Your 2015 Hall of Fame Ballot

[Can_of_corn]

No Pedro?

Bonds

Clemens

Pedro

Johnson

Piazza

Raines

Bagwell

Mussina

Edgar

Biggio

He left off Pedro and Randy since they will get in without his vote.

[Loophole]

What has happened to sour you on Raines?

I think he's always been a borderline case, but his complete lack of support at the beginning and the subsequent internet campaign has blown him up a bit too much. If he'd started at 50% I don't think we'd all be so high on him. There's still an argument there.

I'm still prone to voting for him because I just like him and he's probably the best base stealer of all time, and why not. Part of me takes the HOF less seriously than I used to (especially given that I'll never have a vote so who cares) and "best base stealer of all time" matters more to me as a novelty than career WAR, and another part of me takes it more seriously after coming to the realization that I'd been using career WAR as a lazy cheat. Telling myself to look deeper into things, only using "65" as a basic borderline number and then... basically just using "65" as a dividing line and contorting the numbers to support whoever lands above that. Basically I wanna look deeper into the numbers, understanding that WAR itself has a wider range of error prior to advanced fielding/pitching data collection and still a wide range after that. When they readjusted replacement level a few years back and I saw guys get 10 WAR added to or subtracted from their careers, I got a bit more cynical about that range. Wanna stop using the "tons of crappy players have been voted in so all borderline players should be bingos" logic because I don't really see a point anymore and I've always just felt like I'm supporting guys like Walker and Martinez cause everyone else is, when I really just don't see them as HOFers. Sorry if that makes me sound too much like Skip Bayless.

But I also wanna be a bit lighter about it and re-internalize the idea that the baseball HOF isn't a life or death situation. It's still allowed to be more fun than an all-out culture war.

I think Tim Raines is a great test case for this: a low power/low defense/high OBP corner outfielder who spent most of his career in a pitcher's park with turf. Also one of the best baserunners of all time and probably the best thief. Has a lot of skills SABR nerds have loved for a long time,and he lives in Rickey's shadow, so he's an easy guy to support emotionally. Also fits into that 60-70 "borderline" WAR zone. I just think there's a lot more to talk about with him.

Drungo response in 3... 2...

[25 Nuggets]

What a ridiculous ballot. I could vote for 22 names if there were no cap. We are voting for twelve right?

OK, ballot redone for ten names. It pains me to leave Larry Walker and Edgar Martinez off but so be it.

Jeff Bagwell

Craig Biggio

Randy Johnson

Pedro Martinez

Mike Mussina

Mike Piazza

Tim Raines

Curt Schilling

John Smoltz

Alan Trammell

[DrungoHazewood]

Additionally, I think that perhaps you are overstating your case a bit by saying there are more than 15 that are unquestionably deserving. Pointing out that there are a handful of undeserving HOFers is no reason to enshrine everyone who did as well as they did. Why "correct" a problem by increasing the number of undeserving HOFers tenfold?

No one ever gets thrown out of the Hall, so the standard really is the Vet's Commitee lower limit. I'll ok with not quite going down to that level, but keeping out players who are objectively 20, 30 or more wins better than current HOFers seems crazy to me. Literally there are cases where you can add together the careers of two current HOFers and not reach the value of, say, Lou Whitaker. When that kind of fact exists, to me, it's impossible to be a small Hall advocate without also advocating removing players.

[DrungoHazewood]

No Pedro?

Bonds

Clemens

Pedro

Johnson

Piazza

Raines

Bagwell

Mussina

Edgar

Biggio

Pedro doesn't need my vote. He should be well over 90% in any case. Guys like Walker and Trammell and Raines might just need my vote to stay on the ballot until the system can be reformed. Reform might bring them back anyway, but I wouldn't count on the HOF doing anything optimally.

[DrungoHazewood]

Wanna stop using the "tons of crappy players have been voted in so all borderline players should be bingos" logic because I don't really see a point anymore and I've always just felt like I'm supporting guys like Walker and Martinez cause everyone else is, when I really just don't see them as HOFers. Sorry if that makes me sound too much like Skip Bayless.

I have a huge issue with characterizing guys like Schalk and McCarthy and Rice and Sutter and Highpockets Kelly and the like as "crappy players". They were among the better players of their times and places. They were, at their best, among the 50 or 75 best baseball players in the world. I see no disservice to anyone in honoring them as Hall of Famers. You just have to accept that they were about as good as Brady Anderson or Paul Blair or Dave McNally, and that that's the floor of the Hall of Fame. The floor isn't some artificial construct of 65 WAR or whatever, that's actually 30+ wins better than the floor defined by current inductees. And I don't see what's wrong with that - any definition of a floor could be argued with. I don't quite get why people are up in arms about 5% of a generation's regulars being inducted, while they think it should really be 3%. By 1945 the HOF and the writers had decided it should be a rather expansive Hall.

