Any system that has Blyleven, Whitaker, the Evanses and Grich at the top of the wrongly excluded list gets my approval.

Compare this to how the BBWAA treats those on the margins of the Hall of Fame. There are now officially 196 players from MLB enshrined in the Hall. Most of these have deficiencies that make them less-than-obvious choices, leaving them open to arguments that they don’t belong with the Hall’s greats. At the same time, there are a hundred guys outside the Hall who also fit in to that class. The challenge for the electors is to continually evaluate the players on the in/out margin and determine who should rise above the rest.

and

Well, shucks, you would think any candidate worth a second look would be able to pull 5% of the vote his way. Not so. In fact, there are many hall of famers who polled less than 5% in their first year eligible. The most recent examples of this are Bobby Doerr (1956) 2.6%, Ralph Kiner (1962) 3.1%, Hal Newhouser (1962) 2.5%, Larry Doby (1966) 2.3%, and Richie Ashburn (1968) 2.1%. I’ll demonstrate here how there is often little difference between those the Hall elects, those who continue on the ballot, and those who are cut down by the 5% rule.

The problem here is that you are conflating who the BBWAA rejects and who the VC elects. There is no way that most (50% + 1) of the BBWAA electees exibit the traits you claimed in the first quoted paragraph.

As to the second paragraph, none of those guys were BBWAA electees.

It seems that there is some circular logic here. Take a bunch of BBWAA rejects who were later elected by the VC and conclude there is a major flaw in the BBWAA process because they rejected future HOFers.

Miserlou: I don't know what Daniel's logic is, but my own logic is that those rejections of Doby, Doerr, Kiner et al reflect more poorly on the BBWAA than the players themselves.

Also, there's a big difference between the BBWAA rejecting someone through the 15 year rule (Cepeda, Hodges, Kaat) and them rejecting someone through the 5% rule.

If someone gets dropped by the 5% rule, are they still eligible for VC voting?

Miserlou: I don't know what Daniel's logic is, but my own logic is that those rejections of Doby, Doerr, Kiner et al reflect more poorly on the BBWAA than the players themselves.

Perhaps, but the ballots were stacked those years. For example:

1956 top 10:

Hank Greenberg
Joe Cronin
Red Ruffing
Edd Rousch
Lefty Gomez
Hack Wilson
Max Carey
Tony Lazzeri
Kiki Cuyler
Hank Gowdy.

The top 9 were all eventually elected. That ballot also included future HOFers Luke Appling, Sam Rice, Burleigh Grimes, Eppa Rixey, Jim Bottomly, Red Faber, Ducky Medwick, Chuck Klein, Al Lopez, Lou Boudreau, and Ernie Lombardi down ballot. The fact that Doerr, making only his second appearence on the ballot recieved only 5 votes is not surprising at all.

The other years in questions weren't quite so stacked, but all contained at least 8 future HOFers among the top 10, and others down ballot as well.

Doerr eventually peaked at 78 votes, Newhowser 155, Ashburn 126, and Kiner 273 (I was wong about Kiner in #2. He was elected by the BBWAA, in 1975). None were kicked off. It was a different era with different rules. Candidates, other than obvious slam dunk first balloters, "paid their dues" and slowly climbed the ladder. Comparing first time "snubs" of the 50's and 60's to first time snubs of today is not valid. Luke Apling debuted with 2 votes in 1953. Lou Boudreau with 2 in 1956, Joe Cronin with 6 in 1947, Bob Lemon with 24 (6%) in 1964, Duke Snider with 51 (13%) in 1970. All were eventually elected by the BBWAA with little problem.

The problem here is that you are conflating who the BBWAA rejects and who the VC elects.

Yes I am doing that because it’s reality. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York makes no distinction between those who go in the front door and those who goes in the doggie door, so neither do I.

In addition, if the BBWAA voters are, as you imply, giving no consideration to players on the Hall’s margin and only looking to elect the no-brainers, well, who needs ‘em? Anyone can do that.

conclude there is a major flaw in the BBWAA process because they rejected future HOFers.

