Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Silva: Did Pettitte’s 250 Lock Him for Hall of Fame?
(sportsmediawatchdog.com)
I accept responsibility for those two uhh three uhhh four uhhhh five days.
Read More...Andy Pettitte locked up his 250th career win this past weekend against the Mariners. It now could be said the win also locked up his Hall of Fame candidacy, something that many thought was dead and buried after his retirement in 2010.
The naysayers will point out how Pettitte is the anti-Hall of Famer. He is good, not great. He is more a model of consistency than dominance. You could even point out the advantages ...
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1 2 3 >gee, , swell.....sosa, clemens and barry bonds are on this year's hall of fame ballot.,.i wouldn't vote for any of these cheats
And the man who isn't there...
FREE EL DUQUE!!
Does he even get to 5%? Steroid absolutists and steroid discounters will pretty much all leave him off (based on virtually no evidence), which puts him down in Palmeiro/McGwire land as an absolute ceiling (10-20%). But using Rogers' hypothetical ballot as a starting point, even if you throw Morris off his ballot and vote no on Smith, his ballot's 8 deep without any steroid users (but w/ Clemens - kind of interesting). Add Bonds and he has one free slot and Palmeiro, McGwire, and Sosa are all fighting for it (along with guys like Edgar Martinez, McGriff, Murphy, Lofton). I could see both Sosa and Palmeiro ending up under 5%.
That's not really fair. He voted for 7 guys last year - and mostly good choices - and plans to vote for his 5 holdovers and a few more apparently.
He's doing what he can to get guys in. It's the voters who look at a list of high quality candidates and only vote for 0-3 players for whatever reasons that are causing the logjam.
Of course, if they'd just listened to me and voted in Bagwell, Trammell, Raines, McGwire, Palmeiro, McGriff, Walker, and Martinez when they first became eligible, they wouldn't have so big of a problem now...
If I did my math right there were an average of 5.1 names per ballot last year (2,921 votes/573 ballots). Just thinking of it from a bell curve standpoint I wouldn't be surprised if 20-30 people had 2 or fewer names on their ballots.
You're right he probably isn't the worst or the biggest cause of the problem. I wasn't focusing on how many names of his ballot and was more focused on not going with most qualified. Those who leave a Sosa, Bagwell, Palmiero, Schilling, etc off (not to mention Bonds or Clemens who should be near unanimous) and include a Morris or Bernie Williams will create a situation where none are elected making a crowded ballot even worse the following year. Any ballot returned with less than five names this year is almost criminal.
Jack is a terrible choice obviously, but he's gained too much momentum to expect him to stop now, plus the majority of his votes seem to be a deliberate F.U. to the statheads and steroid era in the first place, so I don't see how a bunch of worthy new candidates is going to change that much.
Biggio seems to have the best shot of the new guys to make it first ballot with his 3000 hits, 1 team career, and most importantly, the fact that he's not a hulking slugger who hit tons of homers and thus won't get the automatic no evidence steroid penalty like Bags, Sosa, and Piazza.
Bagwell has been gaining momentum and seems to be waiting out the unofficial "possible steroid user" discount voters seem to be giving him. I also think there's gonna be more than a few voters who think the chance to vote Bags and Bigs in together will be too cute to ignore.
As far as Morris is concerned, I certainly hope so.
Normally I would say yes WRT players like Morris, but I suspect he's different than most the other holdovers. I honestly don't think even the majority of his supporters really think he's genuinely HOF worthy. They're voting for him cuz they WANT him to be in there, plain and simple. And I don't see that changing now just because he'd be an even worse choice compared to his ballot competition than he would have been in earlier years.
But yes for Raines. And Trammell, McGwire, McGriff, Edgar, and Walker. I suspect they may barely survive the ballot. And Mattingly, Murphy, Palmeiro, and Bernie Williams might not even do that.
