Quite the drop for Bagwell with the final voters that Jaffe sees there. From 65.8% (through 111 ballots) to 52%. He also has Raines collapsing from 62.3% to 48% and Lee Smith skyrocketing from 37.7% to 47%.

"Enough with the dilly-dallying ... I keep going back and forth."

What makes a good man go neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

As of 10:20 AM EST, we need a few more people to like that video.

Jeff Bagwell 52

This is pretty clearly likely to be wrong already, isn't it? Bagwell is currently polling at 66% so he'd have to nosedive.

Also, he has Biggio at 76% and Morris at 69%. They would have to make significant inroads on the remaining ballots, as they're currently at 68% and 61%, respectively.

The odds for the outcome Jaffe predicts already seem low.

I haven't gone through the rest of them.

Also, he has Biggio at 76% and Morris at 69%. They would have to make significant inroads on the remaining ballots, as they're currently at 68% and 61%, respectively.

I think Morris always polls at least 5% below what he really gets.

I think Morris always polls at least 5% below what he really gets.

This is because most of the guys voting for Morris don't know how to use the internet.

I think Bagwell is an odd case here compared to historical norms. It may be small sample size bias, but the presence of Bonds seems to have reminded some voters how slim and silly the steroids evidence against Bagwell is. Seems like we've seen a decent number of voters adding him for the first time. The presence of Biggio may also be helping some voters give him a second look.

Against that, he's stat friendly enough to get more votes from the publish your ballots crowd. I see him inching up a little from last year to about 60%.

I also think Chris underestimates the extent that Raines will inch up as the ferocity of the steroids debate causes some more traditional voters to give his numbers a second look. It's true the Repoz count traditionally overestimates him, but I'd expect him to clear 50% relatively comfortably (maybe ending up in the 53-55% range).

I think Morris always polls at least 5% below what he really gets.

He's down 5.6 percent, on average, over the last three elections, according to Chris, though last year he was off 8 percent.

Like Ray, I think he's going to be high on Biggio and low on Bagwell. Morris may make that kind of a gain, but I believe he needs to do even better than 69 percent to get inducted next year with Maddux and Glavine joining the fray.

What does "Other Guys: 7" mean? Everybody else will average 7%? They will add up to 7% (even though that doesn't make any sense)?

i hope he's right about biggio, but i doubt it

i would really like to know what the evidence is that bagwell used steroids besides that he lifted weights to make his shoulders bigger like 10 hours a day until he practically ripped one of them out of his socket.

and during all this supposed drug use, somehow he had skinny legs - and i KNOW because i saw him from 10 feet away in workout shorts in 98, 99 and 2000. the uni was baggy - hahahahahahahahaha

They will add up to 7% (even though that doesn't make any sense)?

This one. How doesn't it make sense?

This one. How doesn't it make sense?

Because it's a meaningless number. He's predicting that Biggio will be listed on 76 percent of ballots. But the other players can get a combined percentage of 7% without being on 7% of the ballots. It's like adding a player's weight to his height in inches.

Comments here about my Morris, Raines, and Smith predictions are covered in the article. Under item #8 - Repoz's Ballot-tallying, I note:

It’s worth noting that with some players, Repoz's Gizmo has a consistent tendency to be off. Over the last three elections, it has overestimated Raines’ support by 8.0 percent. It underestimates Jack Morris (off by an average of 5.6 percent), Lee Smith (5.8 percent), Larry Walker (5.6 percent), Don Mattingly (8.4 percent), and Bernie Williams (6.2 percent).

So Raines should collapse, Morris should go up some, as should Smith.

I'm likely to be off by some on all of them, but that's why my predications are as far off Repoz's current numbers as they are.

As for Bagwell, the ballot-tallying just looks really high so far. Given where Bagwell was last year and how many new guys are on the ballot this year, it defies historical precedent to see him skyrocket up to 60% or higher. I could still be low, but that's high.

