hall of fame, next vote...

I've always thought Mattingly had a better case than Murphy, but when I look at the career boxes, he really doesn't (not even in peak value, where I assumed he did). Murphy's two MVPs were relatively weak fields, but he had a good case in '87 too. Murphy's peak lasted six seasons; Mattingly's, as pointed out above, was either four or six--he's still solid in '88/89, but there's a clear drop-off from '84-87.

god. these people are going to put schilling in, aren't they?!

and this might seem funny coming from a blue jays fan; but i never thought of Mcgriff as a HoF'er. he was a solid for a long time and, outside of the "he was squeaky clean" narrative, there's not much else. only one ever top-5 MVP finish. was only a seasonal stat-leader three times (HRs twice and OPS once). didn't seem to ever stand out as a defender...
i won't be annoyed if he gets in or anything, but don't really feel he belongs either.

I do think the argument as to whether or not McGriff’s numbers (plus award finishes and all star games) took a comparative hit due to a lot of other extraneous factors is a *decent* one, as far as assessing his historical value. One that may tip the scales. ‘88-‘94 was a really outstanding stretch, on the lower end of HOF caliber. I don’t think he’s a Harold Baines case, I mean there were seasons where Freddy was absolutely one of the best in the game.

I'm a bigger Delgado fan, but--for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me--McGriff is ahead by 8 games in bWAR. They both get dinged equally for defense. Delgado's prime years fall in a much better hitting era than McGriff's (height of PEDs vs. late '80s), so I get that there's an adjustment there, but Delgado still has the edge in career OPS+. McGriff played two more seasons, but he had more years where he was just okay than Delgado, who from '97 to '08 only had one season where his OPS+ dropped below 127. I would think, all in all, they'd be about equal in career bWAR.

McGriff is another guy who probably lost a career year to the '94 strike.

i mean, if we're going to sit down and rate the best Blue Jays 1B – Olerud is also in that conversation imho!

Ha, I was just going to mention that (bWAR of 58.2, ahead of both). McGriff to Olerud to Delgado has to be one of the great 1-2-3 positional handoffs ever.

McGriff probably would have wound up with 45-48 HR in '94

he's up a dozen in fWAR on Delgado!

and behind Olerud by 1!

Olerud is sort of the more likeable version of Will Clark. Clark's career more obviously with a trajectory that took him from an all-time great level to merely good, Olerud had those two amazing seasons mixed in with a bunch of good ones; i wish he'd been more consistent, that guy was a huge talent.

I don't know if any of the guys discussed really meet the HOF threshold but clearly Olerud being one and out with 0.7% of the vote, Delgado out after one year with 3.8%, vs McGriff sticking around for the full ten years and now making this ballot just shows how much the big counting stats still do matter.

Similarity scores are interesting: McGriff and Delgado's are on each other's list, Olerud on neither (no surprise, not a big power hitter). Delgado has three HOF'ers on his list (Stargell, Bagwell, and McCovey), McGriff has five on his (those three, plus Frank Thomas and Billy Williams).

Mattingly and Murphy are two of the many '80s guys who felt like HOFers at the time but just didn't have the long-term careers which would get them in (get them in the usual way, at least.)

But the pitchers of the '80s are an unusual bunch. I came across a list of the top 21 pitchers in WAR that decade, and only four of them (Blyleven, Ryan, Morris, and Carlton) are in the HOF, with Clemens the special case out of the remaining 17.

The list:

Stieb - 45.2
Welch - 35.1
Valenzuela - 34.8
Blyleven - 34.0
Hershiser - 32.8
Clemens - 32.3
Ryan - 30.8
Gooden - 30.2
Tudor - 29.7
Saberhagen - 29.0
Hough - 28.7
Morris - 27.9
Soto - 27.3
Higuera - 27.3
Sutcliffe - 26.7
Reuschel - 25.7
Carlton - 25.6
Guidry - 25.5
Viola - 25.1
Quisenberry - 24.6
Gubicza - 24.6

i kinda think more and more maybe Stieb should be in the HOF. even with a weirdly crappy '86 season, he remains what he felt like at the time: the dominant pitcher of that decade.

