Don’t treat those 15 BBWAA votes as discrete events. The voting body was virtually the same for each of those votes, so any biases inherent to the voters would be present the entire time as well. It’s not like Santo failed to be elected by 15 independent random groups of baseball historians.
Are you capable of admitting that the BBWAA might not have a magic formula for who belongs in the Hall of Fame? They have biases, especially when it comes to third basemen, who many voters expect to field like shortstops and hit like first basemen. There’s a reason the position is so underrepresented in Cooperstown.
If you’re capable of admitting nobody else does, either. And that, FWIW, the decisions are theirs to make, for whatever reasons they choose. Deal?
A five year wait is enough to put a career into perspective. Fifteen years after that is plenty. After that, it’s time to let it go.
You do create the opportunity for the fielder to misplay the ball, allowing yourself to reach base and runners to advance. Sometimes that actually does happen - as I’m sure you know. :dubious:
But if the same people who vote never change their perspective, or have irrational biases against a player, that players should be out of luck? Tough noogies? I reject this.
Like I said, the HoF obviously agrees that there should be no time limits. Now there aren’t usually going to be all that many deserving candidates 100 years on, but sometimes some fall through the cracks. George Davis, turn of the century SS, comes to mind (elected 1998). Basic fairness is the basis of my argument.
Or you could ground into a double play, as I’m sure you know. :dubious: And in fact Maris grounded into 16 double plays, Mantle into just 2.
Strikeouts cost a tiny bit more than other outs but it’s just not anything worth worrying about (in terms of comparing Mantle and Maris; if you’re considering something else, like how a young player’s going to develop, a huge number of strikeouts can be a concern.) Thirty or forty strikeouts, as opposed to other outs, is like a difference of two singles. Mantle had a heck of a lot more than that on Maris. Mantle was simply a better player. There’s hardly any shame in being the second best player after Mickey Mantle.
I’m capable of admitting it, as long as you’re capable of admitting that you don’t have a magic formula either. No one individual has a magic formula, that’s why there’s a vote that includes many people. And the more people you have, the more viewpoints you have represented, and the more likely it is that the collective opinion is objective rather than biased.
You’re right, there is a reason why third (and also second) basemen are less represented in the HoF than other positions. It’s because very few of them are HoF-level hitters, and very few of those who aren’t are dazzling enough fielders to offset this. There isn’t some specialized “third baseman skill” that puts them in a separate category like, say, catchers.
But when the main voting pool is a group of like-minded people (national beat writers and newspaper baseball writers) you quite often get institutionalized biases for and against certain types of players.
It almost seems like you’re making my point for me. Baseball writers have for a long time set up a series of criteria that would guarantee enshrinement into the HOF. 3000 hits, 500 home runs, 300 wins, etc. If you didn’t make these numbers, it was a lot harder to get in, even if you were deserving. But nowadays, things are starting to shift, so that people are realizing there’s value beyond these benchmark stats. That’s the point of having different ways to get in–there is no magic formula, no matter how many years the baseball writers pretended that there was.
Bolding mine. If two positions have a disparity in hitting (and they do, just look at catchers versus first basemen), the concept of “HoF-level hitters” is absurd. There are physical reasons why players are put at various positions. Shortstops and second basemen rely on quickness and footwork, center fielders their speed and route-taking, catchers their toughness, reflexes, footwork and arm strength. Third basemen need to have perhaps the strongest arm on the diamond to make the behind-the-bag-to-first throw; reflexes to snag quick liners (it’s not called the “hot corner” for nothing); and good enough footwork to turn double plays.
In turn, players with some of these skills tend to be worse hitters. Quick-footed and nimble middle infielders tend to be smaller, less bulky players, so their power numbers suffer. Center fielders likewise, although they tend to be lanky and taller. Catchers don’t play 160 games per year, so in general good hitters tend to be moved off the position.
There are specific traits necessary for playing a passable third base. Among the set of players who possess these skills, there is a certain expected level of offensive production. If a player (such as Ron Santo) is able to not only play a good defensive third base, but also hits at an offensive level superior to his contemporaries, he absolutely belongs in the Hall of Fame.
I think you have this backward, or at least skewed. Those numbers will help you get into the hall, but they’ve never been requirements. And even the home run mark changed- conventional wisdom used to be that 400 homers would get you in.
If the institutional bias is so rigid, then how do folks like Bert Blyleven and Jim Rice, left out for a long time, eventually get in? There’s no shortage of players on whom the BBWAA have come around to see a different viewpoint over the course of 15 years of voting. And if the BBWAA is the problem, how did he get left out through 4 prior Vets’ Committee votes as well?
I disagree. A good hitter is a good hitter, and a bad hitter is a bad hitter, regardless of position. There can very certainly be a level of hitting prowess that justifies HoF membership regardless of other considerations. And then, below that level, a player would need to demonstrate HoF-level skill in other ways to be considered on those merits. Some have. Ozzie Smith. Brooks Robinson. But those guys were far and away better at fielding their position than their peers were. Ron Santo, in the eyes of many, many people, polled many times over a thirty-year span, did not stand out in such a manner to an HoF degree.
The subject is popups vs. strikeouts, pal. If you want to pretend otherwise out of sheer argumentativeness, go right ahead, but you’ll be talking to yourself.
cmkeller, you’re right about people’s minds changing over time, which is why there’s such a long period of eligibility. But it does lead to the problem of inappropriately applying anachronistic standards - the game does evolve, constantly, and perceptions evolve too. What can seem obviously proper now can still be wildly improper if applied to the game of thirty years ago.
