Boy, I sure hope so.
Don’t make me come up there.
He had better, but considering the list of obviously deserving candidates that have had no chance and the list of oddly added HOFers, you can never tell.
I think he’ll just squeak in this year, as will Gossage. Boggs will make it by a fairly comfortable margin.
Blyleven should make it, but won’t, again.
Why isn’t Lee Smith going to make it? His stats seem impressive but I am no expert.
Donnie Baseball deserves to be in. He was the best player in the AL at a time when the rest of his team was sucking the joint up. He carried them as far as he could on his bad back.
And that from a Yankee hater.
The baseballthinkfactory.com message boards are tracking writers who publish their ballots (a significant minority, so don’t put TOO much weight in this), and the latest seems to be…
With the ESPN piece finally filling in some partial ballots…we stand at 51.
Top Ten…
Sandberg 48 (picked up 5 votes)
Boggs 46 (plus 4)
Gossage 45 (added 2)
Sutter 38
Dawson 28
Blyleven 24 (Leapin’ Lederers, only one vote added!)
Rice 23 (picked up 5)
L.Smith 23
J.Morris 17
Trammell 13
http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/primer/discussion/25357/
Airman:
Six great years does not a Hall-of-Fame career make.
Lochdale:
Because even though Smith’s saves numbers impress, HoF voters are not impressed by the modern closer in general, who just needs to get three outs or fewer, and is very rarely place in situations in which his team isn’t already ahead. Add to this the fact that closers’ ERAs are artificially low because they don’t get charged for runners on base who they allowe to score.
That’s why the focus, in closers, are on the top closers of the 70’s and early 80’s - namely, Gossage and Sutter. They were required to do a little more work, and their stats are more reflective of pitching skill.
Unless the BBWA’s attitude undergoes a radical shift in the next 20 years, I don’t think we can expect to see even Mariano Rivera or Eric Gagne in the HoF either, despite the fact that their faces are in the dictionary under the term “lights out.”
Their tallies were part of the reason behind my predictions… and I don’t know that 51 is all that insignificant statistically (although it’s clearly not a scientific sampling).
I’d be shocked if Mariano Rivera doesn’t make the Hall of Fame, unless his arm falls off. If he pitches for 5 more years, he’ll be at the top of the career save list (unless Hoffman keeps going forever), and unlike Lee Smith, his other stats are dominating. Mariano may not be first ballot, but I believe he’ll get in.
Gagne it’s far too early to tell. Hoffman is an interesting case…
2005 Hall of Fame class: Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandberg!
Congratulations, you two!
Wilson:
No one’s doubting that he’s a dominating closer. The issue is whether someone who works no more than one inning per game is a HoFer. These days, closers don’t even work two, unless the manager’s desperate!
Just to follow up on this, the primary reason (I think) that there are virtually no closers in the Hall is that voters still don’t know quite how to measure their performances. The save itself has been around for a while, but the precise role of the closer has evolved drastically even from the time of Lee Smith’s rookie season to the present day. Since the role has evolved so much, many voters don’t feel they have the proper perspective to make a clear, knowledgable decision about closers in general. They can’t really apply the same criteria that they would apply for other positions.
For example, longevity usually helps a player, but for closers a voter might think, “Sure, but he pitched one inning or less most of the time,” and therefore not give his performance much credit. Or they’ll see a player who saved 40 games every year for eight years, but wonder how many of the saves were cheap, three-inning jobs. And so on.
Except for the Red Sox, who have him pretty well dialed in now.
Part of the voters’ reticence to pick closers may be because the save stat is so badly overblown. Closers who have contract incentives to reach will insist on coming in to 2 out, nobody on situations in the 9th just to notch a number that means nothing to the game. I discount those performances entirely as a mark of greatness - but there’s no good way to separate gut saves from cheap ones.
Let me be the first to congratulate Ryne Sandberg on making it to the Hall–by a margin of six votes. Boggs made it too.
YES!!!
Justice is done! Stand down the missles! Recall the bombers!