Replace the word “future” with “deserving” and you got it right. As ktj wrote, it’s the rejections of Doby, Doerr, etc., and more recently Grich, Simmons, Evans, etc., that call the BBWAA voters in for indictment.

But more to the point of the article, IMO if you can see even one deserving player dropped due to the 5% rule, it should be scrapped. When you see many (Ron Santo and Dick Allen were earlier victims), it’s outrageous.

If someone gets dropped by the 5% rule, are they still eligible for VC voting?

Yes, but they must wait to be eligible based on their retirement year. The 2007 VC ballot considers players last playing in 1985 or prior.

Replace the word “future” with “deserving” and you got it right. As ktj wrote, it’s the rejections of Doby, Doerr, etc., and more recently Grich, Simmons, Evans, etc., that call the BBWAA voters in for indictment.

And he's wrong WRT to the former. Read post #4 again. I agree that there is a problem with rejecting Grich and Whitaker on the first go around, but that has nothing to do with the "rejection" of Doerr 50 years ago. When you have Greenberg, Cronin, Ruffing, Rousch, Gomez, Carey, Lazzeri, Cuyler, Appling, Rice, Medwick, Boudreau, Faber, Rixey, and Lombardi sharing a ballot with Doerr, him getting less than 5% is nothing like Grich getting the same treatment.

Furthermore, you are holding the sriter of 40-50 years ago up to a standard that didn't exist. It's like saying that George washington was a worse person than Richard Nixon because the former owned slaves. That Ronald Reagan was more populist than Andrew Jackson, that the election of 1800 was less legit than 2000 because women weren't allowed to vote in the former.

The assumption that because those guys got less than 5% meant that they were rejected is nonsense. They had a process, and the process was that unless you were Bob Feller or Jackie Robinson, you start out low on the ladder and work your way up. And you're forgetting one very important point. While the 5 year waiting period wasn't mandatory back then, it was pretty well followed. 1956 was only 4 years after Doerr retired. It wasn't unusual for players to recieve some votes before 5 years, but neither was it unusual for them to get very few and then explode once the 5 years was up (Doerr actually got 3 votes in 1953 as well as the 5 in 1956). In 1958 (there was no BBWAA ballot in 1957), Doerr's first ballot after the 5 year (un)official waiting period, he got 25 votes (13%).

I agree with the point that the writers shouldn't be admonished for not voting for Doerr, Doby, etc. in highly contested years, but I think the basic thrust of the article is still valid. Had there been a 5% rule in place for those elections, those players would have come off the ballot and thus absent from the discussion for fifteen years; instead, Kiner, Appling, and Boudreau are eventually elected, and the Doby, Doerr, and Newhouser remain important parts of the discussion. Regardless of whether they would have eventually been elected, the 5% rule eliminates the possibility of a Lou Whitaker or Will Clark ever making a Kiner-esque climb up the voting ladder, while others are able to hang around on the ballot (like Mattingly) or move close to election (like Blyleven), simply because their starting point in the vote totals was slightly higher.

As to the second paragraph, none of those guys were BBWAA electees.

The BBWAA elected Ralph Kiner. His vote, not including run-offs (note: they used to vote every other year for a while):

1960 1.1%
1962 3.1%
1964 15.4%
1966 24.5%
1967 42.8%
1968 41.7%
1969 40.3%
1970 55.7%
1971 58.9%
1972 59.3%
1973 61.8%
1974 58.9%
1975 75.4%

No idea what happened in '62? Did he start announcing for the Mets right away? The increased visibility might explain how the ball started rolling.

Plenty of guys prior to 1956 got less than 5% only to later win election, but that's a different story. Back then, though writers weren't supposed to vote for people who'd been retired for less than 5 years, if they did it was counted. Almost every HoF you can think of got a few token votes before they were eligible as a result. Heck, Joe DiMaggio was elected to the Hall of Fame before he was eligible for election. (miserlou, weren't you the one that found that out back on the ol' Neyer Board?) They stopped counting it after that, which is why we started getting first-year eligibles elected in 1962, after a quarter-century where it never happened.

Had there been a 5% rule in place for those elections, those players would have come off the ballot and thus absent from the discussion for fifteen years; instead, Kiner, Appling, and Boudreau are eventually elected, and the Doby, Doerr, and Newhouser remain important parts of the discussion.

