hall of fame, next vote...

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.

wiki:

Players who met first-year eligibility requirements but were not selected by the screening committee for inclusion on the ballot were: Matt Belisle, Gregor Blanco, Blaine Boyer, Santiago Casilla, Brett Cecil, Jorge de la Rosa, Brian Duensing, A. J. Ellis, Doug Fister, Yovani Gallardo, Jaime García, Craig Gentry, Chris Gimenez, Jason Hammel, Chase Headley, Phil Hughes, Kevin Jepsen, Jim Johnson, Boone Logan, Ryan Madson, Brandon McCarthy, Miguel Montero, Brandon Morrow, Peter Moylan, Bud Norris, Cliff Pennington, Colby Rasmus, Adam Rosales, Marc Rzepczynski, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Denard Span, Chris Stewart, Chris Tillman, Chris Young, Eric Young Jr. and Brad Ziegler.

Chase Headley had that single great year, finished fifth in MVP voting, gold glove, silver slugger, and that was really the only season of note his entire career.

Utley, of the course, the rare player who had the (dis)honour of inspiring a rule change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiY2GtBrHug

If the Academy Awards are the Super Bowl for gay men (a joke embraced by gay men, I believe), then baseball's HOF season is the Super Bowl for _______________________? (Be gentle there, you're talking about me.)

Chase Utley is one player that fans wanted to have a catch with even if he did try to use a monkey's paw to get back into the MLB.

Four ballots in already--the Tracker:

http://www.bbhoftracker.com/

Also, Jay Jaffe seems to be a few days into his yearly rundown:

https://www.fangraphs.com/blog-roll?author=169789

I believe the posts are mostly recycled from previous years, but I assume first-time candidates get new write-ups.

Considering how many times we had to interview Jim Leyland while he was lying on the couch, having slept in his office after the previous night's game, it's only fitting he got the biggest honor of his career like this. https://t.co/QGQhscsuTe

— Jason Beck (@beckjason) December 4, 2023

Glad to hear it, but surprised Piniella again missed by a vote.

Yeah, what is the argument for picking Leyland but not Piniella? Both were MOY three times and have one WS title. Both had notable successes managing three different teams. Piniella actually won more games with a slightly better winning percentage.

The other thing is, Piniella had a good career as a player, too: ROY, MVP votes four seasons, important member of the '77/78 WS winners.

Maybe the Non-Players Committee officially isn't allowed to take that into consideration...but unofficially, you'd think that that would be hard to do.

It's kind of the Gil Hodges situation redux. When he kept falling just short as a player on the BBWAA ballots, some people said that his years as a manager should put him over the top.

He was eventually elected by the Golden Age committee as a player, but I don't they were given instructions to look only at his playing career. We've basically revived the problems with the old Veteran's Committee, there's way too much cronyism going on. Essentially, they elect who they want based on the criteria they decide for themselves.

Posnanski's column today makes the same points:

Being honest: I’m not at all sure why Leyland cruised into the Hall of Fame first time around while Piniella — who objectively has at least as good a case — has now TWICE finished one vote shy of election. It’s getting ridiculous.

Piniella fell one vote short in 2019 — that was the year that Lee Smith and, bizarrely, Harold Baines were elected. It seemed like a sure thing that Piniella would get elected next time on the ballot.

And then, here we are in 2023, and 14 of the 16 committee members are different (only Joe Torre and Andy McPhail were on both committees) and again, Piniella finished one vote shy.

I mentioned that Leyland had that persona thing...obviously Piniella had it, too, though Piniella’s persona seemed just a bit more cartoonish, lots of rage and hat throwing and kicking dirt on the plate and spitting and in-your-face arguments*.

*Though, interestingly, Leyland actually got thrown out of more games than Piniella did.

I could make a pretty compelling argument that Piniella is even more deserving of the Hall of Fame than Leyland. In fact, were it just those two guys and I had to pick only one for the Hall...I’d pick Piniella. For one thing, I’m a big believer that Hall of Fame voters should take into account the whole lifetime in baseball, and Piniella the ballplayer won Rookie of the Year, was an All-Star and was a key part of the Bronx Zoo Yankees. Leyland never played above Class AA.

But even matching them up purely as managers — well, start with their World Series victories. I rate the job Piniella did with the 1990 Reds higher than the job Leyland did with the 1996 Marlins. Piniella came into a mess, he got the Reds job after Pete Rose was banned from baseball, there were no expectations, that team did not have 30-home run hitter or a starter who ended up with more than 15 wins. What they had was a killer bullpen (the Nasty Boys!), Juan Marichal’s son-in-law as a starter (Jose Rijo), a brilliant young shortstop just coming into his own (Barry Larkin) a lunch-pail worker who drove a Ford Escort and wore glasses at third base (Chris Sabo) and a hot-headed right fielder who found his power groove (Paul O’Neill).

And that team came together somehow, some way, knocked out Jim Leyland’s more talented Pirates and somehow swept the Bash Brothers A’s in the World Series. That was just about as good a managerial job as anyone can do.

