Cooperstown needs to terminate relationship with the writers
 

The Baseball Hall Of Fame is a broken establishment. For far too long have the writers been tainting the reputation of the HOF and diluting it's halls to become instead the Hall of Very Good and Great Players. It has lost much of it's exclusivity.

Writers have been bestowed the priveledge (no.. it should not be a right) of voting on the enshrinement of formeer players. The aguement for their voting has been that they are well informed and more in tune with the game itself and are thus more able to judge a player's merit. While this may have held a little mor weight 40 years ago, it does not hold true today. Information is available to everyoe at the click of a button. I can watch a player or team instantly and follow the games of any team at anytime if I so wish.

Writers who have been given this privlege have not much more information than the average fan anymore. The only qualifier for this privelege is that they are a baseball writer for at least ten years. No other creds neccessary. Some of these people are definately from the shallow end of the gene pool. Really look at some of the votes that have been cast. These writers now use their vote as a meaans for clickbait and to get their names back out there by submitting ludicrous submissions.

The writers already vote for the annual awards and I have no issue with that. Except those hypocrites who for years were giving MVP's and CYA"s to Bonds and Clemens but now all of a sudden have some Self-Righteous conscience that now will not allow them to vote for them for the Hall.

I would suggest that the vote be stripped from the writers and put where it belongs. Into the realm of the fans themselves. It is the fans that pay to visit the Hall of Fame, It is the fans who paid to watch the players, paid for merch and jerseys, kept the teams in business and the attention of the fans helped get the players paid. If it were not for the fans there would not be a game and there would be no Hall of Fame.

As a fan I am a bit offended that we are thought of as ignorant and are not afforded the opportunity to have a say in who should be considered a Hall of Famer....

Have a voting forum similar to the All Star Ballots. Why should the fans be left out of the process when it has been the fan that made the whole thing possible to begin with.

Sorry, a bit of a rant....

I do also find it strange that the National Baseball Hall of Fame does not have an actual affiliation with the MLB but still holds to the "banned from MLB banned from the Hall" position. Have a look at their website and their mission statement, it was set up to prserve the history of the game itself not Major League Baseball. Not tellling the whole story is not preserving history. It is the 21st century ideal of omitting the parts that dont fit your idea of right and wrong.

You think stripping away any qualifications and opening the vote to anyone will fix that?

I understand and support your feelings and reasons but I think putting it in the hands of the fans is a mistake.

They really need to come up with a better voting system or committee to vote or some controls/tighter rules for the writers

I think there are a lot more examples of the fans voting undeserving players into the All Star game than there are examples of the writers voting undeserving players into the Hall of Fame. It's mainly been the various Veteran's Committees over the years that have elected undeserving players into the Hall of Fame.

Fixed it, and responsibility is displayed bigger for a reason.

Yawn, interesting as it’s mostly former baseball people that put the borderline guys in you seem to have a problem with.

I’m usually pretty suspicious of any “let’s kill the media” sentiments. It’s generally just an excuse to democratize idiocy, misinformation, conspiracy theory and intimidation.

Falls in line with us marginalizing experts who get things right 9 times out of 10, in favor of loudmouth pundits who guess right 1 out of 10, and are treated as prophets by some.

Also, I’m committing to slug a shot of Southern Comfort every time one of you fella’s use the term “Hall Of Very Good” in this thread. Please go easy on me guys. I have to be somewhere by 5pm. :D

Glad I took took the opportunity to open a discussion. Having an opinion is not a sin, even if an unpopular one. I never said the writers should be stripped of their credenials in way shap or form. I did say that that their judgemets should be questioned in the same way that the US runs it's politics as not a democracy but a democratic republic. I f there is an insistance of the writers being the be all and end all as to voting for candidates, let the fans determine who actiually has a say.

Seriously look at some of the recent ballots and tell me honestly that there arent voters who have the privelege and so called responibility of this actually have any clue. I am not saying all by any stretch but enough that their criedibility should at least be questioned.

If your local congress person (god forbid i offend anyone) said one thing and did another wouldnt you question their motives and or agenda?