While this is true, it is irrelevant. there couldn't have been a 5% rule back then, as there were too many qualified candidates still hanging around. the HOF voting process was still in the paleolithic stage. The concept of a 5% rule would have been as foreign to them as unmanned jet aircraft in WWI. But had there been a 5% rule, undoubtably many if not most of those players would have exceeded it, as most writers would have maxed out their ballot.

Regardless of whether they would have eventually been elected, the 5% rule eliminates the possibility of a Lou Whitaker or Will Clark ever making a Kiner-esque climb up the voting ladder, while others are able to hang around on the ballot (like Mattingly) or move close to election (like Blyleven), simply because their starting point in the vote totals was slightly higher.

Someone here, I think it is Dag, did a study long ago (back on the Neyer board), about how voting patterns have changed and why. I recall he cited Billy Williams as the last guy to start with a low vote total (he got 97 votes in 1982 for 23%) and eventually climb the ladder and get elected by the writers. No one since him has started so low and gotten elected. It is folly to think someone could get less than 5% today and still make it. Blyleven got 17% his first try, and Mattingly got 28%. Very few guys who start below 10% remain on the ballot very long.

(miserlou, weren't you the one that found that out back on the ol' Neyer Board?)

Hey Chris. I was hoping you would show up. I was writing #10 when you posted #9.

Yes it was me. And I'm sorry I missed Doerr until post #7.

DosCarlos: Thanks for getting the point.

No idea what happened in '62?

After that year, the rules were changed. Starting with the next vote in 1964, players were only eligible until 20 years after retirement, rather than 30. That dumped off a truckload of players who last played in 1932-1943.

As for the 5-year wait, I believe that was formally instituted for the 1956 election. Before this you only had to be perceived as retired. DiMaggio retired in the spring 1952, so he was eligible for election in 1953-54-55.

WWN has the obvious advantage that a nice round 100 would seem to indicate a pretty damn strong HoF contender--er, well, make that 105. Seriously, everybody above 105 on that first list is better than probably half of the HoFers. It is a scandal that players retiring over the past quarter-century do not get the same "fair shake" earlier players got. It sucks. This of course refers equally to the VC side.

I don't think any player should be kicked off the ballot after only a single rule. I think all candidates who meet the ballot requirements for inclusion in the first place should be given five years grace. After five years on the ballot, a player must have received at least 10% of all ballots cast in his time eligible to remain on the ballot.

The ballot might get a little more crowded, but so what?

As for the 5-year wait, I believe that was formally instituted for the 1956 election.

Right after it. Phil Rizzuto received a vote in 1956. He's the last man listed on an active roster to get a vote (Jose Rijo & Minnie Minoso weren't when they got their votes).

Before this you only had to be perceived as retired. DiMaggio retired in the spring 1952, so he was eligible for election in 1953-54-55.

I was under the impression the 5-year thing was some sort of guideline at least. It would explain the vote history of a player like Appling at least. Many guys back then jumped up in the vote by their sixth year.

Good question embedded in here somewhere--are the <5 percenters ineligible to be elected to the HoF EVER, including by the VC, or just by the BBWAA? I thought I had heard it was the former, the VC cannot consider them either. If so, then all the defenders of the status quo (above) need to eat heaping plates full of crow. Of course I could be misinformed. Anybody?

Yes, the VC considers 5% victims. Look at the 200-player list for the 2007 VC election

You find Staub and Wynn, for example, both bounced off by the 5% rule.

there were too many qualified candidates still hanging around...HOF voting process was still in the paleolithic stage.

That’s looking at it from a modern perspective. Actually, then as now, the feeling was that Hall standards had eroded intolerably. The HOF had begun voting 20 years before; all of the generals had been cleared away. They realized standards were lowering and that’s why they went to biyearly voting after 1956.

Doerr would likely have received 5% if he had debuted on the ballot after 1962. This is beside the point. The point is that, then as now, deserving players were getting less than 5% from the BBWAA. Since 1979 they have (mostly) been denied a further hearing.

