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Ichiro's personal beat reporter now has HOF vote


DrungoHazewood

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Bit on BP today about the Japanese reporter who was first sent to the US to cover Ichiro. He approached the Seattle chapter head of the BBWAA, and got them to allow Japanese reporters to be admitted. This guy has bounced around to cover Nomo, Ichii, and Matsui, but his job has always been to cover a specific Japanese player.

But because he's now been in the BBWAA for 10 years he has a HOF vote.

This serves to highlight the silliness of the HOF voting process. A guy who literally is paid to just watch a small handful of players can now vote on HOFers, but the hundreds of historians, writers, sabermetricians, broadcasters, bloggers, etc who follow MLB closely every day and are on the front line of baseball research don't.

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I see where you're coming from, but the criteria is 10 years of writing for the BBWAA so he gets a vote. Doesn't matter if he's assigned to cover one Japanese player a lot, he still watches a lot of baseball and can only watch one game at a time just like anyone else. I'm sure while he's covering Ichrio he can tell that Derek Jeter is a Hall of Famer. He can't be that dense.

Agreed that there are some who deserve a vote that don't have one, though.

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I see where you're coming from, but the criteria is 10 years of writing for the BBWAA so he gets a vote. Doesn't matter if he's assigned to cover one Japanese player a lot, he still watches a lot of baseball and can only watch one game at a time just like anyone else. I'm sure while he's covering Ichrio he can tell that Derek Jeter is a Hall of Famer. He can't be that dense.

Agreed that there are some who deserve a vote that don't have one, though.

I get that there is a requirement, and that the guy successfully met it.

But what does watching a bunch of Mariners, Dodgers, and Yankee games from 2001-2011 have to do with the ability to judge the HOF qualifications of, say, Bert Blyleven or Goose Gossage or Jim Rice? I'd say the Mariners' beat writer for the Sankei Sports Newspaper isn't among the 1000, or maybe 10000 or even 100,000, most-qualified people to be voting on the HOF.

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I get that there is a requirement, and that the guy successfully met it.

But what does watching a bunch of Mariners, Dodgers, and Yankee games from 2001-2011 have to do with the ability to judge the HOF qualifications of, say, Bert Blyleven or Goose Gossage or Jim Rice? I'd say the Mariners' beat writer for the Sankei Sports Newspaper isn't among the 1000, or maybe 10000 or even 100,000, most-qualified people to be voting on the HOF.

He can look at stats just like anyone else.

By the same standard, how can the Veterans Committee elect players that they never saw play?

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