Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 114: The One Where We Talk About the Hall of Fame

Episode Date: January 8, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss the Hall of Fame voting and what their own ballots would look like.

Visit the Hall of Fame during induction weekend. The National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, is like going to heaven before you die. The induction ceremony is free, and there are plenty of family-friendly events all weekend long. Hello, and welcome to episode 114 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller in Long Beach, California. In New York is Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you doing? I'm okay. I've been waiting since yesterday's episode to find out what you thought of Downton Abbey. Oh my goodness, it was just the worst. It was so bad. The part where Edith's ugly old suitor catches the unnecessary character spiking somebody's drink. Right, yeah.

And she says something like – oh, okay. So they're at the wedding and she says, comes in with us. And he says, but I'm not family. And she says, you almost are. Well, I can't talk to you anymore. The ratings were incredible. Yeah, sure. America has voted with its television sets.

Yeah. No, I don't even need to respond to that. to that piece of TV. So this is the day that we are going to talk about the Hall of Fame, which is something we like talking about as much as we like talking about the Cincinnati Reds. I have so many thoughts about Jim Rice. I hope nobody votes him in. Well, that's something I think about or have been thinking about lately because Jim Rice is not someone I think about ever anymore. And so that's what I think about.

You know, people are upset about all the Hall of Fame ballots and all the articles that have been written and justifiably so in some cases, I suppose. and justifiably so in some cases, I suppose. But Jim Rice, I haven't thought about the Jim Rice candidacy or the fact that Jim Rice got into the Hall of Fame at all, really, over the last couple of years, except for when someone brings it up to talk about what a disaster it will be if Jack Morris gets in. And I guess I would prefer that Jack Morris not get in because I don't think he measures up to the standards that have been established. But if he does get in, I will be mildly upset about it for about 10 seconds and then I will be over it.

I don't know. I mean, I don't want to disparage anyone who cares about the Hall of Fame because we write about baseball. Yeah, it was a big part of our childhood. Yes, we write about baseball for a living, and nothing we write about is important. And I care about Jose Molina framing pitches, which is not any more important, really, in the grand scheme of things than who gets into the scheme of things than who

gets into the Hall of Fame or who doesn't. Where to put a pit. What? Where to put a pit. Yes, right. You wrote about that. So I don't know. What's your state of mind as far as the Hall of Fame goes these days? Oh, I don't know. I mean, I generally, I find like injustice anywhere to be annoying. It's a nuisance. And so anytime I see somebody who – I feel like anytime I watch somebody do their job at a low level, I think it kind of annoys me.

And anytime I see a person get rewarded who doesn't deserve it, it kind of annoys me. I mean I think that this – it was probably up to about two or three years ago, I did care about the Hall of Fame for just that reason. But the volume of discussion that we've had, which is generally, you know, it's hard to go very deep in it. It tends to be fairly repetitive and I don't blame anybody for that.

It's just there's really not that much new to fairly repetitive and I don't blame anybody for that. It's just there's really not that much new to say. So I don't know. I think for that reason, I've been able to block it out for the most part and I don't really care all that much. Jim Rice, in fact, I would say I don't care at all at this point in time. I probably will at some point in the future. It's just right now I'm sort of fatigued by it jim rice comes up in my life when um i want to sort of like i want to make some point about how some player is better than you think he is or like to show how good he is and so like i'll i'll look at like oh joe mauer has produced more war through age 28 than jim rice, Hey, Mark Ellis has produced three times as much war as Jim Rice or whatever.

And like, I always want to like broadcast that, like, look at this amazing thing. I found JD drew is better than Jim Rice, but it's just so like, it feels like it's just, it's just carrying on this,

this hard, this debate that we finally settled and, you know, moved on. So I don't really want to keep bringing Jim Rice. That's the problem with Jim Rice is that he just becomes the guy, even after he gets elected, he just becomes the guy whose name you just keep hearing

over and over as the example of the bad guy. And if it wasn't Jim Rice, there'd be someone else. It would be like Tony Perez or something like that. And so I don't know. I mean, there's obviously no real loss to it um there's no stakes i guess is what i'm saying but i don't know i mean i i i would say that at this point the voting is so counterintuitive uh the way that the way that it's gotten so complicated and nobody's you know Barry Bonds isn't going to get in that it's hard to take it seriously at all right now

