hall of fame, next vote...

I'd never noticed this post before:

The funny thing about Morris, as I recall, is that he always seemed to pitch just good enough to stay ahead. If his team had 7 runs he'd give up 6 and if his boys only managed 1 run he'd throw a shut-out. It was the weirdest thing.

― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Thursday, 23 December 2004 03:07 (8 years ago)

So that's where that theory started!

(And since Sutter and Candy Cummings are in the Hall for inventing pitches, I now elect Thermo for inventing one of the key theories of our time.)

Jack Morris says he would've had a better ERA if he'd been asked to

bonus reference to murray chass as a 'blogger'

Long five-part James article on the expansion ballot, behind the paywall. I'll skip to the last paragraph:

My ballot: 1. Joe Torre (yes), 2. Bobby Cox (yes), 3. George Steinbrenner (yes), 4. Tony La Russa (yes), 5. Dan Quisenberry (yes), 6. Dave Parker (maybe), 7. Ted Simmons (maybe not), 8. Billy Martin (maybe not right now), 9. Steve Garvey (probably not), 10. Tommy John (I’m afraid not), 11. Dave Concepcion (no). Marvin Miller...certainly not right now; we can talk about it in a few years.

(His stance on Miller has only to do with Miller's expressed wish not to be inducted, not that he doesn't deserve to be inducted.)

Team success mattered more to Jeff Kent than HOF candidacy

o rly

http://deadspin.com/deadspin-buys-hall-of-fame-vote-will-turn-it-over-to-d-1467003665

lol have you ever seen a big internet poll on HOF voting? if they're going for 75% of the readers they'll be sending in a blank ballot. strds players still probably won't make 50%. and "deadspin readers" isn't some special, 'intelligent' fanbase it's like 50 billion people

Neyer on process, logjam etc

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/11/27/5151640/baseball-hall-fame-ballot-candidates-deadspin-2014-bbwaa

Posnanski's "48,384th" Jack Morris post:

http://joeposnanski.com/joeblogs/more-more-morris-2/#comments

Reader comment: "Bo Jackson is famous. Jose Canseco is famous. Bill Buckner is famous. They're all more famous than Eddie Matthews. Don't get distracted by the word 'fame' in 'Hall of Fame.' It leads you to lousy places."

I do, on occasion, give a tiny bit of weight to fame. I'm not consistent, and I probably couldn't even articulate when I think it applies. I'd give Billy Martin a little credit, for example. But yeah, lousy places.

looking at the ballot, there are 18 guys I might throw a vote too. Don't think it will happen tbh but i wouldn't be surprised to see Maddux lose a few votes bc some folks want to save votes for guys they're worried would fall off the ballot. also I'm 50/50 on whether anyone besides Maddux will make it.

Assuming you'd vote for Maddux, Glavine, Thomas, Mussina, and Kent from this year's group, which added to last year's holdovers would total 22. So you'd eliminate Mattingly, Lee Smith, Morris, and...McGriff maybe?

Those 5+ biggio, bagwell, piazza, raines, schilling, clemens, bonds, martinez, trammell, walker, mcgriff, mcgwire, sosa, palmeiro

so 19. I guess if I had to stick to ten: maddux, glavine, thomas, biggio, bagwell, piazza, raines, bonds, trammell, clemens. some strategic voting there.

Glavine and Kent - personally would not vote for. Muss - I'm on the fence on.

xpost

i'd be happy if the HOF argument over the next 5-10 years expanded to included "let's stop underrating pitchers who didn't have pristine ERAs in the hardest pitching era maybe ever and let's stop overrating hitters in the same era"

mussina is way more deserving than many of these high OBP/HR 1Bs/corner OFs

if maddux & glavine dont go in together im gonna chimp out

Reader comment from the same Posnanski post, the prime years of two pitchers:

Pitcher A (10 seasons): 335 GS, 173-112, 2471 IP, 3.55 ERA, 114 ERA+, 1.24 WHIP, 36.4 WAR, 0 Cy Young Awards, 1 IP title, 1 AL K title

Pitcher B (12 seasons): 348 GS, 175-96, 2468 IP, 3.15 ERA, 131 ERA+, 1.20 WHIP, 59.9 WAR, 1 Cy Young Award, 1 IP title, 3 straight years of leading MLB in K

"A" is Morris, "B" is David Cone.

I'd normally agree with al leong that no one except Maddux gets through this time, deserving or not--the vote's going to be split so many ways, 75% looks more like 90%--but I think there will be a desire to see Maddux and Glavine go in together, and that might be enough to push Glavine over.

plus possibility cox goes in also.

http://joeposnanski.com/joeblogs/no-100-curt-schilling/

this looks like it will be fun

Just came to post about that. I've voted in a few different polls on his site, but it looks like this list is entirely his own.

