Atlanta Braves and the Crowded Hall of Fame Ballot
The Rant
All of the above is why I’m annoyed at the process, but it took this from Jayson Stark today to push me over the edge.
I can tell you who else I've voted for in the past but ran out of spots: McGriff, Kent, Walker, Wagner. Never had room for Manny/Sheff/Sosa https://t.co/n150Bp9Bq1
— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) January 16, 2017
He later added this:
I've heard some voters say they'd have voted for 18 players 2 years ago. Depends on the year. BBWAA asked for 12. The Hall said no thanks https://t.co/shCQbSJRaQ
— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) January 16, 2017
The Problem is Getting Worse
No only did the Hall reject the idea of expanding the votes even slightly – to 12 – they have taken steps in recent years to make it harder to clear a tight field of worthy candidates.
In 2014, the years of player ballot eligibility were reduced from 15 to 10. That doesn’t help to clear any space.
At this point, you have voters scrambling to figure out exactly what philosophy to employ with their ration of votes. I have heard all of the following thoughts:
- The 10 ‘Best of the Best’
- The 10 that others may not vote for (leave the ‘elites’ for others to vote in)
- The “Small Hall” philosophy (which is bogus, as noted above)
- The players who need votes to simply stay on the ballot another year (Jorge Posada is getting some of these)
- The “I don’t want too many speeches in the Summer heat” idiocy.
- Of course, there’s at least 3 or 4 steroid philosophies out there
- And there are always some who employ some of the most bizarre gymnastics with logic and reason in order to justify a vote not cast.
Comparing to the Past
It is hard to quantify this without getting extremely long-winded here, so I will paint a generalized picture here using a 50 bWAR benchmark.
Baseball-reference.com has a wonderful stat chart for hitters and pitchers in the Hall.
On average, hitters had a 69 career bWAR; the median pitcher was at 63.8. It seems reasonable, then, to draw a cutoff at roughly 50 bWAR for each category. You could argue with those numbers, but again, this is entirely done for simplicity.
This year alone, there are fifteen such players on the ballot.
As my friend Lee Trocinski pointed out today, that doesn’t even count the relievers: Trevor Hoffman (28.4), Lee Smith (29.6), or Billy Wagner (28.1).
So even if the writers suddenly went on a voting spree, they would not be allowed to vote in everyone who traditionally has been a Hall of Famer based on these crude stats.
LOOKING FORWARD
The 2018 ballot is going to be absolutely nutty. There’s a potential for another 20-ish names to be added, and of these, here are the 50+ bWAR players:
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While we’re here… let’s check the new 50-WAR additions for 2019 (Fred McGriff‘s last year):
Will all of these players get in? Nope. Should they? That depends on your perspective, but the traditions of the past would seem to argue “yes” if you’re judging modern players by the same standards.
Yet that clearly isn’t happening. In fact, it’s now harder to get elected that at any time before.
You might look at Jamie Moyer (50.4) and think “No – not a Hall guy”. Yet just by this singular stat, his career looks better than Catfish Hunter, Rube Marquard, Bob Lemon, Dizzy Dean, Lefty Gomez, and Chief Bender… just to name a few.
Sure – the elite will be honored as they ought. Others also need to included.
But thanks to ‘modern thinking’ or some such nonsense, many who crack the top 1% of their sport will never get that phone call.
The Hall of Fame must fix this. Open the doors just a little bit wider.