hall of fame, next vote...

Said it before but mcgriff being as far as we know a “clean” dude, maybe that tips him a bit more into the HOF discussion. I don’t necessarily think HOF caliber guys who maybe/probably/definitely juiced should be kept outta the hall (though I’m not shedding any tears either tbh) but it’s good to contextualize freddy’s numbers a bit in light of all that. Bonus points for the nickname.

How did he even get that name?!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGruff_the_Crime_Dog

Ya that was a dumb question. Had a night and still not at my best just yet.

Unanimous for Fred!

(Fuckhead McGee and everyone else passed over.)

Mattingly - 8/16
McGee - 7/16
Murphy - 6/16

Everyone else fewer than 4 votes.

Did not expect unanimous at all!! Guess he goes in as a brave?

happy for him

Braves probably make the most sense, but wouldn't be surprised if he's one of those hatless guys.

Keeping with the idea of how consistent he was:

A.L. - 10 seasons, .284/.384/.506, 132 OPS+, 28.4 WAR
N.L. - 10 seasons, .284/.370/.512, 137 OPS+, 24.3 WAR

Almost twice as many bWAR with the Jays as with the Braves, but he won a WS in Atlanta, and played in two there, so if he does pick a team, probably them.

Shd go in in the emanski hat not joking

Being Canadian, had to look that up!

http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T-TYMPQSbE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T-TYMPQSbE

What did Willie McGee do? I don't recall any controversy as a player or a coach about the dude other that Howard Cosell making fun of how he looked as a cheap shot.

lol i too was offended by the use of willie's surname in such a manner

i think yous owe him an apology

I watched the announcement online, and they didn't even have him set up for a phone call--not fair.

Very important:

Never forget that Fred McGriff makes an appearance in Home Alone pic.twitter.com/SsJLBU9Bef

— Three Year Letterman (@3YearLetterman) December 5, 2022

McGriff's entry gets my full endorse ment.

Brady Anderson hit 50 HR that year. in 2001, at the age of 37, he hit 31 HR and knocked in 102; that was the year Luis Gonzalez--Luis Gonzalez--hit 57 HR.

have we on ilb accused brady anderson of juicing?

or merely of having the most insane outlying season of all time?

I am, to be honest, definitely insinuating that those two totals were assisted by PEDs. Why would they stop? I can see where those seasons were such eyebrow-raising outliers (as opposed, to say, all the Greg Vaughns and Jim Edmonds who were power hitters already, and jumping from 30 HR a year to 40-45), they thought "Well, I got away with this this year, maybe better not press my luck"). But it's a good question and a fair point.

New popular theory ALSO involves the ball being juiced in that time frame

Right. I think there were non-juicing guys who benefitted from that (and two expansions, and maybe all the new parks being built, although I don't know if they helped on balance), and other guys who threw PEDs into the mix, and then there are Anderson's '96 season and Gonzalez's '99 season where you just have say wait a minute--really? 50 HR for a guy who never hit more than 24? 57 for a guy whose career-high is 31?

Of the two of them, Anderson using then stopping would be the harder one to explain. By '99, I recall that suspicion was mounting quickly about inflated HR totals; I could see Gonzalez feeling a spotlight on him. But I don't think the subject was even being discussed in '96.

could have just had an off year. you still gotta hit it.

Story of his career: Fred already bumped off mlb.com's front page by all of today's news.

We've got a Tom Emanski shout-out from Fred McGriff in his Hall of Fame press conference: "This ain’t my Tom Emanski hat. It’s a whole lot better."

— Emma Baccellieri (@emmabaccellieri) December 6, 2022

I know it played almost no role in why he got in, but McGriff was really durable. From his first full season with the Jays in '88 to his age-37 season in 2001, he never played fewer than 144 games or had fewer than 586 PA. Except for the two strike seasons, that is, where he played 113/114 games in '94 and 144/144 in '95. For those 14 seasons in total, he played 97.5% of his team's games.

McGriff was sort of a Willie Stargell type, minus the 40 HR seasons (he'd have had one of those, and 500+ for his career, if there was no strike) and the MVP award. I also always enjoyed his swing, that windmill thing he did was shockingly effective. And this isn't some Jack Morris revisionist history, but at his peak ('88-'94, every year in the top 4 in HR) he was a very intimidating hitter.

Not sure when the voting started, but they've got 64 votes in so far.

Leaderboard: http://www.bbhoftracker.com/2022/11/2023-bbhof-tracker-summary-and-leaderboard/

Spreadsheet: https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=F2E5D8FC5199DFAF!47464&ithint=file%2cxlsx&authkey=!AOiVOHV1SzKLAR0

Always hard to glean much from early voting, but Andruw Jones (68%) doing much better than I expected.

Vizquel getting fast-tracked to irrelevance in these discussions

Sheffield made zero gains last year but this year he’s picked up a decent number of votes. It’s not a Larry Walker type surge tho.

Helton and Rolen both around the same number of votes but if I had to bet money on one making I’d put it on Rolen. Wagner continuing to make strides.

