hall of fame, next vote...

CC comes on the ballot in 2025, which looks to be a pretty favorable moment. Beltre and (I'm assuming) Helton will go in next year, and Ichiro--who'll also debut in 2025--will be automatic. Otherwise, he'll be competing with Mauer and maybe Wagner. He should at least debut at over 50%, I would think.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_2025.shtml

Remove Altuve. He was practically a sure thing before the scandal, now he's winning polls on "most unpopular player in the game."

User polls in 2023 will have no bearing on BBWAA voting in 2035. The scandal is already fading especially after the WS last year and increasing awareness of other teams trying to cheat, and it's well known (or should be) that altuve barely used the trash cans. He only gets so much hate for being the team's mascot that year, and I expect the average BBWAA voter to use a few more brain cells judging him than bitter yankee and dodger fans.

No real precedent, so I don't know, maybe. I think he'll be on the ballot for a few years, at the very least. The BBWAA just seems to be moving more and more in a "character counts" direction. (I'll have to read that book on the scandal--as you say, supposedly it minimizes Altuve's role.)

The BBWAA just seems to be moving more and more in a "character counts" direction

Beltran definitely took some punishment on the ballot for 2017 but he was also considered one of the masterminds. He also didn't really do that badly - for a guy who's in that "he'll definitely get in eventually but he's definitely not inner circle" zone, 46% in his first year seems well within non-scandal-ridden expectations.

The book on Altuve's involvement is shut imo - people recorded and quantified every trash can bang and figured out who did and didn't use them almost immediately, and it showed that Altuve barely engaged. His teammates have come out and said that he's a reactive hitter and he felt like he hit worse when he knew what was coming. He obviously isn't innocent but he won't be remembered as someone who had to cheat to hit. Only reason people still think he's a big cheater is the ridiculously stupid buzzer theory that redditors insist on believing despite there never being a shred of actual evidence for it.

What's this based on...well, Jaffe and Posnanski have written about it at length, and I think they're probably a decent barometer. And it has moved beyond steroids. I won't mention specific cases, because inevitably they'll be someone jump on here and lecture me about linking A to B. Anyway, we'll see when we see. The first thing Altuve will have to do is continue playing well for another five years.

Found the book on the discount site I order from, so it's on its way.

When it comes to steroids, younger voters are way more forgiving than the older ones

I think that's probably true, but the Hall is still zero-for-known-users. Maybe A-Rod or Manny or Sheffield or Cano will will knock down that wall at some point. But it hasn't happened yet. (And the Veteran's Committee, for obvious reasons, has proven an even tougher sell.)

Can you link me to what Jaffe and Pos have written? I'm genuinely lost. I forgot about Vizquel, but younger voters were never going to vote for him anyway just based on his performance.

I think I can dig that up--Posnanski's may be behind a paywall now.

https://theathletic.com/2250850/2020/12/11/top-mlb-outside-the-hall-of-fame-curt-schilling/

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jaws-and-the-2021-hall-of-fame-ballot-curt-schilling/

Had them linked on my homepage--both about Schilling. You can access Jaffe's piece; I can put Joe's on a Google Doc, if you want.

Vizquel went from 37% to 42% to 52% his first three years--that sure looked like a HOF trajectory. In 2021, he started to reverse course, and he'll probably be gone in a couple of years.

altuve, who’s finishing up the prime of his career, is 33rd in WAR/162…among second basemen. has some more work to do for sure

the standards for the hall in baseball compared to basketball (the only other big 4 sport I feel like I know well) are so stark. a guy like altuve in the NBA would have had an airtight hall of fame case 5 years ago

Oh, I thought you were talking more than Schilling. Like I said, I think he's a special case.

I don't think a team-wide cheating scandal is going to hurt Altuve one bit. It'll be ancient history. If he makes it to 3000 hits, most people aren't going to be talking about 2017, they're gonna be talking about his 3000 hits. They'll talk about his Astros winning 4 pennants in 6 years (or whatever it ends up being). And they'll talk about how short he is and how unlikely his story was. Jaffe himself says that Altuve will probably go in with 3000 hits. Not sure what Pos says about it here though.

xp I think Vizquel's jumps can be explained entirely by the massive ballot cleanup that happened those two years. I wouldn't be surprised if he had stalled there anyway. But the allegations against him are so far off from the trash can scandal, and Beltran debuting with over twice the support as post-allegations Vizquel is proof enough of that.

Again, I don't know (my "remove Altuve" was too categorical)--there's just no precedent that I know of. The closest, weirdly enough, might be Gaylord Perry, who--even weirder--become beloved for the very cheating he may or may not have engaged in.

