Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. 
I don’t disagree with you (and I think that Martinez belongs in the Hall). Some truly lousy fielders are in the Hall, but the purists’ argument seems to go that at least those players did play in the field.
I’m sorry. That was a really stupid error. I apologize.
Well, David Ortiz was a DH, and I bet he’ll be elected.
It’s not just that Edgar was a DH, although that’s part of it. There are a few other things against Martinez:
- He had a short career and achieved no major milestones. Things like 500 homers, or 3000 hits or what have you, definitely have a big impact on the voters.
This isn’t a good reason to vote or not vote for someone, but it’s true. Players who do one thing really well tend to be overvalued and players who do many things well tend to be overvalued. Harmon Killebrew, who was very good at belting homers and drawing walks and bad at everything else, is in the Hall of Fame, while Lou Whitaker, who was pretty good at everything, is not, and yet it seems quite apparent to me that Whitaker was just as good a player as Harmon Killebrew and he has a World Series ring to boot.
- Martinez has no winning highlights; he never appeared in a World Series, never won an MVP Award.
But don’t forget, everyone loves Kill-a-Brew’s name too.
Do you think so, even with the possible connection to PEDs?
Dang, Chipper is barely in and Thome is out as of now. I thought Thome was a lock so I didn’t go back and change my vote (he wasn’t on the list when I voted). But now, RickJay, I’d like to request to change my vote from Mussina to Thome.
Any and every Hall of Fame such great fun. And this annual thread about MLB’s HoF is what it’s all about.
It seems, as in past polls, the voting is a bit on the tough side. Chipper Jones has less than 80%. I’d guess he’ll go into to the “real hall” with about 95%.
Take a look at his page in the Baseball Reference. A couple of quick things to skim to. His lifetime slash line, 85.0 career WAR (32nd all-time) and JAWS rated sixth best third baseman ever.
Chipper Jones Stats, Height, Weight, Position, Rookie Status & More | Baseball-Reference.com
Out of respect for Mussina, I’d like my vote for Thome withdrawn if you make that change.
Just kidding. Mostly.
A bit? The voting here is always perplexing, bordering on absurd. Both fruitbat and ekdolphin voted for Livan Hernandez, but not Mussina? Is there a single statistical category that Hernandez was better than Mussina in? It’s a defenseless decision. Outliers like that take a lot of the enjoyment of this poll away, at least for me.
“Forget it, Munch. It’s Dopertown.”
Says the guy who voted for Fred McGriff over Jim Thome…
OK, that’s not as bad as Livan over Mussina, but I’d love to hear your reasoning there.
See post #17 actually.
Hey, I asked Rick to switch that back on page 1!
Hey c’mon, Livan Hernandez led the league in hits five times!
Hideki Matsui got four votes. I can’t figure that out either.
I wanted to vote for him, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
So my guess is he got votes based on gut reaction and no verification of numbers at all.
I thought I was voting for former Bears fullback (and Walter Payton wingman) Matt Suhey. 
Fair enough, I missed that!
I did. Well, I added a vote to Thome (I did not subtract one from McGriff, but it will not matter.) When you edit poll numbers, you don’t switch a ballot, you just edit the numbers. If you look at the list of names who have voted for Thome, it’s not as many as his vote count.
In theory I could reduce a vote count to zero and it would show dozens of people who voted for the guy.
Incidentally, I wanted to address this point, because it kind of half-occurred to me, too, though you have verbalized it very nicely.
I think the way we do this every year, while consistent with the spirit of the Hall of Fame, doesn’t work. Last year we elected no one; Ivan Rodriguez, Tim Raines, and Jeff Bagwell, all elected by the BBWAA, were snubbed. The year before we elected Ken Griffey Jr., for which we really deserve no credit, and some people didn’t even vote for him. Mike Piazza was snubbed.
The problem, as you allude to, is that some people pop in, vote for Livan Hernandez, and do nothing else, thus skewing the percentage by a potentially significant amount since we only get 50-80 votes for these things.
I mean, to be honest, it’s not as if anyone is keeping track, but it seems like maybe the SDMB needs its own system. (I admit we kinda abandoned our own HOF project but I plan on charging it up again.)
Well we have some people on this board that are excellent at math and stats. Maybe they can figure out an adjusted percentage to indicate Hall of Fame status. As a rough stab and not meant to be used; a number in the 60% to 66.7% range might be more in line for the Dope as opposed to the 75%.
We also have many of the same prejudices as the actual voters when it comes to Closers, DH or known steroid users. Can’t get around that part. We seem less likely to not vote for players because they’re assholes at least. I know if I used that criteria I never would have voted for Schilling.
My guess is that unlike the actual BBWAA voting, the voting here is open to low-information voters. So I think what happens is you have people saying “I’m familiar with X and think he deserves to get in, so I’ll vote for him. I’m not familiar with Y and don’t know if he deserves to get in or not, so I’ll pass on him”. So it’s not that anyone compared stats and decided that Hernandez was better than Mussina - it’s probably people who knew a lot about Hernandez and not much about Mussina. I don’t think you would have that issue to nearly the same extent with the actual HOF voting, since all the voting is by professionals.
It’s a lot like the political situation, where low-information voters get the same one vote as political junkies, with occasional unfortunate results.