Judging the way the writers vote, he won’t get in on the first ballot.
You think? Wow, that would be astonishing.
Billy Beane already has; just ask Joe Morgan.
Awesome.
Oh, and the BBTF thread on the Hall of Fame results is immensely interesting and educational, particularly starting on the third page (post #201 on). There’s a glut of worthy candidates starting around 2013 that’s almost unprecedented in baseball history, and it’s gonna be real interesting to see what happens (not least with how the BBWAA deals with Bonds – who had already put up a HOF-worthy career before his enhanced-performance years elevated him into Ruth and Williams territory – and Clemens).
Check out especially the fantastic posts by Walt Davis (most notably #236) and Dag Nabbit (most notably #280). Anyone interested in how HOF balloting might play out over the next few years should read those two posts if nothing else.
Take a look at the most significant players who’ll be debuting on the ballot in the near future:
2011
Jeff Bagwell, Rafael Palmeiro, Larry Walker, Kevin Brown
2012
Bernie Williams, Tim Salmon, Javy Lopez
The deluge begins:
2013
Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio, Sammy Sosa, Curt Schilling, Kenny Lofton, Steve Finley
2014
Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, Jeff Kent, Jim Edmonds, Mike Mussina
And projecting the candidates for the few years after that (so people who are likely to retire between now and the 2012 season):
2015 through 2017
Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey, Chipper Jones, Ivan Rodriguez, Pedro Martinez, Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, John Smoltz, Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, Gary Sheffield, Vladimir Guerrero, Derek Jeter…I’m sure I’m missing some.
Pretty crazy. Here’s an excerpt of Walt Davis’s comments about the debut classes from 2013 through 2017:
Damn. (And remember, under the HOF’s current rules, no one can vote for more than ten candidates per ballot. If the eligible candidates include Maddux, Glavine, Biggio, Griffey, Chipper, Piazza, IRod, Rivera, Thomas, Schilling, and Johnson (not even including the steroid-y guys!), who the hell do you leave off?)
Where did you see anyone arguing that Dawson is better than Raines? What in gods name do you have your panties in a bunch about? Everyone loves pointing out that Alomar was an elite defender and deserves to get in because of that but ignores that Dawson was an elite defender. Dawson is more analogous to Alomar than Rice.
Same as I said in the NFL Hall of Fame thread, I think they need to let the writers vote for more than ten players. An SI writer already pointed this out, but some of the borderline guys in the next couple of years may get swamped by the onslaught of bigger names. I don’t know if anyone on the 2011 ballot will get in on his first try, and I think we can pencil in Blyleven and Alomar, and I’m not sure any of the 2012 guys will get in at all. After that, it’s going to be crazy.
One could make a case that this acts as a good mechanism to cull the list and ultimately make the decision of where that borderline belongs.
Without doing a whole lot of analysis, by the way, here’s how I’d stack up the current and future candidates according to my own personal HOF standards (which aren’t Big Hall, exactly, but certainly aren’t Small Hall). I don’t weight character as much as some people might, and I evaluate the performance enhancement issue on a case-by-case basis, given how little information we still have about it.
Inner Circle – The on-field performance of these players, considering context and era and so on, ranks them among the elite of the elite historically
Craig Biggio – so good at so many things for so long
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Ken Griffey, Jr.
