Over/Under: Media Reaction To Baseball’s Newest Hall of Famers

Posted by Dash Treyhorn.

[Ed Note: Over/Under is a recurring series chronicling the media's reaction to big stories in sports. Today's effort by Dash is focused mostly on the players who did get in to the Baseball Hall of Fame. For more on Jeff Bagwell's first-year snub, check out our Call of the Day post.]

In the past few years, since I really became more of a student of the game — at least from a non-player’s perspective — I’ve taken a particular interest in the Hall of Fame, and more specifically, how players are selected. I’ve come to determine that it’s an inherently flawed system that allows writers to be the gatekeepers. At first blush, it seems like a fine thing to do, because after all, writers cover the game and it’s not as if though they are letting a 22-year-old from the blog-de-jour vote on these things. However, all things being equal, we know that having writers vote on this is foolish, seeing as how they harbor biases – both good and bad – and they don’t necessarily have to cover the game of baseball, much less watch it on a daily basis. So essentially, the BBWAA have bestowed the ultimate honor for anyone whose ever played Little League in the hands of a group of people who are human and are thus not able to be 100% objective 100% of the time.

A friend of mine (Hi Ryan!) had this idea: Put a group of baseball fans into a room and ask “Is player X a Hall of Famer?” and boom, you get an immediate response. For the sure-fire guys, like Griffey or Ripken or Maddux, it’s going to be an easy “yes.” For others, like the Pokey Reeses of the world, a “no.” And for the guys in the middle, like say, your Andy Pettittes and Ryan Kleskos, where you need to spend a few minutes thinking it over and coming up with detailed arguments for his case, that’s a no, too. Because, after all, the very best baseball players in the history of the game are the ones that you need not agonize over for a few hours, much lest 15 years.

Now, the problem with this is that not every guy voting could have possibly been witness to every moment of each player’s career (not that they need to be), and they would have as many biases as the career writers. But you get the point – there is no need to belabor the process of allowing a guy into The Hall if you can’t allow him in on his first few tries. Obviously, if he’s good enough, he should be in already. So pour your best baseball-watching-buddy a beer and pick his brain.

Which brings us to the Hall of Fame class of 2011. Drum roll, please.

Roberto Alomar – One of the best players of his era and one of the greatest second basemen of all time, Bobby was a two-time World Champion who could hit (career line of .300/.317/443), steal a bag or two (474 over his career), and play a little defense (10 Gold Gloves). He received 90% of the vote (75% needed) in his second year eligible, a big jump from his first year on the ballot, when he received 73.7% in a veritable shaming-on-you by the voters who didn’t want to bestow to him the honor of being a first ballot Hall of Famer because he spit on an umpire in 1996. That’s one of the BS writer biases that I was talking about earlier, they make up their own rules as they go along to make a point about something. It’s not like being a first ballot guy means anything, unless there is some first-ballot perk we don’t know about, like a coupon redeemable for a medium soft drink at the museum’s cafeteria.

Bert Blyleven – The Flying Dutchman was one of the most prolific pitchers in his era, with 3,701 career strikeouts (5^th all time), 4970 IP (14^th), 60 shutouts (9^th), and 242 complete games (44^th). His record over 22 seasons stands at 287-250 with an ERA of 3.31. The best season of his career came in 1973, when he owned a 2.52 ERA, a 20-17 record and 258 strikeouts in 325 innings pitched. He never won a Cy Young, but is the author of fine postseason career (5-1, 2.47 ERA) for which he was rewarded with two World Series rings.

And if you’ll allow me to go off on a tangent…It was Blyleven’s 14^th year on the ballot, and the ground swell of internet support finally got him over the top and into Cooperstown, where he should’ve been 14 years ago. At the risk of contradicting myself over my earlier assertion that guys who can’t get in during their first few go-rounds probably don’t deserve to get in, I think that Blyleven is one of the exceptions. He had a truly remarkable career, one that was every bit as good (and frequently better) as any one of his contemporaries.

However, his career went by without many “huge” moments that the voters seem to love, and his 250 losses (not that they mean anything) and predisposition to giving up the long ball held him out for far too long. He is what I like to call the victim of ignorance, having not benefited from the glut of information that we currently have at our fingertips. Back when he was playing, how many actually saw him pitch? I’d venture a completely unscientific guess and say that far fewer saw him pitch in his heyday than, say, Felix Hernandez now. And if not for MLB.tv or Twitter or the internet, how many of us would actually be aware of the Seattle Ace? That’s where a lot of the rhetoric surrounding Blyleven originated from, in my humble opinion. The guy was just overlooked.

End tangent.

