Historically, third basemen have been under-represented in Cooperstown. I don’t care how many votes it takes, if the most deserving 3B not currently in the Hall finally gets the nod, in my book that is a good thing.
The voting bodies have not always valued accomplishments correctly. Singles have been overrated; this is why Tony Gwynn was a first-ballot member and Tim Raines is going to have a tough fight to make it, even though they were similar players with similar career value.
I realize that those are the rules, I’m expressing my disagreement with them.
There will always be a “most deserving (fill-in-the-blank) not currently in the Hall.”
Which is why people stay on the BBWAA ballot for 15 years. And why the Vet’s committee exists at all (for a first “second chance” - although I don’t really agree with that either). But I think it’s obnoxious to render the prior votes meaningless by allowing potentially infinite re-tries for those receiving “no” votes until a “yes” is achieved.
:rolleyes: Sure. And every time someone gets a yes vote, that always is the correct result, and the no votes, no matter how many there were, had never been correct if one vote afterward says yes.
Mom, can I have ice cream? No.
Mom, can I have ice cream? No.
Mom, can I have ice cream? No.
Mom, can I have ice cream? No.
Mom, can I have ice cream? No.
Mom, can I have ice cream? No.
Mom, can I have ice cream? No.
Mom, can I have ice cream? No.
Mom, can I have ice cream? No.
Mom, can I have ice cream? No.
Mom, can I have ice cream? All right, already! Have some ice cream!
He (Walker) played in 16 full seasons (1990-2005), so I’d disagree about the career length. OTOH, he was injury prone, and only averaged playing 123 games per season – he had five seasons (not counting his 1999 call-up) in which he played 103 or fewer games.
How did that make Maris a more valuable player than Mantle? It’s neat he broke the record, but that doesn’t make him the best player in the league.
And it’s a bit more than some walks. Mantle had a much higher batting average, grounded into only 2 double plays all year while Maris grounded into 16, stole twelve bases to Maris’s zero, and played a more demanding position. And he did hit 54 homers. Maris’s advantage of seven home runs doesn’t make up for all the other stuff.
As to the Santo thing, I see cmkeller’s point, but here’s the thing; the HoF’s voting process is completely screwed up anyway, and has been for 70 years. Many, many players vastly inferior to Santo have been inducted and some better are still waiting.
If I’m going to argue some people should be in the HoF and some should not I’m not much inclined to base my argument on the BBWAA or VC votes because what’s the point of that? They’ve made mistakes before, in my opinion, so it would be strange to start worrying about it now. I don’t really care if they didn’t vote for Santo 15 times because I think they were wrong 15 times, just as they were wrong when they inducted Rube Marquard. they were wrong when they didn’t induct Roberto Alomar on his first time on the ballot - indeed, almost by definition, for anyone not inducted on the first ballot (which includes Joe DiMaggio) the voters must have been wrong at least once.
New evidence can come to light and improve a candidate’s standing (or old evidence can finally be recognized and acknowledged). The lengthy voting process helps to give new generations of voters a chance of re-evaluating a long-term candidates qualifications-and in my mind that’s a desirable thing. I’d rather see Tim Raines (for ex.) given a chance by voters 100 years in the future, viewing his accomplishments from fresh perspectives, than to say you’re one and done forever (or 5, or 15, or what have you). Both Santo and Blyleven benefited from these new perspectives.
I agree with that, but I’m hardly saying the process should be one strike and you’re out. I’m fine with the 15 tries that someone gets from the BBWAA. In 15 years, perspectives can change, and membership can turn over. I’m even OK (but slightly less so) with a re-visitation by the Vets Committee, which is a differently-constituted body, so may offer yet another perspective. But how much is enough already? Why wasn’t the BBWAA turnover between 1980 and 1998 enough to provide a diversity of perspective? Why wasn’t one, or two, or three, or even four reconsiderations by the Vets Committee enough?
The bottom line here is that everyone has their “fan favorite” whose qualifications are borderline, and they feel should be in the Hall, and they’ll keep pushing until they are, no matter how many different perspectives had previously rejected them. Phil Rizzuto. Bill Mazeroski. Ron Santo. There has to be some sane limit.
Striking out 45 less times is not insignificant either. Maris lead the league in Runs, RBI, HR and total bases. He played in 7 more games, and was an excellent RF. Maybe Mantle edges him out, but it’s not a landslide.
Well, actually, it is pretty insignificant. A strikeout doesn’t hurt you more than a popout. The marginal difference between Mantle’s strikeouts and Maris’s probably didn’t cost the Yankees more than one run, if that. You’re just as out if you ground out to second.