I am actually ok with keeping known suspected cheaters out of the Hall if that is the case. But make it right across the board... Hate to say it but Bonds and Clemens never actually got caught of doing anything wrong. It is pure speculation and assumption. Ortiz was actually caught but thats ok, Perry wrote a frikin book and continued to do it after, but thats OK, brett didnt have too much pine tar, Whitey used gunk but no bother, Don Sutton never did anything wrong really,

If we hold some out, kick the others out!! tired of the good for some but not all mentality. Pudge, Piazza, Bagell and others in the Hall have ties but no one bats an eye.

Am just a bit tired of the hypocracy.

If they cheated shame on them, but what if everyone is wrong are we prepared to say shame on us?

Agree 100% Harold Baines (I hate picking on him but he's usually the punching bag for small Hall advocates) was voted in by a group that had mostly ex-players and execs...

I agree that Ortiz being ignored and all the others punished is absurd, but I fail to see how Brett’s excessive pine tar in a series is even close to similar.

The general public is the stupidest group of people that exists. I can’t fathom how they would vote better. I can’t fathom why we would think they would hold fair standards and enforce them the same on everyone regardless of popularity and narrative.

Almost all of the mistakes are from the Vets committee.

If the public got to vote, Kevin Costner would be in the baseball HOF within two years.

Tik Tok groups would band together to stuff the ballot boxes to elect Rusty Kuntz and Pete LaCock by the end of the decade.

:D

4 Chan will get a humorously named player who never even existed elected on the next ballot :D

Forgotten Federal League superstar Homerun Ballbraker

I kid, but I'd actually be ok with Kevin Costner getting into the HOF, in a media/writer/observer type of wing.

Sylvester Stallone is in the Boxing HOF, and Costner is basically the baseball equivalent of him.

This here. The one person most responsible for electing Hall of Good players to the HOF was Frankie Frisch. The BBWAA is fine at doing their job. Except for 2001-07, the Veteran's Committees have been pretty bad.

The Hall of Fame standard, based on WAR (yeah, yeah, I know..."what is it good for") has actually going UP over time. The Hall of Fame did get watered down...almost immediately after opening. The last several decades have actually been pushing the standard up, not down.

Of course, a lot of the reason the standard got watered down was, as someone else, not the writers, but the various iterations of the vets committee.

I keep hearing this "watered down" comment a lot in regard to the baseball HOF. Just to let everyone know though, since the beginning of major league baseball was first recognized back in the 1870's, through today, there have been a total of 22,534 players recognized as having played in the majors since 1876. Or 22,860 players if you choose to recognize the National Association that began play in 1871 as also being a major league. At least those are the numbers according to Baseball Reference, which I believe is a somewhat respected site for baseball info. Also, these totals apparently do include anyone that played just in the Negro Leagues now recognized as major leagues as well. And according to the Cooperstown Baseball HOF site, there are now a total of 340 electees to the HOF, of which only 268 were actually former major league players.

268/22,534 = 1.189314%

So roughly speaking, only a little over 1% of all the major league ball players of all time have made it into the HOF. If you wanted to keep that percentage to no more that 1.0% ever, that would mean cutting 42 current HOF electees from the list.

Or to look at it another way.

2022 - 1876 = 146 years

268 HOF players / 146 years = 1.8356 HOF players elected on average per year that MLB has existed since 1876.

If instead you felt there should be no more than say 1-1/2 HOF level players for each year we've had MLB in existence, that would mean there should only be 219 (146 X 1.5) current MLB players in the HOF, and we should be cutting 49 current HOF electees from the list.

So, for those who think/believe the HOF has been watered down, what percentage of MLB players overall, or number of MLB players per year, should be included in baseball's HOF so it isn't watered down? Just the top 1.0%, or maybe the top 0.5%? Or maybe the number of HOFers should be limited to no more than 1.5, or even just 1, per year that MLB has been around?

There are likely to be a lot of people that would argue that based on those above numbers/percentages, the HOF isn't watered down at all.

