Tag Archives: Hall of Fame

Looking Ahead for the HOF

So Hall of Fame ballots will be announced tomorrow. It’s going to be an interesting year. The Hall apparently purged a lot of writers from the voter rolls, hoping to create a more active and engaged electorate. This may change the dynamics of the voting; it may not.

Right now, the public votes are being compiled here. There aren’t a huge number of surprises but I think we are seeing what I predicted last year: a gradual reduction of the huge glut we had a couple of years ago as candidates are elected or drop off the ballot. The thinning of the herd is opening up opportunities for players who’ve been lingering around for a while.

They way I expect to break down is:

  • Elected: Mike Piazza and Ken Griffey, Jr. If it weren’t for the stupidity of a few writers, Griffey would be unanimous: a great and insanely popular player whose place in Cooperstown was being prepared 20 years ago, when even the internet was young. Mike Piazza just missed last year, partly because of unfounded rumors of PED use and partly because some writers don’t appreciate what a great player he was.
  • Just Misses: This will be the really interesting category. Given how the field has cleared, I think we are going to see a number of candidates who’ve been lingering in the 20’s to 50’s take big steps forward. I don’t think any of them will be elected this year, but I think they will put themselves in position to be. As a matter of history, only two candidates — Jack Morris and Gil Hodges — have ever polled more than 48% without getting elected. Some needed the veterans committee and the current committee keeps twisting itself pretzels trying to elect Hodges. It looks like Bagwell, Martinez, Mussina, Raines, Schilling and Trammel may all leap 20 points or more in the balloting. All are worthy of election but time is running out for Raines and will run out for Trammel. I expect Raines and Bagwell to get very close, however, and possibly go in next year. This is Trevor Hoffman’s debut year and while I don’t expect him to get elected, I do expect him to get close, with a long debate over whether closers belong in the Hall (see discussion below).
  • The Walking Dead: There are always candidates who just linger on the ballots, never really gaining the momentum they need to get in but not dropping below 5% either. Bonds and Clemens are on this list for stupid reasons about which I’ve pawed the ground many times. But Kent, McGriff, McGwire, Sheffield, Smith, Sosa and Walker are also in this category. Billy Wagner may join them.
  • Dropouts: Almost all the new guys are on this list. It’s possible Edmonds or Garciaparra could get a one-year reprieve.
  • So: Griffey and Piazza in. Bagwell and Raines get close. Martinez, Mussina, Hoffman and Schilling take big steps toward eventual election. With a fairly uncrowded 2017 ballot (Rodriguez probably gets in immediately; Guerrero gets close, Ramirez goes into PED purgatory), Bagwell and Raines probably go in next year, with the others creeping a bit closer.

    As I noted last year, the HOF balloting has moved toward some resolution of the so-called Steroid Era, with multiple players getting in, Palmeiro disappearing and Clemens/Bonds stuck in purgatory. I don’t think the issue is dead. We will have to revisit Bonds and Clemens at some point. But I think we’ve moved on for the moment to the point where the enraging idiocy of 2013 is unlikely to repeat itself.

    The big debate I expect to emerge now is whether closers should be elected to the Hall and specifically whether Trevor Hoffman or Billy Wagner belong in the Hall. Joe Posnanski makes the case against but … this is a rare time where I disagree with him. Yes, it’s true that a lot of failed starters have been converted into effective closers and no closer has gone back to being a starter unless his name is John Smoltz. While I think a closer’s innings are more valuable than a starter’s, I don’t think they are three or four times more valuable. But here’s the thing: (a) not every failed starter can become an effective closer; (b) very very few closers can be as good for as long as Hoffman or Rivera.

    Let’s expand on that last point. Jonathan Papelbon has been a very good closer for a decade. He’s still over 250 saves behind Hoffman and is very unlikely to get anywhere close to him. Francisco Rodriguez became one of the best closers in the game at age 23 and saved 62 games once. He’s over 200 saves behind Hoffman. Joe Nathan has been a great closer. He’s 200 saves behind.