so I don't I would say that at this point I just don't take it seriously at all yeah figure at some point it'll sort of even out again and then once the merits are a little bit clearer then maybe I'll care again yeah I do suspect that it will sort itself out in the long run, either through changes in the composition of the voting pool, or people just kind of settling down and getting over it, or the Hall of Fame realizing that it needs people to get inducted to continue to exist and somehow changing the rules. Are there any rules or anything about the process that you would change? Either something really dramatic like taking the vote away from the writers or something or just something as simple as, say, doing away with the minimum or the maximum 10-player rule, which I guess is something I would do away with.

Not that in most years it's ever an issue, but it seems to be right now and probably will be for the next few years. Yeah, I think the 10-vote rule is fairly arbitrary and doesn't really serve much of a purpose. I think that probably in previous years it backfired. And I think that once you kind of get it in your mind that you can vote 10 times, you know, you don't vote 10 times. Like in the, I'm not saying that writers were always voting 10 times, but I think that there were probably cases where writers would vote four times instead of three or five times instead of four because it just seemed like wasting spots in your ballot.

I don't know. or five times instead of four because it just seemed like wasting spots in your ballot. I don't know. I mean, like Tim Marchman today wrote that the vote should be taken from writers. It doesn't make sense for writers to have it. They don't really know any more than the average fan does. And they don't have ownership of it in a way that fans do. And I think that that's true. I don't think writers add anything in terms of knowledge but i also don't know that fame i don't know who owns the hall of fame i mean not literally speaking but like i don't know really who's who's got the most

at stake and i mean i guess theoretically in a perfect world i wouldn't mind if it were some like group of historians or something or seems to really work I don't know historians really I don't know I mean you could just come up with some sort of panel of I don't know

Bill James and John Thorne and a bunch of people who know a lot about baseball and do it that way, I guess. Marchman suggested just a popular vote, right? Just people, just fans voting. Yeah. Like the All-Star Game or anything.

I don't necessarily think that that would do any better either. No. He sort of said, hey, they do a good enough job on their senators and mayors, and I don't think they do. Right. The reason that they have a vote for those is because it's an issue of enfranchisement that you sort of decide who owns the vote. And in a popular vote, the populace owns the vote

for elective positions. I don't know that that's the case here, though. I don't know that all human beings alive is an age issue. I mean, it seems that way with the statistical cases where the people who became baseball writers or became baseball fans before the sabermetric movement or before the mainstream sabermetric movement are still looking at the sort of statistics or just ignoring statistics and voting for people like Jack Morris,

and you can see why that would be an age issue. Does it seem to be the case also to you that the steroid issue is an age thing or an experience thing, that just the longer you've been around, the more, I guess, I don't know, the quicker you are to keep everyone out. Because I don't know why it necessarily should be that way. I mean, the players who are on the ballot now are mostly players that I grew up watching and you grew up watching. And if anyone should feel betrayed by the steroid use, I feel like it should be me. I was a kid watching McGuire and Bonds and Sosa hitting a ton of home runs and getting all caught up in it and tuning in wherever I was to watch all of McGuire's at-bats. And so if anyone should feel betrayed by that or like they were misled, it would be me, I would think, except I don't feel that way. So I wonder whether that is something that will sort itself out or whether someone who has recently joined the electorate is just as likely to be upset about that as someone who's been in for decades.

Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm honestly not sure why that is i i think it's clearly the case that um i don't know that when you say young i don't know for sure that it's young it might just be um internetty like the internetty fan is clearly more in favor i think of of uh letting steroids users or suspect suspected steroids users in than the non-internet user user i don't know i don't know what the mechanism is there like i don't know if it's because young people are less judgmental or if it's just because like old the old generally just despise the young yeah right or i guess that they grew up in a different kind of offensive environment.