Because it's a meaningless number. He's predicting that Biggio will be listed on 76 percent of ballots. But the other players can get a combined percentage of 7% without being on 7% of the ballots. It's like adding a player's weight to his height in inches.

I don't see what the problem is. Add up all the votes for Kenny Lofton and all the votes for David Wells and all the votes for everyone else and I reckon that sum will be 7 votes for every 100 ballots.

> Raines should collapse

Yeah, but either he's going down by more than 8% or he's going to be above 50%. That would mean the "internet" group is forming a consensus that isn't shared with the rest of the group. I think the rest of the group can be convinced.

Fun fact No. 1: through 1986, every BBWAA Hall of Fame election averaged at least seven names per ballot.

Fun fact No. 2: from 1987-onward, no BBWAA Hall of Fame election has averaged as much as seven names per ballot.

Last year’s ballot averaged just 5.10 names on it, an all-time low.

Eventually this trend will force some changes. Lord knows you can't tell the BBWAA membership what to do, so I'll guess the HoF will go with the top vote-getter, maybe even top two vote-getters (pitcher and position player?).

DL - my worst ever prediction was Raines' first year on the ballot, and it's because not only was the ballot tracker high, but the earlier ballots trakced were even higher still. I think it began with Raines at 50%, well down to around 40%, and he came in at 24%. So I'm especially leery with Raines.

Mostly, I'm just skeptical of any backlogger making notable gains.

greenback - my hunch is that in 2014 they finally go over the 7 names/ballot level for the first time in a long time. They'll have everyone except Dale Murphy (and hopefully Craig Biggio) returning and have a new avalanche of candidates come in).

DL - my worst ever prediction was Raines' first year on the ballot, and it's because not only was the ballot tracker high, but the earlier ballots trakced were even higher still. I think it began with Raines at 50%, well down to around 40%, and he came in at 24%. So I'm especially leery with Raines.

That's my recollection. Not only is the finished Gizmo typically high on Raines, but he continually loses support at the Gizmo is updated.

finally! an actual forecasting tooL!

I understand it's a big honor for a player or someone else to be inducted into the HOF, but as a fan with no personal connections to these players, why should I care about this? If someone is a HOF player what should I understand that to mean? I don't view it as a sign of great play like the HOM, so what exactly is it? There have been a bunch of articles posted here written by guys saying what their ballots would look like, and I haven't even read any of them because I don't care about the opinions of baseball writers. They don't have any credibility with me since they're not players, coaches, front office people, or analysts. They don't know any more than most rabid fans.

As for Bagwell, the ballot-tallying just looks really high so far. Given where Bagwell was last year and how many new guys are on the ballot this year, it defies historical precedent to see him skyrocket up to 60% or higher. I could still be low, but that's high.

I used to listen to Kornheiser's radio show on ESPN, and the one thing I took away from it was that writers love a good story. I don't know how likely it is that there were enough voters to hold their ballot for Bagwell so that they could vote in B and B together, but it wouldn't shock me.

I'd like to see Biggio get in and he and Morris are probably the only ones who have any chance at this point. But part of me wants to see the ghost town. One inductee will be enough to let the same broken process keep limping into next year. No living inductees, and I think there's a good chance we'll see something changed.

it's kind of amazing that the only people who don't seem to want anyone elected are the voters themselves

As for Bagwell, the ballot-tallying just looks really high so far. Given where Bagwell was last year and how many new guys are on the ballot this year, it defies historical precedent to see him skyrocket up to 60% or higher. I could still be low, but that's high.

Alas, historical precedent is going to be less of a guide here. The BBWAA is clearly 2 or 3 separate populations now and that always leads to weirdness. But, ignoring that (kinda) this is just a year when two "borderline 1st ballot" candidates (Biggio and Piazza) debuted on the ballot. It's not that different than 2010 when Alomar and Larkin came on (and Edgar and McGriff). Dawson and Blyleven saw huge jumps that year and Morris jumped 8 points. Biggio, Piazza, Bonds, Clemens and Sosa form a stronger "voting" combo than those 4 but not dramatically so, especially for the top backloggers (B/C taking votes from those lower on the ballot moreso than those at the top). I'm not sure I see the precedent for expecting Bagwell to slide back -- a 10 point jump might be optimistic but, even without early results, I didn't see any reason to expect him to fall back. I think I had him pegged in low-mid 60s in my guesswork.