Randy Johnson – I’d forgotten how dominant he was with Seattle
Chipper Jones – even putting aside how under-represented third base is in the HOF
Greg Maddux – during his long peak, one of the top ten pitchers ever
Pedro Martinez – Koufax-esque
Mike Piazza
Frank Thomas – seriously, ridiculously good
Clearly Deserving of Induction – These guys are so far above the established HOF standard that the Hall of Fame as an institution is poorer without them
Roberto Alomar
Jeff Bagwell – his park suppressed his numbers and they were still great
Bert Blyleven – not much more to say about him
Tom Glavine
Derek Jeter – sure, his defense was overrated for most of his career, but as a player he’s pretty much as good as they say (and this coming from a Yankee-hater)
Barry Larkin – among the top ten shortstops of all-time
Tim Raines – he’s basically Tony Gwynn
Manny Ramirez – people forget how good he was in Cleveland
Mariano Rivera – still a pretty short career, and I don’t like the Yankees, but if relievers should be in, he’s the cream of the crop
Ivan Rodriguez – decline phase hurts a bit
John Smoltz – quite the career shape
Borderline but Worthy – While I think they deserve induction, there are decent arguments going the other way
Vladimir Guerrero – I could be persuaded to rank him more highly
Trevor Hoffman
Jeff Kent – bonus points for second base
Edgar Martinez – absolute hitting machine
Mike Mussina – anyone who supports Morris but not Mussina is not thinking it through
Rafael Palmeiro
Jorge Posada (another guy who’s likely to be eligible by 2017)
Curt Schilling – stupid Glenn Davis trade
Jim Thome – dinged for position and the surfeit of sluggers in his era
Alan Trammell – criminally underrated (maybe even by me)
Borderline but Unworthy – I can’t quite see it, but I wouldn’t think it was a crime if they were elected (see, e.g., Andre Dawson)
Jim Edmonds – better than Kirby Puckett by a long shot
Fred McGriff
Mark McGwire – I think I’m especially harsh on him because of his limited skill set
Dale Murphy
Javy Lopez – I’d need to see how he compares to other catchers
Lee Smith
Gary Sheffield
Sammy Sosa – I don’t think of him as a HOFer, and I’m not sure why. Puzzling.
Larry Walker – not sure if people realize how good he was outside of Coors
Fine Careers, But Undeserving – These players might belong to the Hall of Very Good, but their careers were simply not of HOF quality
Harold Baines
Kevin Brown – but better than people remember, and way better than Morris
Don Mattingly
Jack Morris – 3.90 ERA? Really?
Dave Parker
Omar Vizquel – he’s gonna have a lot of supporters for his Maz/Rizzuto-like career
Bernie Williams
Shouldn’t Be In The Discussion
Steve Finley – stupid Glenn Davis trade
Kenny Lofton – quintessential HOVG player
Tim Salmon – too short a peak
Hopefully people will post their own, similar lists. Feel free to ask me to defend any of my choices, of course. 
(And these are just the guys that will be eligible over the next few years! Crikey.)
Which isn’t a very good argument when you’ve got fifteen+ names on a ballot who are all substantially more deserving than Jim Rice or Andre Dawson…which we will.
You could make the case, and perhaps I’m underestimating how quickly the voters will work through these names. But I think some guys who have low levels of support right now and deserve more consideration are going to get washed off the ballot in favor of the more obvious choices.
Just going to repost this for the page bump; hope people don’t mind:
Without doing a whole lot of analysis, by the way, here’s how I’d stack up the current and future candidates according to my own personal HOF standards (which aren’t Big Hall, exactly, but certainly aren’t Small Hall). I don’t weight character as much as some people might, and I evaluate the performance enhancement issue on a case-by-case basis, given how little information we still have about it.
Inner Circle – The on-field performance of these players, considering context and era and so on, ranks them among the elite of the elite historically
Craig Biggio – so good at so many things for so long
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Ken Griffey, Jr.