The main reason for the 5% rule was a desire to limit the ballot to a size the voters could manage. The rule was a final step in this direction. In the years leading up to this, candidate limitations had periodically been instituted: a ballot screening committee; 20-year rather than 30-year time frame; ten years played limit; five years retired limit.

I would have thought that the HOM voters would point out that there was 50 years of baseball to sort through when the HOF first started, not just that there were 10 HOF or more ahead of guys like Doerr in the 50's.
Another thing about the career lengths is that players in their late 30's may try to do things that will bring them HOF votes, e.g. Glavine staying for 300 wins (it's not 100% money).
I remember Ted Williams' autobiography mentioning a fan in the '50's who began to point out where he stood relative to the retired greats, maybe it gave him incentive to keep playing rather than retire before he got to 500 HR.
It's like HS students who study specifically for standardized tests; if their scores are better than their parents', are they better students, smarter, or just more aware? I don't think any borderline HOF player now can avoid hearing how he has climbed a spot in career anything.

I would have thought that the HOM voters would point out that there was 50 years of baseball to sort through when the HOF first started

See, that's part of the problem: many voters only looked back 50 years. Actually, when the HOF began voting it had been 67 years since the first professional team was formed. ;-)

Doerr would likely have received 5% if he had debuted on the ballot after 1962. This is beside the point.

Except he and others from his era are being held up as examples of why the 5% rule is unfair today.

The point is that, then as now, deserving players were getting less than 5% from the BBWAA. Since 1979 they have (mostly) been denied a further hearing.

This is true, but unfortunately, changing it won't change anything. For better or worse, Ralph Kiner like climbs up the ladder don't happen anymore. Look at some recent guys who have gotten less than 10% but more than 5% and their progressions:

Dwight Evans 6%, 10%, 3%
Ron Guidry 8%, 7%, 8%, 6%, 9%, 5%, 4%
Bob Boone 6%, 6%, 5%, 4%
Keith hernandez debuted at 9.5%, peaked at 10.7% the next year, and fell off about 6 years after that.

2nd, 3rd, 4th, looks haven't done anyone who has started so low any good in many, many years.

Blyleven's making a prett good climb.

2nd, 3rd, 4th, looks haven't done anyone who has started so low any good in many, many years.

Which is far from saying that it can't happen or it shouldn't happen.

No, dumping the 5% rule won't solve all the Hall's problems. But it's a great and obvious first step, I think.

Blyleven's making a prett good climb.

First, call me when he gets elected.

Second, his 17.55% starting point is nowhere near the 5% cutoff. He may well make it. If he does, he will be the first in 20 years to make such a climb. Even still, he is not relevant to the 5% rule because his intial vote total was over 3X the minimum required to stay on the ballot.

How about this guy? If the VC had not reformed in 2001 he would be in by now, as he was becoming eligible in 2002.

It seems to me that the solution here is obvious. Simply add a 3rd voting option. You can vote "Yes", "No", or "Maybe." Any player that gets above a certain combined percentage of "Yes" and "Maybe" gets to stay on the ballot. I'd set the cutoff higher than 5% (maybe 25%?), but basically it gives voters a chance to keep somebody around if they're not sure about them.

Now, that said, there will still be some guys who are perhaps HOF-worthy who will drop off quickly - I suspect, for example, that Bobby Grich would have gotten relatively few "Maybes" because I don't think, for whatever reason, he was ever regarded as highly as he should have been.

But if you're going to insist on limiting the size of the ballot, by kicking people off it - and that's not a terrible idea - then I think you need to just let the voters explicitly decide who they want to keep on the ballot.

Yes, Ron Santo got screwed. He was in the initial or possibly the second year of the 5% rule, when there were still likely a lot of dinosaurs used to the old way of doing things. His situation was quickly rectified* and he climbed the ladder but still came up well short**. I doubt Grich, Whitaker, et al, would fare nearly as well were they to be re-instated.

*I don't really remember, but were he and the others re-instated in 1985 precisely because they were in the initial classes? IOW, was there a hue and cry from the very writers who didn't vote for them the first time 'round, who didn't realize the implications of their old way of doing things?