It almost seems wrong not to discount that five year run of video game stats, but even with them, his career OPS+ is only 128. I know the conventional wisdom is that steroids can't all of a sudden make you a Hall of Famer, but that doesn't seem to fit Sosa. I realize he was a valuable defensive player for at least the first half of his career, but never a game changer. I'd vote for Palmeiro before him, who's OPS+ is 132 in 2150 more PA. I would certainly vote for Bonds, Piazza, Bagwell, and Clemens, so I'm not strictly anti-steroid by any means, but Sosa's case just seems so weird.
I'm predicting Morris goes in alone with a '#### we gotta elect SOMEBODY' vote.
If that's the reason, and I kind of doubt that his surge has much to do with us or any sinister motives, it doesn't really help him get the new voters who have been resistant to Jack's charms thus far.
Ordinarily, he would slip back down this year with the onslaught. His strong gains last year may help him, in that he got close to the point where voters may see him "on the cusp." He needs to either make it this year or make more significant gains where he's truly on the brink (because next year's ballot is more pitcher heavy). If he stalls or slips back, it's on to the Vet's Committtee (which will usher him in almost immediately).
Two years ago I thought he had no chance. Now, I'd peg him at 50-50.
Which established a new all-time low. The HOF should set a minimum of five names on a ballot.
So who does everyone think actually WILL get elected in January? I'm guessing Morris (sigh), Bagwell, and Biggio.
Just Biggio and Morris. None of the 58 other qualified candidates are pitchers so I don't see Morris suffering from the glut.
Well, it's not really anything to do with US, per se. Nor would I consider the motives 'sinister.' But I think Rice benefitted from the same kind of mindset that's going to get Morris in. Supporters come up with words like "feared" and "gamer" to describe them, then they handwave away all the more recent candidates who were clearly better, cuz you know, they were all evil cheaters and such and these guys deserve a bonus for beaing "clean" (never mind all the other dozens of better clean candidates from earlier decades), and all of a sudden a snowball rolling down a hill type of support starts building and the momentum carries the player into the hall despite everyone knowing that they really don't belong. At least according to those pesky statistics everyone keeps bringing up.
Clemens and Schilling?
Sosa is definitely a peak candidate (which does seem weird considering his 609 homers). But posting three 60 homer seasons and averaging 58 homers a year for 5 years is enough for me to push his otherwise borderline candidacy over the "yes" line. I agree that Palmeiro (and Walker, Edgar, etc) were probably more valuable players overall, but this is the HOF, not the HoM. I'd vote Sosa into the real hall before those 3 any day of the week (but only if I had to pick between them - I'd put all of them in personally). If I voted for the HoM it would be a different story. I have no problem with the actual HOF giving bonus points for historic achievements (but only if the player is already on the cusp without the bonus - no Maris, Don Larsen, or Jack Morris type selections).
Of the 9 promised full ballots I have...Morris is on 7 of them.
does that mean that Clemens acquittal actual means something to him?
Does that mean he actually paid attention to the trial and was surprised (as I was) by the utter lack of evidence the Feds actually had?
And I think this is mostly projection from folks who didn't want to see him elected. Rice started at about 30 percent of the vote, the kind of starting place that often (but not always) results in a slow slog to election. He climbed fairly steady and unspectacularly, kind of like Morris, but also like some other guys who had better cases. His election (and Jack's, if it happens), wasn't in respone to something, a protest against something. It was just a mistake.
Blyleven's trajectory was far more of an outlier than Rice's.
Morris is much, much too close not to vote for at this point. There's a human element here. I do think Biggio will go in, but I don't think Bagwell will. I think he'll land somewhere around 70%, and be an obvious choice next year. 20% would be a very, very big jump to get in.
I wonder how Bagwell's supposed/rumored steroid use will play out this year when Barry Bonds and his smoking gun PED use is on the ballot.
Yeah, but there's got to be a reasonable core of people who know he's just a terrible choice. You only need 25.1% of rational voters to keep him out. I don't think it's inevitable.
For a deserving candidate (even borderline) I'd agree that getting this close would make it inevitable.
Oh, the joy I will have snubbing Sosa, Bonds and Clemens (plus McGwire and Palmeiro, natch) on my HoF ballot.
...
I have a ballot because I covered baseball for nearly 20 years. And I'm keeping it just to vote against the druggies.
