The 2017 ballot for the Hall of Fame is out.
Poll to follow. **Please vote for between five and ten players. ** (The writers can vote for no one at all, but let’s get a little aggressive here just for fun.) No more than ten, please. Feel free to add discussion! I’ll do my annual review of every name on the list in a subsequent post.
12 names I want to vote for… Bonds, Clemens, Kent, Bagwell, Manny, Pudge, Edgar, Walker, Raines, Mussina, Sheffield, Vlad… have to think a bit to cut it down to ten. Pretty sure Sheffield is one of the two to go.
Early on, but already someone has voted for Clemens but not for Bonds. I’m curious as to the reasoning for that.
I still hold a grudge against PED users, but I think the Clemens and Bonds deserve to be in anyway. They would have been great players even without PEDs. Bagwell and Sheffield will probably be in someday. Schilling will too, unless the voters feel the way I do and don’t vote for him simply because he’s an idiot. I’m not ready to put Manny Ramirez or Sammy Sosa in. They were too one-dimensional for me.
This is the final year for Tim Raines. I hope the writers take a look at Hall of Famer Lou Brock’s numbers, and then Raines. It’s a no-brainer for me.
So hard not to vote for Jorge Posada. One of my favorites, but clearly not deserving.
My thoughts:
Jeff Bagwell - Yes. Even in the high offense 1990s Bagwell was a really, really valuable hitter. He is, I believe, the only living person to score more than 150 runs in a season.
Barry Bonds – Yes. A steroid user and a jerk, but one of the best baseball players who ever lived.
Roger Clemens – Yes. The pitching version of Barry Bonds.
Trevor Hoffman – No. I’m a broken record on this but a guy who pitches part time just isn’t that valuable, and closers are terribly overrated. Hoffman pitched about 1100 innings. Corey Kluber will surpass that late next year and he’s just gotten started.
Jeff Kent – No. Kent was a really good player, but he’s not quite in my top ten on this ballot. Kent started as a Blue Jay, and in his rookie year was dealt for David Cone, who helped the Jays win the 1992 World Series but, still, it would have been nice to have him around.
Edgar Martinez – Yes. I didn’t vote for Edgar last year but did this year. What the hell.
Fred McGriff – No. I love Fred McGriff, but he’s not quite a Hall of Famer. When McGriff came up the Blue Jays also had Cecil Fielder, who they sold to Japan, and they traded McGriff to make room for John Olerud, also a hell of a player, who came up when the Jays were developing Carlos Delgado, who I’m sure everyone remembers. Whatever that team was doing to develop first basemen, they did it right.
Mike Mussina – Yes. One of the most underrated pitchers ever. His career ERA of 3.68 is really excellent in context, one of the 100 best ever adjusted to ERA+.
Tim Raines – Yes. Long overdue.
Curt Schilling – Yes. Schilling has made a name for himself as a Grade A dickhead since he stopped pitching, but he really could pitch, and his career W-L record is highly deceptive. He was a dominant performer and brilliant in the playoffs.
Gary Sheffield – No. Great hitter but he sort of melds in with a lot of other guys, and finishes about 14th on my ballot.
Lee Smith – No. See Trevor Hoffman. Piled up a lot of saves, but wasn’t half the pitcher Jimmy Key was and no one is going to put Key in the Hall of Fame.
Sammy Sosa – No. Sosa’s numbers, again, have to be viewed in context; if you really look at his value, he is not a huge standout player. I don’t say one should rely on WAR or other analytical stats to the exclusion of everything else, but if you look at players by WAR there’s like 75 guys around 55-65 career WAR. To argue one of them should be in the Hall of Fame, I think, requires a strong argument as to why they should go in, and not one of the other guys. Maybe they’re unique and important in some way, like Ichiro. So why Sammy Sosa, but not Willie Randolph or Darrell Evans? The argument for Sosa is, I guess, that he had a bunch of 60-homer season, and that’s really cool, but Willie Randolph won a couple of World Series. So Sammy just doesn’t get there for me, but if you disagree that’s cool.
Billy Wagner – No. See Trevor Hoffman. Wagner was an awesomely effective pitcher but only pitched 900 innings.
Larry Walker – Yes. One of the most underrated players of recent times; a terrific outfielder and he really was a first rate slugger. Probably the best Canadian baseball player of all time. Among hitters, anyway.
Casey Blake – No. I actually had to look this up to confirm Blake played ten years, I was surprised he was on the list; indeed, he played 13, and while some were cups of coffee he was a regular in most of them. Totally forgot this guy.
Pat Burrell – No, but should get some sort of award for putting up with Phillie fan bullshit.
Orlando Cabrera – No. Hall of Fame glove, not so much with the bat.
