If a player can't get 5% in any of his first five ballot years, then he should get dumped to the VC. Five years gives his supporters enough time to override a one-year freak of a huge "rookie" class. Brock Hanke

But Howie's point is that your consensus building proposal could punish voters for supporting deserving candidates who are woefully under-appreciated by the rest of the electorate.

Of course. But now you're talking about changing the electorate, which will only happen gradually over many, many years. Or, as SoSH suggest, kicking players over more quickly to a different electoral body whose job it is to fill in the Hall's Grey Area.

There are certainly better ways to improve the electorate, but it's a quick and dirty way to eliminate obstructionist voters.

You realize that by your method, the Bonds/Clemens/Sosa/Mac/Palmeiro voters are "obstructionist" since their ballots do not conform to the consensus. Even moreso if they didn't vote Morris. If they tossed a vote to Lofton, they're now well away from the center. Bagwell, Biggio and Piazza help to draw them back in but they had to go and throw the 10th vote to Walker.

Here's an interesting bit on the 2013 ballot. By career WAR rank:

1. 36%
2. 38%
3. 60
4. 39
5. 22
6. 34
7. 52
8. 8 -- Raffy
9. 3 -- Lofton
10. 36
11. 68 -- Biggio
12. 17 -- Mac
13. 58
14. 13 -- Sosa
15. 1 -- Wells
16. 21
17. 3 -- Bernie
18. 19 -- Murphy
20. 13
22. 68

Yea, verily, we are in the midst of the sabermetric revolution -- 2 of the top 10 got over 50%! :-) The "weird" voters are the ones voting on value.

John's revised idea -- if you haven't vote for 5 years of inductees with an appeal process -- is the closest to a workable idea. It still creates the problem that if you haven't voted for any in the last 4 years, you're going to jump on the bandwagon.

But honestly I see absolutely no reason to reward conformity in voting. Get rid of voting and have a committee select if that's what you want. Or appoint me HoF God.

they probably would prefer if it was a few more then the historical rate of 1.5 per year.

Maybe but not by much. The marginal attendance increase of a 2nd living inductee, especially a backlogger barely squeaking across the line, is probably fairly small. Presumably it's not zero so they'd be happy with something closer to 2 a year. But what they most want from a financial standpoint is annual inductions -- i.e. 1.5 per year is surely better than 3, 3, 0, 2, 0, 3, 3.

The State of Rhode Island wishes 38 Studios had asked ‘What are we going to do about beta testing?’

There was absolutely nothing wrong, technically speaking, with the game. It works just fine. The problem is that it's extraordinarily dull and uninspired, and that's why it failed.

I'm fairly certain I'm in the minority, but I disagree with the notion that decreasing the number participating would solve the election problem. Actually, with the idea of the intelligence of crowd sourcing the larger the crowd the better. Why does writing about baseball for 10 years make you an expert but calling games on radio or tv for 30 does not. Heck, even fans like ourselves should have some method of qualifying to vote. I do think better guidance should be supplied with the ballot. Specifically, voters should be strongly cautioned against voting based on their memory and should be instructed to carefully review each player's record on BB-ref. Include a note that says it is understood that such a review is cumbersome and if anyone doesn't feel they can give that much effort to the process they are encouraged not to vote.

Separately, I disagree with this sentiment:

On the other side, people who vote for Aaron Sele or Shawn Green (or Pete Rose) are clearly breaking the rules and should lose voting rights.

No, voting for Sele or Green or Sandy Alomar is NOT breaking the rules. I would choose ten other players, but if a player is listed on the ballot you are not breaking a rule by voting for him. Rose is another matter altogether. Vote for a guy not on the ballot then you are obviously breaking the rules. That foolishness is even worse if you vote for Rose while piously ######## about other players you consider cheaters.

No, voting for Sele or Green or Sandy Alomar is NOT breaking the rules. I would choose ten other players, but if a player is listed on the ballot you are not breaking a rule by voting for him.

Yes, you are, if you feel that Sele is not worthy of election but you are voting for him anyway for some other "Look at me! This is all about me!" reason. Rule 4B:

Electors may vote for as few as zero (0) and as many as ten (10) eligible candidates deemed worthy of election.

"Why does writing about baseball for 10 years make you an expert but calling games on radio or tv for 30 does not."

Well, the part about those announcers getting paid by the team can't be an issue. I can't imagine an owner pushing his employee on how to vote. What could go wrong?

But I think it was one of those things, like everything else that comes from being in a game mentality, you’re afraid to go against the stream. And I think that’s one of the last times in my life that I didn’t.

Barf. What an arrogant #######. The two good teams (Phils, Sox) he was on were filled to the brim with roiders, he seemed perfectly happy to accept the run support. At least he had the forethought to balloon up to three bills at the end of his career so he wouldn't fail the eyeball test

god damnit shut the #### up curt

If a guy gets less than five percent and you vote for him, you should lose your pass.”

Damn he must really hate Kenny Lofton.

Well, the part about those announcers getting paid by the team can't be an issue. I can't imagine an owner pushing his employee on how to vote. What could go wrong?

The same issues exist with beat writers who want to maintain a good relationship with their team.

I think the only fireable offense for me is blank ballots, and I guess one vote ballets with just Aaron Sele on them. Obviously it depends on the year, but they could at least be a private review of each ballot and some subject decisions could be made.