Randy Johnson – I’d forgotten how dominant he was with Seattle
Chipper Jones – even putting aside how under-represented third base is in the HOF
Greg Maddux – during his long peak, one of the top ten pitchers ever
Pedro Martinez – Koufax-esque
Mike Piazza
Frank Thomas – seriously, ridiculously good
Clearly Deserving of Induction – These guys are so far above the established HOF standard that the Hall of Fame as an institution is poorer without them
Roberto Alomar
Jeff Bagwell – his park suppressed his numbers and they were still great
Bert Blyleven – not much more to say about him
Tom Glavine
Derek Jeter – sure, his defense was overrated for most of his career, but as a player he’s pretty much as good as they say (and this coming from a Yankee-hater)
Barry Larkin – among the top ten shortstops of all-time
Tim Raines – he’s basically Tony Gwynn
Manny Ramirez – people forget how good he was in Cleveland
Mariano Rivera – still a pretty short career, and I don’t like the Yankees, but if relievers should be in, he’s the cream of the crop
Ivan Rodriguez – decline phase hurts a bit
John Smoltz – quite the career shape
Borderline but Worthy – While I think they deserve induction, there are decent arguments going the other way
Vladimir Guerrero – I could be persuaded to rank him more highly
Trevor Hoffman
Jeff Kent – bonus points for second base
Edgar Martinez – absolute hitting machine
Mike Mussina – anyone who supports Morris but not Mussina is not thinking it through
Rafael Palmeiro
Jorge Posada (another guy who’s likely to be eligible by 2017)
Curt Schilling – stupid Glenn Davis trade
Jim Thome – dinged for position and the surfeit of sluggers in his era
Alan Trammell – criminally underrated (maybe even by me)
Borderline but Unworthy – I can’t quite see it, but I wouldn’t think it was a crime if they were elected (see, e.g., Andre Dawson)
Jim Edmonds – better than Kirby Puckett by a long shot
Fred McGriff
Mark McGwire – I think I’m especially harsh on him because of his limited skill set
Dale Murphy
Javy Lopez – I’d need to see how he compares to other catchers
Lee Smith
Gary Sheffield
Sammy Sosa – I don’t think of him as a HOFer, and I’m not sure why. Puzzling.
Larry Walker – not sure if people realize how good he was outside of Coors
Fine Careers, But Undeserving – These players might belong to the Hall of Very Good, but their careers were simply not of HOF quality
Harold Baines
Kevin Brown – but better than people remember, and way better than Morris
Don Mattingly
Jack Morris – 3.90 ERA? Really?
Dave Parker
Omar Vizquel – he’s gonna have a lot of supporters for his Maz/Rizzuto-like career
Bernie Williams
Shouldn’t Be In The Discussion
Steve Finley – stupid Glenn Davis trade
Kenny Lofton – quintessential HOVG player
Tim Salmon – too short a peak
Hopefully people will post their own, similar lists. Feel free to ask me to defend any of my choices, of course.
(And these are just the guys that will be eligible over the next few years! Crikey.)
I see what your saying, but the flipside to that is that many dogged voters would keep unworthy guys they were fans of on the ballot for too long when you remove the penalty for doing so.
One more comment. To put the coming glut in some perspective, it’s worth remembering how few players the BBWAA is generally willing to induct in a given year, especially lately. As Dag Nabbit compellingly argues in the BBTF thread (post #261), the HOF balloting process is essentially a consensus-building mechanism:
It’s exceptionally rare, particularly in recent years, for the writers to elect three people in a single year, let alone four or more. While the steroids thing might given them an excuse to defer decisions on some candidates who might otherwise have been considered locks, at some point the writers are still going to have to decide whether to vote for more people than they’ve collectively been comfortable doing, or to effectively create an artificially high barrier to entry that will exclude or delay candidates whose qualifications are strong enough that they would have soared through in other years.
Take a look:
2010: 1 person elected by the BBWAA
2009: 2
2008: 1
2007: 2
2006: 1
2005: 2
2004: 2
2003: 2
2002: 1
2001: 2
2000: 2
1999: 3
1998: 1
1997: 1
1996: 0
1995: 1
1994: 1
1993: 1
1992: 2
1991: 3
1990: 2
1989: 2
1988: 1
1987: 2
1986: 1
1985: 2
1984: 3
1983: 2
1982: 2
1981: 1
1980: 1
Gadarene, your premise presumes necessarily that there is a glut of eligible guys are coming. I’m not convinced that’s the case. Many modern guys on paper look like candidates based on the inflated offensive numbers (and in comparison older guys like Dawson seem less deserving) but I think that in the cold light of analysis many will be left out in the cold justly when you stop making inter-era comparisons.
