Friday, May 17, 2013
MLB: Talking past, present and future with Ryne Sandberg
(philadelphia.phillies.mlb.com)
Per Sandberg: Self-Appointed Chairman of the Committee on HOF Justice. #norynonoryno
Read More...MLB.com: During your Hall of Fame acceptance speech in 2005, you spoke a lot about playing the game the right way. What was your take on the most recent voting?
Sandberg: Well, first of all, the voting is in the hands of the sportswriters who follow the game, and I think that the writers once again sent a strong message to baseball that illegal drugs and all that is not and should not be a part of baseball. I ...
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1 2 3 4 5 6 > Last ›The Mike Nadel ballot is the latest hoot.
I think maybe catchers need to also be listed on their own list. This is ridiculous.
It's easy to invent reasons for a stupid idea if you're really committed to it, I guess. Piazza not being a first ballot slam dunk is going to confuse future baseball nerds. I fear for your children's children.
IIRC there were a couple guys who were very very very underrepresented on the published ballots (Bernie I believe was around 4% but ended up with 9.6%).
I'd also like to know what Morris ended up on last year through this method so we can get an early guess as to what the actual total will be.
Small sample size, this is only 9% of the ballots.
I think this is the final gizmo count, or pretty close. It would have represented a little over a quarter of the ballots.
UPDATE (1:40) ~~~ 148 Full Ballots.
89.2 - B. Larkin
58.8 - Jack (The Jack) Morris
56.8 - Bagwell
52.0 - T. Raines
44.6 - Lee Smith
36.5 - Trammell
32.4 - E. Martinez
23.6 - F. McGriff
18.2 - L. Walker
17.6 - McGwire
12.2 - D. Murphy
11.5 - R. Palmiero
10.1 - Mattingly
3.4 - Bernie Williams !
1.4 - J. Gonzalez
0.7 - V. Castilla
0.7 - B. Mueller
0.7 - T. Salmon
0.7 - P. Rose (write-in)
He's in the nickname Hall of Fame, if nothing else.
That's because they believe they have been hornswoggled.
Barry Larkin ----- 86.4% ---> accurate
Jack Morris ----- 66.6% ---> gizmo was 8% too low
Jeff Bagwell ---- 56.0% ---> accurate
Lee Smith ------ 50.6% ---> gizmo was 6% too low
Tim Raines ----- 48.7% ---> 4% too high
Alan Trammell -- 36.8% ---> accurate
Edgar Martínez - 36.5% ---> 4% too low
Fred McGriff --- 23.9% ---> accurate
Larry Walker --- 22.9% ---> 5% too low
Mark McGwire --- 19.5% ---> accurate
Don Mattingly - 17.8% ---> 7% too low
Dale Murphy ---- 14.5% ---> accurate
Rafael Palmeiro -- 12.6% ---> accurate
Bernie Williams -- 9.6% ---> 6% too low
Juan González --- 4.0% ---> 3% too low
I think one of the important differences is that I think a large percentage of non-Clemens/Bonds voters are firmly dug in in their positions. Some of those will stop being part of the voting pool at some point but I'd guess half of the people voting against those two wouldn't change their votes under any circumstances. They really need to get close to 100% of the people who aren't staunchly anti-PED.
That didn't work for Steve Garvey.
Andre Dawson.
I've seen about 3-4 flip already to Bonds/Clemens.
They really need to get close to 100% of the people who aren't staunchly anti-PED.
Of the BBWAA voter articles/columns I've collected so far 97 are against Bonds/Clemens ~ 79 are for Bonds/Clemens.
I think the "Let's teach 'em a firstyear lesson" is a big part (10% vote) of this.
McGwire has been hovering around 20%. I think it's safe to say that Bonds will get all of those voters.
That means that of the remaining 80%, Bonds will need to pick up 69% of those McGwire non-voters in order to reach 75%.
And what that means is that all those theories about "steroid discounters" vs. "steroid blackballers" are going to be subject to their first real world test, because it's safe to say that any percentage above 20% that Bonds gets will be from "steroid discounters", while anything below 98% or 99% (or even below 100%) will constitute the hard core of "steroid blackballers".
Of course some of those "steroid blackballers" could be "one year penalty" voters, but that theory never seemed to work for McGwire, whose percentage has actually gone down since his first ballot.
Also, this means no one has become likely to miss 5% - but I would like it if Mattingly at least was removed as losing Lofton, Wells, and Williams (all of whom would've had support in a weaker year) but keeping Mattingly seems silly to me.
Note: 150 votes against = no mathematical chance if 600 or fewer ballots are returned.
Only time will tell how firmly dug in they are, but we are looking at a different animal.
In the past if a player gets 50% in year one and later gets in, you've got a player who is considered at least a reasonable candidate by most. As time goes on, the people who are OK with him going in but don't want to vote on the first ballot will jump on board, and some in the media will attach themselves to the cause, and eventually convince enough others. This process can be for good (Blyleven) or not (Rice) but it will play out regardless.
With Bonds/Clemens, you've got two players whose stats are overwhelming, who would have had slam dunk HOF cases even if they had ended their careers a decade or so earlier, before the first time they were alleged to have started using steroids or other PEDS.
Convincing someone who thinks PED use deserves capital punishment of a player's legacy may not be as easy as getting someone to come around on the player's accomplishments.
Agreed
Looking like the blackballers are outnumbering the adjusters by about a 5:3 ratio, if Bonds stays around the 50% mark the Repoz has him at.
