hall of fame, next vote...

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.

Dude. I think James doesn’t like you

He's got those sarcastic quotation marks around "iffy"--I think you might be right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TELi8M4nkYs

I used to be adamant that a HOF'er had to have a reasonable amount of value in his 30s

I agree to an extent, but I think we're also somewhat biased by the inner circle HOFers of the 50's and 60's (e.g. Mays, Aaron) who were great until age 40, and to some extent the 300 game winners from the 70's onwards (Carlton, Seaver, Unit, Maddux, ...). Plenty of HOFer flamed out in their early 30's. Duke Snider (to name one example) had no good seasons past the age of 30, and was basically a compiler. His comps on BR include Jim Edmonds, Larry Walker, Jim Rice, Moises Alou, and interestingly enough, Andruw Jones. All of them are borderline or at least debatable HOFers.

We could find plenty of hitters from the 20's and 30's who put up video game numbers for a few years in that era, and were essentially done in their early 30's. Many of them were elected via questionable means under the old veteran's committee rules, which is another issue entirely, but the point is that there are many HOFers with 7-8 great years who didn't have much value in their 30's or were simply compilers. Maybe it all comes down to one's opinion on Big Hall vs Small Hall, I'm not sure.

Good point that I hadn't considered. Some of your views take shape early, and my fandom traces to the '70s, possibly the heyday of the 300/500/3,000 benchmarks--wouldn't be surprised if those three numbers were reached more times during the '70s than any decade ever. The other thing that I know had a big influence on me was the MacMillan encyclopedia, where I loved looking at career boxes that had lots of black ink right into and through the 30s. (And where I picked up this weird quirk of favoring players who never had a bad season--including even rookie call-ups of 100 ABs.)

Perhaps I exaggerated by saying that Duke Snider wasn't good past age 30, he was a 1-2 win player partly because of injuries but was still a pale imitation of what he was at his peak. I think his comps basically sum up the quality of player he was, historically speaking.

Another thing: it's almost impossible now for great players to fade away in their 30's like in the old days, because anyone at a superstar level gets a long term FA contract or extension and plays until they get old no matter how bad they are. If Pujols or Miggy had played in an era of one year contracts, they'd probably have finished their careers years ago. It's "easier" for an overpayed veteran to compile stats and pad a HOF resume.

Voting deadline was yesterday, so public votes should step up in the next few days. Rolen and Helton are holding on with a quarter of votes declared, and Wagner's close.

One point for Wagner is his final season, which was better even than Rivera's celebrated final season. I'm going to start a related thread.

Something I didn't know about John Lackey (on the ballot this year): "He is one of only three pitchers — Jack Morris and Bullet Joe Bush being the other two — who started for three different World Series-winning teams."

Obviously came up well short, but that's something. (I used to think of John Lackey and Jon Lester as the Goldschmidt-Freeman of their day.)

when i think of john lackey, i think "salty"

it's not an adjective i use or think of very often. but i heard it all the time with john lackey, and now i do it too

Inside of a week till they announce (Jan. 24). It's going to be close--could be zero, one, two, or three players go in: with ~40% of the votes public, Rolen and Helton are at 79%, Wagner's at 73%. (Jones, only in his sixth year and at 68%, would seem to be in great shape for the future.)

Lackey definitely belongs in the “pitchers who talk to themselves” hall of fame

Baseball gif hall of fame

That actually sounds like a fun thread

Not sure if Mark Fidrych gets in or not; technically he talked to the baseball.

HOF vote updates:

R.A. Dickey and Huston Street now each have one vote