2013 MLB Hall of Fame Screechfest

Sorry for no distinction. That's Pedro, not Edgar.

 

I know I'm in the minority, but even given a night to contemplate it, I don't think some grand injustice was done yesterday.

Biggio is one that people are upset about, right?

He's not some shoo-in.

He had 3,000 hits, but he played for a long time in an offensive era, at a less-than-demanding position.

He had a career OPS-plus of 112. That's low. That's really low for a Hall of Famer. Only a small handful of Hall of Famers are that low. Cal Ripken had a 112. He had The Streak and two MVPs. Sam Rice had a 112. He had a lifetime average of .322. And it took him decades to get in via the Veterans Committee, despite almost 3,000 hits (no one came closer without getting there). George Kelly had a 112. Another guy with a .300 lifetime average, and a very fringe HOFer, to be honest. And, like Rice, a Veterans Committee selection decades after the fact.

Again: Perfect storm year.

It's fine.

 

Second base and catcher are not demanding?

 

Second base is not, comparatively, very demanding, no.

 

Question: which is the more valuable award in moviemaking, the Golden Globe or the Oscar?

One is voted on by the press. The other is voted on by people who make movies.

 

The Golden Globe is a bad comparison. Most people who care enough to pay attention realize that it's essentially a joke.

And people who watch a lot of movies feel largely the same way about the Oscars. I bet you're one of them.

I put more stock in Roger Ebert's Top 10 or A.O. Scott's Top 10 or Adam Kempenar's Top 10 than I do about the 10 movies nominated for the Oscar.

 

Since when is playing for a long time not a good thing? The anti-Biggio crowd sure seem to paint it that way.

Dick, the reasons it is not fine are all over this thread. This field was too strong for nobody to get in and the reasons nobody got in make it worse.

 

Playing for a long time is a good thing.

But one could make the case that, for as long as he played, Biggio should have had more than 3,060 hits.

So:

Playing for 20-plus seasons: Good.

Playing for 20-plus seasons and only compiling 3,060 hits in an offensive era: Possibly bad.

 

I think the comparison is apt. In both Golden Globe and HoF cases you have a small subset of the press voting an award in service of a commercial enterprise.

The Academy Award, however cynical, is at least voted upon by people who know the field, especially in the technical categories.

Swap in the DGA awards or the SAG awards if you like.

And if top ten lists by well-regarded experts are the more reliable metric, why not just let Bill James pick every Hall of Fame class?

 

Seriously, you are stretching so hard trying to justify what the voters did this year, you're going to dislocate your shoulder. It's not like the 3,060 hits are all he has going for him. What they do is help balance the for a guy who was still a contributor at the end, but those last few seasons hurt his career numbers a bit. He was still getting a lot of plate appearances those last three seasons when his skills had diminished significantly.

This is a player who was a good defensive catcher, then made the switch to second base and became an outstanding defender there. He stole 414 bases, including 50 in a season once. He led the league in doubles three times.

The biggest drawback in my mind? He wasn't the best player on the Astros from that era. Bagwell was, but that just shows how far off the voters are by failing to put in Bagwell by now.

 

How can it possibly matter whether he was the best player on his team? Lou Gehrig wasn't, either.

 

Still baffled by Piazza. He's not one of those guys whose name came up (not that I can remember, anyway) when it came to the PEDs.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/friv/scomp_bat.cgi?I=piazzmi01:Mike%20Piazza&st=career&compage=&age=

Maybe he's not 90% of more, but JFC, he's a first-ballot 80-85 percenter.