2014-15 Hall of Fame elections

http://baseballhall.org/hall-of-fame/2015-golden-era-committee-ballot

Dick Allen #1 for me. Maybe Minnie Minoso and no one else.

Can somewhat remind me why the "golden era" cuts off in 1972? Something to do with the introduction of the DH the next year? Or is each "era" exactly 25 years arbitrarily?

If Gillick is in, then shouldn't Howsam deserve to get too?

Dick Allen is deserving, but is there any momentum behind his candidacy?

Besides the SB's, Wills never struck me as a very good player.

Tiant is better than a lot of pitchers already in the Hall. But Kaat will probably get more votes (because of the wins).

Hodges will probably get around 60% of the vote for the 100th time.

Can somebody translate Dick Allen's 162 game avg stats to a c.2000 offensive environment? It's probably something like peak Albert Pujols.

Wills is nowhere near deserving.

They do seem to be on a kick of inducting execs, so Howsam wouldn't surprise me. There's a case.

Bill James is on record as saying Allen was a toxin who never helped a team win. *shrug*

I doubt there's any persuasive reason for the era cutoff.

"Can somebody translate Dick Allen's 162 game avg stats to a c.2000 offensive environment? It's probably something like peak Albert Pujols."

Yup Pujols or Frank Thomas although he struck out more than either.

1. Allen, 2. Tiant, 3. Minoso or Kaat.

Jay Jaffe in BP, 3 years ago:

For as much of a character as Tiant was, he suffers in comparison to the group of 300-win peers that are already in the Hall (Tom Seaver, Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan, Gaylord Perry, Don Sutton, and Phil Niekro), as well as non-300 winners Jim Palmer, Jenkins, and Blyleven. He never won a Cy Young, never even finished higher than fourth, never led his leagues in wins or strikeouts, and made only three All-Star appearances; his won-loss record is a comparatively meager 229-172. He barely edges Palmer in JAWS, albeit with a lower peak. After debuting on the BBWAA ballot with a promising 30.9 percent, he never surpassed 20 percent again, sometimes falling into the single digits. In this case, the voters were correct.

He found too much mediocrity in Kaat's long career, esp the last ten years. Gave Minoso credit for the late start to his MLB career, endorsed him as worthy.

I intuitively didn't think Allen was equal to peak-era Pujols or Thomas, but Alex is right, they're all clustered around an OPS+ of 170 during their primes (Pujols a little higher, Allen a little lower). He was probably the best hitter in the game after Mays and Aaron for the '64-74 window (after which he exits quickly and retires at 35)...not sure how he compares to Frank Robinson for that decade, or Clemente, etc. Here's where his numbers stood after '74: .299/.385/.554, 319 HR, 32 years old. Coming mostly out of the '60s (with his greatest year in '72), that's pretty great. He would have been 13th or 14th on the career slugging list at that point. He was two seasons removed from his near-Triple Crown in '72; started off just as great in '73 before a season-ending injury in August, had another great 2/3 of a season in '74. If he'd had a more normal decline after that, he would have ended up with 500+ HR and maybe 2500 hits; much better than McCovey, for sure, who strung together a lot of half-seasons between 35 and 42. I can't remember what combination of health issues and his reputation (deserved or not) brought his career to a close.

One of my favorite Sports Illustrated covers:

http://www.yourememberthat.com/files/126c24a40c7563e8.jpg

As everyone knows, you should never smoke while juggling.

Actually, if you arbitrarily choose the '64-'74 period, Allen's way ahead of Mays; Willie's doesn't do a whole lot after '66, with his decline coinciding with pitcher dominance. Aaron was the best for that time frame, though.

Schoenfield's rundown:

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/53234/a-look-at-the-golden-era-hall-of-fame-ballot

Neat how close Puckett's and Olivia's stats are.

I'll be seriously pissed if Minnie don't get in.