Now, onto the links…

Opening Salvos

When the World Series ends and the seasonal awards are handed out, all we have left are the winter meetings, a big free agent signing or two, and the Hall of Fame vote to hold us over until pitchers and catchers report. In the month leading up to the vote, you couldn’t throw a rock on the internet without stumbling across somebody’s column about who they picked, and why. Those columns have become increasingly pervasive in the past few years, especially with guys like Sports Illustrated’s Jon Heyman and ESPN’s Buster Olney developing a bonafide online presence.

Heyman, who has become a bit of a pariah and common enemy for the stat-minded crowd (more for his unwillingness to vote in Blyleven and his insistence that Jack Morris is better), did the usual dirt and made public his ballot, while saving a special column just for Blyleven. [SI.com]

Craig Calcaterra, who has become the Riddler to Heyman’s Batman, responded in kind here and here.

Got that? Stat compilers suck, unless of course they compile long enough to reach some arbitrary number like 300.  And make no mistake: if Blyleven had gotten the 13 wins needed to make 300, Heyman would have no problem with his relative lack of “dominance” his winning percentage or the cut of his jib. He would have voted for him on the first ballot, because he just decided that he likes some numbers and doesn’t like others, no matter how important or unimportant they are. [NBC Hardball Talk]

Jayson Stark weighed in with his ballot, and takes a very measured approach to who he lets in, including Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro, one admitted and one accused abuser of PEDs. He also takes the time to criticize The Hall’s practice of allotting each voter only ten slots to vote, which is problematic in a time like this, when seemingly so many eligible players are worthy of entry. Stark makes his case for those he voted for, and more often than not, makes damn good sense. [ESPN]

Joe Posnanski, a favorite of mine (and hopefully yours, too), had week long series of posts about The Hall of Fame, including one on guys who have no shot, guys who deserve a second look, those who are shoo-ins and the ones who are just, just, ju-u-u-st out of reach. [SI.com]

In the face of all the controversy and at the risk of pissing off the entire internet, Ken Davidoff can still have fun with his ballot.

Maybe if we appreciate the fact that the game was only bruised, not beaten, by what went down, then this won’t be such a harrowing process for voters. [Newsday]

Another SI writer, Jeff Pearlman, took to his soap box to talk about one the problems left behind from the steroid era: doubt.

Among the current nominees for the Hall, former Astros slugger Jeff Bagwell finds himself facing the most PED-related doubters. A handful of media types (and I have been among them) cite his staggering power numbers, his Randy (Macho Man) Savage physique as a player (as opposed to his Screech Powers physique as a retiree), his many years with a franchise that, inside the game, was known to be a hotbed for steroids… When I recently called a former Major League contemporary of Bagwell’s to ask if one was right to question to four-time All-Star, he laughed. “Absolutely,” he said.

…

This is not to say Hall of Fame voters shouldn’t support Jeff Bagwell. Or should support Jeff Bagwell. What it means is that, thanks to Major League Baseball’s defiant stubbornness throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, when guilty vs. innocent was rendered nonexistent, voters have the right to rely on their suspicions. [SI.com]

Missing from the not-accusing-but-really-accusing-Bagwell-of-juicing narrative that several writers have adopted in their voting is the acknowledgment of their own hypocrisy. Notably, that they are more-or-less keeping a deserving player out of The Hall because of nothing more than unsubstantiated rumors of past usage of PEDs, despite the 2009 witch hunt of a blogger who did something far less egregious to Raul Ibanez. I wrote about it earlier this year, and Dave Cameron of USSMariner.com and Fan Graphs elucidated that point a little further and finished off his indictment with a gem:

Intellectual honesty and consistency of opinion. That’s all we really want. [Fangraphs]

Following up on that is ESPN’s Jim Caple, who takes the writers to task for singling out the steroid era as the one to banish from The Hall, despite the fact that baseball is chalk-full of shady players, eras, and misdeeds. It’s quite a rant, and from a well respected guy in the industry. He leads off with a doozy, and it only gets better:

I have a message for BBWAA members who continue to withhold votes from players who used, or are suspected of using, performance enhancers: Get off your @#*& high horse. [ESPN]

The Big Day

Of course, an over/under on the Hall of Fame wouldn’t be complete without the totals from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, wouldn’t it? [BBWAA]

ESPN released the voting for their 18 writers, which basically predicted what went down yesterday morning. One enterprising Yankee Blog took it upon themselves to create an easy-to-read graphic with the votes, resulting in most readers asking “Who is Barry Stanton?” As it turns out, he is an ESPN editor who was once fired for plagiarizing Joe Posnanski. [Hardball Talk]

Welcome Aboard!

Circle Me, Bert! Blyleven gets the long-awaited nod to Cooperstown, and that speaks volumes about the changing face of the voter.

