[chadeast]

Originally Posted by cjedmonton

Serious question: why do you think Allen continues to fall short?

His performance was sustained and undeniable.

Are there perhaps some residual issues related to his surliness/perceived surliness (even if justified)?

Do we have a pre-Schilling Schilling situation?

I think we were all shocked to see him miss the cut again, but don’t think we can lean on any “living candidate” advantage Kaat or Oliva might have had. That did not impede Hodges or Minoso this year.

Was Allen a victim of a loaded ballot? Certainly not. Just trying to understand possible circumstances that led to him missing out for at least another 5 years.

Or perhaps his career unfortunately straddled both the Golden Days and the Modern Baseball era…almost perfectly so.

See for yourself. Very identical, although his pre-70 work was superior.

1963-69
https://stathead.com/baseball/player...to=1969&type=b

1970-77
https://stathead.com/baseball/player...to=1977&type=b

I wonder if he would have been better served on the Modern ballot. One could argue his “greatest contributions”, as per the definition of the eras, was after 1969.

Stats are Allen's best friend, so he looks only stronger as we move more towards stats-based analysis. But he was quite moody, lots of controversy surrounded him, and he was not liked. Think Albert Belle. in his prime, Belle was one of the best hitters I've ever seen, but he never came close to the HOF.