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/102250514/randy-johnson-pedro-martinez-john-smoltz-headline-2015-hall-of-fame-ballot

Predictions for the three pitchers:
Johnson -- 96%
Pedro -- 91%
Smoltz -- I don't know...65%?

smoltz will get in bc current high profile as yakkin jock on broadcasts/all around WINNAR/ TRU WARRIORZ/CLEAN etc

Not surprisingly, there was a real push to get him in at last year's inductions. Hopefully there'll be a little more perspective after a year. He belongs in the HOF; not sure that he's a first-ballot guy in the midst of so many others who are waiting.

with Maddux and Glavine getting in 1st ballot, i'm sure Smoltz will too.

maybe this is the year Raines gets in?!
*sigh*

I'm going on the assumption that there just won't be more than three guys go in in any given year (whether there should be or not). Which leaves Johnson, Pedro, and then a maximum of two out of Biggio, Bagwell, and Piazza. I guess Smoltz could leap-frog over the last three, but I don't think he will.

Pedro really 90%? I mean no brainer for me, but I know there are people who are like short career, low win total, few complete games, etc.

so, the Jack Morris Fan Club?

I wouldn't be shocked if he came up a little short of 90% for the reasons you mention. I think he'll be over, though.

Biggio is a lock at this point, right?

Unless he's like Kevin Costner's magic bullet in JFK, doing a U-turn mid-air, you would think so. Which suggests at least one of Bagwell or Piazza is going to fall short again.

tbh i thought biggio got in already but he missed by a few votes right?

ya - *just* missed.

Raines' vote total went down last year. His chances aren't looking good.

I was going to say that Raines is headed for the "golden era" committee (what an awful name), but I see he falls well outside the cut-off date. Will that cut-off be revised every few years? Is there still a regular Veterans Committee? I've lost track...He'll get in somehow, at some point.

i know. dontwanttoliveonthisplanetanymore.jpg

xpost - he will get in even if i have to sneak in a home-make plaque myself.

Nice that two Expos will go in this year, though. Imagine if they'd hung on to Johnson, still traded for Pedro, and had them together in the mid-late '90s. That's a next-level Johnson/Schilling .

Something they do yearly on James's site:

http://www.billjamesonline.com/2015_bjol_hof_ballot/

wowowow nice to have a ballot that isn't overstuffed

Randy Johnson
Pedro Martinez
Curt Schilling
John Smoltz
Kenny Lofton
Kevin Brown

depressing to see all these massive-hall ballots in the comments tho

also i can't comment

I cut-and-paste a comment for Kevin once--if there's something you want to say, post it here and I'll move it over there (making it clear it's not me).

nah thanks tho. i just wanted to vote. but apparently bill wants me to pay 3 bucks a month for the privilege of voting alongside enlightened baseball fans who put bernie williams on their ballots without irony

If you're saying James's readership is unenlightened...I'll take a pass on that one.

I will say that $3 a month for the most influential baseball writer ever doesn't seem all that unfair.

naaaaaah it is for me

and i don't think the paid accounts are any more or less 'enlightened' than any other ball fans. keeping the voting behind the paywall just rubs me the wrong way.

Enlightened is your word, and I'm not sure where you get me saying there's a correlation between a paywall and the level of discussion...$3 is too much for you, because you have little interest in James--that stands to reason. I think for those of us who pay it, it's amazingly cheap. Especially given the opportunity to engage in some back-and-forth with James. I only wish I had a chance to do the same with Pauline Kael or Greil Marcus.

Bernie Williams falls well short of a HOF career in terms of his career numbers, but from 1995 to 2002, when he was the centre fielder on a team that won four WS, his 7-year peak (37.5 WAR) was not that far below the average HOF centre fielder (43.5). He was exactly the kind of player who gets overlooked, because he did a number of things well instead of one or two things really well. He's hardly the most egregious name to put on a HOF ballot.

i'm sure he's a hall of fame guitarist

I'm 100% behind Trammell in the HOF.

You would have to be quite the ballplayer to be in front of him in the HOF.

I can only read part of this, and probably the same for you:

http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/buster-olney/post?id=8805&ex_cid=Insider_share_8805_Why+I%27m+abstaining+from+HOF+voting

>To repeat: I think Mussina, Schilling and Raines and others are Hall of Famers, but it’s better for their candidacy if I don’t cast a ballot.

cuts out before I can any sense of his logic here.

the electorate is the problem

As it stands, once you are eligible to vote for the Hall of Fame, you get that vote for life, which means that a great many voters who are no longer covering baseball — including many who never really covered baseball in a meaningful way — get a vote. Editors who oversaw baseball writers for a time. People who covered baseball for a few minutes during the Carter Administration but later went on to do other things. At the moment, the BBWAA will take away everyday credentials from a member if he or she is not affiliated with a BBWAA-approved outlet for two years, yet it will not take away a Hall of Fame vote from someone who has had no professional need to pay attention to baseball for decades.