Edit: the ones that actually say "this is a protest ballot" should be the easiest to judge ;)

The State of Rhode Island wishes 38 Studios had asked ‘What are we going to do about beta testing?’

The Washington Post states Schilling's company could eventually rack up 100m in losses RI will be liable for. How the hell does a government get in that deeply with a video game company? I've always though tax breaks were just more corporate welfare, but it means only that you're taking in less revenue, not actually paying out, from other revenue streams. This may be worse than stadium nonsense.

edit: is this an old story? No one seems interested.

The two good teams (Phils, Sox) he was on

Seems like something is missing from the good team list.

57. Ray (RDP) Posted: January 12, 2013 at 01:41 AM (#4345456)

No, voting for Sele or Green or Sandy Alomar is NOT breaking the rules. I would choose ten other players, but if a player is listed on the ballot you are not breaking a rule by voting for him.


Yes, you are, if you feel that Sele is not worthy of election but you are voting for him anyway for some other "Look at me! This is all about me!" reason. Rule 4B:

Electors may vote for as few as zero (0) and as many as ten (10) eligible candidates deemed worthy of election.

Ray,

You're just flat wrong. If someone is on the ballot and the voter deems them worthy then they ARE worthy in his view. The rule does not say vote for up to 10 player that Ray agrees are worthy.

You're just flat wrong. If someone is on the ballot and the voter deems them worthy then they ARE worthy in his view. The rule does not say vote for up to 10 player that Ray agrees are worthy.

Sorry to jump in here, but Ray specifically said that he's talking about a case where a voter does not feel Sele is worthy and votes for him anyway.

So now we're back to reading minds? The problem with Sele votes, again, is that there is a screening committee that doesn't do any screening. If a player is obviously not worthy, then that player shouldn't be on the ballot. Problem solved.

Create a variable-length ballot. For a given voter, the ballot shall contain only the players who completed ten seasons in the major leagues while the voter was employed writing about baseball as a BBWAA member. Players are elected to the HOF if they achieve 75% of the vote from submitted ballots on which they were listed.

The BBWAA ostensibly has the vote, and gives it to writers with 10 years of BBWAA membership, because they have been close enough to the players and teams for enough time that they can properly assess the players' merits for the HOF. By that standard, if they stopped writing about baseball in 1990 they are no more qualified to assess players whose careers were largely after 1990 than you or I. They still have relevance in considering the merits of Morris, Murphy, etc., but not more recent players. Likewise, younger writers who remember Jim Rice "from when they were growing up" rather than from when they were covering baseball, are no more qualified than you or I. Don't even give them the option of voting for them.

Eventually, a former writer will get to a point where nobody can be listed on their ballot. At that time, bump them to the Veterans' Committee - and give those writers, as a bloc, one vote.

Seems like something is missing from the good team list.

My bad. The team I missed had Matt Williams, Luis Gonzalez and Steve Finley. You get the idea.

Ray,

You're just flat wrong. If someone is on the ballot and the voter deems them worthy then they ARE worthy in his view. The rule does not say vote for up to 10 player that Ray agrees are worthy.

Huh? You were talking about a Sele vote. And I'm saying, if the voter does NOT think that Sele is worthy, then he's violating the rules by voting for him. I quoted the rule.

On the other hand, if the voter really does think Sele is worthy, then he's breaking no rule. (He would be an idiot, but he would be breaking no rule.)

Voting for Sele simply to "recognize him" or throw him a bone when the voter does NOT think Sele is worthy breaks the rules.

"But I think it was one of those things, like everything else that comes from being in a game mentality, you’re afraid to go against the stream. And I think that’s one of the last times in my life that I didn’t.”

"I think if a guy gets over 90 percent of the vote and you don’t vote for him, you should lose your pass. If a guy gets less than five percent and you vote for him, you should lose your pass.”

The Washington Post states Schilling's company could eventually rack up 100m in losses RI will be liable for. How the hell does a government get in that deeply with a video game company? I've always though tax breaks were just more corporate welfare, but it means only that you're taking in less revenue, not actually paying out, from other revenue streams. This may be worse than stadium nonsense.

Investing in a stadium is low risk, you are almost certain to get what you paid for, a fixed number of seasonal temporary minimum wage jobs that are able to contribute little to tax revenues, while much of the revenues and income of the team is often spirited out of state by the owners and players.

Investing in Curt's company was much higher risk, but had a higher reward. If the company succeeded the state got a large number of full time, highly paid jobs that would be permanent residents and substantial tax payers. The problem was this was unlikely to happen, as Curt was unlikely to succeed, no matter how skilled or well intentioned he was, because most unproven startups don't succeed.

That's why governments usually don't gamble on venture funding, besides being absolutely unskilled at picking good investments, the high number of failures any VC fund has would serve as too strong an advertisement for the need for limited government.

I think--I'm not trying to put words into Ray's mouth--that what he's speaking about are cases where people have said straight out that they gave courtesy votes to guys they liked. That's clearly illegitimate. If you penalized people for saying that they voted for someone they considered unworthy, though, the obvious effect would be that people would no longer say that, even if they kept voting for Aaron Sele. Maybe that would be valuable in itself, but I'm not sure how much it would accomplish. And once people kept silent, we'd be back into the reading minds problem.