I will say it again: not getting into the Hall of Fame is not a punishment. If Mark McGwire forgets where he stuck a piece of used gum for later, he will have suffered a greater loss than he will if he never gets into the Hall of Fame.
Schilling was far superior to Morris in clutch performances in the post season, so the voting makes little sense on the narrative side of the equation if narrative and equation can be used in one sentence.
I should have added that very point to my #21, though I strongly suspect it'll take something like a steroid confession or outing of a current HoF member to move the needle more than a few votes at a time, at least until it gets to the point of just needing a few more votes to get to 75%. That's when any bandwagon effect might be most likely to kick in.
But even though I realize that a fair percentage of McGwire non-voters may simply be "steroid discounters", and therefore put McGwire in a distinctly lower category than Bonds, it is worthy to note that Big Mac's percentage has been stuck just about exactly where it was after his first year of eligibility. That doesn't portend any easy gathering of votes for Bonds in the near future over what he winds up with next month.
I think it's primarily the difficulty of standing out on this crowded ballot. That said, 37% in year one should lead to Curt getting in eventually. Jack Morris didn't get that many votes until his 7th ballot. But Curt will probably have to wait for Maddux, Glavine, Johnson, and Pedro to get in first. Maybe Smoltz and Mussina too.
Yes. If he doesn't get in this year, it will be really tough next year with the Maddux, Glavine, Moose class joining him (though not impossible, if he gets to 73-74 percent and thus "on the verge"). If he's not above that this year, I don't think he makes it through the BBWAA (though he's pretty much a lock as a future Vet's selection).
My hypothesis is that the writers aren't logically consistent or moved by any particular ideology - they're mostly just following the crowd. When Mac doesn't get votes, he continues not to get votes. But when Clemens and Bonds gets reasonably close to induction, you'll see growth as other writers join in with what everyone else is doing.
Thanks. What's the point of the Vet committee if we have a 15-year process by which to evaluate players? Are those regularly scheduled? I haven't paid much attention to the details here. Appreciate the insight.
I think the point is to give another look at guys who may have been overlooked by the writers the first time around, in addition to the non-player inductions (the managers, execs) that go through the Vet's Committees. There's a definite use for it, though it would work best if the Vet's committees didn't take many of their cues (and occasional membership) from the guys doing the voting (and overlooking) in the first place.
Evans wasn't one and done.
All one and done team:
C - Ted Simmons
1B - Darrell Evans
2b - Bobby Grich
SS - Bert Campaneris
3B - Buddy Bell
Lf - Reggie Smith
CF - Kenny Lofton
RF - Jimmy Wynn*
SP - Kevin Brown
SP - David Cone
SP - Dave Steib
SP - Rick Reuschel
U - Lou Whitaker
U - Willie Randolph
* Never got a vote.
Sports is only good at one thing: scoreboard. Everything else is complete poppycock.
I think that based on that and #14 we can effectively rule out any variation of more than 6%-7% from the final gizmo total...
Naw, it's all about the story. The scoreboard is but the denouement.
From TFA:
I'm sure that's right, I guess I've just never been able to wrap my brain fully around the way the HoF ballots work, in that it seems unimaginable to me to have 63% of people believe a player isn't a HoFer, yet that he's likely to make it in. I really will never understand the minds of sportswriters.
I can't understand them. But I can at least observe their patterns. BB-ref makes it easy to see every player's HOF vote progression through the years.
IIRC there were a couple guys who were very very very underrepresented on the published ballots (Bernie I believe was around 4% but ended up with 9.6%).
I'd also like to know what Morris ended up on last year through this method so we can get an early guess as to what the actual total will be.
As I write this, Repoz has 51 ballots accounted for. Here's where he stood last year w/ 59 ballots accounted for:
Larkin: 93.2%
Morris: 62.7%
Bagwell: 59.3%
Raines: 59.3%
Trammell: 45.8%
Edgar: 40.7%
Lee Smith: 39.0%
L.Walker: 25.4%
McGriff: 22.0%
McGwire: 20.3%
Murphy: 15.3%
Palmeiro: 10.2%
Mattingly: 8.5%
Juan Gone: 3.4%
Bernie: 1.7%
Also, as long as I'm looking, on the very eve of the Hall's announcement, MLB.com and ESPN give their ballots. That was 15 MLB.com guys & 18 ESPN guys last year -- 33 in all. Here's how they voted (to give you an idea of the biggest chunks still to add to repoz this year, withi some modifications obviously):
30 Larkin (over 90%)
22 Morris (two thirds)
20 Lee Smith
16 Bagwell (barely under half)
14 Raines
10 Edgar (just under a third)
10 Trammell
10 McGriff
9 McGwire
9 Palmerio
4 Murphy
3 Mattingly (under 10%)
2 L. Walker
Man, they didn't like Larry Walker at all, did they?
That last part is perfectly plausible, but how do you get it to that threshold point, and how long will it take?
Of course all of this is speculation until we see what their actual first and second year base vote turns out to be, as their second year total will presumably add those "one year penalty" aginners.
If their second year vote is 60% or more, I think that their eventual induction is almost guaranteed within another five years or less, but if it's closer to 50%, I'm not so sure, because this isn't going to be a case of trying to adjust statistics a la Blyleven or Rice. It's going to take a wholesale shifting in attitudes on the part of a full quarter of the electorate.
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