Fame!

Kazzy 24 Comments

Here is my hypothetical Hall of Fame ballot.  Voting rules dictate that you may only select 10 players.  Because of the recent screwiness in voting, there are actually more than 10 guys I think deserve enshrinement.  I’m usually a “small hall” guy, but there is a plethora of talent on the ballot right now and a handful of guys who already should have been voted in but haven’t.  So I’m going to rank the candidates from 1-37 based on the strength of their candidacy.  Here goes:

  1. Barry Bonds
  2. Roger Clemens
  3. Jeff Bagwell
  4. Mike Piazza
  5. Tim Raines
  6. Allan Trammel
  7. Curt Schilling
  8. Craig Biggio
  9. Larry Walker
  10. Kenny Lofton
  11. Mark McGwire
  12. Rafael Palmeiro
  13. Edgar Martinez
  14. Sammy Sosa
  15. Dale Murphy
  16. Don Mattingly
  17. Fred McGriff
  18. Bernie Williams
  19. David Wells
  20. Jack Morris
  21. Julio Franco
  22. Steve Finley
  23. Reggie Sanders
  24. Jeff Cirillo
  25. Shawn Green
  26. Lee Smith
  27. Woody Williams
  28. Ryan Klesko
  29. Rondell White
  30. Aaron Sele
  31. Royce Clayton
  32. Jeff Conine
  33. Roberto Hernandez
  34. Sandy Alomar
  35. Todd Walker
  36. Jose Mesa
  37. Mike Stanton

If not for the 10-candidate cutoff, I’d put the line between HoFer and non-HoFer between Sosa and Murphy.  I wouldn’t threaten to burn the place down if #15-17 got in or #11-14 didn’t, but if anyone lower than 17 does make it (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, JACK MORRIS!) or anyone in my top ten doesn’t, they should probably check my pockets for matches if I ever do show up.

I will concede that if folks want to draw a hard line in the sand when it comes to folks proven to have used steroids, I can respect the position, even if I disagree with it.  But if those same folks don’t vote for Bagwell or Piazza, then I reserve the right to call them sanctimonious grandstanding ninnies.

Kazzy

One man. Two boys. Twelve kids.

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24 Comments

  1. Good list. As much as I despise the DH, though, I’d put Edgar Martinez in the top 10.

    • Martinez being as low as he was is more a function of, “I don’t know how to think about DH’s in the Hall of Fame” and less an actual stand on the matter. I wouldn’t really argue with putting him up ahead of Mac or Palmeiro. Not sure I could leapfrog him over Lofton (who I think is severely underrated) or anyone else in the Top 10.

      • But I’m pretty confident in saying he deserves it, even with the lingering question about how we evaluate the contributions of the DH.

    • I’d leave them both off my ballot. McGwire is one-dimensional: he hit home runs. (Admittedly, he also walked enough to have a pretty good on-base average.) But he didn’t hit for average, and was well below average defensively. Sosa had a few great years in what was otherwise an unremarkable career.

      • They were probably the hardest to make sense of. I’m not particularly interested in who did what with what substances when and how. I really just looked at on field exploits. You are right that absent the HR totals, both are almost assuredly not Hall-worthy. But the HR totals are there, as are the WAR an OPS+ numbers (both much better for McGwire, mind you). I think there are statistical arguments that could be made against their inclusion; I think they’re both borderline cases that I tip ever so slightly in favor of including. But I can’t play the “What Would Have Happened” game… I don’t think it is a voter’s job to speculate; it is to evaluate.

        As my ballot stands this year, technically neither of them would get in. But I’d likely have included them in my top 10 had it not been so crowded.

        In hindsight, I definitely should have had Edgar Martinez at #11, ahead of McGwire.

      • Who would you have voted for, Mike? (And James… and whomever else wants to answer)

        • I’d vote for your 1-9 plus Martinez. I’ve never thought of Lofton as an HOF-er, but I have to admit his numbers are better than I’d realized.

          • Lofton is tricky. His defensive and base running numbers were a big part of his value, though he did have some big offensive seasons, especially considering he played CF. I agree that he didn’t feel like a HoF when he played, but I think that is largely the function of a fairly narrow idea of what a HoFer feels like.

