hall of fame, next vote...

The Le Batard/Deadspin ballot was one of the most reasoned and sensible ballots -- it had the maximum ten names, included Bonds and Clemens, and had no Jack Morris/Lee Smith embarrassments on it. I'm guessing not more than 5% of voters could say the same about their ballot. So if the BBWAA suspends him or takes his ballot away then they're just adding to the travesty that HOF voting has become.

Ha -- Gwynn faced Maddux 103 times and hit .429/.485/.538.

that [expletive]

That's crazy.

tbf - i can even understand the BBWAA taking away his ballot. it'll be a shame, but it is any less of an embarrassment having a writer let a website make his picks for him?

he didn't 'sell' his ballot, as no money, even for charity, was exchanged. he took the advice of baseball fans and submitted a ballot far more reasonable than, say, ken gurnick's. why strip his vote? he didn't end up voting for jacque jones and armando benitez. as defenders of the current voting process like to say, it may have been ugly, but it ultimately worked.

saw something yesterday that maddux would purposefully throw hittable pitches in super low leverage situations (like if he was pitching in a 5-0 game) just to fuck with hitters heads

Whenever I made an effort to see someone during their absolute prime--Bonds in the early 2000s, Griffey in 1994--they usually didn't have a great game. But when my dad and I went to Montreal in '95 or '96 to catch Maddux, he was great. He won 3-2, I think--pitched a shutout for six or seven innings, got charged with a run or two after he'd left the game. He worked so fast. I remember watching him in bafflement as to how he made it look so easy.

i didn't say he sold his ballot.

i know -- but some of his critics are

I think this was the Maddux start I saw:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MON/MON199508040.shtml

If I'm right, I don't remember that we took much notice of the Montreal starter.

Why would you, at 9-7 he didn't know how to win.

most memorable game involving one of these electees:

i remember seeing the white sox against the boston red sox in '91 at comiskey park during frank thomas' first full season. it was pretty clear how good he was at that point, even halfway through that season. he hit two massive home runs off mike gardiner and came up against dennis lamp later. thomas was working the count and you could see lamp pacing off the mound and muttering to himself because he had no idea how to pitch to him, it looked like in the context of the situation that he didn't want to get back on the mound. there were at least two visits to the mound by the catcher. anyway, he eventually struck him out somehow but i just remember everyone watching thomas and knowing he was this new, unstoppable force.

also the game had a few future HOFers: thomas, boggs, fisk, raines (fingers crossed), sosa (ok maybe not...) plus ventura, burks, greenwell, jack clark, mo vaughn. lots of old school dudes on the way out and new school guys on the way in.

Any Toronto fan who witnessed Dave Stieb's 1985 season was not hung up on W-L record. (xpost)

I saw Thomas somewhere in there too, but I don't recall that he did anything memorable. When we travelled to Detroit to see Griffey, he (literally) didn't get the ball out of the infield. Probably this game:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SEA/SEA199406270.shtml

‏@richardjustice
BBWAA hot about LeBatard shining light on an issue. Apparently okay with dozens of idiots still voting.

@richardjustice
What about spts editors and columnists and Olympic writers who spend 3 minutes on their ballots? We should not give anyone a lifetime vote.

@richardjustice
We had a guy in Houston ask for fan help in filling out his HOF ballot. He still votes.

@richardjustice
We had a guy in Houston who voted for Jim Deshaies so he could write a column about it. He still votes.

@richardjustice
Houston BBWAA voted to give one guy the "Nice Guy" award. Only later did someone point out the voters hadn't actually been in the clubhouse

i remember this game crystal clear - http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ATL/ATL199709300.shtml

it was my birthday, i was home on leave, first time at turner field. two hours fifteen minutes.

But when my dad and I went to Montreal in '95 or '96 to catch Maddux, he was great. He won 3-2, I think--pitched a shutout for six or seven innings, got charged with a run or two after he'd left the game. He worked so fast. I remember watching him in bafflement as to how he made it look so easy.

Yeah, I saw Maddux pitch a complete-game shutout for the Cubs in 2004 and marveled at his command on the mound. Game was just a shade over two hours:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN200407170.shtml

@LeBatardShow 29m

Max penalty: BBWAA just lifetime banned me from Hall of Fame vote and won't allow me to attend a game as credentialed media for a year.

oh noes

The anti-Le Betard/Deadspin hysteria is a who's who of who sucks

Yep

Sorry, more Maddux.