** I believe Santo is fully qualified and have never argued anything else. He was the third or fourth best 3B in history at the time of his first ballot.

The list of the missed you have is right on. The top ten could go in and enhance the dull, good-only-as-the-butt-of-frustrated-jokes HoF, but this is something the Hall and the reporters seem determined never to allow.

It seems to me that the solution here is obvious. Simply add a 3rd voting option. You can vote "Yes", "No", or "Maybe." Any player that gets above a certain combined percentage of "Yes" and "Maybe" gets to stay on the ballot. I'd set the cutoff higher than 5% (maybe 25%?), but basically it gives voters a chance to keep somebody around if they're not sure about them.

This is in fact what we did in our simulated baseball league some years back. It's so obvious that I think many of us thought of it independently. I don't know why the BBWAA doesn't do it.

One thing I wanted to do was list the new candidates for 2007. It’s a really strong year, not only at the top but having a total of 11 guys with a WWN of 80+. If there’s a hidden gem here it would be Tony Fernandez, likely to be one and done despite having the 9th best WWN on the ballot and being every bit as good as Concepcion and Aparicio.

I'm one of those (OK, I'm the only one) "blow up Cooperstown" guys who hopes that McGwire fails to get 5 percent. That might get 'em to take another look at the rule.

"Yes, no, maybe" is a good solution to the problem of weak and strong retirement classes.

For instance, the ideal thing is for the fine first basemen of the 90s (McGriff, McGwire, Bagwell...) to be lined up and voted on against each other. A "maybe" vote for McGwire for the next 7 years or so allows this to happen. Frank Thomas gets elected first, and then it gets interesting.

In the last year or so I've pushed a couple scenarios which could make people reassess the whole process.

There are some voters who won't vote for guys they don't like and some who won't vote for anyone on the first ballot.

Conversely, there are some voters who send a sympathy vote to really good guys who fall short of HoF level performance.

In a few years we could have Barry Bonds, possibly one of the top three players all time, fall short of the 5% because no one (or not enough voters) vote for him on the first ballot assuming enough other voters will keep him on the ballot for future consideration.

Going the other direction, on popularity alone Sean Casey could end up being elected. I have never heard anyone say a bad word about Casey. I like the guy, but he is not a HoF caliber player. He will end up with a BA around .300. However, for a first baseman with no speed and little power that isn't enough to merit enshrinement.

What happens if in 2012 Bonds drops off the ballot and Casey is enshrined a couple years later?

Going the other direction, on popularity alone Sean Casey could end up being elected.

Never in a million years. If he gets more than 5% of the votes, I will eat an angel food cake hat. Naked. On You Tube.

Don Mattingly was an extremely popular player, and 10 times the player Casey is, and he never broke 30%

Maybe Casey could get the Jim Deshayes-memorial sympathy vote from a hometown BBWAA writer.

While I agree that Mattingly was a better player than Casey, he was not 10 times the player. BA .307 to .302, OBP .358 to .368, SLG .471 to .456. Mattingly is ahead on the various counting stats but Casey is still playing. I believe Casey is ahead on WS rings.

Regardless, my point remains that Casey could end up with a lot more votes than expected as voters give him that friend vote.

Another thing I want to show is a list of the leading HOF candidates who last played 1966-85. These are players who had limited or no opportunity to be elected by the old formation of the VC. Included are all candidates with a WWN of 80 or better plus others who received at least 15% in one year in BBWAA balloting.

While I agree that Mattingly was a better player than Casey, he was not 10 times the player. BA .307 to .302, OBP .358 to .368, SLG .471 to .456. Mattingly is ahead on the various counting stats but Casey is still playing. I believe Casey is ahead on WS rings.

...against league averages of .261/.329/.400, as opposed to .271/.344/.437. OPS+ of 127 to 111.

C'mon.

One thing I wanted to do was list the new candidates for 2007. It’s a really strong year, not only at the top but having a total of 11 guys with a WWN of 80+.

