hall of fame, next vote...

I knew he felt slighted and disrespected by the HOF selection committees and said he didn't want to be voted in. But I didn't know he was so adamant about it. I figured he wasn't losing sleep over it but would eventually be accepting of the honour, if he was still alive to receive it. Obviously that's not the case. His daughter is right -- too bad they didn't induct him twenty years ago. But there was no chance of the powers that be allowing that to happen just a few years after the '94 strike.

Revisiting some HOF predictions from James in one of the Historical Abstracts, Posnanski listed his picks for the next 25 years:

2020: Derek Jeter, Larry Walker
2021: Curt Schilling, Omar Vizquel
2022: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens
2023: Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz
2024: Adrian Beltre, Ichiro Suzuki
2025: Carlos Beltran, Manny Ramirez
2026: Scott Rolen, Joe Mauer
2027: Albert Pujols, Chase Utley
2028: C.C. Sabathia, Yadier Molina
2029: Miguel Cabrera, Robinson Cano
2030: Joey Votto, Buster Posey
2031: Justin Verlander, Zack Greinke
2032: Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer
2033: Evan Longoria, Felix Hernandez
2034: Josh Donaldson, Paul Goldschmidt
2035: Clayton Kershaw, Freddie Freeman
2036: Stephen Strasburg, Jose Altuve
2037: Christian Yelich, Jacob deGrom
2038: Mike Trout
2039: Mookie Betts, Manny Machado
2040: Gerrit Cole, Bryce Harper
2041: Chris Sale, Nolan Arenado
2042: Francisco Lindor, Javy Baez
2043: Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger
2044: Juan Soto., Walker Buehler
2045: Fernando Tatis Jr., Madison Bumgarner

I don't think it's meant all that seriously. I'm impressed that Verlander's going in twice, though.

By the internal logic of his picks--getting past the PED boycott--McGwire and Palmeiro ought to be there, probably Sheffield, and maybe Sosa too.

I’d have Sosa, Sheffield and McGwire before guys like ARod, Manny and Clemens for sure.

If I had to rank the PED guys:

1. Bonds
2. Clemens
3. A-Rod
4. Manny
5. McGwire
6. Palmeiro
7. Sheffield
8. Sosa

I like Palmeiro more than most do. I know he was never dominant, always in the shadow of Thomas/Bagwell/McGwire, but he was so consistent--from '87 to '03, his OPS+ only dips below 110 once, below 120 three times; mostly he's in the 130-160 range. I guess he was a "compiler," but at a level where I don't see that as a negative. And he did draw consistent mid-level MVP support.

Sosa might be ahead of Sheffield...but Sheffield did almost win a Triple Crown pre-PED, and Sosa didn't really do anything outside of that window.

9. Ortiz

a HOF w/out Bonds and Clemens is meaningless

OK, it's meaningless with them, too

A HOF with Harold Baines and no Charlie Hustle

i would put palmeiro above mcgwire. i think he's going to have a little extra problem though -- actually going before congress and straight-up lying will, i think, stick in peoples' craws more than regular juicing

Ortiz won’t be regarded as a PED guy he’ll glide in pretty easily I think. First ballot would be my guess. He’ll be extended the benefit of the doubt even more than Bagwell.

agreed unfortunately

My own take is he deserves to make it and is possibly underrated by WAR since he was such a force at the plate for so long. But also that the other guys on the list should make it but a lot of them will never get anywhere near enshrinement.

Congratulations to Ken “Hawk” Harrelson, who has been elected the 2020 Ford C. Frick Award winner! @whitesox Photo: @bradmangin https://t.co/oxVsXjnfVG pic.twitter.com/DzIUWanKvz

— National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum ⚾ (@baseballhall) December 11, 2019

this year's baines

My own take is he deserves to make it and is possibly underrated by WAR since he was such a force at the plate for so long. But also that the other guys on the list should make it but a lot of them will never get anywhere near enshrinement.

