{"id":5683,"date":"2013-01-10T11:51:39","date_gmt":"2013-01-10T16:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=5683"},"modified":"2013-01-13T11:03:29","modified_gmt":"2013-01-13T16:03:29","slug":"hof-post-mortemis-the-hall-in-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=5683","title":{"rendered":"HoF Post mortem\/Is the Hall in trouble?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5689\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/BiggioCraig-Karen-Warren-Houston-Chronicle.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5689\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-5689\" title=\"BiggioCraig Karen Warren Houston Chronicle\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/BiggioCraig-Karen-Warren-Houston-Chronicle-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5689\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Biggio has to wait for enshrinement to the HoF.  Photo Karen Warren\/Houston Chronicle<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Obligatory HoF Reaction post.<\/p>\n<p>I wasn&#8217;t going to write one. \u00a0But email\/text conversations later I thought it may just be easier to write a thousand words on the topic.<\/p>\n<p>As the <a href=\"http:\/\/bbwaa.com\/\">front page of the BBWAA<\/a> site says, &#8220;No players elected for the first time since 1996.&#8221; Also for only the 8th time in the history of balloting, no player was elected this cycle by the electorate.<\/p>\n<p>We all knew this day was coming. \u00a0You can google articles from nearly 5 years ago when the whole slew of these first time players were first known to all be eligible on this ballot and know this day was coming. \u00a0And now here we are.<\/p>\n<p>My interpretation of the results for the major players kind of goes like the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Craig\u00a0Biggio<\/strong> was &#8220;penalized&#8221; by some voters for not being a &#8220;First Ballot Hall of Famer&#8221; calibre player. \u00a0Therefore lots of voters who have annointed themselves the keepers of this title skipped voting for him this year. \u00a0Much like what happened to\u00a0<strong>Roberto Alomar<\/strong> (who went from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/awards\/hof_2011.shtml#BBWAA\">73% to 90%<\/a> from 1st ballot to 2nd)\u00a0we probably see Biggio get &gt; 90% next year. \u00a0He&#8217;s clearly a hall of famer, but clearly not a first balloter in some eyes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jack Morris<\/strong> is screwed. \u00a0He only rose from 66% to 67%, indicating to me that enough people have bought into the anti-Morris narrative that has been so fully expoused by sabre-tinged writers to outlast the old-school guard of baseball writers who covered Morris and remember him as I do.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Piazza<\/strong> and <strong>Bagwell<\/strong> both are side effects of the PED argument, but clearly get more credit for possibly being clean than the next two names. \u00a0But enough people are believing that &#8220;back acne&#8221; proves PED usage for Piazza, and &#8220;muscles&#8221; proves PED usage for Bagwell, so both will likely struggle to get to 75% for a few years.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Clemens <\/strong>and\u00a0<strong>Bonds:<\/strong> both getting almost identical vote totals in the 36-37% range despite both being amongst the best who ever played indicates a clear statement being made by the older voters, who clearly are penalizing these guys for their alleged\/accused\/leaked grand testimony involving PEDs. \u00a0I&#8217;ll bet though that both players will get significantly more votes in subsequent years and probably eventually make it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sosa<\/strong> and\u00a0<strong>McGwire<\/strong>: probably both never get in, since both are in the 12-16% range. \u00a0Writers clearly believe both guys were 100% the product of andro and steroids, and thus artificially gained their accomplishments.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Bernie Williams<\/strong> and <strong>Kenny Lofton<\/strong> both amazingly will fall off the ballot. \u00a0I don&#8217;t think either are HoFamers but I also thought they deserved to hang around on the ballot for a while (kind of like a <strong>Dale Murphy<\/strong> or a <strong>Don Mattingly<\/strong>) to discuss.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Tim Raines<\/strong> and <strong>Lee Smith<\/strong> are probably never getting in; their vote totals don&#8217;t seem to be changing much, and a slew of more deserving names are coming in the next 5 years.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Edgar Martinez<\/strong>, <strong>Trammell<\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>McGriff, Walker, Mattingly<\/strong>: they&#8217;re all marginal candidates for different reasons, and they all seem likely to die on the ballot in the 30-40% range. \u00a0I like Martinez for the Hall; in a sentence if you elect the best relief pitchers, how can you not elect the best designated hitters?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Palmeiro<\/strong> sealed his fate the moment he tested positive. \u00a0It doesn&#8217;t matter if he broached magical barriers of 500 (homers) and 3000 (career hits). \u00a0He&#8217;ll never get in.<\/li>\n<li>Lastly, the interesting case of <strong>Curt Schilling<\/strong>. \u00a038.8% on the first ballot. \u00a0What does this mean? \u00a0He&#8217;s definitely never been accused of PEDs, had a great peak, was absolutely one of the best pitchers in the game for at least a short amount of time, has 3000 Ks but not 300 wins (or close to it), had an iconic moment in the bloody sock game, and was on two different WS winning teams. \u00a0A 127 career ERA+ puts him career 48th, even or ahead of plenty of hall of famers. \u00a0Why so few votes? \u00a0What statement is being made here? \u00a0I&#8217;m not sure entirely. \u00a0Maybe this is a combination of the &#8220;not a first ballot hall of famer&#8221; denials AND some sense of outrage against the outspoken Schilling from older media members who covered him and still vote primarily with their egos.