There really is a difference in batting performance, and other aspects of the game as well, between positions, though. There’s plenty of reason to think that catching, since that was brought up, reduces a player’s offense over time, simply because it’s rough on the knees and it makes the left hand sore.
All of which means the proper comparison for a candidate is his contemporaries at his position.
There are probably thousands of players that “keep asking” and will never “outlast the resistance”. But Santo didn’t get in because he necessarily “outlasted the resistance”. He got in because a group people designated to make these decisions finally realized he was qualified. This is nothing like your crappy badgering child analogy.
[QUOTE=cmkeller]
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.
[/QUOTE]
But it’s indisputably true that there’s only about 240 players in the Hall of Fame. Lots of players have gone through the BBWAA ballot and the VC and NOT been elected. Getting elected at any point is still a rarity. There’s little evidence you can get it solely through pestering.
After all, the VC didn’t have to choose Santo this year, either. And Santo wasn’t asking anymore.
How often is a popup dropped? Once in a hundred? So indeed, if you’re assuming popouts Maris’s 30-40 fewer strikeouts are, as I correctly stated, worth maybe a single and maybe not even that. If we assume a normal mix of outs, a single or two. It’s simple math.
You aren’t seriously saying here, are you, that (for example) a walk 40 years ago was less valuable than a walk today because we dare not recognize (now) that walks help win games no matter what decade they occured in, but instead we have to bow to what people (sportswriters, HoF voters) perceived as being valuable back then? Please tell me you aren’t strongly implying this.
Don’t you think baseball players respond to incentives and disincentives any less than any other people? That, given contractual and peer-pressure and fan-expectations motivations to “swing like a man”, for instance, instead of waiting out walks, they will tend to respond by swinging away? When the incentives and expectations change over time, then so will behavior. If the standards of the time disdained walks, then a player who tried to draw them anyway does not deserve as much credit for that as one who played in a time with different standards.
Another, and perhaps better, example: The offensive standards of the dead-ball era involved high-average contact hitting, ball placement, doubles and triples, and steals. Home runs were considered hotdogging. Frank “Home Run” Baker’s nickname was actually derisive. Yet, every year, there had to be somebody who led the league in them. Do you apply modern standards and put the top home run hitters in the Hall because that’s what they were? Or do you accept that the baseball world of the time would have laughed incredulously?
Just like a guy who swung for homers in the dead-ball era, somehow knowing that homer totals would be considered critically important some day, would also have been ahead of his time? Of course not. Players play the game as it exists in their own times, against their own contemporaries who are doing the same.
If the player was disregarding the standards of the time in a way that helped his team win, then no, it would be ridiculous to give his less credit for it. What matters more than anything else is how much you help your team win, whether it’s by hitting home runs, playing the field, or whatever.
Babe Ruth was probably more disinterested in the standards of his time than any player who ever played major league baseball. So does he deserve less credit?
Total nonsense. Baker’s nickname was one hundred percent complimentary. It came from his hitting two huge home runs in the 1911 World Series, and he earned it early in his career, when he was otherwise not a particularly noteworthy home run hitter; he’d led the league in 1911 but even then 11 home runs wasn’t a particularly big deal. At the time leading the league in homers was sort of like leading the league in triples today; it wasn’t treated as a huge deal but certainly nobody had any kind of problem with it. The nickname was not meant derisively at all. Indeed, if you Google “home run baker derisive nickname” the only hit that actually claims that is… how about that, it’s your post.
As to putting home run leaders in the Hall of Fame,
Home Run Baker is in the Hall of Fame, and deserves to be, and
We don’t automatically put home run leaders in the Hall of Fame NOW. Leading the league in home runs has never in all of baseball history been a sure ticket to Hall glory. Dave Kingman isn’t in the Hall of Fame, and he isn’t going to be. Frank Howard isn’t, Roger Maris isn’t, Gavvy Cravath isn’t, Fred McGriff is not a likely inductee, and George Foster and Cecil Fielder aren’t getting plaques. It would be considered stupid** today **to put someone in he Hall of Fame just for winning a few home run titles.
Certainly, catching is hard on a body. But how many of the other positions (if any) is that true of, that to play the position necessarily means that they’re reducing their hitting ability?
RickJay: (and Yookeroo, on a similar statement)
Obviously, this only applies to the borderliners, who have supporters who genuinely believe that they’re of Hall of Fame caliber. I’d say the presence in the Hall of such questionable choices as Phil Rizzuto, Joe Gordon, Bill Mazeroski and now Ron Santo says exactly that. A vocal group of supporters will be enough to keep getting names such as theirs on the ballots until some favorable circumstance (such as the reduction of the voting group to a mere 16 people) brings a voting group in agreement with them into power. Eventually, if this isn’t checked, the likes of Gil Hodges and Tony Oliva will have plaques.
Of course he wasn’t asking, but Cubs fans and other vocal supporters were. But what all the “for Santo they were right” sayers are forgetting is that other people, who they thought the Vets’ Committee was wrong about, had their own set of boosters.
I don’t see how this is being forgotten. Being a booster of Ron Santo’s candidacy, and saying “they finally got it right” does not mean a person has also forgotten that Phil Rizzuto took awhile to get in, too. I think we’re all aware of the induction process and the fact that some guys have gotten 20 chances or more. In some cases I think they get it right, and in some cases they don’t. There’s nothing there that requires forgetting.