Wednesday, December 12, 2012
2013 Results: Bonds, Clemens, Piazza and Biggio are elected to the Hall of Merit!
(bbtf)
Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza and Craig Biggio have been elected to the Hall of Merit!
The timing for our first year electing 4 candidates could not have worked out better, since class of 2013 is the strongest in terms of electees that we’ve ever had. The top of the 1934 ballot included Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins, Pop Lloyd, Smokey Joe Williams and Cristobal Torriente, but only 2 were elected.
Bonds and Clemens were each unanimous at 1 and 2. I believe that’s the first ...
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1 2 >Later this year though I am going to have to help select the President of the United States (and many other important jobs). Are the people who write about those issues as woefully ill-informed and incapable of critical thought as a disturbingly large portion of baseball writers? Sadly I suspect the answer is yes.
Also, I think many of these potential ballots are worse than the guy who didn't vote for anyone this year.
EDIT: As in...does that mean none of these people voted for Moose? (Didn't RTFA)
For example, when I'm wathing the news and they bring on some "expert" to talk about a subject I know nothing about, I think to myself: "I wonder if this guy is an expert in the same sense that baseball 'experts' are experts in baseball?" It is scary.
(runs to store to steal more Bics)
Moose isn't on the ballot until 2014. Five years after last game + 1 for the calendar change.
Has there ever in history been a larger collection of complete fools?
And if sports coverage was like primary election coverage, you'd get a lot of stories like "Phillies supporters question the team's viability after 3-2 victory over lowly Astros fails to meet expectations."
Wow. Just...wow. It's beyond words.
Two questions:
1) Does he hold himself to this when a player he really likes (say, Maddux) gets on the ballot? Or will he just weasel-word his way around it and vote for someone from that era?
2) Does that mean he won't be voting for ANYONE for at least 20 years after the last positive PED test in MLB? If that's the case, why should they bother sending him a ballot?
Congress, on the other hand, has earned our confidence! ;-)
Congress, people! You keep forgetting about CONGRESS!
Which part of that ####### covers "how many years the player has been on the ballot weighted against his perceived value?"
Yogi Berra was on two ballots. Does that mean the standard for a first ballot catcher is literally Johnny ####### Bench?
Quick and silly: George Davis has 90 WAR and needed to be inducted by the Veteran's Committee. Therefore only 36 players in the history of the game have merited legitimate ballot election. Alternately, Eddie Mathews took 5 ballots, by WAR only 27 players are legitimate 4 ballot (or earlier)electees. Cy Young took 2 ballots, so only 4 players have merited first ballot election.
The BBWAA has its rules, and its members should be made to follow them. It's really pretty simple.
So a vote for Jack Morris is okay, if you vote for the ped-heads?
They should also be made to follow the rule that says that pitchers are eligible for the MVP. Or, for that matter, that the MVP is based on offense+defense+games played+character, and need not go to a player on a contender. Even though writers have gone on the record explicitly stating that they do not and will not follow these rules, I have never even heard it suggested that the BBWAA might do something about it. The leadership doesn't really seem to see itself as "leadership."
Bruce, you're in better position to make it happen than I am ;-), so I wish you luck, but that's gonna be a tough one.
Here's what I don't get. People hate lawyers, right? They are probably the most despised profession out there. Yet a _majority_ of the Senate has a JD (54 out of 100 this Congress apparently and 36% of the House). Not all of these are lifelong professional lawyers but most of them have been at some point in their life.
So why does the US population, which hates lawyers, keep electing so many fricking lawyers?
I vote you have steak, baked potato, salad and Pacifico
P.S. Kidding aside, I really do appreciate that you drop by here, listen and respond. Thanks!
That'll never happen.
Because the other guy is also a lawyer.
In any case, I think the reason Congress is so despicable is not that they're lawyers - it's that, almost to a [wo]man, they are more concerned with their own careers than the public good, and nobody there does very much thinking. Which, speaking as the governed, is alarming and infuriating.
Without thinking or reading further I can answer clearly - YES.
Didn't a pitcher win an MVP award this year...(checking bb-ref)...yep says so right here, Verlander. Maybe many people rightly feel that a pitcher in today's game just isn't as valuable as a position player, and that they need to have a special year to earn the mvp vote? I don't think there has ever been a year in which at least one pitcher didn't make it onto the mvp final tally.
I have to say that Hal Bodley is the biggest idiot ever. That ballot is disgraceful.
Still don't get the Sosa concern, there is no credible evidence against him. And Piazza isn't a first ballot hofer? seriously? Heck Biggio isn't? I really thought old white people didn't do crack, but apparently that isn't the case with this group.