Kevin--I take your post to mean that the basketball HOF is much more peak oriented, or championship-team oriented, or both, and that once you take care of that, nothing much else matters.

i'd definitely say that the mlb HOF would sooner enshrine a guy who was "very good" for a very long time 10 times out of 10 over a guy who was MVP/best in the game for a brief window, and who didn't accumulate the same numbers as the "very good" guy. there's still the argument that a baseball player requires longevity almost above all else. which is why legitimate "best in the game" types like mattingly, murphy, will clark, hershiser, etc have never made much progress vs other lesser players who just happened to stick around at their own personal peaks for twice as long. which is why it's funny when people claim a player is more "hall of very good" because a lot of those players have made it.

in the NBA you see guys like tracy mcgrady who will make it in for a brief, dominant peak, and someone like lamarcus aldridge is going to have a much tougher case.

Kevin--I take your post to mean that the basketball HOF is much more peak oriented, or championship-team oriented, or both, and that once you take care of that, nothing much else matters.

― clemenza, Sunday, June 4, 2023 8:56 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

for sure, it’s also just much more inclusive overall

i do the mlb hall is probably going to consider many more peak guys, as time goes on. it's arguably better and more accurate to the game to have a hall full of hershiser/gooden types than jack morris types

*i do think

One other thing about the "character counts" issue, mitigated somewhat because it was the VC rather than the BBWAA--it works in the other direction too. I'd say that's at least half of why Harold Baines got in, and--though not nearly as significant--part of why McGriff went in. Both were universally liked and admired, impeccably solid citizens, impervious to the cocaine (Baines) and PED (McGriff) environments they played in.

Very cool! Freeman, who has a real shot at 3,000 hits, entered the day tied with HOFer Fred McGriff and Mark Teixeira in JAWS (44.3). Likely to pass HOFers Tony Perez, David Ortisz and Jake Beckley as well as Will Clark and Jason Giambi (46.3) before the end of the season. https://t.co/E0fFajhM5l

— Jay Jaffe (@jay_jaffe) June 26, 2023

He's not a shoo-in yet, but Freeman's got to be 90% in the clear--three or four more seasons of bulk scenery should be enough. An excuse to update my Freeman/Goldschmidt watch (per 162 games):

https://phildellio.tripod.com/freeschmidt.jpg

Shareable post on WAR and the Hall of Fame.

https://open.substack.com/pub/joeposnanski/p/friday-rewind-war-what-is-it-good?r=1jtu0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

If you're interested in watching today's inductions:

https://www.mlb.com/video/live-2023-hof-awards-presentation-72852

Oops--awards, not inductions.

Had no idea Sportsnet's Shi Davidi was the current president of the BBWAA.

Now that McGriff is in, ensconced in velvet, I hope Delgado's cause is taken up by someone. He wouldn't be at the top of my list--I'd put Whitaker, Lofton, Tiant, and Tommy John ahead of him--but I think he definitely belongs, especially as he left the game with no decline phase to speak of.

Fred's table:

https://i.postimg.cc/gkKGPJTC/hof.jpg

4,507 career HR according to the caption I saw. Seemed high to me (500 per guy), but I guess when you spread Thome's surplus around, that gets you there (and Murray and Thomas are over, and McGriff just shy).

was checking out gary sheffield's career while scanning dudes with a career bWAR of 60+ who aren't in the HOF (seems like once you get there, you've got a much better shot) and wow, 22 consecutive seasons of negative defensive value is a real neat trick. 80.7 bWAR as a batter, -27.7 as a fielder. recognizing of course he did play 302 of those 2212 career games as a DH.

Sheff had infinite cool value tho

yeah his cWAR alone is 35

It's pretty wild seeing all those guys getting old. I guess we all are getting there.

Chipper's got a bit of a Raylan Givens thing going on his chin.

Oh yeah, if you have not seen that Nolan Ryan documentary on Netflix, you really should check it out. It is amazing the list of players that give interview segments in that film and really emphasizes how long Nolan played as you got guys like Jerry Grote to Ivan Rodriquez. If you grew up on 70s-80s baseball, it's good TV.

Something that piqued my interest today: somebody on a Facebook baseball group saying that Justin Turner would probably be headed for the HOF if some team had given him a chance when he was in his 20s. Here's how he compares with some guys from age 29 onwards (I pushed it back to 29 to include his first really good season).