Mike Cameron – No. The Orlando Cabrera of the outfield; Cameron was a terrific outfielder who made a lot of amazing leaping catches at the wall, but wasn’t a good enough contact hitter to be a truly great player.
J.D. Drew – No. Drew was largely famous for enraging fans with his sort of casual, offbeat attitude towards being a baseball player. Frankly, I don’t see why anyone cares about that kind of thing. Different people deal with their jobs in different ways, and Drew was a heck of a good baseball player. Not a Hall of Famer but he was damn good.
Carlos Guillen – No. To be honest I had to look him him to make sure I wasn’t confusing him with someone else. I think ballplayers with really common names, like “Carlos Guillen” or “Steve Henderson” or “Lee” anything (first or last name) should be required to have amusing nicknames they always go by. You wouldn’t forget Jalapeno Henderson or Barbie Doll Lee. Players who already have delightful names, like Elvis Andrus, Dalton Pompey and Jarrod Saltalamacchia should be paid bonuses.
Vladimir Guerrero – No… to my admitted surprise. Guerrero is another player in the mix of guys around 60 career WAR I found struggling to get into my top ten. That’s a shame because Guerrero was fun as hell to watch. His arms were like eight feet long, and he could reach out and hit a ball that would have hit a lefthanded batter in the knee. But if you pitched him inside he’s pull hi arms back in like they were Inspector Gadget arms and pull it down the line. You should not be able to be that gangly and hit MLB pitching, but he did, and no one ever really figured out how to pitch him. Guerrero’s kid, same name, is a Blue Jays prospect now and is apparently very good.
Derrek Lee – No. I apologize but his name is misspelled in the poll; it is DERREK, not Derek. There was a Derek Lee but it was a different guy. (My source for the list misspelled it, in my defense.) Lee was a good hitter and had one truly amazing year but, nah.
Melvin Mora – No. Mora came to prominence in the 1999 and 2000 playoffs with the Mets. He was an old rookie and I remember the announcers were really dismissive of him, sort of saying hey, good for this guy doing this week on the big stage but he’s not really a major leaguer. I didn’t get it; he looked good to me. And he ended up having a pretty good career.
Magglio Ordonez – No. Probably the second best hitter to win a playoff series with a walk off home run, after David Ortiz. You’d be surprised how many players on that list are scrubs. Ordonez had some big years with the stick, but not enough of them.
Jorge Posada –No, but I feel weird saying the starting catcher for the Yankee dynasty isn’t a Hall of Famer. It feels like he should be, and yet, looking at the numbers, I can’t say yes.
Manny Ramirez – Yes. Perhaps the most technically perfect hitter I’ve personally ever seen. Comically terrible outfielder, though, the worst I’ve ever seen who played as long as he did. His bat made up for it. 29 career playoff homers, too.
Edgar Renteria – No. Good player for a long time. Renteria, interestingly enough, ended a World Series twice as a hitter, once winning it (his walkoff single in 1997) and once losing it (grounding out to Keith Foulke in the 2004 World Series.) I wonder if anyone else has ever done that?
Arthur Rhodes – Not a Hall of Famer, obviously, but mad props to a guy who stuck around for 21 years. Rhodes pitched a lot against Toronto and my recollection is that the Blue Jays never ever got a hit off him.
Ivan Rodriguez – Yes, to my mind a very obvious choice. When I was a kid the all time leader in games caught was Al Lopez, the 19somethingsomething. It was just sort of assumed that once you got past 1500 games you’d give out. Since then, though quite a lot of catchers (including several active at the time) have passed Lopez, and five have gotten above 2000 so far. Rodriguez is 201 games above anyone else. He was short and stubby and when I looked it up I kind of assumed most catchers who caught a lot of games would be that physical type, but I was wrong. Most were not; Fisk, Carter and Pierzynski are all big guys, and Bob Boone, Jason Kendall and Jim Sundberg weren’t huge but were all about six feet tall.
Freddy “Fire Truck” Sanchez – No. He did win a batting title but it was kinda flukey.
Matt Stairs – No, of course, but there are many wonderful things about Matt Stairs. Stairs was built like a hockey player, which made sense because he played hockey in the offseason to stay in shape. He was about 5’10” and had thighs like oak tree trunks and he had an all-or-nothing swing whereby he could hit a ball 700 feet. His nickname was, for reasons I do not know, “Wonder Hamster.” He didn’t really stick in the big leagues until he was 29, but he made the most of it when he did.
Jason Varitek – No. Good player and all.
Tim Wakefield – Lasted forever but 200-180 is not a Hall of Famer.
I always look forwards to this post! Love all the evaluation.
I’ll also say that Manny Ramerez has the most beautiful swing I have ever personally seen. He’s right up there with Alfonso Soriano for me. I loved Soriano’s followthrough, but Manny is so damn efficient with his swing that it’s just a thing of beauty
There were only three names on the list that are ‘locks’ for me: Bonds, Clemens, Raines.
