am one of the people that think Jack Morris is over-rated. Yes, he had one very good post-season, but that does not make him hall-worthy. That would be like putting Reggie Jackson in the Hall for his 3-pitches, 3-HR game in the 1977 WS, with him having an otherwise above average career. That obviously wasn’t the case with Jackson. Morris shouldn’t (and I believe doesn’t) make it in. And neither will Andy Pettite. (I needed a better example than Jackson, but couldn’t think of a guy that had one great WS and an above average, but not exactly hall-worthy career on the fly as I typed this).

I think the moment Brady Anderson hit 50 HRs in 1996 was the moment where I thought we all would finally admit that the emperor was naked. That was just wrong. He hit 16 in 1995. I remember how infrequent that magic number was reached in the 70’s. George Foster hit it once (52, in 1977) and I thought he was an amazing power hitter of his day, Willie Stargell, a guy who has hit baseballs completely out of a few stadiums, (including not one but TWO out of Dodger Stadium) and was one of the great HR hitters of his time NEVER hit 50 (48 was his best, in 1971). Mike Schmidt and Reggie Jackson never hit 50, that’s how special that number was… hell, forget about 60. Anderson made that number a relative joke, and i had no doubt Maris’ record would fall eventually. I had no idea that two players would reach 70+ HR’s, however. It made a joke out of the HR record and statistic, which is why IMO Bonds and McGwire should never get into the HoF.

I will never understand these people who have problems with someone getting voted in unanimously on their first ballot. If anyone should have been voted in with 100% of the vote over the last 20 years, IMO, it was Rickey Henderson. One of the greatest EVER. And I personally never liked Henderson, but you just can’t deny his talent or his hall worthiness.

Maddux will also be left off ballots, and my guess is a larger percentage (or raw number… Or both) than Henderson. But he will walk into the Hall, and deservedly so. He will be the highest vote-getter this year.

I don’t agree with your logic here. It’s fine if you look at it this way, but a baseball season is a long grind of 162 games. A post-season is a short snap-shot. Especially in baseball, where the post-season is such a small percentage of games compared to the regular season. I think great post-season performances can help a player who is borderline to get over the hump, but some players don’t get to play in the post-season ever, and they shouldn’t be penalized for that. Barry Bonds is a guy who except for one post-season came up very small in post-season games. He was awful in Pittsburgh, and he had only one good post-season in SF. He has no rings, and the reason Pittsburgh didn’t win one in the three straight years they went to the playoffs in the early 1990’s was largely because of Bonds’ pathetic hitting in the playoffs. (Not to mention his inability to throw out one of the slowest runners from second to home in the history of the game, Sid “no knees” Bream, in that 1992 debacle that crushed this Pirate fan for two decades). So, no… I don’t put an extraordinary amount of weight on baseball’s post-season, although it shouldn’t get completely ignored. Morris shouldn’t get in because of one 10-inning masterpiece, and that’s what everyone always brings up.

Agree with your comments on Morris, not sure yet on Schilling. I need to look at his stats again, but I dislike Schilling so much that I think that might be skewing my memory. I need to be objective with Mr. Ketchup Sock.

Never disrespect Scrap Iron! He was amazing in the 1979 series. Willie Stargell however, carried that team.

If you want a real disgusting vote, the 1979 regular season NL MVP voting was a tie between Stargell and Keith Hernandez. What most people probably forget is that a number of writers left Stargell completely off their list of 10 that year. He would have won that award easily if just one of those assholes would have given him a tenth place vote. Pathetic.

In cases like the Stargell MVP Vote in 1979, or more to the point of this thread the Henderson HOF vote, those writers that didn’t vote for the player should be bounced from the process. I feel the same should be done for someone not voting for Maddux. Having pitched completely through the PED era and ringing up 355 wins is just amazing. Especially since he was never linked to the PED’s himself.

82

Oops, somehow I missed Piazza’s name on the list. Add one more vote for him.

83

Stink Fish Pot:

Kirk Gibson or Joe Carter, perhaps?

84

A lot of the concern about Stargell at the time was that he only played in about 3/4 of his team’s games that year. So while he played well, he certainly didn’t come close to leading the league in anything. Even in homers, his 32 wasn’t close to Dave Kingman’s 48 or Mike Schmidt’s 45. (No, I’m not suggesting that Kingman should’ve been MVP that year. Though as someone who watched a lot of Cubs games that year, I will argue that he was indeed a force to be reckoned with.)

And while Stargell played well in somewhat limited time, he also wasn’t sensational. No one was looking at WAR back then (and I certainly don’t think that WAR should be the be-all and end-all), but here are some retrospective WAR numbers for non-pitchers in the MVP balloting that year:

7.6
8.3
6.7
7.9

Which is Stargell? None of them. Those are from top, Hernandez, Winfield, Stargell’s teammate Dave Parker, and Schmidt. Stargell? 2.5. Bill Madlock was the only player in the top 20 who was lower, and most weren’t close.