If Mantle’s strikeouts meant he was an undisciplined hitter getting on base less that would mean something, but, obviously, they did not.
Except for the part about it not putting the ball into play.
Since the invention of the television, not really. The Veterans Committee was intended to take care of guys who hadn’t had national recognition in their playing careers because it wasn’t possible for them to get it. That problem is long gone. What you’re describing and defending now as its function is the use of anachronistic standards to reading old scorecards, twenty or more years on. Is there *ever *a point at which it has to be conceded that a guy was only one of the Really Goods, not one of the Greats? It’s time to wrap up the VC, I say.
My point is, if you keep asking, and you keep being told no, but you never give up, eventually you’ll get the answer you want, but that doesn’t mean that you were right, it just means that you outlasted the resistance.
And why does “yes” = “right”? Should re-votes on players who were admitted to the Hall of Fame be added, because maybe “no” was the right answer, even though at some point the voting body said “yes”?
I could say that he was borderline because for the longest time, none of the voting bodies thought he deserved it. But instead, I’ll defer to baseball-reference.com’s measures of Hall-worthiness:
That’s below the average HOFer in three measures, and just barely above in one. Sounds “borderline” to me.
(You are correct, though, that he’s better in those measures than Rizzuto or Maz, although this is only a batting measurement, and Maz’s main claim on Fame is his superb fielding (and, quite likely, one extremely memorable home run).)
The Ink tests are position-neutral, so they heavily discriminate against catchers, center fielders, middle infielders, and third basemen.
For example, Luis Aparicio (Shortstop) was a sixth-ballot HoF inductee. His Black Ink was only 19; his gray ink was 84.
Those tests are pretty arbitrary anyway. They’re “reverse-engineered” in a way–they’re not designed to determine who deserves to get into the Hall of Fame. They’re designed to generalize about who is already there, and what kind of statistics the voters tend to value.
Of course, these are all offensive stats, and ignore the defensive side. Defensive metrics for players in Santo’s era are a bit unreliable, but he won 5 Gold Gloves, and ranks very well using some of the metrics we do have, including Total Zone and Range Factor.
Using a more modern stat, WAR, Santo does very well. He had 79 fWAR and 66rWAR; average Hall of Famers have about 60.
There are thousands of candidates who will never ever sniff the Hall no matter how long they wait on the outside. You’re basically telling future voting pools to go hose themselves, you all were born too late to get a vote on candidate X, sorry chaps. I don’t see that as acceptable.
You realize that these measures all have built-in biases, right? Black and Gray Ink essentially reward a player for being in or near the lead in a few “high profile” statistical categories, and not for all-around excellence in many areas (as was the case with Santo). The Monitor and Standards were invented precisely for the express purpose of gauging how voters have traditionally voted (i.e. quantifying their biases), and were not in any way shape or form intended to show actual on-field value. Have a new group of electors come along which doesn’t share in these biases, and they’ll have a chance to re-evaluate candidates using their new paradigms and perspectives. Kind of like how old scientists don’t change their minds-instead a new group of young guns replaces them when the former die off.
If it’s value that you are actually interested in then, I have a few for you. Santo is 75th in career WAR, and was top ten seasonally 4 times. Can’t speak for the latest VC voting pool, but it’s likely that they gave him credit for some things he did well in that previous voting pools didn’t (such as his walks-4 times leading the league). The top Hall 3B are Schmidt, Mathews, Brett, and Boggs (by a pretty big margin over the 5th place guy who probably by consensus would be Home Run Baker). Santo was arguably better than Baker and any other third sacker, and at worst defines the median of the Hall and not the border. You may not like it, but that is the VC’s raison de etre, to re-evaluate old candidates and give them a fair shot at election again, and for that reason it isn’t going to go away. No, it’s not perfect (the pendulum has swung wildly from extreme permissiveness to extreme strictness, and probably will continue to swing going forwards), but is better than your absolutist alternative.
I find it hilarious that you label me as an absolutist even though I have no problem with a guy getting 15 chances with the BBWAA, and then another with the Vets. It’s the idea of infinite re-votes (until someone says “yes”! Never re-consider a “yes” as a possible “no”!) that I have trouble with.
In 15 chances, he wasn’t even CLOSE to induction. At no point did even half the electorate support his induction (and the Hall’s standards are higher, they demand a 75% consensus). The persistence of Santo supporters doesn’t make their opinion any more “objectively correct” than the opinions of over half of the voting baseball writers for fifteen years running, or of the four Veterans’ Committees that failed to give him that 75% (though at least there his supporters were a majority) needed for induction. This year, with the voters trimmed down to a mere 16, he caught the lightning in a bottle he needed for induction that he couldn’t get with a broader voting body 19 times over.
