Maddux, Glavine, Thomas elected to Baseball Hall of Fame; Biggio just misses

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Just take this advice from Bill Madden: "So to my BBWAA brethren having such anguish limiting their votes to just 10 on this loaded ballot, suck it up, folks, and just figure it out. In a very informal survey, every voter I’ve talked to said he or she voted for more candidates this year than ever before (myself included)."

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

This again?

Yeah, let's criticize the voters who actually pick the 10 most deserving candidates, but make excuses for the ones who play games with their ballots. That makes sense.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

OOP, I agree that you should pick the top 10 most deserving in all cases except if Morris is no 11.

He's unique because he's so close AND it's his last year.

He's nowhere near my top 10 so I didn't vote for him, but it would suck for him (and the system) if he loses a vote from someone who thinks he's deserving and instead Edgar Martinez gets 38.8 percent instead of 38.7 percent.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

If you voted for someone, such as Morris, you believed he should be in the Hall of Fame. That's what your vote said.

It didn't say he was among the top 10 on a given ballot. It said he belonged in the Hall, right with all those other past players against whom, frankly, his resume might not look all that great, never mind the other guys on any given ballot.

So to stop voting for him because the latest ballot has more worthy candidates doesn't make sense to me. One year he was worthy of a vote to have a plaque in the shrine near Walter Johnson, Tom Seaver and the rest. Now he can't crack the top 10 on the 2014 ballot? That's wildly inconsistent logic.

The only way to deal with that fairly is to either vote for your holdovers first and then slot in the most deserving newcomers to the 10-man limit or to "strategize" and not vote for the likeliest among your picks to make the Hall with votes to spare.

If you never voted for Morris, in this example, in the first place, fine. If you altered your view of his career and how much he deserves Cooperstown and either add or drop him for that reason, in essence changing your view of him as a HOFer, fine. But to contend that he's just as deserving of a vote as last year but now gets bumped by the 10-man rule on a crowded ballot is bungling the responsibility, in my view.

As Dick says, you really need to account for his dwindling eligibility, while making use of the years many on the ballot have remaining.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

That wouldn't be as much of an issue if so many voters didn't play games with their votes.

The premise here is really comical. Y'all are criticizing voters who put the 10 most deserving candidates on their ballots. You'll defend voters for bullshit like never voting for anybody the first year of eligibility. You advocate misusing the right to vote to punish players for the crime of having been accused of PED use, even if there is no evidence to support the accusation. But here we have a hypothetical example of voters doing exactly what they are supposed to do, choose the players on the ballot they believe deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, and you think that is worthy of criticism? Yeah, comical is the word.

I can understand the thought, but to criticize somebody who uses the 10 allotted spots for the best possible candidates is ridiculous.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

The only player I can find who was as close to election as Morris who actually lost votes in his final year on the ballot was Enos Slaughter.

And technically, Slaughter gained in raw votes — from 261 to 297 — but because the electorate changed from 379 voters to 432, he went from 68.9% in 1978 (his 14th year) to 68.8% in 1979 (his 15th year.)

Six years later, Slaughter was elected by the Veterans Committee in 1985.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Joe, it's unfortunate that the 10-vote limit exists and I truly believe there's a chance it won't beyond this year.

But as long as it does, there is no option but to rank your candidates or play games with the ballot.

I'm among the voters who has made my opinion known within the organization that we should get rid of the limit.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

I agree that the limit does not need to be there. Get rid of that and require voters to publicly reveal their choices and I think that would go a long way to improving the process.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

At least one other player was closer to election than Morris and failed to get in on his 15th ballot.

That was Red Ruffing, who fell 15 votes shy in his 14th year in 1966 ... and 7 votes shy in 1967. However, that was during the period when if nobody got elected by the BBWAA, the writers held a run-off election and selected the top vote-getter regardless of percentage. Ruffing did get 87% of the run-off vote and was elected in 1967.

Incidentally, Joe Medwick — who got the same number of votes (212 of 292, 72%) as Ruffing in the main election in 1967 — got 81% in the run-off, but was not elected due to the rules in place at the time. He was elected by the BBWAA with 84% the following year in 1968.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

Maybe there should be a seven vote limit, but once you vote for a candidate, they carry that vote throughout their eligibility. But it doesn't count against the voter other than the one time they take up a space on the ballot.

That way you don't have to keep voting for that player each year when others join the ballot. It's not like players stop being a quality candidate from year to year.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

There's no reason for there to be any limit. Period.

 

Re: 2014 BBWAA Baseball Hall of Fame ballot released

This current climate must certainly be heart-warming to the "second-level" candidates.