2013 MLB Hall of Fame Screechfest

It's a tradition that developed somewhere along the line. Has it run its course? Perhaps. Do the majority of writers even adhere to it any more? Doubtful. Is it worth all the bleating that it causes? Not in the slightest.

 

It's not about ensuring more inductees. It is about the quality of the ballot improving because now we have entered a time in baseball when the ballot is coming from a pool of 30 teams and 750 players every season. That is going to lead to more players in the discussion.

Here are the holdovers: Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Edgar Martinez, Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff, Mark McGwire, Jack Morris, Rafael Palmeiro, Mike Piazza, Tim Raines, Curt Schilling, Lee Smith, Sammy Sosa, Alan Trammell, Larry Walker.

That's 17 names. Only Morris is guaranteed to drop off.

Now add in Maddux, Glavine, Thomas, Mussina and Kent, to say nothing of guys further down the ballot. That's 21 names to pick from. Let's assume that Maddux, Glavine and Biggio get elected. Morris doesn't matter, he disappears anyway.

Now we have 19 names for the 2015 ballot. And add Randy Johnson, Pedro, Smoltz, Sheffield and Nomar. Mattingly would finally fall off. Let's assume Johnson, Pedro and Thomas get elected.

Now we have 19 names again. Add Griffey, Edmonds, Wagner and Hoffman. Trammell falls off. Let's assume Griffey and Piazza get in.

Now we 22 names for the next ballot. Add Manny, Vlad and Pudge. Lee Smith falls off the ballot.

Every year for the next five or so years, there are more than double the number of viable candidates someone can vote for. And that's what leads to this logjam. This isn't like it has been in the past, when you have maybe five outstanding candidates and the bottom of the returning ballot, which was maybe 10 or 11 guys, had no chance.

And it assumes that the next three classes would have three players each, something that hasn't happened more than a handful of times in the history of voting, and now we expect it to happen in back to back years?

 

It's the height of stupidity to allow a group of voters to hijack the process is what it is.

Basically, because some douchebag writers made Joe DiMaggio wait a year before he was inducted it became ok for some other douchebag writers to spend the next 50 years arbitrarily deciding who is "first ballot" worthy and who is not.

 

I can honestly handle the possibility that Mike Mussina, Jeff Kent, and Jim Edmonds might have to wait a couple years to be elected.

 

Can you list some of the worthy players who are not in the Hall of Fame, as a result of this decades long sham?

 

It's very obvious a lot of voters do. Alomar got 126 more votes -- 20 percent of the voting body -- in his second year to get elected.

Bagwell went from 242 to 321 in his second year. Larkin went from 278 to 261. And that's just recent voting.

So it's safe to say there are around 100 voters that are admitting a first-ballot distinction, which, if that is the case, would put Biggio at 85.7 percent next year and Piazza at 75.4 percent.

 

Uh, assclown, where did I say this had anything to do with who got in and who didn't?

My fucking point is that the pricks at the BBWAA should have never been allowed to make up their own fucking rules in the first place. They've now given MLB & the HoF a chance to slap them down and they should take that chance.

I'll type slower from now on so you can keep up.

 

And you are saying they should be elected. But with the 10-man limit, they may have trouble staying on the ballot because there are too many worthy names and not enough spots, because there are so many voters not going past two or three spots on their ballot.

 

Why? What did they do that was so egregious?

Like I said: Voter evaluation of candidates is better than it has ever been, and getting better each year.

 

A range of players takes care of all of those concerns. Some years there would be for (or make the minimum two, or whatever), some years there would be seven.

It doesn't serve any purpose anymore to have writers -- who no longer have information that the rest of the world can't get -- create some standard of what a Hall of Famer is and then decide nobody meets that standard even though hundreds of people decide the standard differently. In this day and age, a writer doesn't have a whole lot more insight than a dedicated fan does about whether Tim Raines is a Hall of Famer.

The Hall of Fame is also at its core a marketing vehicle for baseball. This is horrible marketing.

 

No, they won't.

 

And if that bias weren't in place, Biggio would be in today. Not that I'm championing Biggio in particular; I'm just fed up with the voters creating their own distinctions.