hall of fame, next vote...

Jaffe makes a strong case for Simmons in his HOF book. My recollection of how Simmons was treated while playing is "Good hitter, no defense." Jaffe says that just wasn't true--and indeed Simmons has nothing but +dWARs through his prime on Baseball Reference. He had the disadvantage of being contemporaneous with Bench, Carter, Fisk, and Munson.

My own sentimental choice for induction would be Tiant.

(And also, strictly in terms of defense, you had Sundberg and Boone, two of the greatest defensive catchers ever.)

https://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_2018.shtml

playing w/ the sorting columns. it's interesting how high JPos is for pitchers relative to the rest of positions.

I remember it feeling that Raines going in this year was some sort of watershed moment for the electability of guys like mussina but I can totally imagine just vlad and hoffman going in this year and chipper being... "forgotten" isn't the right word, and he's 100% going in, but it doesn't feel like there's a clamor to celebrate his career like there was for raines or 1st ballot guys like pedro etc

also ballot of 2021 is going to be straight trash

https://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_2021.shtml

You mean the guys who debut in 2021? Yeah, first ballot in a while with no viable candidates. Hudson, Buehrle, and Torii Hunter are the best of them, and they have zero chance between them. If there's still backlog, that would be the year for someone deserving who's been made to wait. Larry Walker's window, unfortunately, closes the year before. Mussina, Schilling, and Kent will still be on the ballot.

(I mean, Mussina and Schilling may already be in by then.)

I could totally see schilling falling off the ballot this year

I think that'd be terrible if he does. PEDs are one thing--you can argue about that all day, and I think there's room for a difference of opinion there (subsiding now anyway)--but I don't think anyone was ever kept out for being a jerk. Dick Allen, maybe, and the more you know about him, the more you realize his alleged jerkiness had a lot to do with racism.

uh, we can probably say the same about schilling tbh

Possibly--I don't know. The thing he said about sportswriters was creepy, and had some really stupid imagery.

Schilling Is a racist let’s not worry about the asshole part

I will say that I'm totally contradicting something I posted on the greatest-filmmaker thread the other day:

I won't think for a second about what kind of person I'm voting for. I don't know if Polanski (who may or may not be on my list--the old peak value vs. career value question) would be the only one where that's even an issue; most of the people I won't know anything anyway, and I hadn't planned on a James Toback vote. I could see grappling with that if it involved flying someone in to receive a state honour, like the Legion of France, but not with a message-board poll.

The Baseball HOF isn't an abstract thing--you get flown into Cooperstown and you make a speech. To be consistent, then, I'll amend my comment above: it won't be terrible if Schilling drops off, and any voter who objects to him on non-baseball grounds is justified in doing so (although I'd personally grit my teeth and vote for him).

One thing I always tried to make clear is that my fence-sitting on PED isn't a moral issue; it's uncertainty over how much they influenced a player's performance. I've never argued that PED players should be kept out for some perceived moral deficiency.

(Polanski, not to be confused with Posnanski.)

Will Scott Rolen and Andruw Jones be one and done this year? Do we even know for sure what happened to Jones after the age of 30 (besides "he got fat and stopped caring")?

Without any slam dunk candidates this year (besides Bonds and Clemens of course) I don't expect many unfair one and dones, but Rolen was always underrated and wouldn't expect that to change on the HOF ballot.

I'm not even sure that Thome will be elected this year. If Bagwell and Piazza didn't go in on the first ballot ...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DPF2hiVVQAAfo7-.jpg:small

more than 10 worthy options, there.

Do we even know for sure what happened to Jones after the age of 30 (besides "he got fat and stopped caring")?

i didn't follow baseball much when this was happening. he only played more than 100 games once after he turned 30. was he just injured?

Heartfelt open letter from HOFer Joe Morgan to BBWA voters, imploring us not to put steroid users in the Hall. First, they're already in. Second, so is Selig, elected by HOFers' veterans committee. If mgrs. & commish benefited from the era and are now HOFers, why not the serfs?