I was curious if I had the right game. No ticket stub, but I wrote a long Maddux piece for my fanzine at the time, and it turns out the boxscore linked to above is correct. Relevant excerpt:

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/maddux_zps44278e11.jpg

I can't believe it. Saw Maddux at the peak of his peak, starting against a 23-year-old Pedro. Didn't mention Martinez then, remained completely oblivious to his involvement until I looked at the boxscore today.

I was at this game, it was Maddux's only time pitching in Toronto:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TOR/TOR199706170.shtml

The Jays managed to score three runs off of him, but he still left with the lead and threw only 76 pitches through six. Time of the game: 2:45, but when was the last time you saw an 8-7 game with 24 hits get finished in less than three hours?

http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/88163/hotsportstakes-in-a-world-of-wrong-the-hall-always-gets-it-right

also from grantland, I just xp'd this in the PED thread, very good read:

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/10261642/mlb-hall-fame-voting-steroid-era

xpost it has an uncanny resemblance to a Bill Plaschke column ... well I guess that settles the argument about who is the worst writer on earth.

The second Grantland article is a must-read, even if you remember reading some or most of the articles it covers.

My most memorable game ever involving anyone but Frank Thomas was playing :)

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/OAK/OAK200610060.shtml

Just so Morbius can get an early start:

http://www.sbnation.com/2014/1/9/5290468/hall-of-fame-mlb-2015-ballot-pedro-martinez-randy-johnson-john-smoltz

http://mlb.si.com/2014/01/09/jaws-and-the-2014-hall-of-fame-ballot-an-early-look-at-the-new-names-for-2015/

one of my favorite things about yesterday was smoltz taking part in the Maddux/glavine interviews and everyone was talking about how he'd be going in next year and smoltz just sat there stonefaced bc I think the writing is on the wall. I don't really see him making it on the first try, even though I think he'll do a lot better than schilling and mussina. normally he would i think but there are just too many guys down ballot who writers will want to vote just to keep under consideration.

maddux faced 20421 batters in his career. guess how many batters saw 3-0 counts?

1 - tony gwynn

that poophead

133. think about that

no fair, he used pitches that moved

I don't know if that's right:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=maddugr01&year=Career&t=p#count

I read that as 644 3-0 counts ("After 3-0"). What does seem intuitively impressive is that, while the subsequent OBP is of course very high (.726), the BA (.275) and SLG (.375) are very low. I would think you'd expect hitters to do much better than that when putting the ball in play.

They have to induct Mussina before he loses his looks.

That's why they only made Yogi wait a year.

For a quick comparison, some other career "after 3-0" slash lines:

Clemens: .226/.707/.385
Pedro: .279/.714/.532
Johnson: .280/.778/.479
Schilling: .313/.705/.497
Mussina: .245/.657/.344
Glavine: .255/.713/.421
Halladay: .275/.668/.425

Can't look up anybody before that, no data before '88. Clemens was easily the best, then Mussina; Pedro was the worst. Anyway, measured only against his peers, Maddux was better than most.

how is clemens easily the best when mussina's OPS is like 90 pts lower?

it's a meaningless sample anyway

Zach's right, didn't look closely enough--I thought Clemens took the first and last.

I guess it's a relatively small sample, but Clemens and Maddux both had the equivalent of a full season, Mussina slightly less so. I wouldn't say meaningless--with 1100 PA between them, I'd feel confident saying that Mussina and Clemens had a knack for fighting back from 3-0 counts. Palmer's famous thing of not giving up a grand slam is a much smaller sample, 213 PA. (Something that surprises me. Knowing Palmer never gave up a grand slam, I always assumed that being extra careful to the point of paranoia, he probably walked a higher-than-usual number of guys in such situations. No--in those 213 bases-loaded PA, he walked 13...and only gave up five doubles and a triple. His line: .196/.230/.234.)

Palmer pitched to the basepaths (sorta not kidding).

Maybe--I'll have to check if he had any errant pickoff throws.

Sorry bad joke. I meant that he pitched based on how many people were on (which obviously in some sense all pitchers do). It was a play on Morris "pitch to the score" thing.

I got the joke, and it was good. I was trying to return serve...

I'm slow on the uptake at 7am apparently haha.

Always loved the little-kid aspect to Thomas.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/si/dam/assets/140109153134-frank-thomas-ap2-single-image-cut.jpg

Lawrence Rocca
Honorary
Morris Nomo Raines Trammell

Finding old videos of Thomas, Glavine and Maddux is really difficult.

even on mlb.com? don't they have an archive page?