But along with enlightenment comes a touch of ugliness. Inherent in that attitude is that the sportswriters of the 80s, the first arbiters of history, got it wrong. First, there is a righteousness to those who believe that the evolving understanding of baseball has reached its zenith, instead of a phase that could be proved just as flawed 15 years from now. And second, for a group that has often been mocked and blocked by the Old Guard of writers, this comeuppance is especially appealing. It’s easy to get lathered up and write a scathing “We’re right, they’re wrong” story using Blyleven as the instrument of destruction. [Minneapolis StarTribune]

Roberto gets in on his second try, and that’s good news for the Toronto Blue Jays:

But Alomar’s triumph will at least fill some seats and generate some excitement about the team; I bet a nice segment of die-hards make thereasonable drive from Toronto to Cooperstown in July. After all, revenue from nostalgia-based excitement comes in the same currency as playoff-contention-based excitement. [Newsday]

The HMS Snubaroo

Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle makes a plea for Jeff Bagwell’s candidacy and levels his ire at the MLBPA:

If Bagwell is angry at someone — and he said he isn’t — it should be the union that protected the cheats. His union. [Houston Chronicle]

Mark McGwire, who hasn’t moved any closer to enshrinement, is the victim of inconsistent and selective biases from the voters, says Bernie Miklasz:

The integrity clause is interesting. It doesn’t seem to have been consistently applied through the years, the decades, the different eras. It’s OK for racists to be inducted. Pitchers who broke the rules and gained an advantage by doctoring the baseball? Sure, come on in. What about star players who padded their statistics and built Hall of Fame résumés during baseball’s long, disgraceful period of segregation? They’re fine. [StlToday.com]

Next year could be a fine time for Barry Larkin to strike, writes Rob Neyer:

However, Larkin will have two things working in his favor next time. He’ll benefit from the paucity of new viable candidates; at least a few voters who didn’t have room on their ballots this time because they voted for Blyleven and/or Alomar will find room for Larkin next time. And as the top non-electee this time, Larkin will receive somewhat more attention from the voters who didn’t vote for him … which can only help, considering just how qualified for the Hall of Fame he actually is. [ESPN]

Rafael Palmeiro, who recently reiterated his innocence, was on 11% of ballots. Needless to say, he is put off by the outcome:

“I don’t know what to say,” he told USA TODAY in a telephone interview. “This is one of those dark days in my life. The last five years, ever since that incident, I’ve felt like they were putting me in a coffin and putting nails in. Today, they were throwing dirt on my coffin.” [USA Today]

The greatest DH of our time, Edgar Martinez, is losing support on the ballot, but can find hope in the ever-changing thought processes of the voters.

But much like how the BWAA was able to overlook [Felix] Hernandez’s win-loss record in awarding him the Cy Young Award, it was also finally able to give credit to Blyleven for all he accomplished despite a statistic over which he had limited control – wins and losses.

Martinez can hope for a similar shift in perception of the designated hitter position in the next decade. As more of the game’s top players become DHs earlier in their careers, the case for the position will only get stronger. And Martinez was the prototypical DH for much of the 1990s. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

What About the Children?

In the wake of the vote, Jon Bois from SBNation.com penned a nice piece on The Hall, and why it might be more prudent to just let everyone in. Sometimes, I find it hard to disagree with.

Were we to visit, we’d certainly seek out the plaques of Willie Mays and Sandy Koufax, but we also have a tendency to cherish the game’s lesser-known players. The Bill Pecotas and Sal Fasanos of baseball would be recognized for what they were: two of the tens of thousands of co-authors of the endless chronicle of baseball. [SBNation]

If this vote was any indication, it’s going to be a long road for the likes of McGwire and Palmeiro, as well as anyone else implicated in the steroid era, if they wish to one day grace the halls of Cooperstown. McGwire saw his totals drop, and Palmeiro’s 11% is hardly any indication that it’s going to change. And with a bevvy of suspected users coming up for election over the next few years, it’s going to get even cloudier. Sayeth Jerry Crasnick:

This year, we got heaping doses of sanctimony and suspicion on one side, and cries of McCarthyism emanating from the other. Consider the events of last Wednesday, when Jeff Bagwell and Rafael Palmeiro both went public with their take on performance-enhancing drugs and their respective decisions not to use. So what if Palmeiro actually failed a test and Bagwell has never been linked to PEDs in any tangible way? It’s all one big morality play, and nobody cares about the details. [ESPN]

That news undoubtedly makes the non-asterisk bearing Home Run King Hank Aaron pleased, according to Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. [AJC]

Posnanski is back to wrap it all up. [SI.com]

Epilogue

What we learned from today’s vote was this: The Hall of Fame has some sort of unspoken code about who they let in on the first ballot, that persistence pays off, and if you were associated with steroids during any part of your career, however spurious those ties are, it doesn’t look good for you.

Posted on January 6, 2011 at 11:50AM

This Post tags: Baseball, Bert Blyleven, Dash Treyhorn, Hall of Fame, Media, MLB, Over/Under, Roberto Alomar

 

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