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Back to the question of the article; is the HoF in trouble? \u00a0Well, yes and no.<\/p>\n<p>No because I think Biggio will be elected next year, along with two more big names who have never had a schred of PED accusations (<strong>Maddux<\/strong> and <strong>Glavine<\/strong>). \u00a0And you can see guys in each of the subsequent years easily being elected (<strong>Randy Johnson<\/strong> and <strong>Pedro Martinez<\/strong> in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/awards\/hof_2015.shtml\">2015<\/a>, <strong>Ken Griffey Jr<\/strong> in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/awards\/hof_2016.shtml\">2016<\/a>, <strong>Pudge <\/strong>and <strong>Manny<\/strong> in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/awards\/hof_2017.shtml\">2017<\/a> unless there&#8217;s still PED outrage at that point. \u00a0And that ensures there&#8217;s ceremonies with who should be absolute no-brainer electees each year for the next few years.<\/p>\n<p>But, Yes because Cooperstown and the Hall itself are not always profit making endeavors, and having an election year without any recently retired players is going to mean a massive drop in income for the town and the hall. \u00a0Reportedly the museum has lost money in <a href=\"http:\/\/hardballtalk.nbcsports.com\/2012\/01\/03\/the-hall-of-fames-attendance-is-in-decline\/\">8 of the last 10 years<\/a>. \u00a0That coupled with the continued recession, and we could see some serious financial hardship in upstate New York in 2013. \u00a0Will it be enough that the BBWAA agrees to one of the litany of election system changes being proposed on the internet? \u00a0Maybe, maybe not. \u00a0But if this continues into 2013, yeah we may see something change. \u00a0Perhaps a panel of judges versus the BBWAA electorate (similar to what the NFL does) makes sense in the long run. \u00a0The point is that the HoF NEEDS to have a compelling election class in order to stay profitable, and may change its entry mechanisms to guarantee attendance (and thus revenues) each year.<\/p>\n<p>One thing I do agree with; I think writers who purposely send in a blank ballot should be removed from the voting system. \u00a0You just can not look at this list of players and tell me there&#8217;s not at least ONE deserving candidate. \u00a0A blank ballot does nothing but hurt the chances of legitimate players to be honored and should be interpreted as a writer who does not take the process seriously.<\/p>\n<p>Murkier are my thoughts on entrance requirements to the BBWAA in general. \u00a0Should we allow in all these internet baseball writers? \u00a0I think that a lot of the moral outrage and indignance expressed by frequent baseball bloggers over the BBWAA and the &#8220;old school&#8221; writers is simply mis-placed jealousy that they (the internet blogger) are not eligible to vote. \u00a0 \u00a0There is a section of the <a href=\"http:\/\/bbwaa.com\/constitution\/\">BBWAA constitution<\/a> that talks about internet writer acceptance and the requirements don&#8217;t seem that unfair. \u00a0The intent of the organization is to find people who &#8220;cover the game&#8221; but also people who actually &#8220;attend the games,&#8221; interview players and coaches, and are generally members of the traditional media. \u00a0People who have access and who understand more than the average baseball blogger, who interprets box scores and statistics websites to pass judgement. \u00a0I&#8217;m ok with the limitations set out as thus.<\/p>\n<p>Two other quick thoughts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Yeah, we should probably increase the 10-player limit.<\/li>\n<li>Yeah, we should probably force writers to reveal their ballots (much as the major awards now do).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Until next year. \u00a0One thing is certain; much like relief over the end of the election news, I&#8217;m relieved that no more HoF articles will be appearing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Obligatory HoF Reaction post. I wasn&#8217;t going to write one. \u00a0But email\/text conversations later I thought it may just be easier to write a thousand words on the topic. As the front page of the BBWAA site says, &#8220;No players elected for the first time since 1996.&#8221; Also for only the 8th time in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1390],"tags":[1118,596,649,639,638,679,656,606,644,120,146,575,576,607,1322,655,647,193,667,636,745,646,374,571,637,501,573,169],"class_list":["post-5683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","category-hall-of-fame","tag-alan-trammell","tag-barry-bonds","tag-bernie-williams","tag-craig-biggio","tag-curt-schilling","tag-dale-murphy","tag-don-mattingly","tag-edgar-martinez","tag-fred-mcgriff","tag-greg-maddux","tag-ivan-rodriguez","tag-jack-morris","tag-jeff-bagwell","tag-ken-griffey-jr","tag-kenny-lofton","tag-larry-walker","tag-lee-smith","tag-manny-rodriguez","tag-mark-mcgwire","tag-mike-piazza","tag-pedro-martinez","tag-rafael-palmeiro","tag-randy-johnson","tag-roberto-alomar","tag-roger-clemens","tag-sammy-sosa","tag-tim-raines","tag-tom-glavine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5683"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5694,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5683\/revisions\/5694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}