As Marley points out, this is not a stats thing. This isn’t about comparing Maddux to guys like Juan Marichal. I mean, let’s bear in mind this is the same pool of writers who saw fit to hand Maddux four straight Cy Young Awards, two unanimously, an award they gave precisely zero of to Juan Marichal. The writer who refused to vote for Maddux did not do so because he didn’t thank Maddux had the credentials; he did so out a refusal to appropriately discharge his duty as a voter, so he cast a sort of protest vote.
That’s a very different thing entirely. If someone’s crazy enough to think Greg Maddux wasn’t as great a pitcher as Fergie Jenkins, so be it. We’ll go through the same crap in a few years when Randy Johnson, who was just as great as Maddux, is up for election. But to refuse to vote for people because you don’t want to be a real voter is disgraceful. If he doesn’t want to participate in the process, don’t participate.
I can still perceive some thread of consistency, if, during the ‘90s, writers saw Maddux as the best of that years’ pitchers, but holding the view that all starters in the 5 man rotation era were “pussies” compared to the 4-man era.
And you have to realize that some writers, rightly or wrongly, see themselves as “guardians of the hall.” In the 70s, a couple of Veterans Committees, put in a lot of weak choices, and that caused an over-reaction on the part of some writers. And while I do disagree their methods, I’m not going to condemn their intent.
I think the breaking point was the whole issue of the PED-era, which is clearly generational. I’m just young enough to understand – 20 years ago, I wanted to play in an old-farts hockey league, but realized I had to bulk up, lest I get a broken collar-bone from a routine check. So I spent the summer in the weight room, where some real-muscle heads were injecting like crazy. Hell, I even took some OTC GNC creatine, which probably had andro. I thought nothing of it, at a time when guys were putting needles in each others asses. I guess that means I don’t get some writers’ votes for the HOF, if and when, I ever get an MLB contract.
It’s nonsense to you. And, admittedly, Gurnick, in his brief statement, is on the cusp of sense/nonsense. But Maddux won’t be close to unanimous. I’m guessing that the early ballots cast, come from stat-guys that are eager to share their votes, while the old-fart guys either vote late and don’t publicize their ballot via twitter, etc.
A decade ago, I made the case that Dwight Evans was more HOF worthy than Jim Rice. And I was told by all my Sox-centric fans that it was nonsense. But today we can see that Evans had 15% longer than Rice and had 40% more WAR. But, back then, they hadn’t arrived at a clear definition of defensive measurement, so that wasn’t reliably available in 2003.
(I’d been a season ticket holder during both their primes, and for 40 games a year, for 5 years I’d seen both of them play, and determined, in my mind, that Evans contributed more to his team’s overall success than Jim Ed.)
So what appears to be nonsense may turn out eventually to be sanity, and vice versa. I do think Gurnick is more wacky than sane, but he’s trying to apply his sense or reasoning. His intent is not to make a mockery out of the HOF. He’s doing it because he thinks the PED era has made a mockery of the game, he’s trying to not be a part of having the players of the PED era not make a mockery of the HOF. I disagree, but I’m not going to tar and feather him. It’s not like he’s a football writer.
I submit that if you watched Greg Maddux pitch and your eye test tells you he wasn’t a first-tier Hall of Famer, then you either need new glasses or you were accidentally watching Mike Maddux instead. I’m a “stat geek” myself, but I was also a Mets fan for all of Greg Maddux’s career and there is no eye test he fails, statistics be damned and forgotten.
He’s nowhere near sense. He’s protesting “the steroid era” while pretending it started in 1995. This is just crap. So let’s pretend you don’t think Maddux is the best pitcher ever because he didn’t win 20 games very often and didn’t rack up crazy strikeout numbers. How does that justify voting against a guy who won the Cy Young four times, won 355 games, and put up ERA numbers that looked like they were from the wrong decade?
I watched Maddux pitch, in person, only twice. In Fenway, he didn’t have it that day. In Houston he did. Very impressive. But compared to Pedro’s prime, (admittedly, only 5 years, or so) he was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. He’d throw like 3 stinkers a year, when, because he was Pedro, he’d be left in to give up a total of 24 ERs (8 per game), then over the rest of the year, he’d give that many over the other 25-30 games.
Now, I have no idea what 'first-tier" HOFer means to you, but in my mind Maddux gets to the same level as Pedro, only because he did it so good for so long with a prime 3 times longer than Martinez. But Pedro surely won my" eye test."
This. I watched Maddux take on the Mets more times than I care to count on television and he was a wizard damn near every time. He will spit on the ground every time I hear someone praise the Braves, but damn if Maddux, Glavine, and Chipper Jones weren’t standup guys and absolute monsters on the field.
If he had said, ‘Look, there are at least 12 guys on this year’s list that I think are close. I know Maddux will be an overwhelming shoo-in, so I left him off my ballot only because I wanted to give a vote to someone I thought needed the vote to stay on the ballot next year, or because he wasn’t a shoo-in and my vote might count more’…
I’d understand that. I still can’t quite believe that he’d leave GREG FUCKING MADDUX off his ballot, but I’d at least understand it.
But no, Ken Gurnick is an idiot, should never be allowed to vote again, and everyone has permission to point at him and laugh. If he can’t be bothered to actually cast a meaningful vote, he should give his vote to his cat - the cat probably has more intelligence than this air-breather waste of space.
On certain nights, I know in my blood that Pedro Martinez was the greatest pitcher that ever lived…on certain nights. And on other certain nights, I’m not so sure that Randy Johnson wasn’t. But nobody in the last 30 years can top Maddux for being one of the best in the game, year after year after year…his career ERA is almost a full run lower than the league averagae while he was pitching.
Comparing Maddux to Pedro Martinez’s prime is unfair, because 1997-2003 Pedro Martinez was IMHO the greatest pitcher to ever live. (Especially in 1999-2000. Jesus.)
Maddux got in with 97% of the vote. 15 people left him off their ballots and one blank ballot was submitted. So Gurnick outed himself as a dumbass, but he didn’t prevent Maddux from getting in unanimously or anything. Maddux wound up with the eighth-highest percentage of votes.
I can see not voting for Maddox under this line of thinking: “Maddox is going to make it with or without my vote. I think player X deserves to make it, but my reading of the electorate is that X is a borderline case, so I’m going to vote for him instead of Maddox, not because X is a better player than Maddox (he isn’t) but because X needs the vote more than Maddox does.”
I hope it’s the same guy who voted for Armando Benitez. Forget the guy who just voted for Jack Morris- I want to hear about a guy who only voted for Jacque Jones and Armando Benitez.
For whatever reason, spitballing / scuffing (at least in that era) was seen by a lot of people as a wink-wink, nudge-nudge sort of cheating. Everyone knew that Perry did it. It was a question of whether he was crafty enough to avoid getting caught too often.
But, that was 30 years ago, or more, and the climate in sports might be different now. I’m not entirely sure that you could have a Gaylord Perry in the game today.
the 3 managers who just got in won a lot of games with PED players. And they claimed they knew nothing about anybody using steroids. So either they are very stupid or liars.
The whole PED thing is silly. I don’t see anyone ragging on the players - like Mantle - who admitted using amphetamines to boost their performance. Sure, that was in an era where they were pretty freely available - my grandmother got addicted to them as weightloss pills - but it was still intended to enhance their performance.
Looking at the overall numbers…
Who the hell voted against Cobb? Or Ruth? More people voted against Ruth than against Ryan even though Ryan had twice as many voters.