Mark Buehrle looking like the type of guy who will linger on these ballots forever.

jeez, mark buehrle was incredibly durable for his era. did he ever miss time on the DL? except for his partial debut season and his final season, he pitched 200+ innings every single year. in his final season, 2015, he pitched 198.2 innings, which, you know, let's just round up to 200 there.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30372428/why-everybody-vote-andy-pettitte-hall-fame

(xpost) John Gibbons tried his damnedest to get Buehrle those 200 innings in 2015; gave up five hits and eight runs in 0.2 innings against the Rays his final start. (All eight unearned...don't remember how that happened.) Cost us homefield advantage in the playoffs, and that did end up mattering.

Also: he was starting on one day's rest!

yeooooooowch. kind of a crappy way to toss your last regular season game, too!

Interesting to compare Andruw Jones and Torii Hunter. Not that they're much alike, but a) both have a ton of Gold Gloves (10 consecutive for Jones, 9 consecutive for Hunter) and the same OPS+ for their careers (111 for Jones, 110 for Hunter). Hunter was still playing well in his late 30s, Jones decline and early exit started at 30/31. Jones is ahead in bWAR (62.7 to 50.7); in voting, he leads Hunter 68.6% to 0.0% at the moment.

Weird thing is how Hunter hasn’t lost any votes so technically still on track for +5%

i love mark buehrle and the dewayne wise perfect game is one of my top memorable sports moments but he is not a hall of famer

At least in terms of bWAR, Buehrle and Sabathia and Pettitte match up well. Sabathia will probably go in, not sure about Pettitte, and yeah, I think Buehrle will be overlooked.

Pettitte feels like a vet committee shoo-in (w their current standards) — at least he was way better than Jack Morris for sure. But then again Buehrle was also a bit better than Morris.

Get the feeling these guys just need to wait it out till they get an ex-manager and two or three ex-teammates on the committee. (Contrary to what I've always thought about the BBWAA vote, being well-travelled might be an advantage with the VC.)

I notice that Jaffe's ballot is in (looks like he wrote about it on Fangraphs): Abreu, Beltran, Helton, Jones, Rolen, Sheffield, Wagner. Find yes on Sheffield and no on Manny/A-Rod odd, especially when he's only filling seven spots on his ballot; and I guess he's giving Beltran a pass.

Maybe he’s weird like me in that ARod and manny got busted after MLB had clear rules and testing in place that they were suspended for breaking and Sheff (along with Bonds and McGwire etc) played before when it was a lot more grey and never had to be disciplined for breaking the rules.

yes:

As I’ve said repeatedly throughout this series, when it comes to connections to PEDs, I draw a line between those whose allegations date to the time when the game had no testing regimen or means of punishment (i.e., prior to 2004) and those that came afterwards. With no means of enforcing a paper ban, and with players flouting such a ban being rewarded left and right amid what was truly a complete institutional failure that implicated team owners, the commissioner, and the players union as well as the players, I simply don’t think voters can apply a retroactive morality to that period.

With Bonds, Clemens and Sosa gone, that stance has less impact upon this ballot, but it does keep Sheffield in the clear on that front, and it has me crossing Ramirez and Rodriguez off my list. On a performance-only basis, both would get my vote, and likewise if their failing the supposedly anonymous 2003 survey test were their only PED-related transgression. A-Rod is one of seven players with at least 3,000 hits and 500 homers, and he ranks 12th in WAR among all position players, but his full-season suspension for using PEDs bought from the Biogenesis clinic from 2010-12 is a black mark I can’t overlook. Likewise with regards to Manny. He’s one of the greatest hitters of all time; his 154 OPS+ ranks 20th among players with at least 7,000 PA, but I still can’t get past the two failed tests, not when better players who never tested positive are being kept out. Every year, I consider whether it’s time to take a new approach with such candidates, but this isn’t the year I’m changing my mind.

Note that I have not used allegations of domestic violence to disqualify candidates from consideration, though such matters are far more serious than PEDs. I can certainly understand voters choosing to rule such candidates out.

Okay, that makes sense. I'll have to think about how that squares with some other things he's allowing.

I sent a version of that Andruw Jones/Torii Hunter post to James a couple of days ago, mentioning that I was iffy on Jones in the HOF. Hard to tell, but it doesn't sound like he's big on Jones:

"Andruw Jones is not 'iffy'; Andruw Jones is a completely unqualified candidate who has sort of inexplicably developed a base of delusional fans who imagine that he should be a Hall of Famer."

It's actually Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera who have made me more open to Jones's candidacy. I used to be adamant that a HOF'er had to have a reasonable amount of value in his 30s (putting aside the special case of Koufax). But after watching those two guys drift aimlessly and sometimes haplessly for 5-10 years, and realizing their careers would look better if they'd retired at 32 or 33, I'm moving away from that view. Not easy.

I mean, cabrera and jones might be decent comps, but putting pujols in that conversation seems a little insulting

I meant Pujols from 2013-2021--that his career would look better if he'd retired after 2012.