hall of fame, next vote...

it's gonna be a decade or two probably before any RPs get a shot after mo/hoffman get in, and by then who knows what the story will be.

hoffman had a narrative surrounding him for the latter half of his career that made him sound like he was destined to go into the hall because of that saves total. lee smith didn't get it but he did. i don't think that'll happen again with any predictability

We see that differently, Kevin. I think Rivera hurts Hoffman, not helps him. If there's no Rivera, Hoffman sails in--he'd be #1 on the save list by 100+, with what were once good rate stats for a closer. Rivera raised the bar so high, especially with regards to post-season, that Hoffman will maybe get close to 80%, and then, I believe, that door closes for a decade.

Rivera should get in without a doubt of course, a 56.6 war as a reliever is remarkable. more than double Hoffman's too.

don't let kev hear you talking like that he'll hit you with his patented "relievers are just failed starters" left hook

doin this in June huh

Felix, Verlander, and Sabathia are all scrambled up right now. The best of them, Felix, may fall short because of health (unless it's a mid-career blip); the least impressive, CC, may be back in the picture after he looked dead. Verlander, who knows.

any of them could squeak their way to 3000 if that means anything anymore

still hopeful felix will some day learn how to pitch while old and have a good 30s

verlander seems to have the best shot of the three

Halladay and Vlad were inducted into the Canadian Baseball HOF today. Hard to think of two more likeable guys from the recent past.

http://www.torontosun.com/2017/06/24/halladay-guerrero-headline-2017-canadian-baseball-hall-of-fame-inductees-3?select_sec_photo=4

Had lunch with a friend today who left teaching for real estate--wanted some advice on selling a couple of years from now. He's a baseball fan, so we got talking about Scherzer, Kershaw, and Sale. I mentioned that if Scherzer wins the Cy this year, he's pretty much a lock for the HOF (an intuitive statement--didn't check into it until later). Anyway, before long, he's offering me a bet: $25, and I give him 4-1 odds, that Scherzer doesn't make the HOF even with a third Cy Young.

I knew it was a sucker's bet--giving, instead of getting, odds on virtually any 32-year-old, especially a pitcher, is crazy. But we kicked it around--I offered 3-1, or 2-1 without the third Cy provision, and eventually (I owed him a favour for something else) I took the bet at $40, 2.5-1, with or without the Cy.

So I'm no longer a baseball fan. I will be following Max Scherzer exclusively from here on in.

(I looked into it when I got home, and indeed--assuming Kershaw's in, and ignoring Clemens--a third Cy is an HOF lock. Works with the MVP, too, counting Pujols and ignoring Bonds/A-Rod. There are four pitchers and three position players who won twice and fell short.)

There's part of me, too, who thinks they'll never elect anyone who looks like a Hanna-Barbera character come to life, but I'm hoping the writers will overlook that.

an HOF

new poll when you read "HOF" do you see the actual letters or do you think "hall of fame"

Scherzer's been my favorite player outside of the Giants for a while now.

"An HOF"...Interesting; as I'm typing, I'm composing in my mind, and I realize I'm thinking of the letters rather than their meaning.

I've figured out that five more years (at least) of Scherzer plus the 10-year voting window means I'll be dead and never have to pay off anyway. I'm in good shape, so to speak.

The one-and-dones vs. the anti-one-and-dones:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hall-of-fame-careers-that-cooperstown-never-gave-the-time-of-day/

The writer went straight by JAWS; personally, I'd take one-and-done Delgado over Olerud.

clemenza you might be interested in the new book by jay jaffe, "the cooperstown casebook". there was a long excerpt of chapter 6 ("the war on WAR") on fangraphs the other day:

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-cooperstown-casebook-excerpt-the-war-on-war/

love how the lowest likelihood HOF catcher still had an 80% chance

almost like a lot more catchers belong hmmmmmmmmm

that 538 article mentioned ron santo, so i took a quick look at his stats again. i knew he was underrated, but i didn't realize how good he really was. cherrypicking the years, obviously, but from 1964-67 he led the majors in fWAR (34.3), which is pretty amazing. he even edges out willie mays, who put up two 10+ WAR seasons during that stretch.

I knew about the Jaffe book, thanks--I noticed a link to it on Baseball Reference a few weeks ago. Will order it for sure.