They were the two best candidates, IMHO, so it was a good vote. Maybe some of the others deserve it too, but two a year is reasonable, and they got the right two.
Bruce Sutter getting 66% of the vote makes it very likely he will be elected next year or the year after; if any player has ever gotten to 66 and not made it, I don’t recall who it was. There aren’t a lot of good new candidates next year so I am predicting now that Bruce Sutter will be eleced to the Hall of Fame next year.
Things are looking good for Jim Rice, Andre Dawson and the Goose, but that will depend on who comes onto the ballot the next few years. 2007 will have three first-ballot picks (Gwynn, Ripken, McGwire) so they might get buried.
No offense to Ryne Sandberg, but what’s he got that Dale Murphy ain’t got?
They always seemed to me to be at a similar level of play, yet Murph gets snubbed by the HOF.
Points in Murphy’s favor:
Two-time MVP
More total bases than any other player in the 80s
7-time All-Star
5-time gold glove winner
But hats off to Ryno! Just wish Dale could have joined him.
Well, everyone who got at least 66% in one election eventually made it into the Hall of Fame. In fact, only one player with 60% or better failed to get into the Hall - that being Gil Hodges who got 60.05% (233/388) in 1976.
However, not everyone who got 66% by the BBWAA made it into the Hall with the BBWAA. Some needed help from the Veteran’s Committee.
Those are:
Enos Slaughter
1978 261/379 68.87
1979 297/432 68.75
Nellie Fox
1984 246/403 61.04
1985 295/395 74.68 (missed by two votes)
Jim Bunning
1986 279/425 65.65
1987 289/413 69.98
1988 317/427 74.24 (missed by four votes)
Orlando Cepeda
1994 335/456 73.47 (missed by seven votes)
Zev Steinhardt (who never received a single vote)
I’ve had complaints in the past, and no doubt will again. But it’s hard to argue with these selections.
spoke-
Ryno dominated his position - when he retired, he was clearly one of the best 2Bs EVER, not merely relative to his era.
Murph, great though he was, isn’t even in the top 50 (at least) outfielders, historically.
Sandberg obviously has Murphy beat on All-Star appearances and Gold Gloves.
Basically, the difference is this; there are many outfielders who were basically as good as Dale Murphy who aren’t in the Hall of Fame. Dwight Evans was just as good as Murphy, maybe better. So was Fred Lynn, who won an MVP Award as a rookie. Jim Rice was pretty much the same - a little less glove, a little more bat, and got a lot of MVP votes and won it in 1978. What about Andre Dawson, also got a lot of votes this year? Joe Carter is listed as the most similar player to Murphy, which I don’t exactly buy because Murphy WAS better, but they aren’t THAT far apart and Carter wasn’t within a mile of election. George Foster was 75% Murphy and 25% Carter and once hit 52 homers in a season and won the MVP, but he got hardly any votes at all. Don Baylor was very similar, won an MVP, and he might have actually been the best baserunner listed here, but he’s not in. I could go on - why isn’t Gil Hodges in? Jack Clark?
But there are damned few second basemen as good as Ryne Sandberg who aren’t in the Hall of Fame. Maybe Bobby Grich and Lou Whitaker, but not by much, and IMHO, they were major oversights. Roberto Alomar will be the best available candidate someday but he’s not eligible yet.
As for the two things Murph has Ryno beat on; I don’t think two MVPs versus one really means much. Murphy really shouldn’t have won the MVP in 1983, anyway; it should have gone to Mike Schmidt, who led the league in home runs, got on base more often, won the Gold Glove at a harder defensive position, and was more or less the entire offense for a team that won the pennant. In any case, if we went by MVP Awards you’d be forced to conclude that Roger Maris was as good as Willie Mays, or that Hal Newhouser was infinitely better than Tom Seaver, and all kinds of other silly things.
As to the issue of total bases - well, yeah, if you pick ten specific years you can usually find a category in which a particular player led the majors for those ten years by virtue of his career being in the centre of the ten-year span.