Donie Bush for Hall of Fame!

Higher career WAR (39.3) than Harold Baines (38.7) and Lee Smith (29.0).

An interesting note is that Baines was only on the BBWAA ballot for five years before being dropped off. The highest percentage he achieved during this time was only 6.1 % (with 75% needed to be elected into the Hall). Just sayin' :confused:

I would like to know what the criteria for election are. Is it the Hall of Fame (name ID in the general public)? The Hall of Stats (some 5-year or career metric of WAR), or something else? Baines and Smith seem to fail every conceivable objective test.

Not picking on them -- many others do too. George Kell anyone?

I am alright with Smith. Cant see Baines though, in any statistical or other way, someone(s) smiling over him.

2800 Hits and 1600 RBIs. Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Mike Schmidt fail those metrics. Maybe we should kick them out. 450 saves. Eckersley, Gossage, Sutter and Fingers fail that metric. They are out.

I don't understand the obsession with WAR. It is just a made up stat based on a person(s) opinion. Bill James doesn't like it. It clearly has its faults. Why is it so had to allow others to have different opinions? The voters clearly like Baines and Smith's actual production over WAR. Deal with it.

These guys are compilers. There is clearly a place in the HOF for guys like that. Playing at a high level for a long time has always been a way to make it. Lee Smith has more WAR than Hoffman, Fingers and Sutter. He is 3rd all time in saves. He shouldn't be a surprise. He got over 50% of the writers vote. That generally leads to induction.

Baines is a bit of a stretch. However, of players with 2800 hits clean, only Omar Vizquel isn't in the HOF and he is getting a lot of support. Of players with 1600 RBIs clean, Baines was the last not in the HoF. Kell only had 2054 hits and 870 RBIs, he is not in the same class as Baines as are many others. These guys clearly do pass the objective test of Hofers, at least ones elected by Veterans Committees over the years.

my thoughts
 

I don't mind Smith getting in and I've always like Baines, a nice and genuine guy. My question is 'Why did you have to elect Baines under these questionable conditions?'. The 16 person panel voting for induction included Harold's former manager, Harold's former GM, and Harold's former owner. Couldn't you compile a more impartial panel? If he's truly deserving then why stack the deck?

Also, I sure hope this does NOT open the floodgates for similar good players, who were 'compilers'. I've seen several mentioned in this thread. Are tomorrow's mistakes justified by today's?

Ah, have you see prices realized on cards after an overpay?

That already happened when Andre Dawson got in, now the gates will open for other nondeserving players like Dave Parker, Dale Murphy, etc.

Lee Smith opens the door for John Franco and Billy Wagner.

Well the voters are changing i assume. Politics starting to be more important and small sample size.

Maybe a term for not sure thing HOFs elected after 2017 or so.... I will need to coin one..

If you think that Harold Baines lowers the Hall's standards you are sorely mistaken. There are MANY players in the Hall not as accomplished. Yes, this should open the door for the Hernandez, Mattingly, Garvey, Parker, Murphy crowd. I'm ok with that. I thought of those guys as HOFers while active, and they are better than a lot of guys in now.

Harold Baines rules! He was a great player and is a well deserved Hall of Famer. Lee Smith is a no brainer. These guys are legends.

The players and mangers you feel are more deserved will earn their keys to Cooperstown in due time.

Alan Trammell and especially Jack Morris opened the door for Lee Smith and Harold Baines. The Veteran's Committee had been limiting the number of ex-players, but now seems open to putting in guys that just missed the cut with writers. Look for Ted Simmons, Steve Garvey, Tommy John, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, Dave Parker or Luis Tiant to be elected next year and Dick Allen, Tony Oliva, Jim Kaat or Minnie Minoso to get elected the year after.

You may consider them nondeserving, but the HOF and its voters do not and it has been that way for a long time. Candy Cummings was elected in 1939. Tommy McCarthy was elected in 1946. Ray Schalk was elected in 1955. Lloyd Waner was elected in 1967. Fred Lindstrom was elected in 1976. Rick Ferrell was elected in 1984. The Veteran's Committee has the job of electing players that were over looked by the writers, who for the most part do a good job with Arky Vaughan and Johnny Mize being the only two really bad misses.

The funny thing in this situation is, unlike all those other players you listed (Murphy, Tiant, Oliva, Parker, etc), Baines was never at any time considered a star or great player by anyone while he was playing-- even for a short period. He was considered basically a non-entity even while he was playing. It may not have panned out, but with Parker and Garvey, for examples, when they were winning the MVP and on All-Star teams, some people thought "We may be looking at a future HOFer here." With Baines, no one ever thought that ever while he was playing. It's not as if he was one of those many former stars that never panned out-- he was never a star.