It's interesting to compare Santo and Robinson side-by-side through the '60s. Except for the fact that Santo came up in '60 and didn't play the full season, they hardly missed a game between them all decade. Per 162 games:

Santo - 82 R, 94 RBI, 55 XBH, 25 HR, 77 BB, 90 K, .281/.366/.478, 131 OPS+
Brooks - 79 R, 84 RBI, 54 XBH, 19 HR, 48 BB, 57 K, .278/.329/.434, 115 OPS+

Offensively, I can see why they were probably thought of as comparable then--no one cared about walks, and that's where Santo's big advantage is. HR, too, masked a little bit by more doubles from Robinson. I don't think anybody took anything away from Santo for hitting in Wrigley, but I don't know.

Defensively, I remember Robinson in the '70 Series, first one I ever watched, no recollection of Santo. Santo's dWAR numbers through the '60s are very good, Robinson's excellent.

Trying to figure out why Santo was so underrated...I guess it comes down to team success (two World Series vs. perennial doormat), no regard for Santo getting on base so much more, and missing, for whatever reason, that he was a great fielder too. And then, in '70, Robinson's mystique doubled.

Besides those reasons, he was a third baseman (arguably the most underrated position based on the number of HOF'ers at that position) and his best years were in a pitching dominated era.

In general, for sure--I'm trying to figure out why Brooks Robinson was so celebrated and Santo wasn't. (James was a very early advocate.)

Then it's got to be team success above all else. Although I think that many players who peaked in the 60's are underrated, even HOFers like Yaz (36th all time in WAR) and Willie McCovey (he had some ungodly offensive years in the late 60's).

The excerpt from Jaffe's book on Fangraphs came off as dry and technical (exactly fitting the stereotype of a book about the HOF written by a stats nerd) but I'll probably buy it too ...

i have always missed this particular context for Tim Raines' rookie season:

Raines was best known for his blazing speed. He won the stolen base title in each of his first four seasons, swiping a then-rookie record 71 bases in 88 games during the strike-shortened 1981 season.

O_O

best part of the ceremony was when pudge flipped out and revolted

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/07/31/sports/31HALLweb3/31HALLweb3-master675.jpg

#VoteBonds#VoteClemens https://t.co/SNy4KDZqsa

— keithlaw (@keithlaw) July 30, 2017

My God, Selig invoking Giamatti is like the king mourning the meddlesome priest!

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) July 30, 2017

Not that I disagree with the premise of this piece--I think Posey will go into the HOF too--but I don't know how the writer manages not to mention Joe Mauer anywhere; their careers are similar in so many ways up to the age of 30.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/buster-posey-has-quietly-become-a-lock-for-cooperstown/

yeah not sure he's reached the "lock" stage yet. let's see him be productive for a few years into his thirties

Finished Jay Jaffe's HOF book today. It's good--because he's a good writer, and because of the way it's formatted, not because the arguments are necessarily eye-opening (advocacy for Grich, Edgar, Mussina, Ted Simmons, etc.). I think it gets harder and harder to surprise on that front, as such reevaluations pass more and more into conventional wisdom. Which is good; I'm just contrasting that with the early Abstracts, when the field was wide open and suggesting that Gene Tenace was a better hitter than Steve Garvey was like, I don't know, hearing the Ramones for the first time. After a few introductory chapters Jaffe goes position by position, leading off with a close case study of one or two players he'd like to see go in, and then breaking down a bunch more into "The Elite" (a word that really ought to banished at this point), "The Rank and File" (sounds pejorative but it's not--basically a deserving, mid-level Hall of Famer), "The Basement" (HOF'ers who shouldn't be), and "Further Consideration" (neglected old guys, PED casualties, etc.--big Andrew Sarris fan). I wouldn't say it's as good as James's HOF book, The Politics of Glory, but it's probably more comprehensive (been a while since I read the James book). He pointedly takes James to task a couple of times, over things he wrote about Dick Allen and Simmons. Some strange and funny 19th-century stuff, as always. I think the only under-30 players who sneak into the book are Trout and Kershaw; I might have included two or three more (Altuve or Kimbrel, maybe, who are both doing well on the needs-to-be-updated HOF Monitor).