I remember thinking at the time, “This is the classic Leadership Award.” And I’d agree with that today as well. So if you didn’t buy into leadership, and if you expected an MVP to play more than 126 games, it made perfect sense to leave him off the ballot. Great player, great man, but I do understand the unwillingness of some to see him as a top-ten candidate that year.

85

Your shorter answer is incoherent.

And the point, of course, is that it’s impossible to win a World Series without playing well in the regular season.

Let’s try a thought experiment. I have two teams ready to add into Major League Baseball in 1977, Jack Morris’ rookie year. They are very different teams.

The Alberqueque A-Rods are, to a man, the sorts of players you mock. They are regular season demons. During the regular season, they each play about as well as Barry Bonds (the hitters) or Bob Gibson (the pitchers). They win 65% of their games, give or take, every season, because they’re that damn good. But in the playoffs, they all are chokers; they become league average, able to win only half their games (50%).

The Juneau Jeters are quite the opposite. During the regular season, they are barely better than average; they win slightly more than half of their games (the same 51%). But during the playoffs, they Jack Morris all over the place - they become literally unbeatable. They cannot lose a game in the playoffs; they’re just that clutchy. Note that I’ve made the Jeters much better in the playoffs than the A-Rods are in the regular season, and better in the regular season than the A-Rods are in the playoffs, just to be as fair as possible.

You can have the Jeters - since you obviously prefer such players - and I’ll take the A-Rods. Who do you suppose will win more championships by 1994, when Jack Morris retired?

Look, if you put together a team of players who all performed exactly as Jack Morris did for his career as a whole - very slightly better than league average - you’d have a team that very probably would not make the playoffs even once, let alone win a title. If you put together a team of players who all performed exactly as Greg Maddux did for his career as a whole, they’d make the playoffs literally every year.

Jack Morris pitched brilliantly in the 1991 World Series. But if he hadn’t pitched exceptionally well in the regular season that year, he wouldn’t have won a title that year. The regular season matters because you can’t win a title without being exceptional there, and Morris’ performance over 18 regular seasons was, ultimately, not exceptional.

86

Since Stargell was not one of the ten best players in the National League that year, that seems perfectly fine with me. He wasn’t even the best player on his own team. He is one of the worst position players to ever win an MVP Award (within the MVP season; obviously he had a great career.)

Ron Cey is a good candidate.

As for the Morris argument, I’m wondering who’s actually reading his career playoff stats; in the postseason he was 7-4 with a 3.80 ERA. That’s pretty good, but hardly puts him in a class with Bob Gibson or Curt Schilling. He’s not even in a class with Juan Guzman. As awesome as he was in the 1991 World Series he was fantastically dreadful in the postseason the very following year. Why was Mr. Clutch so not clutch in 1992?

87

Rick Dempsey, MVP of the 1983 WS?

88

We are a stingy bunch here. Only Maddux gets into the SDMBHOF. No Big Hurt? No Glavine? Wow.
And I also missed Piazza’s name. Adding Skammer’s and my vote, he still falls short at 72%.

89

It’s hard to dispute, maybe. After all, winning is what it’s all about.

You do have to play well enough to advance out of the qualifying round, of course. But, once there, you have to rise to the occasion, and all those other sports clichés that *are *clichés because they’re true.

The ones who know how to rise to the occasion and *win *the big games. Which one is that?

There are multiple rounds after the qualifying one, you know. If you don’t win them, too, then, well, you’re almost any of Greg Maddux’s Braves teams.

That hasn’t really been true since divisional play was instituted, and even more so with 2 wild card teams now. Teams have made the playoffs with .500 or so records before (e.g. 1973 Mets, 82-79, took the A’s to Game 7 in the Series), and it will become even more common in the future.

90

And that’s why Joe Carter was a greater player than Carl Yastrzemski!

91

McGwire was one of the most feared sluggers in all of baseball from 1987-1992 and 1996-1999. While his late 90s peak was considerably higher than his 80s/90s peak, people forget that he was always a big home run hitter during his career (when he wasn’t injured from 1993-1995).

“The Home Run Race of 1998” was a captial-E “EVENT” and while I don’t subscribe to the “saved baseball” meme (Cal Ripken did that two years earlier) it’s impossible to deny that it was more important than anything Tim Raines was involved in. (Aside from nicknames, Rock Raines is like the most badass name ever).

But looking at his numbers again, you’re right, being almost as good as Rickey is a pretty good place to be in. Tim Raines probably should be in. And on the real ballot, I have a feeling he will.

92

Tim Raines was a hell of a ballplayer, but he was not really “almost as good” as Rickey Henderson.

Rained, according to Baseball Reference, had 69 career WAR. Rickey Henderson had 110. The difference between them is basically Luis Gonzalez’s entire career.

93

The mathematical formulas and manipulations now serving as arguments for Hall of Fame election have progressed beyond the point of ridiculousness.

This analysis even cites the Pythagorean theorem! It is nuts.