There was a different offensive environment in baseball at the time that they grew up, and they memorized all the old records that were broken by the steroid generation of players, and so they are upset about that. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know why it is. that yeah yeah I don't know why it is I mean it most people who write about it I don't feel like do a very good job of explaining why they feel the way that they do so it's actually hard to know how they feel even though they're writing thousand word columns every year about it mm-hmm yeah I think it was Rob Munier wrote something about how he has yet to see an explanation of how steroids or more modern PEDs are any different from amphetamine use or anything that might have been used by a previous generation of players. And that maybe we would stop asking that question if anyone answered that question.

And I guess that has been what most people are up in arms about this year. It's not just so much that Jack Morris might get in and some people think he's a more worthy candidate than Tim Raines or going against the numbers. kind of the grandstanding and the blank ballots and the not submitting ballots and all that sort of showmanship voting, I guess. Yeah. And also the I'm not voting for this guy, even though he never was, you know, tied to steroids because I have sort of like my secret knowledge that I get from my expertise, you know, is a factor here. Like nobody's actually showing evidence for Bagwell, but there's this kind of innuendo like we know because we know more than you. It seems a bit condescending to the average fan. Well, we are releasing everyone's ballots at Baseball Perspectives. Obviously, none of our ballots count except for except for John Parato's. But we will be releasing everyone on the staff's choices if they did have a vote on Wednesday. So we'll see who Baseball Prospectus as a group would have elected had Baseball Prospectus been the electorate. But I guess we can talk about our ballots, which were very similar.

We both would have voted for 10 players, and I think nine of them were the same. That's right. We both would have voted for Bagwell, Bonds, Clemens, Edgar, Piazza, Raines, Schilling, Trammell, and Walker. Larry, not Todd. And the only difference was that you voted for Mark McGuire and not Craig Biggio, whereas I voted for Craig Biggio and not Mark McGuire. I guess I am wondering how many players you would have voted for

if you could have voted for more than 10. Would you have added anyone else to the list? I don't know. It was very hard for me to decide on Biggio, and it was very hard for me to decide on Maguire. So I don't think I would have gone beyond 11, and I very nearly did 9. Me too.

And what's that? I did too, although I think Larry Walker was going to be the one that I would have left off. Yeah, I have not. Me too. to figure out why you think the things you do. I mean, I tweeted the other day that saying because of his war is the worst argument in the world except for all the other arguments. It's the only thing that feels consistent and it feels like it has some perspective to it. But also it's just so depressing to think that's all you're doing is looking at a leaderboard and just picking. But I mean what's the alternative? Like why wouldn't you do that besides the fact that it's no fun and it kind of – like I think Marchman described it as an accounting, turning the Hall of Fame into an accounting exercise.

And so like I don't – I mean it seems to me that everybody's – the stat head ballot, which is pretty consistent. I think almost everybody has almost the same ballot. Yes. Like Poznanski has exactly the same ballot as you do. Yes. And I think Derek had – I saw Derek Carty's. I think it had maybe one different than you. And so the BGO is definitely on the stat head ballot.

And so the BGO is definitely on the stat head ballot. And while I was filling this out, I was sort of anticipating, like, well, how am I going to defend this? I know what people will argue against the votes that I've made. And there's not much to say except, well, his war wasn't that high. And I figure with the margin of error that is inherent in war, I figure he and Maguire are essentially at the same level. And I just think that Maguire was sort of – he hit more dingers. Yeah. That would be in a year. That was – I don't know. I mean, I could, like I said, it was not easy for me to act like,

I'm very glad I don't have to write 1200 words on Biggio for the hall. Because I've got about 106. Yeah. I might have voted for Maguire if I had had another vote. I might fake vote for him in the future. And even thought about palmero he's i did too i thought about i thought about lofton yes me too probably a little more palmero than lofton but yes then i looked at the war and i was like how am i gonna put lofton on right yeah i, you leave yourself open to criticism from some people, certainly, if you cite some to do that than, than to look at a number that, that encapsulates our best attempt at figuring out what someone was worth? Yeah. Oh, I watched, yeah, no, I watched 114 Craig Biggio games over the course of 19 years.