    It seems to be we are starting to develop a separation that I will call the Wagner line. We are seeing a whole bunch of Billy Wagners emerge — guys with 400 or so saves and amazing rate stats. We can’t start putting those guys in the Hall because it will mean inducting a couple of closers a decade. But beyond the Wagner line you see the very rare guys like Rivera or Hoffman who have 500-600 saves. The latter, to me, should be in the Hall of Fame. I can understand why someone would say none of them do. But you can’t pretend that there isn’t at least some separation between the two elite guys and the next half dozen lingering around the Wagner Line.

    I’ve actually thought about this issue quite a bit because I like to play computer baseball. In particular, I like Out of the Park baseball, which has long careers, minor leagues, an amazing statistical model and a Hall of Fame. One problem I’ve encountered after 60 simulated seasons is a raft of potential Hall of Fame closers. The computer has produced maybe a dozen guys with 400 saves and amazing rate stats, similar to what we’re seeing emerge from baseball right now in the persons of Papelbon and Rodriguez and others. I’ve probably put too many relievers in my fictional Hall of Fame, but the only way I’ve been able to avoid inducting a dozen is to limit it to guys with long careers who were also the best closers. And, like the real Hall of Fame, I do have a few, “Shit, I shouldn’t have elected him” guys from the early days.

    I expect a similar paradigm to emerge over the next decade or two — maybe set at the Wagner Line, maybe elsewhere. Because we can’t elect everyone who managed to put 300 saves. But we can elect the best of the best.

    That’s what the Hall if all about, right?

    The 2015 HOF Class

    Baseball Think Factory is compiling publicly released Hall of Fame ballots to get an idea of how this year’s balloting will go. You can check here to see how well their Ballot Collecting Gizmo did last year when compared to the final vote.

    Just to get this out of the way, I think publicly releasing Hall of Fame votes is a great idea and should be actively encouraged by the BBWAA and the Hall. When writers have to publicly defend their votes, you get much more thoughtful results (the odd Murray Chass aside — and at least he provides exercise for your neck muscles). Look at that second link and compare the public and private ballots. The difference is quite noticeable. For example, 99.5% of those who publicly released their ballots voted for Greg Maddux. This makes sense, since he was one of the greatest pitchers of all time. But only 95.9% of the private ballots did. It’s a small difference, but it shows the effect of accountability. It is much easier to vote against Maddux because of his era or some dim-witted “no one should get in on the first ballot” logic when you don’t have to defend that attitude in public.

    Note that almost every player did better on the public ballots than the private ones except a few like Don Mattingly and Lee Smith. I think this actually a generational thing: older writers not wanting to throw their ballots out to the internet wolves and also favoring older players.

    Looking at BBTF, it looks like Johnson, Martinez and Smoltz will get in this year. Biggio is doing even better than last year, when he fell two votes shy, but I would still hesitate to say he’ll make it. Piazza is currently polling at 77.8% which means he will likely not make it as the difference between his public and private numbers was very strong last year, probably due to unsubstantiated PED rumors. Bagwell, Raines, Schilling and Mussina look likely to take small steps forward.

    What’s interesting, however, is that this looks to be the year we will see the big purge of the ballot that the HOF has clearly been wanting. One problem the HOF ballot has had in recent years is a super-abundance of candidates. Joe Posnanaki recently commented that he regarded Fred McGriff as a marginal HOFer and had him 17th on his ballot. There are ways to improve the process, including Bill James recent suggestion. But I think we’re going to see the glut of candidates finally shrink this year. Why?

    At least three and possibly four men will get inducted. Don Mattingly will drop off the ballot as his time expires. And looking at the votes and considering how the private balloting has gone, it is quite possible that Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and Gary Sheffield will also drop off the ballot. In fact, of the new arrivals, it’s possible that none will be on the ballot again next year. That’s a big reduction in the backlog.

    Next year will see Ken Griffey Jr. and Trevor Hoffman probably voted in the first ballot. It’s possible Jim Edmonds or Billy Wagner will linger around. But that will crack the door open for Bagwell, Raines, Schilling and/or Mussina. Then in 2017, we’ll see Pudge Rodriguez (in on first ballot), Vladimir Guerrero (in after a few years) and Manny Ramirez (excluded by steroid allegations). That will keep the door open. Then things get interesting again in 2018.