Since the BCS is going out of business after this year, can’t we just rent their computers, upgrade the software and get humans entirely out of the business of voting for candidates? :dubious:

94

The Pythagorean win-loss expectation has been around for quite a while, and is listed on MLB’s website on the standings page. It’s a pretty simple equation that calculates an expected win-loss record based on just two things - the number of runs you score, and the number of runs you allow. It’s a far better predictor than the actual record is, and is a good measure of how lucky or unlucky a team has been in the past when you compare it to their actual record.

I’d never thought of applying it to a pitcher (especially an entire career), but it’s elegantly simple.

95

Why would someone vote for Bonds but not Clemens, or vice versa? I don’t get it. (They have the same total right now, but slightly different sets of voters.)

I would need at least 13 votes to be satisfied with my ballot. I missed Biggio’s name when I voted. Probably would have slipped him in there otherwise, but I’m not sure who I’d take out to make room.

96

Joe Carter is who I thought of after posting last night, but Kirk Gibson is an excellent, and maybe perfect comparison.

[hijack]

I don’t want to talk about this in this thread any longer, because o don’t want to hijack it from the thread’s intended purpose. However, I just want to follow up some of these comments.

Wow. I’m amazed at the lack of Stargell love in 1979. I understand the argument that he only played in 3/4 of the team’s games, but if I remember correctly, he played during the last two months of the season and really carried the Pirates, clearly the MVP of the team, who won the NL East. Back in 1979, it wasn’t unusual for a player on a winning team to get the MVP over a slightly better individual candidate on a team that finished on a second division team.

And i wouldn’t have a problem with him not winning the award at all if the BBW voted him down on the list. But for him to receive enough votes to tie for first without appearing on some ballots at all just seems strange. To say he wasn’t one of the ten best players in the NL that year may be statistically true, but the reality is a lot different. He hit clutch home runs down the stretch, and that carried over into the playoffs and WS. And leadership was a part of the equation back then, much more so than today.

I realize i am seeing this through the eyes of a homer with the memory of a kid who watched his favorite team win the world series that year. I just could never figure out such a discrepancy in some of the ballots.

I don’t think Saber-metrics were used at all back then by anyone, so many of the stats being used today to look at Stargell against his peers that year weren’t in play. I admit, however, they make the case against Stargell as regular season MVP stronger. But to not be on a ballot at all just seems crazy, especially if you remember that season and how big of a presence he was.

Seeing his performance just broken down in stats, without the context of a pressure of a pennant race is very sterilizing, but it removes many of the intangibles that he excelled at, and just blends his stats over the season. That doesn’t help his case at all.

I wonder how many other MVP’s would suffer a similar fate if they had their seasons broken down like this. Interesting.

[/end hijack]

97

I’ll do you the favor of assuming your question was serious. No, that’s a strawman - nobody nowhere has claimed that a Hall of Fame vote should be based *solely *on October performance. For instance, I firmly agree that Maddux and Glavine belong. Will *you *do *me *the favor of granting that? :dubious:

However, we *do *tend to see, even here, claims that only the “regular season” counts, since what happens in the playoffs is “fucking luck” or words to that effect and, consequently, can be dismissed. Anyone who wishes to cling to losers’ excuses is welcome to. Winners win.

Do please, also, note that part of being a great player is making your team better. Since you brought up those two, for reasons you needn’t explain: Yaz did, in fact, drag an ordinary Red Sox team with him all the way into the Series, and it is hardly his fault they didn’t get those last few wins against a still-superior Cardinals team. The 90’s Jays would have been good enough to win even without Carter, and I doubt you’d claim he dragged them along with him.

ETA: Great post, Stink Fish Pot. Stargell is another example. The rage we see against considering intangibles, in the context of the Hall of Fame, is hard to understand.

98

VarlosZ:

I don’t know why someone would vote for Bonds and not Clemens, but I can see Clemens but not Bonds. The PED evidence against Bonds is more solid than that against Clemens.

99

I think this is the year that causes the HoF to change the voting rules/requirements. There are so many truly worthy candidates, yet it’s entirely likely that almost none of them get in.

Frank Thomas should be a no-doubt HoFer. He passes both the eye test and the number test.

Bonds had a 1st-ballot HoF career even before his well-documented usage of PEDs in 1999. To leave him off the ballot is purely punitive, and I don’t believe such things have a place in the voting.

Bagwell, Biggio, Maddux, Glavine, Raines, Schilling, Edgar Martinez, and Larry Walker all deserve to get in. It’s possible none of them do, except for the two pitchers.

McGwire and Sosa are a bit of a red herring, IMO. You could make a very good argument against either of them getting into the HoF even without PED accusations. Their value was almost entirely linked to their power; they were poor defenders and baserunners (Sosa had some speed but got caught stealing too many times), and their peaks were too short.

100

PEDs or not, I think you can make a very solid comparison from McGwire/Sosa to Roger Maris. Not only do they all have the HR race in common, but they’re all, as you say, red herrings. Short peaks, novelty points of interest, ultimately unimportant. None of whom are Hall-worthy.