Garry Maddox never played for the Cubs.
I admit I don’t get it. If Smoltz is deserving, he’s deserving. Glavine wasn’t as great as Maddux, so should he not be able to “share the stage” with him? I mean, of course Smoltz wasn’t as great as Randy Johnson; Randy Johnson was one of the ten greatest pitchers in the history of baseball. He was as great as Maddux. If your standard is Randy Johnson, not a heck of a lot of people are going to be in the Hall of Fame.
I confess that I find this and a lot of arguments utterly baffling when the process allows for such a simple, fair, straightforward and functional process for voting; all you have to do is ask whether a guy should be a Hall of Famer or not, and if he is, you put his name on your ballot. If you think more than ten guys deserve it then you name the top ten and #11 will probably get a vote next year. If every voter would do this, the process would work really well. Why doesn’t everyone do that?
Unfortunately, stuff like “Player X deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, but not on the first ballot”, “Player Y shouldn’t have to share the induction with Player Z,” and “I’m a buffoon using my ballot to attract attention” have all been common throughout the history of HoF voting. I doubt they will ever go away.
Ordinarily, I absolutely agree with you. I’m (nearly) always upset when I see voters give the old “he’s a HOFer, just not a first ballot HOF-er” nonsense. But in this case, I think we’re looking at two of the best pitchers to play in my lifetime - and for me, it tarnishes a bit of the shine on both Pedro and Randy, and Smoltz/Schilling/Mussina. I’ll admit it’s not entirely rational - but it’s not like I can’t find 8 more equally deserving players to vote for next year either (including Clemens). It’d be amazing to have Johnson, Martinez and Clemens in all in the same year.
Frankly, when people get in is not important as long as they do get in. No one thinks anyone is less of a HOF player because of how they got in*, and few people even remember.
*There have been some bad choices over the years, notably because of the Veteran’s Committee, but 90% of all baseball fans don’t care.
If there are enough other worthy candidates to fill out the complete slate of 10 (in my case, Mattingly and Raines who are running out of time), then I think it’s okay to make a tactical decision to exclude the lesser pitchers. But there’s a bit of a jam on the ballot, at present, caused by Roiders like Clemens, Boggs, etc who aren’t going to get in, any time soon, but who will draw substantial votes for years to come. Casting a ballot with 7 candidates or less, while omitting Smoltz, Schill and Moose, just clogs up the ballot and makes it harder for a Bagwell or Piazza or whomever.
I don’t think they can consider candidates until their 15 years are up.
I don’t get Bagwell getting almost twice as many votes as Bonds. Bagwell was clearly on roids too, and wasn’t half the player Bonds was. Bonds was a future hall of famer before the juice, which probably isn’t the case with Bagwell, Sosa, or McGwire. I totally get punishing Bonds for roids, but I don’t get giving other guys a pass because they weren’t specifically targeted by the press, congress, whatever.
And as for the OP, if you’re going to use your vote to protest PEDs, wouldn’t it make more sense to vote the pitchers of the era who had to pitch to these guys? And still had great careers?
Some of the pitchers used PEDs too. That’s where this stuff really starts to fall apart: when people start guessing who used and who didn’t and basing their votes on varying levels of evidence.
Traditionally (and that may be always) players aren’t eligible until 21 years after their last year, which = the five year waiting period + the 15 years on the ballot, but the HOF can structure the special committee’s any way they want. So if there was a desire to deal with the PED-tainted players, they could do whatever they wanted to, but, of course, any player still on the regular ballot could not be considered.
Of course, the problem is deciding when the PED-era ended, if it has at all. What happens if a 40 year old Mike Trout fails a drug test in 2031 while trying to get 1 more year out of his aging body to get to 5,000th hit?
What does “clearly” mean? Bagwell was never suspected by ANYONE. As far as the public should be concerned, he’s as clean as any player from the Steroid Era. If you want to keep everyone out, fine. If you want to punish the known cheats, fine. But Bagwell doesn’t belong in the latter category.
If Bagwell weren’t suspected, he’d have been voted in. There’s little or nothing in the way of evidence.
Yeah I guess that’s true, but I’ll bet my house Bagwell was on roids. Even HE didn’t deny it. I was just surprised to see him get so many votes with all the backlash against the era.
Bonds is the greatest hitter I’ve ever seen. I remember games where they’d walk him on twelve pitches in three straight at bats, never even flirting with the strike zone. Then one pitch would foolishly drift over the corner of the plate, and he’d hit it out. I’ve never seen that combination of discipline and aggressiveness. His OBP in 2004 was over .60. That’s obscene. Obviously the roids are a factor there too, but I never saw anyone get as much advantage out of the extra power as Bonds did. Sosa was the same hacker he always was. He just hit the ball harder. But what Bonds did with the additional power was, in a sad weird way, sublime. FWIW I probably wouldn’t vote for him, but I can’t imagine making that call and then still voting for Bagwell.
The only “evidence” against Bagwell is his body type changed from 1990 - 1996, and he didn’t hit many homers in the minors (although he played in 2 big minor league parks). Frank Thomas was always big and always had power.
The case against Bagwell is BS, another reason why I have zero sympathy for those proven guilty because their actions may keep Bagwell out of the HOF.
Not sure that’s true. While Bagwell was a great player, he is overshadowed by the vast number of big power-hitting first basemen he played with. Guys playing first and piling up gaudy stats were very plentiful in the 1990s and 2000s and so even with no PED connection, Bagwell is not a lock for quick election.
A key thing with Bags is the lack of significant milestones, due to his having a short career. He won one RBI title and never led the league in any other big ticket categories. He did win one MVP Award but it was in a season that didn’t count (and he would not have won it had the season continued.) He didn’t get to 500 homers, didn’t bat .300 over the course of his career, never won a World Series, and didn’t play in New York or Boston. To the stupid voter - and a LOT of BBWAA writers are quite stupid - there is no clear separation between Bagwell and a lot of other guys like Fred McGriff or Jason Giambi or Todd Helton or Andres Galarraga or a bunch of other guys who played first base and hit home runs.
Baseball wanted more homers after the 94 strike drove fans away. So they did not test for steroids until 2003.
The fact “greenies” were ubiquitous IS what makes them different! We have a writer here in Boston who apparently believes NOBODY was “clean”
…so cheating is OK if everyone’s doing it, but if not everybody is doing it it’s a horrible moral failure that needs to be punished harshly?
Dramatically changing your body type is what athletes take steroids for, so it seems a bit weird to dismiss that as evidence. If you look at rookie McGwire/Canseco/Sosa/Bonds/Brady Anderson/Bagwell compared to the same guys at their power peak, you see the same Bruce Banner to Incredible Hulk transformation. You also see a HR spike. Bagwell had 20 or fewer home runs his first three years with the Astros, then jumped to 40 in a strike shortened year where he had 100 fewer at bats. That same year, he
I agree with you that I feel sorry for the guys of that era, like Gwynn, that got overshadowed by a bunch of mutants. I guess we just disagree about which side of that divide Bagwell falls on.
Are you talking to me? If so, I believe cheaters shouldn’t be rewarded. BTW, nobody’s advocating putting them in prison, just denying them a HoF plaque.