    In short, the storm has passed and the Hall has apparently passed its judgement on the PED era. Pitchers are in. Great players without specific allegations are in. Palmeiro, McGwire, Sosa and Sheffield are out. Bonds and Clemens are in limbo but almost certainly will not make it before their eligibility expires.

    I think the Hall will have to go back and address the steroid era again, especially once they find out that one (or likely several) current HOFers used steroids. It’s going to be difficult to have a Hall without Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, McGwire, A. Rodriguez, Palmeiro, Sheffield and Manny Ramirez. But I think it will be at least a decade before we get there. The hysteria over PED’s is waning. But it’s not over yet.

    The Steroid Thing

    Mike’s Rule #3: Human beings aren’t very good at reasoning; but we are dead awesome when it comes to rationalizing.

    It’s Hall of Fame ballot time again and if any group illustrates Mike’s Rule 3 perfectly, it’s the Baseball Writers of America. You will rarely find such a pure distillation of the frailty of the human thought process. For every Joe Posnanski or Joe Sheehan, who use facts and data to inform their positions, there are five others who:

    1) decide in advance what they think

    2) twist the facts to suit their pre-conceived opinion.

    You can see it perfectly in the debate over Jack Morris vs. Bert Blyleven. It’s possible to vote for both, for neither or for just Blyleven.

    But it’s really difficult to vote for just Jack Morris. Blyleven had both better career numbers and better peak numbers and his post-season performance was a good (if not as notable). But there are a slew of writers who will, on the one hand, tell you that Blyleven was never the best pitcher in baseball, that he never won a Cy Young Award, that he was just a “compiler” of stats (as if there’s something wrong with that) — and then, on the other hand, will conveniently forget that those arguments apply doubly-so to Morris.

    That’s difficult to wrap your mind around until you understand that they are not reasoning, they are rationalizing. As Bill James observed long ago, many HOF voters and agitators care more about individuals than arguments. The Blyleven-no, Morris-yes writers don’t care about arguments … they care about Jack Morris. And whatever argument they have to use to make their case, they’ll use it, consistency and reason be damned.

    But nowhere does rationalizing become more painful and more odious than the debate over steroids and whether to put players from the steroid era into the HOF. Over the years I’ve laid out my thought on this (here, here, here). There are basically three options when it comes to voting on players from the Steroid Era:

    Option 1 – Vote for No One. This has the advantage of being clear and consistent. It also has the advantage of creating a very high horse from which the media can make up for their massive failure to uncover the scandal as it was going on (Wilstein exempted). The disadvantage is that it throws the innocent in with the guilty and means a very empty hall.

    While this option is reasonable, I don’t think its viable for one big reason — it rewards cheaters from earlier eras. Even leaving out sign stealing, corked bats and segregation, we know that PEDS long pre-date Mark McGwire. Baseball players chomped amphetamines for decades. HOF pitcher Pud Galvin drank a concoction with monkey testosterone. And steroids specifically have been around for several decades. I think it’s highly likely we will find out, in the near future, that someone already in the HOF used steroids. And when that happens, option 1 collapses.

    Option 2 – Innocent Until Proven Guilty In this option, the writers admit anyone who has not been implicated in or confessed to PED use. So guys like Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, etc. would be out while guys like Maddux, Johnson and Thome would be in. This has the advantage of requiring evidence of cheating before punishment is meted out.

    But I don’t think this option is viable either. First, it rewards players for not getting caught and makes it nearly impossible for players to be honest about what they did and didn’t do. Indeed, Mark McGwire has gotten caught in a catch-22 where the writers clamored for him to talk, then turned on him when he did. Both his silence and his admission were seen as incriminating. Innocent until proven guilty encourages players to lie and cover up.

    Even worse, it opens the door to smear, innuendo and statistical malpractice. Nowhere is that seen more clearly than in this year’s debate over the candidacy of Jeff Bagwell. You can read Peter Gammons and Joe Posnanski on why Bagwell should be an absolute lock Hall of Famer. And then, you can read Jeff Pearlman‘s ridiculous smear job. Pearlman asserts that Bagwell should be thrown in with the guilty since (a) he got bigger as he got older (see here on how little this means — check out Puckett specifically); and (b) he had “guilty knowledge” — i.e., he didn’t speak out about it.