That is a sobering thought, sure if I don't agree with someone I'll usually research their comments(I started that when Rush Limbaugh started getting big around '93 I guess, and it was hilarious that I could find one lie within every ten minute segment, that it became a game to find the factual truth in something he said---much harder) but generally if an expert pops up without a controversial viewpoint, I'll take them somewhat seriously
Why do writers give any credence to this first-ballot HOF worthiness, when there is nothing in the voting guidelines about it?
And why doesn't the leadership of the BBWAA emphasize its rules to its membership? Another example: some writers continue to write in Pete Rose's name on the ballot, when the rules specifically say that no write-in votes are allowed.
Douglas Adams had a bit on this phenomenon in one of his books:
Take me to your lizard
"the wrong lizard might get in" explains most of contemporary American politics.
I don't think that there are that many people who work at YES, although Michael Kay does a lot of damage on his own.
Career WAR (via BB-Ref), I have next year's ballot in this order:
1. Bonds
2. Clemens
3. Bagwell
4. Walker
5. Edgar
6. Trammell
7. Biggio
8. Palmeiro
9. Raines
10. McGwire (63.1)
11. Sosa (59.7)
12. Piazza (59.1)
I'd re-arrange a fair number of these. Piazza definitely moves into my top 10; Palmeiro slides below at least Raines and McGwire; Edgar's too high here.
But absolutely, you could put together a perfectly defensible sabr-friendly, steroid-ignoring 10-person ballot that leaves out Sammy Sosa.
People hate Congress but generally rate their own rep quite highly and most incumbents win re-election easily. Probably the same with lawyers -- hate them except for yours (until yours screws you over as any bottom feeder eventually will ... sorry, did I type that out loud?)
Also, I assume most people who run for Congress are failed lawyers* so they can't be all bad right?
* If they were good lawyers, they'd never take the Congressional pay cut. Yes, some use their past as a "successful" prosecutor as a springboard to office but they wouldn't have become prosecutors to begin with if they could have been a real lawyer. :-)
I really thought old white people didn't do crack
They don't, they do Oxycontin.
Willie Mays>>>Andre Dawson>>>Freddie Lindstrom
However, as Bruce affirms in [19] "There are no tiers in the plaque gallery. A Hall of Famer is a Hall of Famer...."
So people are left to their own devices to make sense of the mess, usually thinking of the HOF in three tiers:
1 - First BBWAA ballot hall of famers
2 - BBWAA hall of famer, non first ballot
3 - Veterans (Old-timers) Committee selections
This system is fraught with problems, not the least of which is that some VC selections (Nichols, Vaughan, Mize) are much better than some first ballot selections (Brock, Puckett).
Why can't the Hall address this issue, enacting a system to separate the wheat from the chaff? At the very least, the HOF needs to establish an Inner Circle, a true honor for the truly elite. (More should be done, but that's about all we can realistically hope for.) How large should the Inner Circle be: 10%? 15%? 20%? 25%? 33%?
And this is why you don't create an Inner Circle. You have endless debate about how big it is or what the standards of election are. Then endless debate about who belongs and who doesn't. Then endless whining that those idiots didn't elect X. The endless whining that nobody knows who Eddie Collins is. Then endless debate that the Inner Circle is now watered down because 28.7% of HoFers are in the Inner Circle eventually requiring the creation of the Innermost Circle.
Granted, that's what we've already got. :-)
In semi-seriousness, there's no incentive for the HoF to do this (I don't think) because nobody is going to drive to Cooperstown for the induction of Cobb into the Inner Circle.
HA HA
Being a US senator or rep. is a well paying job.
Wouldn't that be a feature, not a bug? You could even go all Simmons and have a five-tier Pyramid.
Why can't the Hall do that? Who says they can't? The real question is why would the HoF enact a new status of elite of the elite or whatever? The only reason the HoF would make a change of that nature would be to find a way to monetize the new system. If they can sell the inner circle idea as a draw to increase attendance then they in time may do so. The opportunity to make such a change may be just a year or two away. Those of us who want to change the voting system or at least expand the voting pool will be more listened to after a dry election or two. If the writers are as big a group of fools as some of the early articles indicate the voting system may be taken out of their hands under the guise of reform and improvement.
I've actually always thought that Simmons' pyramid idea was a good one if it was done right. Problem of course, is that it wouldn't be. I'm guessing it would be like every "Greatest Players" list and include no one from the last 40 years in the highest level.
AND, how the heck are you going to decide who's in this magic Inner Circle? Surely not the same clucks who are voting Jim Rice in and drop Lou Whitaker and Kevin Brown off the first ballot? If not them, who? The current Veterans Committee?
There were 6 or so who gave it credence with Rickey Henderson. And it's arguable a couple of those were alzheimer victims. The first balloters in todays votes are nothing more than a minor annoyance. Basically they are the special bus kids that the bbwaa has on it's roster to meet some type of affirmative action quota.
You say this like it's a bad thing
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