The Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2011 thread

[Tom_Scud]

I thought there was a bit more spacing between them, to be honest; it sure felt like Biggio was hanging around forever to get that 3000th hit.

[ReticulatingSplines]

@Parthol

snip

You don’t even have to go back that far. It is simply criminal that Morris gets 53.5% of the vote and Kevin Brown doesn’t even stay on the ballot.

[Munch]

@RickJay

The Bagwell thing is interesting. The assumption is that it’s a steroid thing, but I think there’s more to it than that. Bagwell himself has never been implicated in a story, or even been the subject of a serious rumour, about steroids. I think the reason he got “only” 42% of the vote - a number that suggests he will be elected eventually - is that there’s just a lot of power hitter noise right now; there’s all kids of first basemen on the ballot and coming onto the ballot who were quite similar to Bagwell, and using the simple stats, he doesn’t stand out from them. He didn’t get to 500 homers or set any big records, and he was never the game’s pre-eminent, no-doubt-about-it star at his own position. I think that in the shuffle, he got lost. I also think he will be elected someday.

I think a lot of writers are up in arms that Bagwell has come out and said that he didn’t really care that people were on steroids. Add in the fact that this was his first year, and you have a lot of BS protest non-votes. He’ll be in the high 60s if not elected next year. It’s like the Alomar thing - the writers were “teaching him a lesson” for being a jerk that one time, but then piled the votes up the next year.

[RickJay]

@Munch

I think a lot of writers are up in arms that Bagwell has come out and said that he didn’t really care that people were on steroids. Add in the fact that this was his first year, and you have a lot of BS protest non-votes. He’ll be in the high 60s if not elected next year. It’s like the Alomar thing - the writers were “teaching him a lesson” for being a jerk that one time, but then piled the votes up the next year.

I’ll be surprised if he goes from 42% to 75% in one year. That would be unprecedented, IIRC (I might be wrong.) Depending on ballot strength from year to year I suspect it’ll take him five to ten years.

[Oakminster]

Only 12.6% for the Mighty Murph.

I keep hoping he’ll get in one year…

[kenobi_65]

@Oakminster

Only 12.6% for the Mighty Murph.

I keep hoping he’ll get in one year…

Agreed. He was great, but I think the issue with him was that he had four great years, three or four pretty darned good years…and not much else.

[Oakminster]

To a certain extent, Murphy suffers from Archie Manning syndrome. Great player on a lousy team.

[Ulf_the_Unwashed]

@Hawkeyeop

I generally agree with your post, but “pass” was Bill James full comment on Jeff Bagwell in the aforementioned baseball abstract.

The book said “Jeff Bagwell: pass”?

What did that mean? “I don’t want him on my team”? “He doesn’t fail”?

Help!

[Ichbin_Dubist]

@Ulf_the_Unwashed

The book said “Jeff Bagwell: pass”?

What did that mean? “I don’t want him on my team”? “He doesn’t fail”?

Help!

My impression was he meant “Pass on making a comment,” meaning that his rating system had Bagwell rated really high and he didn’t feel like making an argument for or against.

[Jonathan_Chance]

@RickJay

I don’t quite understand this. Was there ever an illusion that 500 home runs alone was an automatic ticket to the Hall of Fame? If, as you point out, Dave Kingman had gotten to 500, he wouldn’t have been elected. But if we agree that that was the case then the writers weren’t labouring under the assumption that 500 homers was an automatic ticket.

I certainly know that some writers with votes operated under the ‘500 HR equals in’ thing. I once caught an interview where a writer said just what you mentioned. Something like ‘we’re all kind of glad Kingman didn’t get signed. If he’d made it to 500 homers we’d have had to vote him into the hall.’