Dan, have you thought about a way to incorporate weighting for peak in your formula? I notice Harold Baines rates very strongly, and personally I see his value as being almost entirely on the career/longeviety side, which may be fine for some folks, but his lack of peak disqualifies him, imo. His score, even including the class of 2007, would make him the 18th "best" player not in the Hall which you've shown here. Perhaps that is a fair ranking, but to me he belongs in the Hall of Very Good Players with Long Careers (or perhpas the Ray Lankford Wing of the HOF), not the HOF.

Dan, have you thought about a way to incorporate weighting for peak in your formula?

I agree with you about Baines, definitely HOVG.

As for incorporating peak, there are a million ways to do it. My current favorite method is to use a 12-year weighted prime. Huh? you say. Yeah.

Using win shares or WARP, I weight the best season at 13/90, the 2nd best is weighted 12/90, ... to the 12th best year weighed 2/90. The result is a typical prime season for a player. (I'll have to dig up that spreadsheet, if you're interested.)

One and done in 2007:

Two and done:

Does this look better?

Looking for just a minor victory here, why not say that a guy has to be below 5 pct of the votes for 3 years (or 5 or 10)?
The problem with a guy like Belle is that a lot of people won't consider him as 'first ballot' but don't want him off entirely either.
Then the results come in, and I'll bet a dozen or more voters may have just noticed, 'huh, I didn't think Belle would be off the ballot entirely.'
But now it's too late.
After getting 3.5 pct this year, I suspect several voters would think, 'Geesh, he should at least be on the ballot next year,' and he gets another vote. Then he clears 5 pct, and the problem is 'solved.'

I realize it's not the grand unified solution, but it's a start at least.

why not say that a guy has to be below 5 pct of the votes for 3 years (or 5 or 10)?
Howie: always nice to seee a fellow HoMer check in!

I like that solution; straight forward, easily tracked. It gives a player time to build a constituency. You could state the rule like this: A player is allowed to remain on the ballot up to 20 years after retiring (same as now) as long as he gets a vote and until the third time he draws less than 5%. Just like baseball - three strikes and you're out. Unless nobody votes for you, then you're out right away. Over time this would expand the size of the ballot to maybe 60 candidates, about double what we have now.

DanG,

In the BTF HOF thread, besides the failure of some guys who should remain in the discussion, the other issue you had was with the lack of qualified recent candidates getting enshrined.

Isn't it possible that a more crowded ballot could exacerbate the problem? If voters are already not enshrining enough guys, would giving them double the amount of choices decrease the likelihood that some of the borderline guys (in their eyes) get the required 75 percent? I wouldn't be surprised if some voters impose artificial limits on the number of candidates they support. If one of the guys they've been voting for drops below 5 percent (and off the ballot), such as Belle, it might open them up to voting for one of the guys who actually has a chance of getting enshrined, like a Blyleven or Gossage. I just wonder if expanding the ballot, without some fundamental shift in the voters' thought process, might make the bigger problem (not electing enough modern guys) worse.

I wouldn't be surprised if some voters impose artificial limits on the number of candidates they support. If one of the guys they've been voting for drops below 5 percent (and off the ballot), such as Belle, it might open them up to voting for one of the guys who actually has a chance of getting enshrined, like a Blyleven or Gossage.
Yes, I think you would see that happen on a minor scale. It could cost a major candidate a percent or two, I think.

Getting rid of the 5% rule would be a crack in the door, aiming ultimately for more meaningful changes.

Yes, I think you would see that happen on a minor scale. It could cost a major candidate a percent or two, I think.

Sure, it's unlikely to have a great effect, since we're talking about guys with less than 5 percent to begin with, and will only impact voters whose ballots are constrained (either by themselves or the rare voter who goes 10 deep). But with the borderline guys, any percentage point drop can be the difference between enshrinement and disappointment (or, in Goose's case, bitterness).

I do like Kiko's suggestion, which could possibly lead to a change in the thought process that does seem necessary.

I do like Kiko's suggestion, which could possibly lead to a change in the thought process that does seem necessary.

Yes, his suggestion of a "Maybe" option is really good. Actually, I kinda stole the idea in a posting to another web board. I suggested that voters be given the third option of "Deserves Further Consideration". Again, the flaw with the current system is that this aspect of voters' opinions is not being measured. This is consistent with my opening thesis, that those on the margins of the Hall are being poorly treated.