hall of fame, next vote...

If you're interested in watching today's inductions:

https://www.mlb.com/video/live-2023-hof-awards-presentation-72852

Oops--awards, not inductions.

Had no idea Sportsnet's Shi Davidi was the current president of the BBWAA.

Now that McGriff is in, ensconced in velvet, I hope Delgado's cause is taken up by someone. He wouldn't be at the top of my list--I'd put Whitaker, Lofton, Tiant, and Tommy John ahead of him--but I think he definitely belongs, especially as he left the game with no decline phase to speak of.

Fred's table:

https://i.postimg.cc/gkKGPJTC/hof.jpg

4,507 career HR according to the caption I saw. Seemed high to me (500 per guy), but I guess when you spread Thome's surplus around, that gets you there (and Murray and Thomas are over, and McGriff just shy).

was checking out gary sheffield's career while scanning dudes with a career bWAR of 60+ who aren't in the HOF (seems like once you get there, you've got a much better shot) and wow, 22 consecutive seasons of negative defensive value is a real neat trick. 80.7 bWAR as a batter, -27.7 as a fielder. recognizing of course he did play 302 of those 2212 career games as a DH.

Sheff had infinite cool value tho

yeah his cWAR alone is 35

It's pretty wild seeing all those guys getting old. I guess we all are getting there.

Chipper's got a bit of a Raylan Givens thing going on his chin.

Oh yeah, if you have not seen that Nolan Ryan documentary on Netflix, you really should check it out. It is amazing the list of players that give interview segments in that film and really emphasizes how long Nolan played as you got guys like Jerry Grote to Ivan Rodriquez. If you grew up on 70s-80s baseball, it's good TV.

Something that piqued my interest today: somebody on a Facebook baseball group saying that Justin Turner would probably be headed for the HOF if some team had given him a chance when he was in his 20s. Here's how he compares with some guys from age 29 onwards (I pushed it back to 29 to include his first really good season).

Chipper Jones - 1564 G, .304/.405/.525, 142 OPS+, 52.6 bWAR
Adrian Beltre - 1506 G, .299/.351/.498, 124 OPS+, 57.7 bWAR
Scott Rolen - 985 G, .279/.354/.468, 115 OPS+, 33.4 bWAR
Justin Turner - 1205 G, .294/.373/.489, 132 OPS+, 36.3 bWAR

He's not Jones or Beltre, but more durable and productive than Rolen. Not an outlandish claim--and he's still playing well at 38.

Actually, at least Beltre's equal as a hitter; obviously not in the field.

Turner revamped his swing in his late 20's, much like Jose Bautista, and became a different hitter. It's not that he wasn't given chances.

https://www.mlb.com/news/contemporary-baseball-era-committee-candidates-announced

Cito Gaston, Davey Johnson, Jim Leyland, Ed Montague, Hank Peters, Lou Pinella, Joe West, Bill White...Didn't the Jays--maybe Gaston in particular--used to have all sorts of trouble with Joe West? The Immaculate Grid concept might be useful here in predicting who goes in: find guys who played for the most managers/executives in that group and go from there.

Two umpires. Guessing they're big, big analytic guys.

Anyway, this year it's Modern Day, since 1980. So, hoping for any of the following: Whitaker, Lofton, Delgado. I don't know if Dwight Evans would count--his best years came after 1980, so maybe. Pitchers? I don't know if anyone will ever emerge from that '80s quagmire: Stieb, Cone, Fernando. Am I forgetting someone obvious?

I am. Kevin Brown, Hershiser, and there are others.

Whitaker seems like the most likely out of that group, probably followed by Dwight Evans if he were to be included. I think a guy like Kevin Brown definitely deserves some more consideration. By most HOF standards he would deserve it. Stieb was a guy who felt like the best pitcher on the planet for many years. Despite the win totals, I think he should get a serious look. Jim Edmonds?

I thought Edmonds might still be on the regular ballot...must have forgotten he was one and out in 2016. Which is ridiculous.