One sportswriter wrote that Baines doesn't deserve to be in the HOF, but don't be hard on him because he didn't do the selecting. My response is that it is true he didn't do the selecting-- and, in fact, he said he was surprised as anyone that he was selected. However, you can start blaming Baines once he accepts it. That part is his choice. If he says "I'm honored, but I don't deserve it and will respectfully decline," he would be admired if not become a folk hero in baseball history books. If he's enshrined, he will eternally elicit a collect an eyeroll and mocking chuckle anytime someone mentions his name. He'll never be known as "Hall of Famer" but as "One of the Worst Hall of Famers Ever." I googled his name and the word "joke" and you get a lot hits. I didn't try "travesty."

Time to reprise my 2011 Christmas Carol.



Default A Christmas Carol, Cooperstown style

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Deck the Hall with average players
Colavito, Kaat, fa la la la
Vote em in ignore naysayers
Hodges, Tiant, Blue, la la la la
Don we now Mattingly and Baylor
Oliva, Kluszewski, la la la
Deck the Hall with average players
Santo, Reynolds, Staub, la la la la
__________________
Buy high, sell low.

Ha! After my post I did google his name + the word 'travesty'

Google search: Harold Baines + travesty

I think the issue is not that there are too many players in the HOF. There are only 228 players in the HOF (excludes Negro Leaguers, Managers, Umpires, and Executives / Pioneers), which is like 1.1% of all the players who ever made the Major Leagues. The issue is not even that there have been some bad selections, which have often been at least partially the result of cronyism. The issue is that it seems the HOF has not corrected the mistakes of the past that resulted in many of these poor selections. Clearly, some of the voters on the committee that voted for Baines should have abstained from voting as they could not possibly claim to be impartial.

For the record, these are the 12 picks out of 228 I think clearly were bad selections:

Ray Schalk - C
Rick Farrell - C
High Pockets Kelly – 1B
Jim Bottomley – 1B
Freddie Lindstrom – 3B
Chick Hafey – LF
Lloyd Waner – CF
Tommy McCarthy – RF
Ross Youngs – RF
Harold Baines – DH
Jesse Haines – P
Rube Marquard – P

These are the players (excluding players still-eligible and PED and banned players) I believe should be selected based on statistics, championships, clutch performance, fame, popularity, and other intangibles, such as who were considered true superstars when they were playing:

Thurman Munson - C
Keith Hernandez – 1B
Don Mattingly – 1B
Gil Hodges – 1B
Steve Garvey – 1B
Lou Whitaker – 2B
Ross Barnes – 2B
Ken Boyer – 3B
Minnie Minoso – LF
Dale Murphy – CF
Roger Maris – RF
Rusty Staub - RF
Tommy Bond – P

I also believe the HOF made a mistake not inducting Buck O’Neill in and should correct it.

I would add Bill Mazeroski to your first list and Ted Simmons and Luis Tiant to your second list.

Tinker Evers Schoendienst Slaughter Maranville to first list if not already there.

You're being very kind - I'm sure most people could double that first list....
Someone (can't remember who) gave me the title of a pretty cool book to read regarding HOF inductions. "Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame" by Bill James. Note, the book was written in the 90's but really provides great detail on the players elected by the veterans committee. The book can be found relatively cheap on ebay or Amazon. Over 400 pages of a lot of good/fun reading.

Using WAR, which is what most are arguing for exclusion, Baines is the best player on your exclude list and better than some you left off. I would leave Bottomley and Baines in, but the other 10 are clear mistakes.

From your should be in list, Barnes only played 9 years and 499 games. Bond only played 10 seasons and one he pitched 2 games, another 3. I don't think they played long enough and if they were really famous or popular, they would be in. The other guys I wouldn't have a problem with and there are some other guys you missed like Dick Allen and Ted Simmons.

The Hof has already gone down the road of electing a lot of marginal candidates. I think we are going to see a bunch of those guys who played in the 60s-80s elected by the VC over the next decade.

The last words in the Bill James book (speaking of Rizzuto's enshrinement) are "He won't be the worst player there". The same could be said of Baines.
Unfortunately to build a stairway to heaven you have to have some bottom steps.

Add Jeff Kent to that 'should be in' list. Talk about a travesty, how does such an RBI machine second baseman get virtually no support for enshrinement?? Give me a frickin' run producing second sacker like him any day of the week!
(Sure, he played during the steroid era, but there's no hint he was ever involved with juicing and he's always been an outspoken advocate for HGH testing in baseball.)

