Baseball Hall Of Fame

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12/31/2007 11:06 pm

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It's time for my fifth annual "If I had a Hall Of Fame Vote" post.

My previous ballots:
2004 ballot
2005 ballot
2006 ballot
2007 ballot

A few reminders:
1. Voters can vote for up to ten players.
2. I'm a "Big Hall" guy so I voted for ten.
3. I reserve the right not to have reasonable explanations for any or all of my selections.
4. To be inducted, players need to be named on 75% of the ballots cast.
5. The real results will be announced on January 8th.

Eligible Players:

Holdovers from last year: Harold Baines, Bert Blyleven, Dave Concepcion, Andre Dawson, Rich "Goose" Gossage, Tommy John, Don Mattingly, Mark McGwire, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Dave Parker, Jim Rice, Lee Smith, Alan Trammell

First-timers: Brady Anderson, Rod Beck, Shawon Dunston, Chuck Finley, Travis Fryman, David Justice, Chuck Knoblauch, Robb Nen, Tim Raines, Jose Rijo

My Ballot:

Bert Blyleven - Eligible since 1998 (5th time on my ballot)
Andre Dawson - Eligible since 2002 (5th time on my ballot)
Rich "Goose" Gossage - Eligible since 2000 (5th time on my ballot)
Tommy John - Eligible since 1995 (2nd time on my ballot)
Mark McGwire - Eligible since 2007 (2nd time on my ballot)
Jack Morris - Eligible since 2000 (5th time on my ballot)
Dale Murphy - Eligible since 1999 (1st time on my ballot)
Tim Raines - Eligible since 2008 (1st time on my ballot)
Jim Rice - Eligible since 1995 (5th time on my ballot)
Alan Trammell - Eligible since 2002 (5th time on my ballot)

Dropped from last years ballot:
Tony Gwynn (elected)
Cal Ripken Jr. (elected)
Lee Smith - Eligible since 2003 (previously voted for on '06 and '07 ballots)

Added from last year:
Tim Raines (newly eligible)
Tommy John (voted for in '06, didn't vote for in '04/'05/'07)
Dale Murphy (did not vote for '04-'07)

	PackOne - You analyze me. Tend to despise me. You laugh when I stumble and fall. 01/01/2008 @ 12:14:29 AM
Dawson, Goose, John, and I personally like Knoblauch.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Alex - 3619 Posts 01/07/2008 @ 09:24:08 PM
I didn't comment earlier cause some of these guys are still a little before my time. After reading some thoughts from espn: Goose, Andre, Bert, Jack, Tim, Mark, Alan While I have commented in the past I haven't put out a list so I have no historical data. Matt, any reasoning for the flip-flopping on Tommy John and Lee Smith?		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Matt - Washington Bureau Chief 01/07/2008 @ 10:46:35 PM
I added both for the '06 ballot because there weren't any good newcomers that year so I had spots open. Then last year with McGwire, Gwynn, and Ripken joining I had to drop some and Smith made it over John. I'm not sure if I had any reason other than just a gut feeling at that point. This year, I decided to add Dale Murphy for the first time. I've always kind of liked him, even though he was a little ahead of my time (his peak years at least). Again, kind of just a gut feeling type pick (which is how I usually have to separate the close guys at the bottom of the ballot). That left one spot left. I never really had any strong feelings one way or another on Smith or John, but this year after looking over the stats again, I just felt that John's many years of good but not great play as a starter (and his 288 wins) were worth more than Smith's years as a closer (especially since I'm still not quite sure what the standards for closers should be yet). Also the fact that John only has one more year after this one on the ballot made his case more urgent. So I decided to drop Smith and re-evaluate him next year. I heard he was disappointed, but what can you do.		Rate this comment Yours: Total: Rated 1 times.
Matt messed with this at 12/31/2008 4:40:42 pm

	Matt - 3941 Posts 01/08/2008 @ 01:21:56 PM
Results Gossage is in with 86%, Rice falls just short at 72% and should get in next year. Dawson at 66% (previous high was 61%) and Blyleven at 62% (previous high was 53%) look good to get in eventually. Blyleven's big jump this year is especially encouraging. All others were below 50%, with Tim Raines debuting at a criminally low 24%.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Alex - You've got to trust your instinct, and let go of regret 01/08/2008 @ 01:38:05 PM
The reason I didn't have Rice or John on my list is that it shouldn't take that long to get in. Why is there even 15 years of eligibility?. If I was in charge I'd it cut it down to 10 at the most, maybe 5. The whole only being able to vote for 10 players doesn't seem to matter since it's clear from this year's numbers that most voters don't vote for 10 guys anyway. If it takes 15 tries to get in people are only voting for you because they feel bad.		Rate this comment Yours: Total: Rated 1 times.