Cool; I respect that opinion but disagree. Who are you thinking of, exactly? Take the twenty-one candidates (seventeen who are soon to be eligible, and then Alomar, Larkin, Blyleven, and Raines) from my “Inner Circle” and “Clearly Deserving of Induction” categories above – which of those would be justly left out in the cold?
Which ones? I mean, which of the guys in Gadarene’s first two groups do you think will ultimately seem like non-candidates because their numbers are inflated by their era? The pitchers - Smoltz, Glavine, Johnson, Clemens, Martinez, and Rivera (and I consider him Inner Circle, by the way) have cases that will certainly not be affected negatively by any offensive inflation associated with their era. All six of those guys seem like certain Hall-of-Famers (I’m leaving Blyleven out here because he’ll likely be inducted either next year or the following, so he won’t affect the “glut.”
So six pitchers.
Which of those other guys won’t make it? Alomar will go in next year, I think, and Biggio had comparable numbers over a longer period of time, so if the one goes, I’d predict that the other will, too.
So who else? Forget about who’s deserving; who will the voters reject? Looking at Gadarene’s lists:
Bonds is a gimme, as he was incredibly dominant even by the standards of this era
Griffey has terrific numbers, again, even by the standards of this era, was at one point a superior defensive player, and definitely has that air of greatness that the writers like to reward.
Larry Jones is the best hitting third baseman we’ve seen since Schmidt. Lots of offensive categories have been inflated in the last fifteen years, but batting average really hasn’t been; the voters still love career averages over .300, especially when accompanied by a shit-ton of walks and homers. And again, the Hall needs third basemen.
Piazza would struggle to get in, but definitely might get in, as a first baseman. As a catcher? He stands so far above his peers offensively, let alone above the other historical catchers, that he will walk in.
Thomas also has a career average above .300, an OBP even higher than Jones’, and two MVPs. He also has those 500 home runs, but those aren’t the main thing about his candidacy. I can’t see the voters freezing him out, although I guess this is the first guy on the list about whom I’d say it’s theoretically possible.
Bagwell is deserving, I think, but could get lost in the shuffle. He’s kind of a slightly-less-awesome Frank Thomas.
Jeter is going to the Hall of Fame. You know it, I know it, guys in fishing villages in Sicily know it.
Larkin could get lost, I guess. But his numbers are better than Dawson’s in some ways and close to Dawson’s in most others, he has an MVP, and he played shortstop. He’s probably going.
Raines is probably going to get screwed, unless his miraculously gets the votes in the next two years.
Manny is Manny. I wouldn’t be surprised if he got elected to the Hall on the first ballot, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he never makes it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ate a piano on live television.
I-Rod? I guess maybe. His offensive numbers are a bit short of Piazza’s. But he has that cachet of “incredible defensive catcher;” the voters rewarded Ozzie Smith for very similar reasons.
So even if the voters decide to leave out I-Rod, Larkin, Bagwell, and Manny (a huge assumption!), that still leaves 12 players to be elected in that period. That’s a lot.
I wavered about putting Rivera into the “Inner Circle” category; I think he could easily belong there. Jeter too, maybe, depending on how much you value positional adjustment.
I agree that Thomas is likely to be given somewhat short shrift by the BBWAA voters (that is, maybe it’ll take a couple of years for him to be elected), although I’d hope they wouldn’t be so insane as to leave him out entirely. Frank Thomas was one of the most dominant offensive forces in baseball history – a Hall of Fame without him would be like a Hall of Fame without Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, or Jimmie Foxx.
(EDIT: Okay, maybe not Gehrig. But the difference between them offensively is smaller than people think.)
Yeah, I’d say they are both there. Bagwell too, much like Biggio he was really good at everything. I’d probably knock Larry into the regular hall.
I don’t really see leaving Mcgwire and Sosa out and voting for Palmerio. Mcgwire was great at the two most important things a player can do, getting on base and hitting for power. Beyond that not too many quibbles. I’d knock Javy down a couple categories and raise Lofton one.