        • Oh, I don’t pay close enough attention to make an intelligent choice. I’d just say Jack Morris because he played for the Tigers.

  3. I find the current hall class a bit difficult to think about.

    Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Clemens, et al. probably don’t deserve enshrinement based on PED use. This is particularly true if we’re going to bar people like Pete Rose from Cooperstown.

    I’d probably go with:
    Bagwell
    Piazza
    Raines
    Biggio
    Lofton
    Martinez
    Murphy
    Mattingly
    Morris

    I’m not sure about the rest.

    • I’d love to see Jeter admit to PED usage, just to watch all the sportswriters’ heads explode.

    • There’s only one person like Pete Rose, and that’s Pete Rose, and he deserves what he’s getting. Players cheating on the rules here and there is unethical and it deserves appropriate reprimand and all that.

      A manager or coach betting on his team is right out. Any sport.

      (no religion).

      • Well, there’s Hal Chase, Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, etc.

      • I suppose I’m still agnostic on this one. Especially unless it’s proven he bet AGAINST his own team. I thought he was just betting on his own team to win.

        And the hypocrisy over betting needs to end. Not so much in baseball, but football? Yeah.

        • If you’re a manager and you’ve bet on your own team, you have an incentive to win that game rather than do what’s best for the team or season as a whole, particularly by overusing pitchers. It can’t be allowed.

  4. I’m in agreement with your 1-8, with the exception that I’d swap Murphy with Trammell. If Lou Whitaker couldn’t get enough votes to stay on the ballot, then I have a hard time supporting his DP-mate for inclusion. Meanwhile, it’s hard to understate just how scary Murphy was when I was growing up – had he been on better teams after his second MVP award, I strongly suspect he’d already be in the HoF. I’d probably also move Morris up to 9 or 10 – no one responsible for that many childhood memories should fall short of the Hall. For the last spot on my hypothetical ballot, I have a really hard time deciding between Lofton, Mattingly, Martinez, and Walker, though to be honest, I’d probably leave them all off.

    Regardless, I simply cannot understand the arguments against Piazza, Biggio, and/or Bagwell getting in. While I understand the argument against Bonds, the idea of a Hall of Fame that does not include the best all-around player of all time, even before he started juicing, is an absolute joke.

    On the other hand, I have a hard time understanding the arguments for Sosa, Palmeiro and McGwire – they’d all be borderline candidates for me even without the juice, and lose the benefit of the doubt as a result of it.

    • Whitaker not being in is a damn shame.

      Morris is a real battlefield in the new school/old school debate.

      I’m pretty soft on Sosa, Palmeiro, and McGwire, and may even be somewhat biased to counter the, “I DON’T CARE WHAT THEY DID ON THE FIELD! THEY SULLIED THE SANCTITY OF THE GAME!!!!111!11!” folks. If they didn’t make it in on a true assessment of their candidacy (which I think can fairly include the PEDs but shouldn’t be all or nothing about them), I’m fine with that.

      • I should also say that I am too young to have seen most of these guys; really, only the last few groups of players added to the ballot are ones I can recall really watching and having a sense of. And while I think there is enough of a statistical record that I can pretty fairly judge the rest, I’ll cop to there being some things I can’t speak to. Murphy is another guy who is hard for me to evaluate, having never seen him. He’s a “peak guy”, accumulate almost all of his bWAR over a 7-year-span. I actually give credit to that (I prefer peak over longevity), which is why I have him higher than his total bWAR would otherwise.

      • I’d probably think differently about the PED guys if they weren’t weasels over it. If they just came out and said “yeah, I juiced.” I’d be less inclined to think poorly of them than the current spate of half-assed non-apologies they keep issuing.

  5. Jaybird, I’ve tried to comment 3 times on Bookclub! and none of them are showing up. I’m not sure if there’s an issue with the site or what.

    • I just approved one of yours. (Power!) I’ve noticed that when I make a comment that’s all or almost all rot13, it tends to disappear.

    • I was only able to find a couple in the spam folder.

      It’s irritating, is what it is. That said, if it happens again? Just do this again.

      • I think there is a rot13 issues, though. I’ll do some experiments to see if I can nail it down.

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