Dunno if this is well known or not among you much bigger baseball fans than I, but I never forgot this great quote from Jim Leyland, set up here by OG Deadspin:

He was being interviewed by then-ESPNer Chris Myers, who was asking him about his well-publicized tendency to smoke cigarettes in the dugout. Leyland paused for a moment, put his head down and delivered the obligatory platitudes about how bad smoking is for you, how children should avoid smoking, how he knows it's unhealthy. Then he looked directly into the camera, his eyes very wide, and said, "Still. Smokers out there, you know what I'm talking about. That moment, after you've had a huge meal, say at Thanksgiving, when you step outside in the cold, light up a cigarette and take a deep inhale ... that's about the best moment in the world, you know? All the smokers out there, you know that feeling. Sometimes, smoking is fantastic." Myers quickly cut to commercial, and Leyland has never been on the show since.

I am not a smoker and pretty much buy into the "obligatory platitudes," but you gotta love a guy who just can't be helped from being honest about how he feels about things.

i used to smoke and that fucking hits

david cone is an interesting case, he didn't even get to 200 wins but he was clearly a HOF-level pitcher from '88-'99. the problem is he didn't do much of anything prior to or after that era. i think he was on that second tier of guys during the big 4 period (Clemens, Johnson, Martinez, Maddux), just as good as Smoltz, Glavine, Mussina, and better than Pettitte.

he came in at the end of that weird period for pitchers too, where so many of the best guys wound up with a career limited by injury or other factors. Hershiser, Viola, Guidry, and of course arguably the best pitcher of the '80s after Clemens and peak Gooden was Bret Saberhagen, for example, just absolutely a remarkable guy. if he were to be inducted on his peak value, and if the MLB HOF was more like the NBA HOF in that respect, he's a guy who might deserve it. he was an unluckier version of Zack Greinke.

i still think they should throw a bone to Rick Reuschel someday too.

Reuschel's definitely in line for reconsideration too--he'll have to wait for whatever era is pre-1980 to come up again. (I think--does it go by what year you debut?) A lot of position players from that era too: Grich, Nettles, Reggie Smith, others. I really believe--and hope--that Munson will end up in the HOF eventually: his similarity to Posey in so many ways was much commented on a couple of years ago, and obviously Posey is going in.

How badly did I fuck this sequence of posts up? The eight guys I mentioned aren't the voters this year--they're the nominees! Not a single player (seeing as Bill White is up for his executive time). I don't get it.

Anyway, here's Posnanski's post. Sentiment aside, it's probably hard to make an argument for Cito (best one I can think of: only one less WS than Bochy and more historically significant).

https://open.substack.com/pub/joeposnanski/p/friday-rewind-snakes-alive?r=1jtu0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Maybe there's a separate ballot for players...who can keep track of this anymore?

Pinella is not well aiui so i could see him pulling a reverse dick allen

Pulling a reverse dick Allan definitely sounds like something

There are now three committees that rotate votes each year:

-Contemporary Players (2022, 2025)
-Contemporary Non-Players (2023, 2026)
-Classic Era (both players and non-players) (2024, 2027)

Thanks. Same question as above: do they go by year of debut, or by when your best years/biggest contribution happened? It would be weird to slot Whitaker (rookie year 1977) as "classic era."

How the living shit is Joe West a nominee? That turd, prima donna umpire was probably the chief inspiration for Angel Hernandez. If his bloated, smug face is in the hall before Bonds, burn the whole thing down

John Huston explained that in Chinatown.

Jay Jaffe on West: "He’s the first umpire to reach the ballot from a period where we can track his performance thanks to instant replay and Statcast, which may not work in his favor."

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/managers-umpires-and-executives-get-their-hall-of-fame-shot-via-2024-contemporary-baseball-ballot/

Pinella looks like a shoo-in; only missed by one vote the year Baines and Lee Smith were elected.

Also the answer to my question in that piece: "dedicated to candidates in those categories who made their greatest impact from 1980 to the present."

Speaking of Jim Edmonds (above), I see he's really stepped in it.

he's kind of embarrassing in most off-the-field respects

do i want to know?