You'll be very happy, Kevin, when--I bet--Trout checks in at about #37.

wtf are u not seeing about Mussina, TT

equal to Glavine, played w/ a lotta shitty defenses, as Schoenfeld said today

@TomGlavine
Congrats Bobby Cox on your HOF induction, so proud to have played for you, your the best

#your

@Buster_ESPN 40m
Don Fehr on Marvin Miller/HOF vote: "Marvin should have been elected to the Hall many years ago. It is a sad and sorry state of affairs..."

@Haudricourt 2m
We were told Marvin Miller received six or fewer votes for HOF. Coincidentally, there are six former players on the Expansion Era committee.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BbDwxR0IQAAOU-M.jpg

@DSzymborski
By the way, to "catch" Morris's ERA+/IP? Halladay needs 1074.2 IP of a 7.10 ERA. Would *that* enhance his case?

Joe P. gets called out by a reader for an old-school gaffe:

Joe: "Torre also was an excellent postseason manager, always willing to grab the moment, something I think Bobby Cox sometimes did not do."

Reader: "I can’t find 'GTM' in Baseball Prospectus. If there is any substance or definiton – or any meaning whatsoever – to the words 'grab the moment,' please provide some substantive examples and the numbers and comparable acts from superior moment-grabbing managers..."

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/12/roger-angell-baseball-hall-of-fame.html

Angell waiting this long for that award is like the Giants waiting to retire Monte Irvin's number til he was 92.

That's great. The Summer Game was one of the first baseball books I ever bought. I didn't understand at the time (I was probably 15 or 16) that Angell represented the most literary and rarefied extreme of baseball writing--is there anybody else like him? he might have that whole corner to himself--but he covered all those World Series from the '60s I missed, so I was glad to read all that. When I discovered Bouton, and then James a few years later, he probably started to seem a little stodgy. Then he and Robert Creamer were all over the Ken Burns documentary, and I reconnected with his seasonal wrap-ups for the next few years.

Looking forward to Bouton getting the award within the next millennium or two.

Neyer on the secret Bennies Era balloting

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/12/11/5199704/hall-fame-voting-committee-marvin-miller-veterans

judging candidates by their commercials

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=22440

neyer steps out: http://deadspin.com/these-guys-sucked-in-the-playoffs-should-that-matter-t-1488336874

After I read that, click-click-click and I landed on this:

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/awards/aw_out.shtml

Never knew the writers have been giving out a DH award since the very first year it was introduced. Or that they renamed it the Edgar Martinez Award right after Edgar retired. Or that David Ortiz has now won more Edgar Martinez Awards than Edgar Martinez, 8-5. (No big deal--Willie Hernandez won more Cy Young Awards than Cy Young.)

Other multiple winners: Willie Horton, Hal McRae, Greg Luzinski, Don Baylor, Harold Baines, Dave Parker, Paul Molitor.

Mussina v Glavine

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/12/24/5237398/tom-glavine-mike-mussina-hall-fame-voting-process-ballots

i agree with him that moose is more deserving than glavine and the ballot limit needs to be lifted (obv this is the real issue) but the whole thing where he treats the MVP points system like some scandalous error is just lol. it's a weighted ballot, that's how it works. glavine didn't sneak in through a loophole, he got more points than hoffman bc the voters liked him better than hoffman, even if he got less 1st place votes.

er, *cy

Tom Glavine was just a bigger star. The guy played on the Braves who were always on national TV on cable and won their division every year for pretty much the heart of his career.

They both were great, yeah Mussina was better but part of this type of popularity is just luck and circumstance. You come up on crappy teams or don't play in the playoffs, fans don't know about you as much. Burt Blyleven was probably better than Don Sutton, but Sutton pitched for the Dodgers when they were one of the most popular clubs on TV. Same deal, Sutton had the 300 win club punched on his card too.

are... you not aware of the teams mussina played for

orioles never went to the series w/ him, yankees stopped winning them once he showed up...is a bullshit line and hence part of the equation for some moron. mussina dropping off the ballot seems insane to me - is there really that much of a risk of it happening? i get the ballots crazy clogged but this is someone w/ a pretty strong case. i could see the argument for mussina being the better pitcher, glavine having had the better career. could glavine's union leadership hurt him? amazed this hasn't come up since it came up and so often when glavine was discussed at the time. if glavine goes in this year it will be synergy w/ maddux and cox. not that he isn't a hall of famer but his case isn't so unimpeachable to make him a cut above the rest of the morass. forgot that mussina finally got that twenty win season his last year, maybe that's not as much of a factor anymore (though god it was brought up as a strike against him at the time), maybe it's just not being brought up cuz he won one extra game than he ever had in a season before.

the only way i can see it NOT being at least a risk is if enough voters completely blacklist anyone ever linked (or "linked") to PEDs and they have room for him, but there are also going to be plenty of voters who still somehow end up with only 3 or 4 guys on their ballots. cause voters are idiots. and still plenty of "he doesn't deserve first ballot" voters. v real possibility

honestly if i had a ballot i'd probably leave off obvious guys like maddux/thomas for sake of guys who might wrongly fall off. or i wouldn't vote bonds/clemens. the whole thing is fucked, and so easy to fix.

