hall of fame, next vote...

dan shaughnessy voted for rivera and no one else

We were talking about another guy like that earlier (who was submitting a blank ballot, I think). I honestly think that anyone who submits a ballot with one or no names on it in order to make some symbolic point should be taken off the list. I'm not talking about a full or near-full ballot that leaves off PED names--that's a personal decision, still defensible I believe (though admittedly cloudier and cloudier after Selig and others go in...and I'm not really looking to argue about the others for the nine millionth time), and there are lots of deserving non-PED names if you choose to go that route. But if not you're not voting for anyone (or for only one), why are you voting?

"But if you're not voting..."

Martinez is over the hump at this point, seemingly; he missed election last year by 20 votes, he's picked up a net of 25 votes from returning voters this year. Walker has picked up 46.

Bonds and Clemens have still only picked up three votes each. I think they'll finish in the high 50s again.

I think Mussina is going to miss out by a couple percentage points, maybe...

Jamie Malanowski is mookieproof.

http://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/opinion/baseball-hall-of-fame-bill-james.html

i was a much better little league player

Just looked at the list of writers who are in there (kind of, sort of):

http://baseballhall.org/discover-more/awards/884

Jayson Stark? Jesus--going by the book of his I read, I'm quite certain Harold Baines is a better writer.

james should totally be in, of course. but probably not before marvin miller

Made the same comparison on Facebook, in that they were both apostates...although, I added, the owners always hated Miller because they thought he cost them money (he didn't, on balance, I don't think), whereas James led to hiring people who theoretically help them spend their money smarter. So they'd have no reason to freeze him out.

Walker's jump is almost too good to be true. This is the same player who dropped from 20% to 10% in his first four years on the ballot. Those were crowded ballots, and now the writers are starting to catch up with the backlog of great players, but it's still an amazing story.

mussina's gonna miss by one vote, isn't he

when do they announce?

right now

they should make dan shaughnessy announce it

I'm watching MLB's introductory film, and it looks like Mussina made it.

Mussina!!!

He did get in.

Mariano got 100%

Whoa--100%! Thank god that's over with.

Walker (54%) and Vizquel (42%) really moved towards each other--not good.

So Bonds and Clemens didn't crack 60%, Placido Polanco got a vote!!!

it looks like Walker made up approximately half of the additional vote total he'd need to get in next year. He missed by 173 in 2018, missed by approx 87 or 88 this year. Plus I think the cleared-up ballot helps him out considerably. Lots of writers suggested they'd vote for him if they had more room, others are "willing to listen".

sorry, TWO votes for Polanco.

Walker ended up farther back than I thought he'd be...I was expecting at least 60-65%. But the light ballot and last-year push should be enough next year (more writers will be advocating for him all year like Posnanski's been doing). What did Helton get? I missed that.

Mariano Rivera 425 (100%) 1
Roy Halladay 363 (85.4%) 1
Edgar Martinez 363 (85.4%) 10
Mike Mussina 326 (76.7%) 6
Curt Schilling 259 (60.9%) 6
Roger Clemens 253 (59.5%) 7
Barry Bonds 251 (59.1%) 7
Larry Walker 232 (54.6%) 9
Omar Vizquel 182 (42.8%) 2
Fred McGriff 169 (39.8%) 10
Manny Ramirez 97 (22.8%) 3
Jeff Kent 77 (18.1%) 6
Billy Wagner 71 (16.7%) 4
Todd Helton 70 (16.5%) 1
Scott Rolen 73 (17.2%) 2
Gary Sheffield 58 (13.6%) 5
Andy Pettitte 42 (9.9%) 1
Sammy Sosa 36 (8.5%) 7
Andruw Jones 32 (7.5%) 2
Michael Young 9 (2.1%) 1
Lance Berkman 5 (1.2%) 1
Miguel Tejada 5 (1.2%) 1
Roy Oswalt 4 (0.9%) 1
Placido Polanco 2 (0.5%) 1

(vote total, percentage, year on ballot)

Walker went from 34.1% to 54.6%. The same next year would of course put him at 75.1%.

That is a long uphill climb for Helton, but he starts with James and Posnanski as advocates.

Bonds' percentage has gone up in five straight years. McGriff got a nice bump to nearly 40 percent that probably bodes well for his chances on getting elected via the Baines route.

Jeter's unanimous election is a virtual lock now. He might even get 110% of the votes, because he was just that special as a player.

historically, there's always a very big push in the year before players are elected, but the final push is several points more. That was the case for Mussina and Edgar.

Bonds went up 2.7% vs Clemens' 2.2%. That's like a yearly L.A. rent control increase.

Posnanski says that McGriff is a lock the minute he shows up on whatever VC ballot he fits. At which point the Delgado situation reemerges--it never ends!

Andruw Jones went up 0.2% over last season. Manny 0.8%.

who the hell voted for placido polanco

I'd bet probably a beat writer from Philly or Detroit.

Polanco played a long time and was a solid middle infielder. The guy added up 10 more WAR runs than Ray Durham or Brandon Phillips in just about the same amount of games. I was mildly surprised Polanco's career batting average was .297.

Polanco is possibly a more arguable vote than Michael Young. That dude had six (emptier than you think) 200-hit seasons, was basically a Steve Garvey type with a far lower WAR, all minus the essential key party vibe.

i don't really mean to poop on placido; he was a good player

not to mention that he matched harold baines in fWAR and beat him in bWAR. but if you have a sub-100 career OPS+/wRC+ you better have been a legendary fielder like ozzie

Stoked for Mussina, that's great

if Twitter had always been around, lotsa players woulda got 100%

The threat of being shamed on social media helps in getting voters to toe the line, yeah. But I think there's more to it, in the past, a voter could claim that he never really got to watch players in the other league, giving him a somehat plausible reason for not voting for a clear HOFer. Now there's no excuse for anyone not to be fully informed. We've almost worked through the candidacies of the so-called steroid era stars, so there won't be any more "excuses" to leave someone off.

such a lot of fuss over a guy who threw one inning a night

I thought the longtime no-unanimous-selections was primarily grounded in sportswriters who objected to the early guys--Ruth and Cobb especially--not being voted in unanimously, and if they weren't, they'd make sure that no one would be. I'm not sure what the window on that factor was...from the '40s right through to the '70s? Mixed in with pockets of racism when it came to a Mays or an Aaron.

even w/ white guys like Seaver or Mantle, they were just being dicks.

That's almost the only explanation as to why, say, a Seaver or Ripken wasn't unanimous--stray voters who held to the silly if-not-Ruth-no-one principle.

The first question for the Hall of Famers is about Edgar's batting average against Mo. "Why do you have to say that," Mo said jumping up. "Why do you have to say the number???"

— Lindsey Adler (@lindseyadler) January 23, 2019

.579/.652/.1.053 in 23 plate appearances...

https://www.mlb.com/cut4/edgar-martinezs-amazing-stats-vs-pitchers-in-his-hall-of-fame-class/c-302992870

rivera becomes the third hall of famer with zero hits, following jack morris and walter alston (who isn't in for his playing)

rivera: 0-for-3, K, BB, RBI
morris and alston were both 0-for-1, but morris did score four runs

trevor hoffman also had more RBIs (5) than hits (4)

James seems to have taken on a new cause: Bobby Abreu.

So I’m actually (possibly irrationally) annoyed that Halladay isn’t going inas a Jay. Like wtf does his wife have against it?

It's weird--not quite as weird as when Maddux did the same, but still weird. I don't think it's irrational for a Jays fan not to be happy.