One of the better arguments for Morris is that he had the longevity that so many of his contemporaries didn't. The 70's and 90's had many great pitchers and 300 game winners, and in the 80's everyone seemed to flame out early. I have never seen a good explanation for it.

As representatives of their era, you could make cases for Stieb, Saberhagen, and Hershiser, but each one falls short of the overall HOF standard.

In that argument for Morris, you have to assume that his longevity was a skill, i.e. the game changed in some fundamental ways at the end of the 70's, but he adjusted whereas many others couldn't, and should get credit for it.

The 80's were a weird time for Cy Youngs, you had one year wonders who weren't even all that good in their "career" year (Pete Vuckovich, LaMarr Hoyt), closers clogging up ballots, etc. Stieb should have won two or three CY's and probably would have won if the present day electorate was voting. His lack of hardware really hurts his HOF case. Without the awards, he's a longshot, but with them, he'd be the 80's version of Johan Santana and maybe even a little better.

older us should get special mention in the hall for wearing his helmet in the field

*olerud lol

It’s not called the hall of fashion you know

Guys like John Denny winning the Cy, that amazing Tudor season, Danny Jackson in 1988…there were a lot of Jake Arrieta-type careers in that decade.

And Gooden!
Absolutely dominant for a very brief period and then the wheels fall off.

I had a misconception about how long Dwight Gooden was dominant because against the Cubs he went 28-4 during his career. Almost twice as many wins as he had against any other team.

Non-shareable, but Posnanski's VC ballot would include: McGriff and Schilling, then Dwight Evans, Whitaker, Lofton, Stieb, Cone, Fernando.

Are we at the point where we should no longer take pos seriously

Can't say as I get that (is it Schilling?)...That's a much better ballot than the one released yesterday,* and he's the best baseball writer out there right now, I'd say.

*The absence of the PED players? He's trying to be realistic. He just ranked Bonds as the third greatest player ever in his Baseball 100 book.

I still haven't had a chance to read the whole thing, but here's his rationale for leaving off the PED players:

"Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro: Look, I get that the committee probably felt trapped by circumstances. But if it were me … I wouldn’t have put any of these players on the ballot this year. None of them will get elected, obviously. That’s a JoeBlogs guarantee. Plus, everybody is SO burned out on the steroid talk that has been going nonstop for more than a decade, it would have behooved the Hall of Fame to just take a little break from this conversation and let things settle down for a bit.

Sooner or later, the Hall of Fame will have a 'PED Committee,' that will be put together to figure out the best way to remember the greatest players from the Selig Era. That’s going to happen — might be five years from now, might be 10, might be more, but it WILL happen, I feel sure. And that’s when we will find out if Bonds or Clemens or Palmeiro or McGwire or any of those players will end up in the Hall. Putting them on the ballot this year just doesn’t do anybody any good."

But like approving schilling as a non-user while he advocates for extrajudicial murder is like peak “i’ll defend to my death the right for you to say it” nonsense. I may be misreading all this and i may be tired of people crowing about how last night wasn’t a complete massacre, merely a blood letting

Okay. I'm a little surprised myself by his inclusion of Schilling, in that he's been very tough on him recently. Explaining why he dropped him from his ballot two years ago:

"...it isn’t Schilling’s politics. It’s his nastiness. It’s his intolerance. It’s his compulsion
to troll. Curt Schilling pushes anger and fear and hatred. Every day he divides, every day he
offends...and all the while, he makes sure to note that those he offends deserve it, and bleep
’em if they can’t take a joke, and if they happen to have a Hall of Fame vote they should give
it to him anyway because he was a damn good pitcher, particularly in the big games. I’ve done
that for eight years. He was a damn good pitcher, particularly in the big games. I still rank
him as one of the 100 greatest players in baseball history. But I’m not voting for him. I sus-
pect he will get into the Hall of Fame anyway, and that’s fine. He doesn’t need my vote. He
shows every day he doesn’t want my vote."

Jay Jaffe has a piece up on the ballot, also calling attention to the absence of Evans and Whitaker:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/new-format-familiar-frustrations-for-hall-of-fames-latest-committee-ballot/

I'd like to see Thurman Munson get another chance. His bWAR/162 games is 5.2, a game-and-a-half better than both Mattingly and Murphy (albeit on the decline when he died).