And I’ll make a write-in vote for Pete Rose.
Dodger fan?
I haven’t voted yet, but my thought at this very moment is that I’m going to relent and forgive the PED users. If so, it might be hard to limit to 10.
I believe in years past the SDMB ballots pretty closely matched the writers’. If anything, we were a bit more stringent on handing out Hall passes. The new 5 player minimum might make things interesting.
Easy picks: Bagwell, Bonds, Clemens, Martinez, Mussina, Raines, Schilling, Ramirez, Rodriguez. Which leaves me with one spot for Larry Walker, Sammy Sosa, Vlad Guerrero, or Billy Wagner as a “hey he was probably better than Trevor Hoffman” protest vote. Going with Vlad for making swing-at-anything kind of work.
storyteller0910:
Probably because, like me (you posted this before I voted), they find the steroid evidence against Clemens a lot less convincing than that against Bonds.
Manny could hit for average, draw walks, and hit homers.
Sammy hit the dingers, learned some patience too, and before he got old was a solid fielder.
I thus count 3 high-quality skills for each player.
If you used that criteria to judge the entire Hall (i.e. a candidate would need a well-rounded game), it would probably have no more than 50 position players in it. I mean, the only other major skill not mentioned yet would have to be baserunning (and Sammy ran well too). So 3 out of 5 is “one dimensional.” Okay.
The true one-dimensional types (e.g. Dave Kingman or Bill Buckner) are never going to get in.
That’s news to me-a quick search revealed no such new rule, unless I missed it. Cite?
This is only the OP’s rule, not one adopted by the BBWAA.
People often described Mark McGwire as one dimensional. Of course he had one of the greatest homer rates of all time and one of the greatest walk rates of all time as well. “So which of those, walks or home runs, doesn’t qualify as an important skill?” I would ask if I was feeling especially snarky.
He also had some speed; he stole 30+ bases three times, though his steals dwindled when he bulked up and focused on being a power hitter.
A career stolen base success rate of 69% isn’t really a plus.
It sure didn’t stop them from electing Harmon Killebrew or Ralph Kiner.
McGwire isn’t eligible anymore but to my mind he’s another guy in the knot of “guys who are on the fence.” He had about 64 career WAR (I am averaging his BR and Fangraphs numbers) which, to use Willie Randolph as an example, makes him about that good.
I think the “He was one dimensional” argument is meaningful to explain why his career value is a lot lower than I suspect people whould guess if they didn’t look it up. McGwire was at his peak a ferocious power hitter and walk machine, but he was a mediocre defensive first baseman who ran like a sofa, and his career was very short for a Hall of Famer, fewer than 2000 games, so the total career value thing comes up making him look about the same as Willie Randolph - or Ken Boyer, Andruw Jones, Jim Edmonds, or Reggie Smith.
I actually think that one dimensional players are probably overrepresented in the Hall of Fame, and not the other way around. So Harmon Killebrew and Ralph Kiner, who were just strong guys who hit homers, are in. So is Bill Mazeroski, who was a poor hitter and in truth probably wasn’t as valuable a player as 150 guys who aren’t in the Hall. Players who are just as valuable but get there by being just really good at many things tend to be left out - Alan Trammell, for instance. It’s easy to fixate on Killebrew hitting 573 homers, or Bill Mazeroski winning many Gold Gloves. Trammell has no one central number you can hang your vote on.
I think Manny’s defense was vastly underrated because yes, sometimes he made the boneheaded play. But generally, he played the Monster just about as well as you can. He had a decent arm, might have led the league in OF assists once if I remember correctly.
Yeah, sorry for the confusion. Cite = OP. The rule only applies to this poll, not actual writers.
He’s on the upcoming Veteran’s Committee ballot.
RickJay is mostly correct about specialists vs. generalists, of course: I was only really taking issue with someone with at least 3 viable skills being called “one-dimensional”…
My ballot has been cast and after much consideration, but very little stat checking, here are my selections:
Jeff Bagwell
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Edgar Martinez
Tim Raines
Curt Schilling
Sammy Sosa
Vlad Guerrero
Manny Ramirez
Ivan Rodriguez
So, obviously I cast aside whatever reservations I had about PED users. Shame we can’t go back and vote again for McGwire, Palmeiro and whoever else got tossed into the bin for their alleged connection to PEDs.
And now that those floodgates have been opened, 10 selections isn’t enough. I would probably have also included Walker, Mussina, Sheffield, Hoffman and even Lee Smith, for whom this is the first time I did not vote.
I obviously didn’t just run with the top 10 WAR guys. Not saying what’s right or wrong, but there’s something to be said for guys like Sosa and Vlad who added a little more flavor and excitement to MLB in their heydays.