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/12/05/the-hall-of-fame-ballot-limit-is-a-problem-but-the-composition-of-the-electorate-is-a-bigger-one/

Randy Johnson is a photographer now? Here's his photo spread from Slipknot's Knotfest festival in RS:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/randy-johnson-knotfest-photos-20141030

A couple of pieces on Dick Allen (the Times piece is from yesterday); some context for his malcontent reputation that shouldn't surprise anyone.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/cooperstown-confidential-dick-allen/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/sports/baseball/weighing-the-complexity-of-a-hall-candidate-and-his-times.html?_r=0

nothing from the golden era committee

Disappointing. Dick Allen only fell a vote short (ditto Oliva). Not sure if that's his one chance, or whether there'll be others. I sensed from the Times piece and from a Facebook discussion group I'm on that there was some real advocacy out there for him.

Baseball Writers Assn votes to recommend to Hall of Fame that voters be allowed to vote for up to 12 candidates instead of 10

so here's the full list for 2015 with how long each player's been on the ballot and their previous vote%

Craig Biggio 3rd 74.8%
Mike Piazza 3rd 62.2%
Jeff Bagwell 5th 54.3%
Tim Raines 8th 46.1%
Roger Clemens 3rd 35.4%
Barry Bonds 3rd 34.7%
Lee Smith 13th 29.9%
Curt Schilling 3rd 29.2%
Edgar Martinez 6th 25.2%
Alan Trammell 14th 20.8%
Mike Mussina 2nd 20.3%
Jeff Kent 2nd 15.2%
Fred McGriff 6th 11.7%
Mark McGwire 9th 11.0%
Larry Walker 5th 10.2%
Don Mattingly 15th 8.2%
Sammy Sosa 3rd 7.2%
Randy Johnson 1st
Pedro Martinez 1st
John Smoltz 1st
Gary Sheffield 1st
Brian Giles 1st
Nomar Garciaparra 1st
Carlos Delgado 1st
Darin Erstad 1st
Tom Gordon 1st
Jason Schmidt 1st
Cliff Floyd 1st
Jermaine Dye 1st
Rich Aurilia 1st
Troy Percival 1st
Aaron Boone 1st
Tony Clark 1st
Eddie Guardado 1st

Really is amazing how strong the return candidates are as a group. Who's the worst player among them? Probably one of the bottom two, Mattingly or Sosa, unless you think it's McGriff. And, Sosa's issues aside, that's 600+ HR, almost 500 HR, and a guy who was brilliant for a short period of time.

perhaps at the ceremony he will just hold Biggio aloft instead of his plaque

before I look it up i'm going to guess how many games Biggio caught in the majors. i'll say 120.

He was a catcher for a lot longer than part of a season, no??

man, 428! I had no memory that he caught for his first 4 seasons.

age 26 when he moved to 2B fulltime.

(Was kidding about Randy...)

tbf the big unit may well have had a giant unit

it would have to be in order to appear proportional. it's tough out there for big guys, i bet

nah

man, 428! I had no memory that he caught for his first 4 seasons.

He was a legit All-Star at catcher too!

Re: Delgado, if you're comparing him to the average HOF first baseman he has a case, but no, I don't think he belongs in the HOF based on that standard. But many writers have pointed out that there are now twice as many teams compared to pre-expansion era baseball and about the same number of HOFers being elected per decade. With more great players to pick from, standards are effectively going up which gives Clark, Delgado, Olerud, etc. a better argument for induction.

I can't blame anyone for not voting for Delgado or hell even Raines because they weren't one of the top ten players on the ballot this year. The ten player maximum is a dumb rule but it's the rule.