	Jeremy - Always thinking of, but never about, the children. 01/08/2008 @ 01:47:42 PM
Wait, so only he made it this year? I'm not sure there should be a statue of limitations at all, which while keeping in play the "we feel bad for this guy after waiting "x" years" factor gets rid of the urgency to vote him in after a few. In my opinion if emotion (especially emotion over speculations .... McGwire) or "I'll vote for this guy next year because he has 2 years left while this is this guy's last chance" enters your mind than you are doing it wrong. Edit: As Alex alluded to, there's probably a reason you didn't get elected the first 14 times. There are players out there who deserve to be in, I just don't like the system of "well, there's no one else to vote for." Maybe they should enforce having to vote for a certain number of players, or if someone is a forgone conclusion, like is on 95% of ballots, you get another vote in a second round of voting. I think this would address another problem with voting issues like this because people will think someone is a foregone conclusion to win something, so they throw their votes elsewhere as a "nod" to that person and it skews and effect the outcomes sometimes. I can't find it, but there was an article written after Manning and McNair got co-MVPs that one of the voters (a woman I think) regretted her decision to vote of mcnair. She thought it was a lock that Manning would win and just wanted to give a little shout out to the decent season McNair had. She ended up the deciding vote it making them share it. It doesn't work out for a "single ownership thing" like MVP is supposed to be. Pretend for a minute you were allowed to vote for your top 3 players for hall of fame and you really felt 3 hold overs were deserving, but there were also 3 "locks" on the ballot. You could vote for the obvious people and then get those votes back, instead of making a statement with your votes.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.
Jeremy perfected this at 01/08/2008 2:02:58 pm

	Jeremy - 9543 Posts 01/08/2008 @ 02:17:53 PM
In other words, come up with some system of weeding out the people that everyone on earth knows will win, then vote on a ballot without them spending your 0-10 votes how you see fit. I forgot to mention one of the key features of doing it this way, it would reduce the impact of those "big" players have so in actuallity the rest of the players are likely to go it when/if they deserve it, and not because there was "no one else" to vote for, because the "real" ballot would always just be those "no one else" ballots.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Jeremy - 9543 Posts 01/08/2008 @ 02:24:54 PM
Also, this would only work in hall of fame type situations where you aren't taking away anything from the "main" people by giving little guys a marginal bump. It wouldn't work in mvp situations where you could UN/CO the real MVP. All in all it would allow "big hall" guys like Matt to vote for all the players he thinks are deserving and not be, necessarily, affected because there happened to be 6 no-brainers on the ballot that year.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Matt - 3941 Posts 01/08/2008 @ 03:03:22 PM
Well, very few voters these days actually use up all ten of their ballot spots (recently, the average number of names per ballot is usually in the 5.75-6.75 range, this year I saw someone who calculated that it was 5.36), so having no-brainers on the ballot won't hamper too many voters from voting all the players that they want. That's not to say that years with multiple no-brainers on doesn't have an effect, because they do, but I don't think its big enough of a problem to warrant a change just by itself. As for the 15 year thing. I agree that it should be clear right away (or within a few year) whether a guy should be in the hall of fame or not, but a lot of sportswriters are dumb, so there needs to be some time for people to get them to change their minds. Also, if you change it so that a player only has 1 or 2 or 3 years on the ballot, you would get too many years where nobody is elected, so giving them longer allows for the second-tier and borderline guys to build support and "fill-in" the years where there aren't any sure things on the ballot.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Jeremy - 9543 Posts 01/08/2008 @ 03:13:11 PM
Maybe the solution is to make a BCS type system to determine who belongs in. People hate the BCS system because it doesn't pick like a person would, but that's the whole point. People are stupid and pick on dumb criterion like being lobbied, steroid allegations, gut feelings, for the hell of it, because they played on your favorite team, because he's a jerk, etc.		Rate this comment Yours: Total: Rated 1 times.

	Carlos44ec - 2079 Posts 01/08/2008 @ 04:17:23 PM
I voted "0 Nuts" on your thread specifically for the last reason you gave. of course, you didn't play on my favorite team either.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Alex - 3619 Posts 01/08/2008 @ 07:18:24 PM
This is getting off the topic, but MVP type voting should be done like the Heisman is with everyone submiting 1st, 2nd, 3rd and summing up the results. Much less chance of the token vote getters passing up the "obvious" winner then. Only voting for 1st and only 50 votes total is straight foolishness. BCS type system would not be good. There's almost no end to the inane statistics you can come up with in baseball, and people already compute many of them for voters to look at (though some voters probably don't take the time I'm sure). A HOF type award should be based on more than stats though.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.
Alex edited this at 01/08/2008 7:20:02 pm