― omar little, Wednesday, December 11, 2019 12:13 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I’m fine with him going in but can you explain what you mean by being underrated by WAR? to me he is just such an icon and, yeah, a good enough hitter that I don’t think keeping him out is reasonable

idk i mean i think it's more that if you are merely measuring hitters based on WAR he falls plenty shy of other players who might be lesser than he is, which i think is strictly due to the penalty assessed bc he was almost exclusively a DH. i think even some WAR adherents might admit the DH factor is a bit flawed, though i think it's probably important to take it into consideration in some way. so maybe only "possibly" underrated.

yeah I mean you would have to fundamentally take issue with positional adjustments for that to be the case, right? the guy only played on one side of the ball and when he did play defense did it badly. that’s gotta count for something!

he definitely belongs in the hitting hof

and he excelled so mucch at hitting, he might belong in the normal hall as well, despite not contributing (or negatively contributing) to the other half of the game

I won’t argue too much about the positional adjustments since I think you’re probably right and my knowledge of all that (*gestures*) with regards to the calculations on DHs is limited but I think if DHs are going to be in the HOF he’s an inner circle all hit/no field guy.

yeah, i think i agree! if the hall includes sub-Mariano relievers, it has room for stellar DHs too, and Ortiz would definitely be one of them

funny thing about closers, i can't think of a single one remaining out there who's going to make the HOF. or for that matter batters who were almost exclusively DHs.

Beyond Edgar and Ortiz, I don't think there's a third career DH who should go in, unless I'm forgetting someone. (Technically, Thomas too, although I think of him as a first basemen--which I guess I shouldn't, seeing as 57% of his starts were as a DH.) And not counting Baines, who obviously should not have gone in.

(xpost) However odious Aroldis Chapman might be as a person, I wouldn't count him out just yet. His post-season troubles won't help, but his career stats are still imposing; who knows what the view of closers will be when he comes on the ballot. (I was saying the same about Kimbrel and Jensen a year ago, but both had very rough years.)

The 90's/00's were an era full of slugging 1B/DH types though. 1B isn't a premium offensive position anymore, only two out of the top 30 players in oWAR last year were 1Bmen (Pete Alonso (#8) and Carlos Santana (#30)). There are others, like Cody Bellinger, who played multiple positions regularly including first base, but we're talking about the Ortiz/Edgar/Giambi/Thome types of players.

with lots of players having come off the ballot last year, via either having run out of time or being elected, there's a lot of interesting momentum for some players happening this year.

about a third of the ballots are accounted for on the BBHOF Tracker. Bonds and Clemens are per their annual tradition hovering around 75% at this point, yet Bonds has a net zero votes score vs last year (lost one, gained one) and Clemens has a net minus-2. They might be stalling, idk. Two more years of this bullshit, I guess.

Larry Walker has gained 22 votes and is presently at 84.7%. Tough to tell right now, but he'll have to make up a lot of ground with the yet-to-report voting group, who seemed more disinclined to vote for him last time around.

The biggest gain this year is from Rolen, who has picked up 39(!) votes thus far and while he's only at 50% and doesn't appear to have a shot this year or next, he's gaining ground and this is only his third year.

Maybe surprisingly, Gary Sheffield has picked up 34 votes and is around 40%. A year ago with this same group of voters he was around 16%.

Helton, Jones, Kent, and Wagner have all picked up over 20 votes this year.

Considering the gains from other players it's maybe surprising that Vizquel has picked up only 13, but he's at 46.5% and seems to be a guy who'll get in 3-4 years down the line.

Pettitte and Schilling have gained only 7 votes but Schilling has fewer votes required to be elected obv and i could see him making it, since he wound up at 60% last year.

Manny has gained 9 votes, he's moving slowly in year 4.

Sosa has gained 6 votes and is around 18%. He's cooked.

Bobby Abreu has 10 votes. He might live to see another vote...but probably not.

Sheffield gains votes based on the stogie/dinger combo

Jerry Koosman (mentioned once on this thread) has to be up there among the best guys not to survive one ballot. He got 4/443 votes...222-209, 3.36 ERA, almost 4,000 IP, won 20 twice in his 30s, 57 WAR. Helped by his ERA and park for sure while in New York--ERA+ of 110, FIP of 3.26, so he does come up short, but, especially in the context of 1991, 4 votes? (Busy ballot that year, with three guys voted in and another 6--or 5, plus Joe Torre--on their way.)