Possibly. Though I do think Rice had a better case than Morris. He was one of the best hitters in the game for at least a few years. Jack was never one of the truly elite pitchers, even for a short stretch of seasons.
Yeah. He was one of the few where it seems the stathead arguments actually might have made a difference (maybe that's just wishful thinking, though). Santo is another. Before I got into the SABR stats and this site, I sure didn't see either of them as HOFers. Now I have a hard time seeing how they were left out for so long.
I thought that factor might be enough to keep Rice out when he was on his last ballot, but it wasn't. Of course, Rice was closer at the time to election (72 percent to Jack's 66), and he still barely made it (and, as Booey notes, he was a slightly better candidate).
Last year helped his cause tremendously, but Jack's certainly not a given.
To be fair, they are only electing one of the many guys who don't belong. I haven't seen a ballot with Jeff Cirillo on it yet, for example.
I find the release of the ballot to be a much more exciting time of year than the actual vote. It's a great time to stop and remember some of the good (and sometimes not so good) players that enriched my life through their baseball play, without necessarily being stars. Nostalgia is fun!
Some notable down-ballot or non-ballot players...
John Mabry - who could forget?
Desi Relaford - best 2B to come out of Georgia in my lifetime? Or is Gordon Beckham better?
Neifi Perez - who could forget?
Antonio Alfonseca - most fingers in MLB history?
Rick White - OK, I don't remember anything about him
Shea Hillenbrand - World class jerk with a heart of gold (when it comes to adopting kids anyway)
Preston Wilson - I remember him being a lot better than he was in retrospect.
Scott Spiezio - the man with the beard
Mark Bellhorn - my favourite of the idiots.
Joe Kennedy - May he rest in peace
Jose Mesa - is he hated or pitied in Cleveland?
Noah Lowry - tragic tale, though I suppose not as tragic as Kennedy's
Tony Batista - the only player I ever heckled. I still feel bad about it
Byung-Hyun Kim - A rude introduction to the MLB playoffs, but he had some good years
Sandy Alomar - why did he win the Gold Glove? Seems odd for a rookie to take the award and his defensive stats don't jump out at you
Mike Lieberthal - of Dunder-Miflin fame.
Morgan Ensberg - the brightest flames burn out the the quickest
Woody Williams - a true gent with a cool name.
Murphy definitely won't.
Not the worst thing in the world, but a guy voting for Morris and McGriff while leaving off Bonds and maybe a couple of other no brainers isn't all that admirable either.
Hype. Same reason he was voted onto the All Star Team while hitting .241 with 4 RBI his second season.
I sincerely hope he never gets into the Hall of Fame.
Nothing that pithy. I just told him he sucked when he struck out to end a game. He actually looked up in my direction so I think he may have heard me. I really should write him a letter.
Not a fan of BBWAA voters making up their own criteria beyond basic eligibility and Hall-worthiness. However, if it is done, those voters should do it publicly, so others can evaluate the process. The Absolutists seem too close to those opposed to MLB integration vowing to never vote for a Black player, IMHO. The downside of the BBWAA vote is that in a declining industry it is one of the increasingly fewer ways that a writer can call attention to his or her work, and I worry that the grandstanding may go beyond the steroids issue if there isn't some push back from MLB & the Hall.
What a sad little man.
Rick White was in the Pirates bullpen for a little while. He had a giant beard and wore number 00.
Wasn't really considering the one-and-done guys. Of all the carryovers Morris is the worst player with the possible exception of Lee Smith who placed 3rd with 50.6%.
Ah, last year on the ballot. Didn't notice that before. Nice catch.
On the main topic, I am in favor of a much smaller Hall than the current one, and I usually return 2 or 3 names at most per "mock ballot" here every year. And this year, even I would go to ten names.
does that mean that Clemens acquittal actual means something to him?
Does that mean he actually paid attention to the trial and was surprised (as I was) by the utter lack of evidence the Feds actually had?
I'd sure like to think so, though when I offered that possibility after the acquittal I think I had maybe one person here who agreed with me.
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