And yes, that was Piniella’s only pennant, while Leyland had two others. But Piniella managed the 1995 Mariners to their greatest triumph — that ALDS victory over the Yankees — and managed the 2001 Mariners to an incredible 116 victories. He also managed the 2008 Cubs to 97 wins — the Cubs actually led the league in runs that year, though if you look at the lineup it would be hard to figure out exactly how.

Piniella won more games with a higher win percentage.

Look, that’s just me trying to make the Piniella argument...I could play the other side, too. The point is that it’s IMPOSSIBLY close between Leyland and Piniella and it makes no sense at all to me that Piniella would twice finish just short of election while Leyland sails in. If you’re going to put one in, put ’em both in.

I was looking at Jay Jaffe's Fangraphs HOF post on Carlos Beltran today:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jaws-and-the-2024-hall-of-fame-ballot-carlos-beltran/

God, that's long--almost 6,500 words. (Pasted it onto a Google Doc.) That's like 10-15% of a book.

hadn't checked in on the HOF tracker in a minute, and not much new to report but:

a whopping 15 ballots are in -- Beltre is at 100%, Mauer is at 80%, Utley is at 60%.

I've been checking in every few days...Really small sample, but I wonder if there's an outside chance of 100% for Beltre? There's zero rationale for not voting for him, but then that's been true of dozens of players who weren't unanimous. I'm still not sure how Mariano dodged that. The writers' vote does get more informed over time, though.

i think Mariano being probably twice as valuable as any other closer in the history of the game, plus his fairly unassailable clutch credentials, really put him into the stratosphere. he's sort of the Gretzky of RPs. no one else was close.

i think some fool will withhold a vote for Beltre. probably more than one.

Mariano deserved it, no argument, it was more the timing I found puzzling. A few years after the writers seem to conclude that closers shouldn't get anywhere near a Cy Young, they make a closer the first unanimous HOF pick.

i think it really probably was just his breathtaking consistency and dominance at that position, i guess. plus two things can be true, closers deserve HOF enshrinement (the bar should be vv high, and Rivera cleared that bar to such an unprecedented degree), but on a season-by-season basis, it's hard to argue they ever deserve Cy Young over a starting pitcher, let alone MVP over a batter. I do think the one year where Rivera probably should have beaten the Cy winner in the vote (2005, vs Bartolo), is also a year where the winner should actually have been Santana.

Not to fixate on this one narrow point, but 3/440 writers didn't vote for Jr. in 2016; I'm assuming that one, two, or all of three of those writers voted for Rivera three years later. If I'm right, would love to hear their rationale.

i personally would probably not care to

the only thing I can imagine is a voter who believes that a first round HOF should be the very best at that specific position, literally the #1 player. So Mariano is the greatest RP of all time, whereas Ken Griffey Jr was merely one of the top ___?

Possible, but looking around online--there are a couple of pieces and a Reddit thread asking the same question--I think they're might be a simpler explanation: strategic voting. That was right in the middle of the logjam:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_2016.shtml

Steroids aside, the top 20 on the list, right down to Edmonds, are all HOF caliber, and I think voters were still a little unclear if the PED players were viable candidates. By 2019, things have cleared up a little:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_2019.shtml

Fewer obvious candidates, PED players more clearly not viable. So maybe those three voters felt they had room enough not to leave Rivera off to make room for someone else.

No logjam this year, so leaving off Beltre for that reason would be quite unnecessary.

there/their/they're--will work on that.

They jumped to 27 ballots.

http://www.bbhoftracker.com/

I'd say Beltre has a chance at 100%. The precedent of no-unanimity no longer applies, so that excuse can't be used, and there's lots of room on the ballot, so no need to strategize.

And Utley's support is a lot shakier than Mauer's thus far.

(Which was always a terrible excuse: "I'm still really angry that Christy Mathewson wasn't elected unanimously, so I'm passing on Greg Maddux.")

I'm not surprised Mauer has more support than Utley, but I am surprised it's that wide a gap (thus far.) I'm maybe more surprised Jimmy Rollins has picked up two votes, he at best feels like a Hall of *almost* very good type player.

Gonna be real annoyed* when scheff doesnt get in

*not really but also yeah kinda really bc scheff is ill

Beltre will not be 100%

Beltre will not be 100%

Yep Bill Ballou didn't vote.for him

Rangers third baseman Adrian Beltre waves to the crowd in Seattle as he leaves his final game, in 2018.
Beltre will get plenty of support, and maybe even make it on this year’s first ballot. There are voters who are passionate about Beltre’s qualifications, and those qualifications are impressive.

The last five Hall ballots cast by this voter, however, have all only included the elite of the elite, which is what Cooperstown is supposed to be all about. Only eight players have received this vote — Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Roy Halladay, Derek Jeter, David Ortiz, Rivera, Ramirez and Rodriguez.

Beltre was good, but not as good as anyone in that group.

😵‍💫