And that gives me more perspective than a pretty well-established metric that is decades in the making, scientific in nature. I mean, there's the, with Biggio, if he had retired, say, at age 35, would you put him in? Is it the years that he kind of hung on and was bad that take him off your ballot? Or just he wouldn't have been in any way? No, you know what would have gotten Biggio in is if I had decided that I didn't trust the defense and basically just regressed all of everybody's defense to like a third of what they, you know,

of what it actually was to the mean, you know? Biggio's defense rates really poorly. And I, you know, Biggio won gold gloves, which means nothing, but it means a little something. And I never knew of Biggio. I mean, Jeff Kent rates much more highly than Biggio on defensive metrics. And so I decided that I'd trust those and that I'm going to take them as significant and as something close to accurate. and is something close to accurate. Now, there are people, and sometimes I think this is the better way to do it, who just think that the error inherent in these metrics,

especially when you go back to the 90s or the 80s or whatever, makes it more prudent to simply just make defense almost like a constant, not even across the board, but almost like a constant. And in that case, Biggio would have made it. As a hitter playing second base, and a base runner playing second base, It's center field and catcher. Yeah, kind of, but only for three years.

But if you assign Biggio an average glove, then he's a Hall of Famer. If you assign Biggio a well below average glove, then he's not. That's what would have made a difference. You asked me if the last few a well below average club, then he's not. That's what made a difference. You asked me if the last few years, the hanging on, no, not really. Probably not at all. I would say not at all.

I think he probably had the peak, it seems to me. Yeah, it was really good. I was going to make a joke about how Ben Zobrist has the better peak than Biggio, and then I looked and Zobrist has been amazing for four years and actually Biggio has the better peak than Biggio. And then I looked and Zobris has been like amazing for four years and actually Biggio has the better peak.

So never mind. Yeah. Do you think anyone will get in? We have seen, of course, the Baseball Think Factory tracker that has counted up about 20% of the votes something like that and according to that 20 no one will get in uh bgo is close jack morris is close and there's a whole a show announcement show set for wednesday on mlb network which will be very strange if no one gets in uh i will probably be more likely to watch that if no one gets in just it will be as awkward as ever on mlb network um do you think so i i'm guessing

someone will squeak by uh yeah i i don't know i uh it's uh gosh i don't know i think that um uh i don't know i don't know how we should view that track i mean it does pretty good but it misses by five percent or so either direction for most players but the problem is that at the moment nobody is within five percent and i%. And I would have guessed before this that Morris would have gotten in this year. And he's like 12% away. So that would have to be very skewed. So I'll say no. I'll say nobody gets it. That really would be something if a ballot that is so stuffed that we can't fit all the players that we want to put on there onto the ballot and not a single person gets in. That would be – Well, most people – I think that's – I mean, yeah, that's true.

And I don't think that you can blame it on the stuffed ballot because anybody who would get in uh is going to get the votes i mean people aren't not voting for bonds because he's on their list right there and the guys who who would be 11th on a lot of lists are like larry walker and and mcguire they're not going in no matter what so uh yeah i think next year though then i mean i think it's been documented well elsewhere that it's going to be trouble no matter what. There have to be some number of voters who are just kind of giving Bonds and Clemens the slap on the wrist, not first ballot guys, but will eventually come around. The fun thing about the ballot tracker is that Bonds and Clemens have been exactly identical pretty much every day for the last yeah and you figured that they will be i will it will be fun to see if they are exactly

like who is the guy who stands up and says i voted for bonds but not right that would be hard to justify um let's see what else is there to talk about with this hall of fame stuff going more what we're going on huh yeah well i feel like people are just so upset like we should talk about this all day and then people will listen and and commiserate or something i don't know i mean i haven't written anything about it really because i don't know. I mean, I haven't written anything about it really, because I don't know what to write other than, I mean, I could go around trashing other people's ballots, which I don't really have any interest in doing. And certainly there's no shortage of people already doing that. Or I could make the case for certain players. But as you mentioned, the case has been

made by people who would make the same case year after year after year in some of the cases of these players, or the case is just so clear that you don't have to make a case really. I mean, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are possibly the best hitter and pitcher ever, statistically, or very close so that just comes down to a pure steroids thing so i don't know it seems like sort of a repetitive debate and if you believe certain things about player evaluation then you believe that certain players deserve to be there and if you believe different things then you believe different players deserve to be there. I don't know. What else is there to say?

