Here are the full voting results:
It is frustrating that each individual ballot isn't made public. The person who voted for Todd Stottlemyre should not be allowed to vote in future elections. Does anyone disagree with this? The same goes for the person that checked Shawon Dunston's name. And so on.
Rice will almost certainly get in next year. This whole thing is so strange for me. I honestly don't understand how 8.7% of the voters can vote "no" for Rice for 13 years, and then suddenly change their minds. It is not like we've all come to some greater understanding of how valuable Jim Rice was. I guess people were bombarded with enough "dominant" and "feared" nonsense that they finally gave in. Next year, a few others will inevitably do the same. I should really stop trying to understand these people.
Morris got 101 more votes than Raines. What is there to say?
From Baseball Crank, some trends:
Everybody on this list did better this year, which is not surprising given the relative weakness of the first timers (from the voters' perspective, at least).
Morris was as low as 19.6% in 2001. He has six years of eligibility left; he's got a chance of eventually getting in. This is horrifying.
It also looks like Dawson and Blyleven will reach 75% at some point. Blyleven's 14.2% increase is probably the best news to come out of this year's voting (there's not much competition).
Finally, comparing Keith Law's 120 ballot sample to the official results:
Not surprisingly, Law's sample overestimated the "new school" candidates (Blyleven, Raines, Trammell). This seems unavoidable; I can't imagine too many retired voters fully appreciated Raines' .385 OBP and 85% SB%. When doing this in the future, it's hard to know how much of an adjustment to make, as the sample was pretty close on Blyleven, but way off on Raines.I am surprised that Morris did worse in the full voting, but it's becoming quite obvious that I don't understand any aspect of this man's candidacy. Morris is similarly mystified (and by similarly, I mean oppositely):
"I think a 3.90 ERA today is worth $25 million a year. ERA had nothing to do with it. There are writers who know nothing about how the game is played, and they look at ERA. My point is, who was in games and in at the end of games? I was in games to win. I played to win the game."Okay, Herm.
Not that the Blyleven over Morris case needs more ammunition (and not that this is particularly meaningful), but:
Morris Career CG: 175
Blyleven Career CG: 242
Raines' weak showing is definitely the most disappointing part of this year's voting. He's got a large hill to climb, but at least he has a strong support group.
Related: F You Baseball Writers of America, F You [Defensive Indifference]
Apparently, there was a hilarious argument on ESPNews Tuesday afternoon involving Sheehan, Law, and Steve. It seems like ESPN has taken down any parts that may be deemed controversial from its Video section; if anyone has video, or a transcript, or anything, that'd be great.
After reading the title, I had a feeling I was going to enjoy this post because I like anything to do with the Hall of Fame.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I'll never read it. I made the mistake of clicking on the link in the first sentence, to see what that background looked like, and now am blind.
Is the Wizard of Oz a major sponsor of the BBWAA or something?
The ESPNews argument was absolutely hilarious. Law and Sheehan made Phillips and Kurkjian (to a lesser extent) look like idiots. Kurkjian voted for 9(!) players. At one point, when Law was discussing Rice's home/road splits, Phillips asked, "Well will you look at those for every player?" as if it would a)take forever and b)be absurd and Law responded, "Yes."
ReplyDeleteKurkjian's defense of his vote for Rice went something like this,
"I didn't vote for Rice for the first 10 years of his candidacy, but then I suddenly woke up and remembered how feared/dominant he was during his career."
That struck me as a perfect example of the way that this "most feared hitter" myth really affects the way people perceive/remember past events. How is it possible that Kurkjian could look back with more clarity 10 years later?
According to a poster on Law's blog, Phillips said this word for word: "When a guy is the most impactful offensive player in a league over a decade period of time, to me that certainly gives him very strong consideration for the numbers."
According to a different poster on Law's blog, Phillips said,
“Not studying the numbers as much as you guys have Tim Raines just doesn’t sound like a HOFer in my gut. He just doesn’t feel like a HOFer.”
Okay, I've recovered enough to actually read this. WARN me the next time you do something crazy like that.
ReplyDeleteI had a thought or two on the following section:
The person who voted for Todd Stottlemyre should not be allowed to vote in future elections. Does anyone disagree with this? The same goes for the person that checked Shawon Dunston's name. And so on.
I disagree with this sentiment.
While voters have the right to put ten players on their ballots every year, the average number of names per ballot has been somewhere in the five or six range since the late 1980s (I forget where I read that - was it here?). This means that the average Hall of Fame voter throws out four or five votes, unused, on a yearly basis.
As long as a writer submits a ballot that is, overall, well thought out and free of bias and idiocy, I have no problem with him or her throwing a courtesy vote in the direction of a given player.
For instance: the "Make Believe" ballot I did last week was mostly the result of serious thought (not as much as if I had a real vote, but I did put some effort into it), and in the end I came away with several players who were, in my opinion, deserving of baseball's highest individual honor. If I had included, say, Jose Rijo, because he showed tremendous guts in coming back from an insanely long injury-forced retirement, that wouldn't have fundamentally changed my ballot. I've still got a number of guys who are clearly deserving of the honor - I'm just taking the opportunity to give a little honor to a player who I greatly admire.
On the other hand, when somebody like Woody Paige makes these sort of arguments as the basis for every selection on his ballot, that's just not right. There needs to be some legitimate argument for the majority of the names on a given ballot in order for it to be taken seriously.
In short: I'm far more concerned with the fact that Tim Raines had less than 1/4 of the vote than I am with the fact that 11 courtesy votes were given to players who, for the most part, shouldn't have been on the ballot to begin with.
(Oh, and Robb Nen getting only two votes is, in my opinion, a grave injustice. Not saying he's a Hall of Famer, but his career warranted a far better showing than this. On the bright side, they didn't elect Dave Concepcion.)
Bobby- That last part was what I wanted to see, but I don't think they posted it.
ReplyDeleteOMDQ- How about the fact that some of the people that voted for Stottlemyre/Dunston/etc. probably didn't vote for Raines? This concerns me tremendously.
I bet they voted for Morris, though.
Wow, nice page, BBWAA. Did they make that template in FrontPage 1.0?
ReplyDeleteWhat Morris' defense of his ERA doesn't seem to realize is that the Hall of Fame is an individual honor, not something that should be bestowed upon pitchers who happened to pitch for a lot of good teams. Morris pitched on, I believe, six teams that won 90 games and only two teams that finished below .500. That suggests his win number had some help. His ERA, ERA+, and WHIP, on the other hand, are pretty much pure Morris.
If everyone follows the 'courtesy vote' logic, we could end up with a guy like Dave Concepcion in the Hall. This reminds me of the time everyone in Minnesota thought they would vote for Jesse Ventura as a joke, and then woke up and he was governor.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be fun to put together a protest in Cooperstown if Jack Morris ever got in. Just all-out chanting during his speech.
ReplyDelete"3.90 E-R-A is Too Fucking High For the Hall of Fame"
I'll show myself out.
VW, the average voter fills out just over half the ballot. Unless somebody voted for nine "worthy" players and a throw-in like Stottlemyre (but not Raines, which is totally inexplicable), the matter of courtesy votes and Raines non-votes are separate issues.
ReplyDeleteMy only problem with Jack Morris is that when he goes in, he won't get 100% of the vote. Don't people realize he won Game 7 of the 1991 World Series singlehandedly? I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the Twins didn't even need to field any position players.