I was just looking at a list of players elected to the HOF since 2000, and I'm wondering which of them people think lower the Hall of Fame standard. I see a handful one could probably argue lower the standard, or are at least below-average Hall of Famers for their position, but it's a pretty short list.

To me, one of the biggest problems with the voting process, is that people like Pedro Gomez get to vote, and Vin Scully, Jack Buck and Ernie Harwell didn't!

Steve

I can't stand writers who submit one name, two names, etc instead of voting a full ballot. It kills me. I look at ballots sometimes and think "there are 5/7/10 guys on here who deserve a vote." If they don't want to vote strip the vote from them.

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It really varies by what we mean precisely with imprecise words. I would consider "lowering the standard" to be guys who are near the bottom of their positions AND shouldn't be in, not necessarily the absolute worst at their position. A player who is below the average is not a bad selection; half the hall will be below average. I think the key is one of the worst at their position in and does not pass a deeper test is a good general standard. There are more I would not have voted for, but I don't see as being poor choices, just difference preferences others have to weigh certain things more than I weigh them. A 20 second glance at each year gave me this list:

Jack Morris
Harold Baines
Bill Mazeroski
Dennis Eckersley
Bruce Sutter
Effa Manley
Alex Pompez
Dick Williams
Billy Southworth
Joe Gordon
Jim Rice
Whitey Herzog
Bud Selig
Alan Trammell
Lee Smith
Buck O'Neil (Yes I like him too, before someone flips out. Being likable and telling good stories is not a qualification).

David Ortiz is a separate category, my objection is to the utter and absolute hypocrisy.

I generally like your list though I'm a little more accepting of Trammell and Eck and MAYBE Smith. They're borderline, but to me possibly on the right side of the border. Of course that brings me to my eternal argument, if Alan Trammell is voted in by the writers how the hell does Lou Whitaker fall off the ballot in his second year of eligibility???

Off the top of my head, three of these guys (Eck, Sutter and Rice) were elected by the writers.

So, if the HOF standard is being lowered, it's not the writers who are doing it.

I'm really interested to see if this is the vets vote where Whitaker gets on the ballot and gets in. This is going to be a really interesting vets vote...lots of way the nominating committee could go.

I would think that by definition, anything that "lowers the standard" is below the average. That being said, I agree with you that doesn't mean that a player below the average shouldn't get elected, just that their election would technically "lower the standard".

Of course, I'm a big advocate for looking at median, not average, when looking at HOF rankings, especially by WAR. Look at WAR by CFers...the "average WAR" of the 19 Hall of Fame CF is 71.6. BUT, there are only seven CF above that, 6 of who are in the HOF (Trout is the other). The median is probably closer to 60, so players above that would be those we should at least consider. There are 16 CF with over 60 WAR, 10 of who are in the HOF.

The average is high because of crazy scores for Mays, Cobb, Speaker and Mantle. Also, I use BBR WAR. If you prefer Fangraphs, more power to you.

While I don’t support either of their candidacies, (both fine players for a long time but with little to no statistical highlights, a little above league average bats and excellent defense just isn’t quite enough I think), I have no idea why Trammell is in and Whitaker is not. They really seem like a package pair, and I’d bet Whitaker gets in eventually via the era committees. Whitaker had the slightly better bat compared to the league and Trammell gets the slight boost of being a SS as opposed to a 2B.

On a side note, I wonder if there has ever been a better team than those Tigers that did not have a hall worthy player. Morris and Trammel have made it but I don’t think either is a good selection. They put together an excellent team with a ton of excellent and many underrated players, but no real Hall talent or superstar.

The one on here I was hesitant to put is Lee Smith. He was not dominating and I do not think he is a hall worthy player, but he did hold a significant career record for a long time, and so I can see him being included by the ‘Lou Brock standard’.

And of those three, 2 of them are on the better end of the bad choice spectrum. Sutter I simply don’t understand how he got in at all.

The vets committee is responsible for most of the terrible choices and most of the corruption.