Koosman was vv solid, maybe suffered slightly in W-L numbers from being on some weak teams here and there but probably ultimately wouldn't have made much of a difference for his HOF enshrinement chances. Clearly the type of guy who was good enough that if he had been elected at some point he wouldn't lower the bar too much.

current numbers w/40.5% of the ballots in on the tracker (i'm only bothering to type it out for future reference):

Jeter - 100% year 1
Walker - 85% (gained 28, lost 0) year 10
Schilling - 79% (gained 11, lost 2) year 8
Bonds - 73.7% (gained 3, lost 1) year 8
Clemens - 72.5% (gained 3, lost 2) year 8
Rolen - 49.7% (gained 41, lost 0) year 3
Vizquel - 47.9% (gained 20, lost 3) year 3
Sheffield - 37.7% (gained 39, lost 2) year 6
Helton - 35.3% (gained 30, lost 3) year 2
Wagner - 34.7% (gained 29, lost 0) year 5
Ramirez - 33.5 (gained 11, lost 1) year 4
Kent - 29.9% (gained 24, lost 0) year 7
Jones - 26.9% (gained 26, lost 1) year 3
Sosa - 17.4% (gained 6, lost 0) year 8
Pettitte - 11.4% (gained 8, lost 1) year 2
Abreu - 7.2% year 1

i'm trying to remember what a possible rationale is for voting for bonds but not clemens

actually, i figured it out - clemens slept with the spouse of one of the voters

also Bonds was the one who told that voter about the affair

next year i suspect there's not going to be a single new player who survives for another round of voting. And while it would make sense in terms of numbers and timing i really wonder if Schilling would make it if only because do voters want that guy being the only player elected?

Rolen will probably come closer than people might imagine.

Latest turn in the strange one-but-not-the-other saga: Clemens would always run one or two votes ahead of Bonds; this year, Bonds is one or two ahead.

Wagner's doing much better than I would have guessed--worthiness aside, I just assumed Hoffman then Rivera put closers out of the picture for a long while.

is it possible that both bonds and clemens are sleeping with the writer's spouses? i suppose it's also possible that as new writers join the ranks of HOF voters, and other writers leave, the overall number of writers whose spouses bonds/clemens have slept with is fluctuating over the years

idk how serious wagner's oblique injury was, but it's interesting that he retired after being extremely good in 2010

On February 12, 2011, Wagner reiterated his intention to retire, stating, "I’m totally content with not playing baseball," Wagner said. "I love watching it, I love talking about it. If I miss anything, it would be some of the guys I played with and actually competing on the field, but other than that, you can keep it."

tbh i say put him in the hall just for pitching like that with his non-dominant arm

Bonds had domestic violence accusations made against him in his divorce

Posnanski's ballot. I put it on a Google Doc--Joe says he okay with occasional sharing.

http://docs.google.com/document/d/15pVy5d3tolQGbj6EvPVpnwELl-evYKgzCmo3f7DpJOY/edit?usp=sharing

Looks like Walker's going to be teetering on the fence and Schilling will fall short.

excited for this last round of jeter encomiums

I get that it's a weak class but it kind of sucks that the third-best shortstop of the era is the one who's going to be remembered as being enshrined with 100%

There's not really a good argument for not inclluding Jeter on your ballot but then again there was also no good argument for leaving off RICKEY FUCKING HENDERSON and people did that.

he's not gonna get 100%

Although I believe I’m going to come up a little short today I still wanna thank all you that have been pulling for me and showing your support. I’m grateful for all of you! It’s been fun leading up to today reading everyone’s thoughts. Cheers 🍻 LW

— Larry Walker (@Cdnmooselips33) January 21, 2020

third-best shortstop of the era

A-Rod...who's second? Ripken and Larkin overlap, but they're a half-era ahead of Jeter; Trammell retires a year after Jeter debuts.

Rey Ordonez

FACKIN' NOMAH

fWAR, 1990-present, shortstops

A-Rod: 114 WAR
Jeter: 73
Larkin: 55
Rollins: 49
Reyes: 48

fWAR, 1980-present, shortstops

A-Rod: 114 WAR
Ripken: 93
Jeter: 73
Larkin: 55
Ozzie: 64

yeah he was second in his era