BA .290
Hits 2,461
HR 377
RBI 1,518

Five time All Star, 2000 NL MVP, 4 Silver Slugger Awards.

+1 for Kent and I would add McGriff also, no hint of PEDs 493 HRs

It's good you brought up McGriff. Unlike Baines (nothing personal against him, he seems to be a fine man), The Crime Dog was an out and out star during his career, not a second thought sorta guy. He was thought of as a 'potential HOFer' and he had some seriously nice career stats.

Nick Markakis Is jumping for Joy with the election Of Baines.

If we are selecting people based on stats, Albert Belle should be in, he was better than every player on your second list.

Couple of more


List 1

Craig Biggio

List 2

Jim Edmonds
Juan Gonzalez

This discussion has already made me tired because it doesn't matter at all. They are both in. That isn't going to change. They aren't the worst HOFers, they obviously aren't the best. They are both somewhere in middle of the road and you can argue about where. There are more deserving ballplayers still waiting for the call, there are less deserving ballplayers who have already been voted in. And none of that matters. It is what it is, to use the cliche. Life goes on. What you or I think is completely irrelevant except for purposes of discussions like this.

I do feel bad about the Baines bashing because he did nothing to deserve it and has always been a stand-up guy as best as I can tell. That is completely undeserved and unfortunate. My $.02.

The percentage of all players elected should never be a constant except within specific eras.

A vast majority of the total number of MLB players have been active since WWII and we don't need to have the same percentage of players elected now as they did before all the expansions.

IMO, while the talent pool is much larger, expansion has assured that the mean-level talent is actually lower than before.

That's my three(?) cents worth.

Good point on Barnes; I excluded Caruthers for that same reason. I would induct Barnes as part of the Pioneer wing along with many of his teammates.

Once the scoundrel Bud Selig got in, I had to let go of any idealism I had over Hall of Fame selections. In general, though, I'm an open-the-flood-gates kind of guy. The more the merrier. I'm happy with Lee Smith and Harold Baines, who aren't any worse than Jesse Haines, Highpockets Kelly and about a dozen others. Bring on Jim Edmonds, Minnie Minoso, Luis Tiant, Vada Pinson, Gil Hodges, Tony Oliva, Maury Wills, Dick Groat and Lon Warnecke (who has almost the exact same stats as his contemporary, Lefty Gomez). And how about Cecil Travis? He has the third highest average ever for a shortstop, and he fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

Wagner is in that neighborhood and was miles better than Hoffman. In fact, he had a better WHIP than Rivera.

If we're putting in a reliever behind Rivera, start with Wagner, not Lee Smith.

Neither are the worst selections, they are both “lower tier” in relation to others in the Hall of Fame but I don’t have a major problem with either of them. I feel that Smith compares rather favorably to Bruce Sutter and Baines was a steady performer that made a lot of All-Star teams so I’m not sure why all the hate.

I am as guilty as anyone at overusing WAR, it is a fun stat to throw around but it is a bit arbitrary. People with fairly mediocre numbers can emerge with WAR numbers that are off the charts while others get absolutely killed. Keep in mind Doc Cramer who had some traction for the HOF in the 1970’s has a career WAR of 8.5 according to Baseball-Reference despite over 2,700 hits and a .296 career average (this seems almost impossible to be that low) while Rick Reuschel has a career WAR of 69.7 despite a near .500 career W-L record (214-191) and only ever really led the league in losses and hits allowed.

Kaline/Baines
 

Baines compared to Kaline ( stats look about the same- that was a surprize to me ):
G Hits HR RBI Bave SLG
Kaline 2834 3007 399 1583 297 480
Baines 2830 2866 384 1628 289 465

You are making the mistake of comparing players like Barnes and Bond to players of more recent eras using a measuring stick that doesn't apply. Any player can only fairly be compared to players from his era. The early game was baseball, yet quite different than today. Also, in Barnes defense, he played 5 seasons prior to 1871, the first year of the professional National Association, at the highest levels available at the time. The 10 year rule is not relevant to Barnes, as well as many other players, who played part or all of their careers prior to the start of the professional leagues. These players are the pioneers of baseball and have been neglected by the Hall of Fame, basically, because all or most of the voters have no understanding of the early game and fail to properly evaluate the early players.

Tony Larussa is off his rocker.

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/2...etractors-weak

+1

Someone on this very board tried to argue that Rick Reuschel and Bob Forsch were better than Jim Palmer based on (their interpretation of) metrics.

I don't hold the Hall in the same high regard as when I was a kid. I always thought of the Hall as a place for the best - y'know, for the guys who you would pay to see. Nothing against the guy, but I wouldn't pay to go to a ballgame to just see Harold Baines, sorry.