    The latter point was the impetus behind Christina Kahrl’s diatribe on media arrogance and I agree with much of what she says. The guilty knowledge argument not only ignores that baseball culture is extremely hard on those who rat on team-mates (see Bouton, Jim), it makes the media the focus of the debate. That may be gratifying to their tiny media egos, but it’s terrible for the debate.

    And ultimately the innocent-until-proven-guilty argument founders on the same rocks as strategy (1): eventually we will find out that a steroid user is in the Hall. And since the door into the Hall only goes one way, he’ll stay there, a constant reminder to the players to keep their mouths shut.

    (As self-indulgent as Pearlman’s article is, Perrotto’s article is equally self-effacing. He admits to not asking the hard questions and acknowledges that this makes him uncomfortable being judge and jury for the players. It’s one of the most refreshing things I’ve read this week.)

    Option 3 – Curve the Era In this option, we simply set a higher bar for players from the Steroid Era, especially when it comes to hitting for power. 500 home runs ceases to be an automatic admission, high slugging percentages weigh less. We only take the best players from the era. In this scenario, known steroid can use can be used as a factor in judging borderline candidates (the HOF voting instructions include a character clause). But it’s not a determining factor.

    In the end, this is the option I favor. For one thing, it acknowledges that the Steroid Era was about more than steroids. The power explosion of the late 90’s was a result of many factors, including smaller ballparks, smaller strike zones, more elastic balls and players standing on the plate to drive outside pitches. In fact, it’s not clear at all that steroids had that big an impact. As Joe Sheehan has pointed out relentlessly, many of those who tested positive for PEDs were not power hitters at all, but fringe players and pitchers. The biggest impact of steroids may have been keeping players on the field (for a while, at least).

    Another advantage is the acknowledgment that we will never know, with absolute certainty, who used and who didn’t and what impact it had on their performance. The best way to deal with that uncertainty is to let it be, not try to slice and dice it based on rumors, gut feelings and rookie baseball card pictures.

    Finally, one of the defining elements of the Steroid Era, as I noted before, was the complicity of the league, the teams, the media and the fans. As homers soared out of ballparks, no one asked the tough questions, no one cried “foul!”, no one wanted to hear the whispers. We created an environment in which PED use was, if technically illegal, still tolerated and even tacitly encouraged. To block players from the Hall because of steroid use — real or imagined — is to put the onus entirely on them.

    Granted, they are the ones who stuck needles in their bodies. But they did it because everyone else looked the other way. They did it because, as Buck O’Neil said, they could.

    The only real disadvantage of option (3) is it throws in the innocent with the guilty. If a clean player hit 400 homers, he sits out of the Hall while a dirty player who hit 500 gets in. Furthermore, it encourages future cheating for just that reason — that a small extra advantage could be the difference between stardom and immortality.

    I’m not entirely comfortable with that. But in the end, there is no perfect solution and the “curve the era” option, for me, has the best combination of trade-offs (especially since I think the impact of PEDs on the game was and is overstated). As with most human endeavors, we simply need to do the best we can. And curving the era seems the best we can hope do with the information we have.

    —-

    As for tomorrow’s ballot … I expect Alomar and Blyleven to get in. I expect Morris and Larkin and possibly Lee Smith to surge ahead, possibly getting elected in 2012. I expect Edgar Martinez and Jeff Bagwell to both poll in the 30’s or 40’s. Everyone else will poll in the 20’s or lower, including Raines, Trammell and McGwire, who deserve better. Walker, Palmeiro, John Franco and Kevin Brown will stay on the ballot, but many of the other first-timers will go quietly.

    But the real story is coming two years from now. For many of the players on the ballot, they need to get elected by 2012 or they won’t get elected at all. Starting in 2013, there will be a slew of massively-qualified guys hitting the ballot. For my money, we will see six definite HOFers in 2013 (Bonds, Clemens, Biggio, Schilling, Sosa and Piazza), five more in 2014 (Glavine, Kent, Maddux, Mussina and Thomas), three more in 2015 (Johnson, Martinez and Smoltz) and at least one already in 2016 (Griffey).