I think we need a tighter definition for lowering the standard, otherwise it’s simply inevitable. After the first year, the standard will lower, as the Hall expands. I think the more reasonable thing is to have it expand to the best players not in, instead of what looks from afar like committees throwing darts randomly and looks up close like them electing their friends.

A player 5% below the median is a deserving hall of gamer and not a poor choice. It may lower the statistical median slightly, but it doesn’t lower the standard for election, as those players almost always make it and always have.

Trammell was voted in by one of the recent iterations of the Veterans Committee, specifically the Modern Baseball Era Committee, in 2018. The closest he got with the writers voting was 40.9% in 2016 which was his last year on the ballot.

Agree on the veterans committee. I wish I could say "the old vets committee", but the whole Baines thing proves that it's still happening.

My take on Sutter is that he wasn't an awful pick when he was elected. He had 300 saves when not many did, led his league in saves a number of times, won a Cy Young, etc. Of course, now those 30th saves rank 30th all time, and we have better ways of measuring relief pitchers that make him look far more borderline. Sutter was kind of the "in between" era between the classic mutli-inning fireman and the "modern closer".

That being said, if Sutter was the worst player in the Hall of Fame, we'd be in a pretty good place. He's not the worst player in the Hall of Fame. :D

Of course, even saying "the HOF standard" assumes we can find an objective standard to all agree on, which feels like a fools errand.

But I don't disagree with any of this...being below the average or median isn't a disqualifier. I think of it more as if you're ABOVE the median or the average, there should be little argument for induction. That's not always the case.

What I don't like is the "if/then" argument. "If this guy, then why not that guy who's 5% worse?". I mean, if we did that with Baines, the Hall of Fame would need to about triple in size.

On the off chance this conversation has made you think "I'd sure like to read about 5,500 more words on the Hall of Fame", here's a couple articles I've published recently on the 2023 election:

An Early Preview Of The 2023 Baseball Hall Of Fame Election

Cardlines Guide Of The 2023 Baseball Hall Of Fame Returning Candidates And The Player Who Is Likely To Get In

I'm working on an article about the first-year candidates right now...coming soon.

I'd be fine with as a friend called him Lee "lets make it interesting" Smith not being in the hall. So many times he'd enter with a lead and make it a much closer game.

It seems like a lot of the "Hall of Fame has gone to hell" conversation is actually a "Don't like relievers in the Hall" conversation, or at least a "The Wrong Relievers are in the Hall of Fame".

There's only eight relievers in the HOF, and that's if you count Eck, who also started 361 games.

Rivera is the consensus "best ever", and I don't see a lot of arguments that he shouldn't be in (other than the occasional "all relievers are failed starters" thing).

The other six are Whilhelm, Gossage, Smith, Hoffman, Fingers, and Sutter.

I guess I'm not sure where the line is, and not sure there's any consensus on that.

I for one think Billy Wagner and Joe Nathan are Hall of Fame closers, and if I look at Frankie Rodriguez, I can see an argument. And could guys like Jansen and Kimbrel get there? I think so.

Sorry I thought he was elected his last year, but still how does he stay on the ballot for 15 years and Whitaker falls off in 2.

It's a fair question...Trammell was a 6-time All Star & 4-time GG winner. Whitaker won 5 and 3, respectively, so it's not like Trammell was that much more highly regarded at the time.

What's even crazier is that is that Whitaker hasn't been elected in the years since....highly overdue.

That I don't have an answer for. Whitaker actually dropped off the ballot after his first year in 2001 when he got 2.9% of the vote. Trammell debuted the following year on the ballot with 15.7% and didn't get above 20% until his 9th year. Analytics weren't as big 20 years ago when they both debuted on the ballot so not sure why Trammell did that much better than Whitaker. Their raw numbers seem similar enough that you would have expected them to be voted on more similarly.

I just wrote an article on the new candidates for this upcoming election, if anyone is interested.

Cardlines Guide to the 2023 Baseball Hall of Fame First-Time Candidates

As Yogi Berra once said,

"Folks don't go to Cooperstown any more, its too crowded."