Garvey, John, Mattingly, Miller, Morris, Murphy, Parker, Simmons, Tiant & Trammell comprise Modern Baseball ballot: https://t.co/tIEYqB7pnn pic.twitter.com/WnF0pnPfpd

— Baseball Hall ⚾ (@baseballhall) November 6, 2017

main complaints i see are 'whittaker was better than most of these guys'

marvin miller had better get in tho

CHRIST

Whitaker not being on the ballot isn't a mistake, it's a blunder so bad that it eviscerates any claim to expertise of the people who made it

— Dan Szymborski (@DSzymborski) November 6, 2017

yeah, Steve Garvey in particular looks emptier than ever

i just went down a rabbit hole of MVP voting, looking at A-Tram's second place finish to George Bell in 1987. Did you guys know that Jeff Reardon finished 11th in the MVP voting that year thanks to a sparkling 4.48 ERA and 31 clutch saves?

Whitaker & Garvey had remarkably similar hitting careers. Problem is, one was a 1B, one was a good-fielding 2B. Why isn't Lou on ballot? pic.twitter.com/CfVGD4gcEf

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) November 6, 2017

Steve is just a Hollywood version of Michael Young, my only knowledge of him beyond that was as an attempted bigamist or whatever.

If you measure Garvey today against how he was viewed during the '70s--sure HOF'er, 200-hit machine, I think even clutch because he'd knock in 100 runs--his limitations are painfully obvious. The list of underappreciated players who were clearly more valuable than him--Reggie Smith, the two Evans, Grich, Tenace, etc.--is long.

But if you measure him against the way James wrote about him in the first few Abstracts--he was basically became a piñata for the first wave of sabermetricians--he's a little better than the caricature. He played in a pitchers' park in a mostly low-offense decade. His career OPS+ is 117, 130 for his '74-80 prime. The career mark puts him in the company of Rose, Beltre, Fisk, and Alomar (more defense-oriented positions, obviously; Garvey wasn't even much of a first baseman, winning a few Gold Gloves that look quite undeserved). 130 during his prime is better than I would have guessed.

Not at all saying he should be in the HOF--no way. (As a Reds fan before the Jays came along, I especially disliked him.) But from '74 to '80, at least, he was pretty solid, and not as bad as the caricature that took hold. (James himself had something of a mea culpa in the second Historical Abstract--too much so, as I remember it.) A Hollywood Michael Young is fair, although Young's OPS+ prime is 20 points lower.

"The first wave of sabermetricians..." James, Palmer, and, uh, I don't know who else. Not much of a wave.

Steve Garvey was one of the most popular and most loathed players of the 70s and early 80s. I think the greasy fall from grace of the All American wonder boy is a part of the reason he fell out of flavor. The guy definitely had the 'fame' part of the equation much more than many of those players, the guy played in 5 World Series in a decade.

I grew up hating the Dodgers and that popeye armed fake, but the guy was an iconic player of that time period of baseball.

When 1B was a premium offensive position in the so-called "steroid era", Garvey's stats looked pedestrian in comparison and he wasn't mentioned in HOF discussions anymore. Now 1B is a fairly ordinary position and suddenly people are high on Garvey again.

i bet Don Sutton isn't.

Heh. Didn't know about this.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1978/08/26/dodger-incident-smacks-of-schoolyard-scuffle/bbadb544-6b9c-44bd-bfa1-7103f001a95a/?utm_term=.085b10ecda4b

A team that was boisterously confident until its two most famous players - Steve Garvey and Don Sutton - wrestled and punched each other on the locker room floor last Sunday, is now houned by petty humiliations.

The free-spirited Sutton has had to stand in the public pillory and pray for forgiveness. Sutton, long on the record as a born-again, has called the entire incident a message from God for him to reexamine his life.

What was Sutton's sin? He told the truth in a judicious and rather carefully worded way.

Garvey, an exemplary player with a sly, needling sense of humor, has appeared on national televison - his eye blood-red, his face scratched, his pride tattered - to explain that he felt pushed past the point of endurance and that he had to answer with this fists.

Sutton and Garvey, once neighbors as well as teammates, may never look each other in the eye again - unless their bronze busts are on opposite walls of the Hall of Fame.

I encourage the "Modern Era Committee" to put Marvin Miller in the Hall of Fame. His importance to the game ranks with Ruth and Robinson.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) November 6, 2017

beltran: will he get into the HOF/should he get into the HOF?

i'm thinking: eventually/probably, but i think he was definitely a bit of a compiler vs a dominant peak type. it also reminds me how Jim Edmonds definitely didn't deserve a one-and-done ballot fate.

neither did kenny lofton

meanwhile bernie "i'm actually not as good as them" williams managed to stick around for a couple years.

bernie hated that nickname at first but grew to love it

https://deadspin.com/carlos-beltran-did-it-all-1820401309