Bringing the current weirdness back in, in essence, there are maybe three groups:

The Bonds/Clemens voters: Bagwell might lose a few votes here from B/C voters who vote for 5 or less and he pales in comparison to those two. That is, for this group, historical precedent holds in part -- two near-unanimous candidates joining the ballot almost always pushes everybody else down some. But Bagwell is probably still a top 5-6 selection (Biggio, Piazza, Sosa) among the vast majority of these voters so I would guess that he was getting almost all of this group before.

The mild roid blackballers: When Bagwell debuted at 42%, most of us (including me) blamed this on unfounded steroid rumors. Some poster here (don't remember who) pointed out that actually it's pretty typical for good all-around players (Sandberg, Larkin, etc.) to start out kinda low and build steadily and fairly quickly. Bagwell fit that mold last year jumping to 56%. We would have to think the majority of that jump came from this group which has decided that Bagwell doesn't fit their definition of a known roider. I don't see any reason to think his growth among this group wouldn't continue as we'd expect since they aren't voting B/C and probably not Sosa. There are obviously a good number of Morris and Smith voters in this group but still hard to see how they'd rank Bagwell lower than 4th (Biggio, Piazza, Morris).

The blackballing zealots: Well, Bagwell is kinda the test of whether this group is large enough to keep deserving barely even rumored candidates out so really we have to wait and see. I can see an argument that this group might grow slightly this year with the Evil Ones joining the ballot and reaffirming their zeal but, in the long run, this group will only get smaller.

I still don't see that adding up to a loss. I think his drop among the first group will be minimal and more than offset by continued "standard" growth among the second group. Bagwell's big jump last year gives me encouragement that the last group is not big enough to keep Bagwell out even though the last two groups are big enough to keep B/C out. Some absolute wild guesses:

B/C group: 45% (the B/C vote). Nearly all went for Bagwell last year but let's say it's only 40% this year.
MRB group: 40%. Bagwell pulled 11% here last year, assume standard Larkin-esque growth here and he might get as much as 20%.
TBZ group: 15%, 0% for Bagwell.

And we've got him to 60%.

Note for the moment, anybody who's pulling a "B/C deserve it but I'm gonna make them wait" routine is currently classified in my MRB group. I'd assume they're almost all voting Bagwell already.

Of course these are human beings I'm taking about so if you think what I said above makes sense then you can assume that actual voters are not acting in that manner. :-)

In short (bet y'all wish I'd done this one post earlier): I think you're high on Biggio and Smith and low on Raines but I think you're really off on Bagwell. He'll be at 60% or higher.

Dermatologists HATE me! Because I have multiple hypodermics in my face!

Please, can't we go back to the cute girl in the 50's bathing suit?

Alas, historical precedent is going to be less of a guide here. The BBWAA is clearly 2 or 3 separate populations now and that always leads to weirdness. But, ignoring that (kinda) this is just a year when two "borderline 1st ballot" candidates (Biggio and Piazza) debuted on the ballot.

I'm glad to see you've come around to our side. A year late, but nice nonetheless.

Walt - hey, I hope I'm low on Bagwell. That would be nice.

I was one of those guys arguing against Bagwell being hurt for steroids in his first year. Aside from guys currently on the BBWAA ballot, the best debut by someone not in Cooperstown is Steve Garvey, at 41.6%. Bagwell got 41.7%. That doesn't sound like steroids blackballing to me.

As for comparing this to 2010 when Alomar & Larkin showed up - well, 2010 averaged 5.67 names/ballot overall w/ newbies making up 1.89. That's a big newbie class, but nowhere near this year's newbie class of Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, Biggio, & Piazza & Sosa.

