2013 MLB Hall of Fame Screechfest

Then maybe there shouldn't be hundreds involved. There are people voting who probably haven't covered a game in 25 years.

 

There's no doubt about that.

 

Only way to stop the extreme outlier votes (1 vote for Green, 1 vote for North Dakota State in the AP poll, etc.) is not to publish every person/team that got a vote. Announce the top 25. And that's all. Announce the Hall voting . . . but don't announce anyone who got less than 10 percent, etc.

Goes against most of what I believe in, but it's obvious these people are using these votes so they will "show up" somewhere. If they know beforehand that the vote will be completely invisible (as if it never happened), maybe they'll stop.

 

If they're going to leave it with the BBWAA then do two things:

1. If the ballot has room for 10 names (or 9 or 12), you have to vote for 10 candidates (or 9 or 12). Anyone who returns a ballot with fewer than 10 names loses his voting privileges.

2. Cut the time a player can spend on the ballot to five years.

 

How about watched, or even paid attention to.

 

Again, this was one year. Not some epidemic. There used to be years all the time in the early decades of voting in which no one was elected. Why are we going to drastically alter the process for a single year? What an overreaction. If Greg Maddux doesn't sail in next year, then fine. Something fishy is going on. But right now, it's much ado about absolutely nothing.

 

Maybe it's already been mentioned, but in 1996, there were two 300-game winners on the ballot.

And no one elected.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_1996.shtml

 

I'd be OK with adding an instruction that says "Vote only for players you think deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, not to make statements about players."

A writer can write a column about a Shawn Green and what a swell guy he is without putting him on the HOF ballot and making the entire body look bad.

That being said, I really don't think the actions of 3 or 4 people out of 569 are worth losing any sleep over.

As for requiring people to vote for the maximum, what's the point of that? If you don't think there are 10 guys worthy of HOF consideration, you shouldn't have to vote for 10.

 

There should be a minimum number to vote for, though.

Pro football mandates that between four and seven get elected every year, right? That's a pretty good system.

 

Why?
Because we have to elect someone?!
Oh hell, let's stick in Jack Morris and Jim Kaat because that's really all that's half-decent this year.

Making it mandatory to elect people every year water things down.

 

There are inductees this year. That seems to be lost on a lot of people. They're old-time baseball inductees, but they are inductees, nonetheless.

 

This is also something that seems to be lost on a lot of people. For whatever reason, steroids/PEDs are a very polarizing issue. They almost remind me of global warming. The people on each side of the debate absolutely believe they are 100 percent correct, with no room for nuance or shades of gray. And that the other side are stupid dumb-dumbs.

PED use is an agonizingly gray ethical area. And it is moreso because of how the particular situation in baseball played out. There seems to be absolutely zero sympathy for the voters who had to sort through this.

It seems like a lot of people punted for now. Why is that so unexpected? Voters had two choices. One they can never un-do, which is to vote PED users in. The other they can un-do as early as next year when the same players come up for vote again. It would seem to be to be perfectly predictable and defensible behavior to take the option that doesn't box the voter into an irreversible result over the one that does.