Biggio was shifted to 2B by Yogi himself:

http://blog.chron.com/ultimateastros/2015/01/06/craig-biggio-notes-yogi-berras-impact-on-legendary-career/

curt schilling is claiming he's losing votes for being a republican, also claiming john smoltz is a democrat, which based on the public record is debatable at best.

curt schilling claims a lot of things.

hmmm – don't see any post about it on twitter, but he is also stumping for Raines at least!

Stopped Clock Theorem.

I imagine Schilling is being marginally punished for being a loudmouth--maybe a handful of votes--but if political leanings have ever entered into HOF or awards voting, I've never read about it. I know there was lots of puzzlement in 1960 when Jackie Robinson supported Nixon, and there was category-unto-himself John Rocker, but I'm sure vocally left-leaning players in the late '60s got far more grief from the Dick Youngs of the media than Schilling would ever get today.

(Especially left-leaning players who didn't look like Mickey Mantle, so to speak.)

yeah, left-leaning players, I barely remember 'em

they read my hof q on BBP podcast today so I got that going for me

i'd guess that the BBWAA votes mostly republican, at least the old guard

most corn fed white boys from bumblefuck arkansas aren't democrats

do they really eat a lotta corn in AR, i thought it was yankees

chitlin circuit then

Mickey Morandini ftw

https://twitter.com/BenLindbergh/status/553576841408020481

my man

The newest members of the Baseball Hall of Fame will be revealed on Tuesday, and three overpowering aces of the 1990s — Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz — seem certain to be cast in bronze in Cooperstown.

Among them, they made 26 All-Star teams and won nine Cy Young Awards. They collected 735 victories and 11,113 strikeouts. Some of the game’s greatest hitters quaked in their presence.

Not Mickey Morandini.

Morandini was a second baseman for 11 seasons in the majors. He once turned an unassisted triple play, and Baseball-Reference.com lists his nickname as Dandy Little Glove Man. He never hit .300 in a season, but when he faced those pitchers, he became Rogers Hornsby. Morandini stepped into the box more than 100 times against Smoltz, Martinez and Johnson and hit .352.
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“There’s just certain pitchers you pick up the ball well against and certain pitchers you don’t,” Morandini said Monday from his home in Pennsylvania. “I can name a handful of pitchers who threw probably 75 or 80 miles an hour, and I couldn’t sniff them. I can’t tell you how many ground balls to second I hit off Bob Tewksbury.”

It is one of baseball’s endearing charms that an otherwise ordinary player can sometimes own a legend. Over three starts in 1965, at the height of his powers, Sandy Koufax was flummoxed by a jocular backup catcher for the Cardinals. The catcher went 5 for 6 with a double and a home run off Koufax in those games, and then Koufax walked him intentionally.

The catcher’s name? Bob Uecker.

Morandini was a better hitter than Uecker, who turned his .200 average into a career in comedy and broadcasting. Morandini, a Class AAA coach who aspires to manage in the majors, batted .268 for his career. He appeared in the All-Star Game in 1995 as a backup to Craig Biggio, who could also be elected on Tuesday.

But while Morandini could handle Smoltz (.344), he was hopeless against Tewksbury (.133). He faced Martinez 30 times and hit .370. He faced Omar Daal 30 times and hit .185. He could always turn on fastballs, he said.

“It was a gift, I guess,” Morandini said. “A lot of repetition, a lot of work.”

The games against Smoltz and Martinez, though, were more fun than work. Mariano Duncan, a right-handed hitter who was Morandini’s teammate with the Phillies, could not touch Smoltz’s slider and dreaded the thought of facing him. Morandini, a left-handed hitter, would play instead and hack at the first fastball.

“Normally when Smoltz got me, he had a good split-finger, and on days when he also had that slider working and it was really sharp, he’d give guys fits,” Morandini said. “That’s why you never wanted to be up there with two strikes off him.”

Smoltz was a master of the postseason, 15-4 in his career, but his first loss came to Morandini’s Phillies in the 1993 National League Championship Series. Smoltz fanned 10 but allowed two unearned runs and a pivotal single to a pitcher, Danny Jackson. Before he could pitch a seventh game, the Phillies won the series in six when Morandini knocked out Greg Maddux with a triple.
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Continue reading the main story

That was also the season Morandini first faced Martinez, before Martinez was traded from the Dodgers to the Expos for Delino DeShields. Morandini would often face Martinez in the N.L. East and remembers how Martinez’s curveball and changeup improved in Montreal, how he learned to pitch and not just throw heat.