Different era, though, so not eligible this time.

jaffe on schilling a couple years ago:

So, what’s a voter to do when it comes to a candidate with an increasingly corrosive public persona? My study of the history of the character clause for The Cooperstown Casebook leads me to conclude that it’s a mistake to connect Schilling’s words to the “integrity, sportsmanship, character” portion of the Hall’s voting instructions. His comments had no bearing on his playing career, and I don’t believe that the clause — which, for starters, was introduced by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who spent his 24-year tenure upholding the game’s color line — is worthy of increased investment by voters. What’s more, if there’s some definition of “integrity, sportsmanship and character” that can be applied in a positive manner to 2017 Today’s Game honoree Bud Selig — who as the Brewers owner colluded against free agents, and as commissioner turned a blind eye to the proliferation of PEDs — then the clause should be regarded as even flimsier and more meaningless than anyone has previously considered it. This isn’t the time to further imbue it with greater importance.

Having said that, I was not alone in believing that Schilling’s pro-lynching tweet went beyond the pale as far as public discourse is concerned, in that it moved from his personally held beliefs (however toxic) to a condonation of violence. His claim of “sarcasm” regarding the matter didn’t wash given his failure to apologize or repudiate the post. On the contrary, he’s buried that particular controversy under avalanches of hot garbage in the four years since, all without apology. It’s nearly impossible to keep track of it all, even in an exercise like this.

At a time when the type of right-wing rhetoric Schilling has repeatedly trafficked in has fueled the United States’ inclusion among the most dangerous countries for professional journalists, I don’t blame any journalist for eliminating Schilling from consideration. And at a time when Trump and 126 members of Congress have called for the unprecedented overturning of a fair presidential election on the grounds of unfounded claims of voter fraud, I’m not about to give the benefit of the doubt to a single person, let alone a Hall of Fame candidate with strong stats and an impressive highlight reel, amplifying those claims.

Thus, I’m done telling anybody to hold their nose and vote for Schilling, and while I have included him on nearly every one of my virtual ballots since he became eligible, I won’t be including him now that I have an actual ballot. Not this year, and — spoiler alert — not next year either, if he falls short of 75% this time around. At times, I’ve worried that figuring out how to handle his candidacy would be difficult once I got my ballot, but aside from the labor of tracking the above litany, he made my decision far easier than it would have been even a couple of months ago. This isn’t about politics, this is about his using his sizable platform to spread hatred, intolerance, and disinformation. That platform will only grow if and when he’s elected, and I want no part of that.

he was a good ballplayer (and earned $114m doing it). he isn't owed any further celebration

Jaffe and Posnanski did a 180 on Schilling at the same time.

nowhere else to put this but i was revisiting possible future HOF closers, and putting it into more context w/mariano rivera, who had exactly zero mediocre seasons after his tough rookie campaign. when you assess his advanced stats, and this is preaching to the choir, you see what a freakishly special career he had.

from the outside looking in one can view trevor hoffman as a contemporaneous example of a similar player, but it's like night and day. hoffman had 6 seasons w/a bWAR of 2+, rivera had 16! hoffman had a handful of not-amazing years, 2 seasons with a sub-2.00 ERA vs rivera's 11. if you're a closer you should...always be closing. hoffman felt like a guy who lasted just long enough to build up the numbers in a much less impressive fashion.

the recent crop of absurdly dominant guys: kimbrel, chapman, jansen, hader. kimbrel hasn't been great since 2018 (that half-season with the Cubs aside, which he wrecked on the south side in the other half), chapman is looking done, jansen nah. now hader obviously could turn around after last season's disaster and do what he did for a few more years and put together a vv compelling case but idk if he will. these are guys whose peaks are staggering but i don't think they clear the bar.

the bar should be rivera. it's a very very high bar, but it should be for specialists. they need to excel beyond a single cheap stat for a very long. rivera leads in that cheap stat but if it didn't exist, he'd still be an undeniable HOFer for just how long he did what he did.

separately when i was looking at current bWAR leaders, i peeped starling marte and it reminds me what a good player he is. clearly not gonna make the HOF, but he's sort of the ian kinsler of OFers. consistently solid, some pop, good speed, toiling away mostly on teams that are out of the spotlight.