    It’s going to be very interesting to watch what happens with such a crowded ballots, especially as a number of those guys are going to struggle to make it due to steroid allegations (Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, Piazza) or writer ignorance (Biggio, Kent). The BBWAA has not elected more than two players in a year since 1999. The last time they elected four players was 1955. They not elected five since the first election in 1936.

    We may be in for a calamity like we did in the 1940’s and 1950’s, when there simply too many qualified candidates for anyone to command enough votes to get in. The Hall had to respond with run-off elections and I suspect they will end up having to do the same about 2016.

    Expect a long backlog that drag outs until at least 2020, followed by the Veteran’s Committee picking up the stragglers like McGwire, Martinez and Raines, who simply got crowded off of the platform.

    Update: Tom Verducci disappoints me by throwing in with the “I know a steroid user when I see one” crowd. He even quotes Andre Dawson … since no one in Dawson’s era used PEDs … as the players having “chosen their legacy”.

    What sanctimonious claptrap. The players did not choose their legacy — baseball did by not taking the issue seriously until an unpopular player started breaking records. The players were the largest part of that, obviously. But they played in an environment in which the only negative impact of steroid use was long term health risk — something many would trade for success. What Verducci and others are trying to apply is an ex post facto judgement. They looked the other way when steroid use was happening. Now that it blew up in their faces, they suddenly want to start issuing retroactive penalties.

    Verducci even dusts off the criticism of McGwire and Bagwell for claiming that steroids did not make their careers. While I think the players are wrong to claim this, it puts the players into yet another BBWAA Catch-22: we will not forgive you until you admit that your entire career was a fraud. After which confession, of course — as they did with McGwire, as they did with Pete Rose — they will turn their backs again and say, “Well, I definitely can’t vote for him now.”

    In the end, what the BBWAA wants is not consistency, justice or logic. What they want is for the players to grovel to them, to suck up to them, to kiss their feet, to show what they think is requisite amount of contrition. This was the chief reason the narrative on steroids changed when Barry Bonds started using them — because he was famously hostile to certain members of the press (although that too involved revisionist history — they elide the part of the infamous “back off or I’ll snap” incident where they were trampling his kid).

    I see every reason to hold players accountable for what they did. But I see no reason to let everyone else off the hook. And I see no reason why players should have to crawl and grovel to a bunch of people who continually forget that voting for the HOF is a privilege, not a right.

    In the end, they are going to end up with egg on their faces when it turns out that an existing HOFer was a steroid user. And their self-righteousness and preening will be revealed for exactly what it is.

    Update: Jayson Stark comes through, as he usually does. Stark is one of those writers, like Gammons and Verducci, who I’ve watched evolve and change over the last 15 years. The man thinks, which is rare.

    Why Fans Don’t Vote

    Here’s why, as bad as the sportswriters are, the fans should never control the doors to the HOF. Less than 75% think Ricky Henderson is a HOF player. 10-time all-star, MVP, most runs in history, most steals in history, 2nd most walks in history, 297 HR, 3055 hits. Only 74% think that describes a Hall of Fame player.

    I’ll put off my diatribes about Tim Raines and Bert Blyleven until the writers show that they’re only slightly less dumb.

    Continue reading Why Fans Don’t Vote

    No HOF For Me

    I was a little annoyed when I heard a writer had refused to vote in baseball’s hall of fame balloting. But reading his statement he makes a great point:

    Anybody who has a HOF vote now was writing then. Also I recall that when I wrote about McGwire and andro, wondering why we celebrated him while crucifying Ben Johnson, the fan/public response I received was almost one hundred per cent negative. Leave McGwire alone, they said. Totally different thing. Don’t wreck a great story.

    So the same writers who were celebrating Big Mac back then, and pissing on the reporter who wrote the andro story, suddenly got religion last year. I got sick reading all of those ‘what will I tell my children if I vote for him’ columns.

    To my mind, baseball created the working conditions under which players felt comfortable using steroids, amphetamines, and god knows what else. There were ‘rules’ and there was a law — but with no testing and no enforcement, that was like posting speed limits with no radar.

    After the fact, I am not willing to stand in moral judgment, deciding who gets in to Cooperstown and who doesn’t. I didn’t sign up for that. And I think it’s wildly hypocritical for anyone else to do it, given how willfully blind they were, but that’s up to them. (The whole idea of sports writers standing in moral judgment of anyone is a bit hard to take.)