Nothing criminal is about the best you can say.

i was checking out active bWAR leaders and seeing deGrom w/42.1 (pitching WAR) over a mere 1356.1 IP made me wonder what his career rate per 200 IP was compared to others. i thought Pedro Martinez might be a good comparison.

Martinez: 86.1 bWAR/2827.1 IP = 6.1 bWAR per 200 IP
deGrom: 42.1 bWAR/1356.1 IP = 6.2 bWAR per 200 IP

Clemens is at 5.6, Randy Johnson 5.0

Apples and modern architecture, but just out of curiosity:

Mariano: 56.3 bWAR/1283.2 IP = 8.7 bWAR per 200 IP

There are probably at least a dozen closers higher than Pedro.

I thought that might be the case, but I'm thinking it might not be that many. Kimbrel is about where Pedro and deGrom are (and likely to drop below, if i had to bet money), Hader is close, Chapman isn't there, nor is Jansen. Guys like Sutter, Hoffman, Smith, Quisenberry, Gossage, etc just aren't anywhere near. Rivera was just absolutely remarkable to such a high degree, the exception to so many rules.

Separately speaking, I forgot Quisenberry had five top 5 Cy ballot finishes, plus finished third in MVP voting in 1984 (among a few other high placements.) They really thought saves were a stat on par with home runs back then. And in 1984 Cal Ripken finished at the bottom of the list of players who received votes, with a bWAR of 10.0(!)

When I first bought Pete Palmer's Total Baseball, it was eye-opening that he had Ripken's '84 season rated higher than his MVP season from the year before.

The HOF ballot was released today:

https://www.mlb.com/news/2024-hall-of-fame-ballot-released

Haven't had a chance to look at it. Obviously Beltre will go in first try--guessing 90-95%.

Utley and Mauer will be two of the more heavily debated candidates of recent times (Utley especially); classic peak vs. career players.

I suspect Mauer will get close, and might get in. I'm kind of envisioning something between 55% and 65% maybe. He was just such a great hitter. That mvp season is probably the key deciding factor that will ultimately get him enshrined but he was no joke for the rest of his career.

Utley's peak was remarkable, and he's not a bad comp to Ryne Sandberg in some ways but Sandberg had his absolute best years scattered all over his career rather than clustered together, his off-years weren't nearly as off (Utley had a really steep decline), plus his extensive hardware and legend-making moments made it a bit easier for him. And if it took Sandberg three(!) tries to get in, I figure it might take Utley at least that long even with the wider acceptance of advanced stats helping him.

I was just looking at Utley's five-year peak--pretty great, for sure. And Jaffe has him ranked as the 12th greatest ever, ahead of both Alomar and Biggio. He's not my favourite kind of candidate--I do have a bit of a hang-up about consistency and longevity--but he'll probably go in within three or four years.

For the guys who got close last time: Helton (72.2%), yes; Wagner (68.1%)...normally you'd say yes for sure, but with a closer, there's maybe a small chance he peaked--but probably yes; Andruw (58.1%), would be shocked if he jumped 17%. Sheffield's last year on the ballot; don't think so. Beltran's second year, started at 45%--? Jays question: will Bautista last a second year on the ballot?

K-Rod received 10.8% in year one. The closer thing is just so weird to me. He's a guy who was never as good as someone like also-rans Joe Nathan or Tom Henke, and about as good as Papelbon. I guess because of that single season save record, he gets some props. I wonder how long he'll last on the ballot.

If Posey is a HOFer, which seemed to be the consensus when he retired, then Mauer should be too.

Mauer played for longer and accumulated more stats, but surprisingly Posey had a better OPS+ (129 vs 124). I always thought of Mauer as the far better hitter, but maybe that's wrong.

I was thinking that catcher might be one position where WS wins carry a certain amount of HOF weight, but that didn't seem to help Munson or Posada. I expect Posey will have quicker passage than Mauer. And I don't understand the Hall's long-standing resistance to Munson.