— Claire Smith (@MzCSmith) November 21, 2017

has this ever been posted?

https://baseballpastandpresent.com/2012/07/19/hall-fame-circle/

it's a fun read, trying to identify the top 50 inner-circle HOFers via a vote back in 2012. it was apparently organized by graham womack, who somehow managed to not include his own name anywhere on his own website

I've participated in two or three of Graham's poll, including that one. I think he culled my name from regular posters on High Heat Stats (a site I eventually lost interest in).

freshly said

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-hall-of-fame-isnt-worth-our-time/

heh, yeah that's where i got the link posted

the hof is only discussed because it's the dead time of the baseball year, especially when the hot stove isn't active. we are bored

If you're not not-interested in the HOF, some research on living inductees vs. dead ones (the subtext being Morgan's letter and changing attitudes toward PEDs).

http://www.billjamesonline.com/the_living_hall_of_fame/

Jaffe's been doing these at SI

https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/11/28/edgar-martinez-hall-fame-ballot

Ballot #28, from Bill Livingston (https://t.co/GhfMy0OgAe), who submitted a blank ballot last year, which is different from abstaining. In the Tracker: https://t.co/EHQYbIMnWo pic.twitter.com/L9FdSqM8Xg

— Ryan Thibodaux (@NotMrTibbs) December 7, 2017

wow, Jim Thome is doing extremely well

612 HR w/ no smoking needle

bill apparently forgot that manny and kerry wood also played for the indians

yeah i figured Thome would get in but i wasn't sure if he would get in the first year. Surprised that he's leading Chipper even at this early stage, though they could easily swap places considering how many ballots remain.

Vizquel is going to be the new Jack Morris. He'll last the full ten years, his advocates will cherry-pick weird combinations of numbers to argue his case, and he may climb as high as ~60%, but--correctly, I'd say--he won't go in.

i'm not sure what they'll point to besides the 11 gold gloves. he was a below-league-average hitter in 22 of his 24 seasons, and anyone who really believes in defensive metrics is going to have to deal with the less savory numbers as well

not remotely an Ozzie Smith

(xpost) The first thing they'll point to seems obvious (not me talking here; I think Jaffe also constructed the case for, before easily dismantling it): the near-2,900 hits, most for a shortstop (at shortstop) after Wagner. Next, I would think, would be his stolen bases. He'll become the only 2,900+ hit/400+ SB/11 Gold-Glove-winning shortstop ever.

Obviously, zero context at all. (Little things like the non-existence of the Gold Glove 100 years ago.) As you point out, all those singles didn't mean a whole lot without much of anything to go with them (and in a massively high-offense era besides).

As predicted:

Then there’s Vizquel, whose 45.3 WAR is dwarfed by the 76.5 of Ozzie Smith, the shortstop he is most compared to. Sorry. You can’t tell me there was that much of a difference between these two superb defensive shortstops, especially when Vizquel hit .272 lifetime to Ozzie’s .262 and his 2,877 hits are the third most of any shortstop in history.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/war-shouldn-heavily-emphasized-baseball-hof-voting-article-1.3684618

Clearly the writer here verges on caricature. My only point was that this drumbeat will linger for the next 10 years, just as it did with Morris.

vizquel had one season with more than 3.5 fWAR, ozzie had ten.

is 3.5 cherrypicked? you bet your ass

https://simpsonswiki.com/w/images/1/14/Omar_Vizquel.png

Jack Morris and Trammel in via committee. I can totally see Jack Morris becoming a too-vocal crank waxing nostalgic about the sanctity of The Hall and His Day.

Fuck Jack Morris.

morris instead of simmons, baloney sandwich

And Morris received one more vote than Trammell. I...

Congratulations to Alan Trammell, now need to start working on getting Lou Whitaker. They cannot have one without the other, it's one of the classic middle infields ever in baseball history.

ted simmons was a vote short. marvin miller was 5 short.

what a stupid hall of fame, i don't even know why i pay attention

Trammell getting in is quite awesome. Morris is the opposite.

Sports outlets should send only women to cover his induction and interview him

good ol' jack morris. he sure did eat a lot innings for some decent teams and not get injured and did really well in the world series that one time

all kidding aside his best single season WAR was almost as good as Braves ace Kevin Millwood's best.

I guess you could take solstice that Jack Morris getting in probably makes Curt Schilling mad.

I mean the baseball literati response is them looking forward to another 50 dudes being good enough for the HOF now including Kevin Brown

Kevin Brown iirc did not have a bushy gamer mustache, total false grail, so he's out

Trammell aside, worst baseball weekend in the history of December