[wildcard]

On average the writers vote in 2 to 3 players per year. So posters that are voting for 10 are voting for 7 guys that will not get in.

Is there any reason at all be believe that the steroid users will get in this year? What has changed?

[DrungoHazewood]

On average the writers vote in 2 to 3 players per year. So posters that are voting for 10 are voting for 7 guys that will not get in.

Is there any reason at all be believe that the steroid users will get in this year? What has changed?

You should vote for who deserves it, not for whom the writers decide to try to sell papers by not voting for and then writing exposes about their no votes. Why would anyone vote based on who they think the other writers will vote for?

Also, on average you don't have ballots with 15+ deserving candidates.

[wildcard]

You should vote for who deserves it, not for whom the writers decide to try to sell papers by not voting for and then writing exposes about their no votes. Why would anyone vote based on who they think the other writers will vote for?

Also, on average you don't have ballots with 15+ deserving candidates.

Why will steroid users get into the HOF this year? What has changed to make that happen?

[waroriole]

Why will steroid users get into the HOF this year? What has changed to make that happen?

The whole thread is about who is on your ballot. Not any other question you are trying to make it. Also, Palmeiro is the only guy who was ever suspended for anything.

[Can_of_corn]

You should vote for who deserves it, not for whom the writers decide to try to sell papers by not voting for and then writing exposes about their no votes. Why would anyone vote based on who they think the other writers will vote for?

Also, on average you don't have ballots with 15+ deserving candidates.

Isn't that exactly what you are doing when you are not voting for Pedro?

[Frobby]

On average the writers vote in 2 to 3 players per year. So posters that are voting for 10 are voting for 7 guys that will not get in.

The fact that the writers vote in 2 or 3 guys a year does not mean that the individual voters are only voting for 2 or 3 guys. Last year there were 4,793 votes cast by 571 voters. That's an average of 8.4 votes cast per voter. It's just that there wasn't enough of a consensus beyond the top 3 candidates as to who should make it. Maybe because too many qualified candidates are backlogged.

[Number5]

No one ever gets thrown out of the Hall, so the standard really is the Vet's Commitee lower limit. I'll ok with not quite going down to that level, but keeping out players who are objectively 20, 30 or more wins better than current HOFers seems crazy to me. Literally there are cases where you can add together the careers of two current HOFers and not reach the value of, say, Lou Whitaker. When that kind of fact exists, to me, it's impossible to be a small Hall advocate without also advocating removing players.

You know very well that WAR was completely unknown for the majority of the time that players were being voted on to enter the HOF. Voters went on stats like Wins, RBI, Runs, Hits, Batting Average, Gold Gloves, etc. Using 20-20 hindsight on those voted in years ago serves no purpose. If a player is so questionable as a HOF candidate that your only real reason for voting for him is to claim that some guy fifty years ago was voted in with a WAR of 20 wins less, then you are reaching.

[Loophole]

I have a huge issue with characterizing guys like Schalk and McCarthy and Rice and Sutter and Highpockets Kelly and the like as "crappy players". They were among the better players of their times and places. They were, at their best, among the 50 or 75 best baseball players in the world. I see no disservice to anyone in honoring them as Hall of Famers. You just have to accept that they were about as good as Brady Anderson or Paul Blair or Dave McNally, and that that's the floor of the Hall of Fame. The floor isn't some artificial construct of 65 WAR or whatever, that's actually 30+ wins better than the floor defined by current inductees. And I don't see what's wrong with that - any definition of a floor could be argued with. I don't quite get why people are up in arms about 5% of a generation's regulars being inducted, while they think it should really be 3%. By 1945 the HOF and the writers had decided it should be a rather expansive Hall.

But I don't care what the writers were thinking in 1945. By my own standards I don't think Larry Walker is worthy of any superlative accolade -- if he cries himself to sleep at night because I don't put so much value in the logical consistency of the HOF then I'll send him a nice fruit basket or something.

[DrungoHazewood]

But I don't care what the writers were thinking in 1945. By my own standards I don't think Larry Walker is worthy of any superlative accolade -- if he cries himself to sleep at night because I don't put so much value in the logical consistency of the HOF then I'll send him a nice fruit basket or something.

I guess this is the fundamental disconnect. I can't support dramatically different and higher standards for today's candidates. Everyone else seems to be fine with that.