Of all the guys on this ballot who are, you know, like, I don't even want to say steroids tainted because they're not necessarily, but who are not going to make the Hall this year because of steroids or who are facing uphill climb because of steroids, because of the steroid era, how many of them would be first ballot in a kind of non-steroids neutral environment? Definitely Bonds and Clemens. I would say definitely Piazza. I would think so, yeah. Beyond that, I think maybe Bagwell might have been.

Yeah, I wonder about Bagwell. Bagwell might have been. Wouldn't McGuire have been? Yeah, probably. I guess so. And probably Palmeiro would have been. I don't know about that. But I think Palmeiro would have made it, but I don't think he would have. I mean, with the 500 homers and the 3,000 hits, I think that would have gotten him in, I don't know, pretty quickly.

Maybe, maybe. What about Sosa? Sosa would make it, first off. I think yes, maybe, probably. I think so. I don't know. The home run totals are huge, so if you have no reason to doubt the home run totals,

I guess he gets in. It's not like a lot of voters are all that concerned about the fact that he didn't walk that much or anything. I don't know. And what do people have against Schilling? Schilling seems like such an easy pass. Nobody has him steroid at all. No.

He's literally the guy that Congress brought because he was so clean, right? Yes. I guess with Schilling it's just the... I don't think he's that good. I guess it's the win total or I don't know he's uh he's got 216 wins and I don't know was kind of up and down from year to year sometimes although

excellent overall um I mean I don't know you'd think as a as a clean player or at least a player who has had no suspicions attached to him and a guy with an incredible postseason record you'd think that would get him in almost as like a protest vote about the other guys if nothing else

but that doesn't seem to be the case either well I don't know how many ballots we've seen that are protest votes for nobody or the i'm not going to vote any more votes but um you would think that they would be overrepresented in the public ballot collective right because there's no point doing a boycott silently at home you have to make it you have to make your voice known so that's the best chance i think that biggio and bagwell and maybe morris

get in is that there's this like that there's this vast oversampling of those guys and so i don't know we'll see we find out tomorrow at like one or something uh we find out on, yeah, well, if you're listening on Tuesday, yes, Wednesday afternoon at 1 or 2, something like that. Coverage starts at 12, and then there will be a couple agonizing hours. Tuning the baseball

prospectus for all your announcement needs. Is that right? Are we going to have anything? I guess you and i can talk about it again on thursday if there's anything interesting to talk about we'll go over the results um what what do you say to uh people who don't vote for edgar because of the dh thing so i have mixed feelings about that. Oh, do you? Yeah.

I mean, there's the person who says that it doesn't matter that he's a DH because he's a position, and he was really good at that position, so as long as it's a position, we put him in, which I don't really like that argument. Okay. Because, I mean, you could do the same argument for a relief pitcher or a closer, and I just don't think that quite translates. Yeah. If a relief pitcher or a closer had 64.4 wins above replacement, you would put him in.

Right. Yeah. So that's the thing, I guess. I mean, he was just such a good hitter that I would put him in despite the DH thing, even though I count the DH thing against him. Um, then, then I guess there's also the argument that if he had played in a different

era, he would have been a bad fielding first baseman instead because his bat was clearly good enough that, that he was going to play regardless. Uh, so maybe he would have played first base and been bad at that, but he still would have been in the lineup. I bet there's a lot of guys in the Hall of Fame who were that.

Yeah, definitely. All right. All right. So we've solved all the Hall of Fame problems. No one is upset anymore. the Hall of Fame problems. No one is upset anymore. We will be back with a listener

email show, I guess, tomorrow. So send us your emails at podcast at baseball prospectus dot com. And if you really want us to talk about the Hall of Fame again, you can just send us a whole bunch of Hall of Fame questions. Or no emails at all.

Yeah. You can send your protest emails right they have no question and then we'll be forced to talk about the hall of fame yes that's another option uh so we will be back tomorrow