    So I opted out. Wrote a little note on my ballot saying I declined to participate, and sent it in. Don’t know if they’ll send me another one next year, but I can’t see getting back into the voting unless baseball somehow rules that alleged drug use should not be taken into account.

    The great irony is that had McGwire lied to that congressional kangaroo court rather than awkwardly taking the Fifth, he’d be in Cooperstown now. There’s a great moral lesson for the kids.

    Degrees of Scum

    Will Carroll, whose analysis of the baseball steroid issue is second to none, makes a great point.

    One final note: While I agree with Sen. Mitchell’s call for a blanket amnesty for all users, named and not named, prior to the testing agreement in 2004, I have a problem with several of the players in the report acting as salesmen and distributors for Radomski. Drug use is wrong, but drug trafficking is a far larger issue and one that I feel calls for not only suspensions, but the consideration of larger penalties.

    To me, this should be where our thinking is. The thinking of our self-important self-righteous SMTs when it comes to future HOF voting seems to fall into three camps:

    1) Ban any players who might have done steroids, possibly even refusing to vote for anyone from the steroid era. This is ridiculously puritanical. The HOF is filled with segregationists, spit-ballers, sign stealers, mugs, thugs and pugs. We have never held baseball players to a terribly ethical standard. So why start now?

    Well, the reason to start now is because a lot of the SMTs are feeling guilty because the knew what was going on and said nothing. And the reason to start now is because the SMTs feel stupid because they lavished praise on Bonds and Clemens and McGwire only to look dumb later on. And so, in their anger and arrogance, they throw the blame squarely on the players. Jason Stark is the only writer I’ve heard even start to take some of the blame for the steroid era.

    It reminds me of the Pete Rose business. The press spent decades telling us how wonderful he was. And then when it turned out he was a corrupt asshole, they turned on him like a pack of wolves.

    Never forget the first rule of the SMT: we were always right.

    Moreover, as Carroll points out, banning players from the HOF is ex post facto punishment. Steroids were illegal before testing, but they were not banned by the league (similar to the way sunday games used to be illegal but not banned). The most fascinating part of the Mitchell report is the internal e-mails of the Red Sox, who clearly knew who was using. Everyone in baseball management knew this was going on but no one did anything until the outcry. And to turn around and punish only the players because they took advantage of the league’s tacit tolerance of the juice is unfair.

    Finally, there is not enough evidence that steroids really make a ballplayer better to exclude everyone. I have no problem with a slightly tougher standard, but this extremism is silly.

    2) Only exclude players on whom we have good evidence. This is fairer but puts in a “don’t get caught” morality into the league. And again, show me the proof that steroids make ballplayers better.

    The only scientific study to date — that of Baseball Prospectus — showed little effect. Yes, two of the best players of all time did them. So did many guys who flopped right out of the league. And the latter outnumber the former.

    3) Only exclude guys we don’t like. I suspect this is the way it will go down. Because that’s the way it’s going now. Guys who suck up to the media and appear contrite (Betancourt, Giambi) are forgiven; those who obfuscate (Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Palmiero) are pilloried. In that sense, Andy Pettite is the smartest guy in the room. He immediately confessed. By opening day, he’ll be getting cheered again.

    I don’t think we should play these games. We can apply a tougher standard on HOF considerations, we can drop guys from the era a little bit in compilations of “best ever”. But we don’t get up on a high horse (option 1), we don’t play witch hunt (option 2) and we certainly don’t play favorites (option 3).

    But Carroll makes another good point. The only players I would seriously punish are those who were spreading the gospel. It is clear that several players were spreading steroids like a virus, aiding and encouraging their use.

    The worst was that scumbag Canseco, who is currently being lauded by the media because, of the hundreds of names he threw out, one or two stuck. Has anyone read Canseco’s book? Because my understanding is that he talks about how great steroids are.

    Oh, he’s a whistleblower. Bullshit. He’s a media whore. Ken Caminiti was the first player to go public on steroids. Canseco took advantage of the scandal to cash in on his own scumbaggery. That ain’t a hero.