Frankly, as much as I say 2013 has a weak backlog, man that 2010 backlog was WEAK. The 2009 election had just 5.38 names/ballot - but that included not just one but TWO guys elected to the Hall that year: Rickey & Rice. They averaged 1.7 appearances per ballot. Plus Tommy John ran out of time in 2010, taking his 31.7% of the vote w/ him.

That means the actual backlog returning to the 2010 ballot accounted for less than 3.4 appearance/ballot the previous election - far, far under what the 2013 backlog has. And 2010 had a weaker incoming group of newbies.

So I don't think 2010 is a good comp for telling us what'll happen in 2013.

Color me a bit skeptical on Raines - he had 48% last year, and has been steadily picking up steam. His 10% rise would put him at close to 60, which is too high. But maybe over 50? 52? 53?

I'll take the over on Raines. Under on Piazza. Under on Edgar. Those are the ones that stand out to me as being most likely off by a noticeable amount.

I haven't updated since Repoz was at about 80 ballots but in the Repoz sample they were at 6.5 names per ballot. I have no idea what past history of the Repoz sample is -- I'm guessing it's higher than the non-Repoz sample -- but I'm assuming we'll see a reasonable jump in names per ballot this year. If I added right, the Repoz sample is up to nearly 6.8 per ballot. The new guys are tracking at 2.75 votes per ballot about .9 over 2010. And in addition to Dawson making it in 2010, Blyleven (and Alomar but already counted) barely missed. The top 3 vote getters in 2010 accounted for 2.25 names per ballot while this year they'll account for about 2.

If votes per ballot go up to about 6.2 to 6.3 there's plenty of room to add growth for Bagwell and some other backloggers. That would be a big jump I know but we're coming from a historic low too.

But basically I just come back to the psychological process. For Bagwell to go down, his 2012 supporters have to drop him (or the newbies really hate him). That does seem to happen in years where really big, 95% type names hit the ballot -- I thought Morris was an HoFer but now that I'm reminded of Maddux's existence, I'm reminded what a real HoF pitcher looks like. Normally Bonds and Clemens would play that role for Bagwell and they might be doing that among the group that's supporting B/C. But among the Bagwell voters who are not B/C voters, which is at least 11% based on an assumption of 45% for B/C, nobody coming onto the ballot blows Bagwell out of the water so it's not clear to me that they have motivation to change their mind. There is a case to be made that the non-Bagwell voters are less likely to vote Bagwell than otherwise given the presence of 2+ "equally good" candidates so I suppose a small drop is not impossible.

Note I'm also guessing you're a bit high on B/C. They're at 45% in the Repoz count and I think the roids guys usually drop a bit -- I certainly don't see any reason to think they'd go up so a drop to 42-43 seems reasonable to me.

Anyway, I think the group that's going to get hurt here are the deep backloggers. Biggio and Piazza joining the ballot I think does little/no harm to the top backloggers. It would seem nearly inevitable that the guys below 50% get hurt by B/C/S/S eating up about 1.5-1.6 names per ballot that might otherwise go to them.

We'll find out soon enough, no need to wildly speculate further.

I'm guessing it's higher than the non-Repoz sample -- but I'm assuming we'll see a reasonable jump in names per ballot this year. If I added right, the Repoz sample is up to nearly 6.8 per ballot.

I meant to say I'll also take the over on the names per ballot, I'm pretty sure that it's going to seriously approach(if not pass) the 7 per ballot level, even with a handful of blank ballots.

So are we going to do a prediction thread where we try to guess what percentage each player will end up with?

Looks like these were pretty good predictions

+8 on Biggio, -8 on Bagwell, +7 on Clemens, +9 on Bonds. Most of the rest look pretty good.

-- MWE

Me vs reality, 2013

Well, I was really close with my 6.66 names/ballot prediction. 6.60. Within 3% with 10 of my 19 predictions, within 1% with 7 of 19. Within 5% with all but four.