Morandini also remembers a brawl when Martinez charged the mound against Mike Williams, firing his helmet in a rage.

“Pedro was just wild enough that you couldn’t get comfortable at times,” Morandini said. “He’d put you on your butt any time he wanted to, and then when he went to the A.L. and didn’t have to hit, he could do it at will.”

Still, Morandini’s fastball-hunting plan often worked. It was less effective against Johnson, whom he faced while playing for the Cubs in 1999. A right-handed hitter, Gary Gaetti, had become ill, putting a reluctant Morandini into action.

“As frightening as it was for some right-handers to face Pedro and Smoltz, that’s how frightening it was for me to face Randy,” Morandini said. “He was dealing. I don’t even think I swung in my first at-bat because I really didn’t see it.”

Yet somehow, after that strikeout, Morandini pulled a first-pitch triple down the right-field line in his next at-bat. His reward: a starting assignment against Johnson the next time the Cubs faced the Diamondbacks. Morandini went 0 for 3 with a walk that day but did not strike out.

Johnson led Arizona to a championship in 2001 with help from Curt Schilling, a teammate of Morandini’s in Philadelphia who is also up for the Hall. The voters have a blind spot regarding Schilling, who has not topped 40 percent in his first two appearances on the ballot despite the best strikeout-to-walk ratio of the 20th century.

“He thrived in big games,” Morandini said of Schilling, who was 11-2 in the postseason. “That’s what he lived for.”

One of the biggest games of Morandini’s career, at least at the time, was on Sept. 8, 1998, when Mark McGwire trotted right by him as he rounded the bases on his 62nd home run. It broke Roger Maris’s single-season homer record and was heralded as an epic moment.

Now McGwire, who has never received even 25 percent of the vote, is in danger of falling off the ballot. Like other giants of the time — Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens — McGwire has ties to steroids that give him little hope of election.

“It’s tainted,” Morandini said. “It’ll always be tainted. There were some of the best athletes to ever play the game in that era, but are they Hall of Famers? Probably, by their stats. But there will always be some issues with what went on, and a lot of those guys obviously aren’t going to make it.”

Still, some players will make it on Tuesday, most likely that group of aces. They all achieved excellence, and they all felt the wrath of a dandy little glove man named Mickey.

"Dandy Little Glove Man" is a great moniker

http://www.warm-mouse-heated-keyboard.com/images/micky.gif

he used to work out with my american legion team when he was home from college. best arm of any fielder i ever met, wasn't enough to stay at short.

aside from his lousy arm, Piazza's defense was pretty damn good

http://mets360.com/?p=24200

unit going in as a d-back

lol'd at first and then remembered that it makes the most sense

good for them

Seems fair. Most successful years were there.

kind of a misnomer for "chooses barely legible logo for plaque"

ie i'm still free to think of him as a Mariner.

also if he left the cap blank ppl would think he was from 1884.

i wasn't really around then but johnson as a mariner just seems like a prelude for the relevant years.

http://i.imgur.com/H54qV01.jpg

i'll just picture this

I said on a Facebook group that even though Johnson is still basically a Mariner to me, he has to go in as a Diamondback; easy call.

it's NOT "going in" -- it's just the goddamn plaque. THERE IS NO OTHER FACTOR INVOLVED IN THIS CHOICE.

yeah shouldn't be surprising that he is entering the hall of fame as a member of the diamondbacks

are you secret zlyon?

he is dead i am the replacement morbs troller

when i visited the hall of fame, i went in as a blue jay!

whatever happened to jqhiggins aka the other orioles fan

i went in as a Brooklyn Bushwick

whatever happened to jqhiggins aka the other orioles fan

― mookieproof, Friday, January 16, 2015 9:43 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he is dead there can only be one

so do i need to watch any speeches from yesterday?

Pedro dancing of course.

also still sad at the non-inclusion of Minoso.

so, fewer voters

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/just-a-bit-outside/baseball-joe/blog/p-r-or-not-hall-change-is-good-one-072815