"is a bullshit line and hence part of the equation for some moron"

Not doubting Mussina is probably a better pitcher, I am just stating why he's not going to get more votes than Glavine. Life isn't fair, sometimes the popular kids get picked first. Mike Mussina is a hall of famer as a pitcher, I don't doubt that, but I don't have a vote other than some marketing gimmick.

That said, I have seen Tom Glavine pitch way more than Mussina as I have grown up following NL baseball. I wonder what Glavine's ERA would be without would do in the first inning. That guy would get popped a bunch for a couple of runs early in the first then throw zeros for six or seven innings to follow. Glavine definitely got by more with guile than power. He was pretty cool on the mound and I saw him pull of quite a few escapes after seemingly loading up runners in scoring position, by getting a big double play ball.

Easy to look up:

ERA, 1st inning (career): 4.58.
ERA, all other innings (career): 3.34.

You're exactly right.

I can't see Mussina falling off. He just needs 5%--55 or 60 votes. There are surely that many sportswriters, new-stat-leaning guys, who realize how good he was. My guess is that he holds around 10-20% for a few years, starts building, gets in when the logjam clears.

I agree with Earl about luck and timing. Glavine's best year was 1991, when he had an 8.5 WAR; no starter was close, and he won the Cy Young going away. Mussina's best year measured by WAR was 1992, a year later, with 8.2; he finished fourth in Cy Young voting. But even if you cast aside Eckersley, who won that year, and McDowell, who for some reason finished second, there was still Clemens in third, with an 8.8 WAR. I know WAR wasn't even around then...in the context of 1992, Clemens had the same number of wins, more strikeouts, a lower ERA. Mussina just wasn't going to win--bad luck.

obviously 5% of voters would want to vote for him, that isn't the problem. the problem is whether or not those new-stat guys are going to put him in their ten. those stat guys are same ones reserving spots for all the controversial players, either the roiders or the more borderline guys close to running out of time. moose has more of a chance on the ballots of the old guys leaving off bonds/clemens/sosa/mcgwire/bagwell/piazza // raines/trammell/martinez/walker/schilling. and that's still leaving out maddux/thomas/biggio/glavine and, for some fucking reason, jack morris, all of whom will be occupying half the spots on a great number of lists.

mussina isn't a terribly unique case but he seems the best and most likely representative for the type of player who'll fall through the cracks, who definitely wouldn't if there wasn't a name limit.

the concern is valid and raising the issue of being limited to 10 names is worthwhile but i really, really doubt he doesn't get 5% of the vote

impt to make a big deal about it in case any passing stat nerds here have a bbwaa card, DON'T FORGET

real problem is i think at least one deserving guy is gonna get left off, if not him it'll be someone else. honestly kenny lofton should've gotten a fighting chance last year but this year he'd be even more toast.

I think two or three deserving (or at least deserving of consideration) guys fall off the ballot. This could be it for McGwire and Palmeiro -- even the people who voted for them in the past might have to bump them to make room for the no-doubters like Thomas and Maddux. Fred McGriff and Larry Walker are borderline HOFers and deserve to stay on the ballot but they each drew only about 20% last year so this might be it for them too. Even their biggest boosters can't claim they're one of the best ten players on the ballot. Of course some people will vote strategically (e.g. not voting for Maddux because he'll get in anyway) but it's nearly impossible to coordinate that to ensure that anybody gets elected or stays on the ballot another year. Basically it's going to be a huge mess.

walker is actually 9th in both fWAR and bWAR

McGriff was my favourite Blue Jay before Alomar, but after some hedging, I see now he really has no case for the HOF, other than the downward-spiral argument that there are worse players in there.

I'd hate to see Walker drop off, though--he deserves to be in, I think. He's right at, or close to, the average HOF right fielder by a number of measures:

Career WAR = 72.6 (average = 73.3)
7yr-peak WAR = 44.6 (average = 42.9)
JAWS = 58.6 (average = 58.1)
HOF standards = 58 (average = 50)
Black Ink = 24 (average = 27)

He's farther below in Gray Ink, and he's not as far above on the HOF monitor as I thought he'd be (148). All in all, though, he pretty much sits in the exact middle between Babe Ruth and whoever the worst right fielder in there is.

The '97 MVP is worth some close analysis--good arguments for him, Piazza, and Biggio. (Think I would have voted for Piazza, although WAR gives it to Walker.)