For a long time, I was convinced that one of Kimbrel, Chapman, or Jansen would make it, because even though they weren't as durable as Rivera (and didn't have the post-season resume), their rate stats were a leap forward. Virtually no chance now.

I’m not necessarily a believer in the clutch thing but if the job of a closer is to come in to face a few batters and finish off the opposition, you should absolutely never be a guy your team is concerned about putting out there. That’s more heightened in the postseason obviously, where a lot of guys falter. Rivera was like clockwork and it wasn’t just coasting on reputation, it was a constant level of performance, and that was in his case especially a postseason thing. kimbrel, jansen, chapman…not clockwork. hader obv a disaster last year.

Such a disaster i’ve had to say it twice

https://www.mlb.com/news/2023-hall-of-fame-ballot-released

Beltran is one of Posnanski's 100 greatest players, but I don't think he was going to be first-ballot in any event; with his involvement with the sign-stealing scandal, and losing the Mets job as a result, he's probably got a long road ahead of him.

Going to guess that Rolen squeaks by (63% last year) and Helton gets close (65-70%) but still falls short.

Can’t imagine a single one of them making it past one ballot beyond the obvious but I’m guessing Beltran lands somewhere well below 50%.

The logjam clearing a bit last year with the alleged roid trio and schilling going away probably means it’s more likely there will be major vote increases for a few downballot guys, maybe enough to carry the close calls over another year but who really knows. Rolen seems like a safe bet, Helton will get a great boost, Wagner too. Gonna be curious to see what happens with Andruw Jones this time around. Sheffield and Manny seem to have maybe hit their ceiling of support but maybe the logjam clearing helps them incrementally as well.

The scandal will hurt Beltran, but unlike the suspected steroid users, it shouldn't be reflected in his stats unlike people seriously think that he stole signs throughout his career and wouldn't have been a HOF-caliber player without sign stealing.

The bar for closers shouldn't be Rivera. The undisputed GOAT can't be the bar, that's not fair for anyone. Hoffman and Lee Smith (both HOFers) are both around 28 WAR, as is Billy Wagner (not in the HOF). That's a solid bar for closer longevity and dominance, particularly because the careers of great relievers are getting shorter, not longer. Kimbrel can still get there. Chapman may very well be done.

Agree about Beltran. I would expect Helton to make it in before Rolen does

My Beltran post above should read "*unless* people seriously think that ..."

I think both Helton and Rolen will make it this year. They're rapidly trending upward (both received less than 20% of the vote in their first year), the "controversial" players (Schilling, Bonds, Clemens) aren't clogging up the ballot anymore, and the class of incoming first-timers is fairly weak.

I agree about Beltran's stats, but I do think it will hurt him--in a weird way, losing the Mets job might hurt him more than what caused it. Just guessing; we'll see.

I think ppl will see the astros as more “between the lines” than steroid era and that the vitriol is LA/NYY pissiness about losing their respective series #costalbias

At this point with everything, you got so many people NOT in because of this or that who actually gets elected is kind of a who cares. It was just like 'some' media people trying to put asterisks on asterisks on Judge getting the home run record, it really does not much matter anymore.

Answering my own question above (courtesy Posnanski): who are the 16 voters on the Veteran's Committee this year?

Hall of Fame Players: Chipper Jones, Greg Maddux, Jack Morris, Lee Smith, Ryne Sandberg, Frank Thomas, Alan Trammell

Executives: Paul Beeston, Theo Epstein, Arte Moreno, Kim Ng, Dave St. Peter, Kenny Williams

Media Members/Historians: Steve Hirdt, LaVelle Neal, Susan Slusser

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/in-naming-the-era-committee-members-the-hall-again-cant-avoid-the-specter-of-cronyism/

I wish Trammell had cronyed Lou Whitaker back onto the ballot.

Didn't realize this is tonight. Fred McGriff's sitting by the phone right now.

Kind of nervous they’re gonna install fuckhead mcgee