Chipper Jones - 1564 G, .304/.405/.525, 142 OPS+, 52.6 bWAR
Adrian Beltre - 1506 G, .299/.351/.498, 124 OPS+, 57.7 bWAR
Scott Rolen - 985 G, .279/.354/.468, 115 OPS+, 33.4 bWAR
Justin Turner - 1205 G, .294/.373/.489, 132 OPS+, 36.3 bWAR

He's not Jones or Beltre, but more durable and productive than Rolen. Not an outlandish claim--and he's still playing well at 38.

Actually, at least Beltre's equal as a hitter; obviously not in the field.

Turner revamped his swing in his late 20's, much like Jose Bautista, and became a different hitter. It's not that he wasn't given chances.

https://www.mlb.com/news/contemporary-baseball-era-committee-candidates-announced

Cito Gaston, Davey Johnson, Jim Leyland, Ed Montague, Hank Peters, Lou Pinella, Joe West, Bill White...Didn't the Jays--maybe Gaston in particular--used to have all sorts of trouble with Joe West? The Immaculate Grid concept might be useful here in predicting who goes in: find guys who played for the most managers/executives in that group and go from there.

Two umpires. Guessing they're big, big analytic guys.

Anyway, this year it's Modern Day, since 1980. So, hoping for any of the following: Whitaker, Lofton, Delgado. I don't know if Dwight Evans would count--his best years came after 1980, so maybe. Pitchers? I don't know if anyone will ever emerge from that '80s quagmire: Stieb, Cone, Fernando. Am I forgetting someone obvious?

I am. Kevin Brown, Hershiser, and there are others.

Whitaker seems like the most likely out of that group, probably followed by Dwight Evans if he were to be included. I think a guy like Kevin Brown definitely deserves some more consideration. By most HOF standards he would deserve it. Stieb was a guy who felt like the best pitcher on the planet for many years. Despite the win totals, I think he should get a serious look. Jim Edmonds?

I thought Edmonds might still be on the regular ballot...must have forgotten he was one and out in 2016. Which is ridiculous.

Dunno if this is well known or not among you much bigger baseball fans than I, but I never forgot this great quote from Jim Leyland, set up here by OG Deadspin:

He was being interviewed by then-ESPNer Chris Myers, who was asking him about his well-publicized tendency to smoke cigarettes in the dugout. Leyland paused for a moment, put his head down and delivered the obligatory platitudes about how bad smoking is for you, how children should avoid smoking, how he knows it's unhealthy. Then he looked directly into the camera, his eyes very wide, and said, "Still. Smokers out there, you know what I'm talking about. That moment, after you've had a huge meal, say at Thanksgiving, when you step outside in the cold, light up a cigarette and take a deep inhale ... that's about the best moment in the world, you know? All the smokers out there, you know that feeling. Sometimes, smoking is fantastic." Myers quickly cut to commercial, and Leyland has never been on the show since.

I am not a smoker and pretty much buy into the "obligatory platitudes," but you gotta love a guy who just can't be helped from being honest about how he feels about things.

i used to smoke and that fucking hits

david cone is an interesting case, he didn't even get to 200 wins but he was clearly a HOF-level pitcher from '88-'99. the problem is he didn't do much of anything prior to or after that era. i think he was on that second tier of guys during the big 4 period (Clemens, Johnson, Martinez, Maddux), just as good as Smoltz, Glavine, Mussina, and better than Pettitte.

he came in at the end of that weird period for pitchers too, where so many of the best guys wound up with a career limited by injury or other factors. Hershiser, Viola, Guidry, and of course arguably the best pitcher of the '80s after Clemens and peak Gooden was Bret Saberhagen, for example, just absolutely a remarkable guy. if he were to be inducted on his peak value, and if the MLB HOF was more like the NBA HOF in that respect, he's a guy who might deserve it. he was an unluckier version of Zack Greinke.

i still think they should throw a bone to Rick Reuschel someday too.

Reuschel's definitely in line for reconsideration too--he'll have to wait for whatever era is pre-1980 to come up again. (I think--does it go by what year you debut?) A lot of position players from that era too: Grich, Nettles, Reggie Smith, others. I really believe--and hope--that Munson will end up in the HOF eventually: his similarity to Posey in so many ways was much commented on a couple of years ago, and obviously Posey is going in.

How badly did I fuck this sequence of posts up? The eight guys I mentioned aren't the voters this year--they're the nominees! Not a single player (seeing as Bill White is up for his executive time). I don't get it.

Anyway, here's Posnanski's post. Sentiment aside, it's probably hard to make an argument for Cito (best one I can think of: only one less WS than Bochy and more historically significant).

https://open.substack.com/pub/joeposnanski/p/friday-rewind-snakes-alive?r=1jtu0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Maybe there's a separate ballot for players...who can keep track of this anymore?