HOF - True or False

[Rhotchkiss]

I was telling my wife about how Ty Cobb's Mom shot and killed his Dad (the husband) and I pulled up Ty's info on Wikipedia to read her the story. I noticed in his profile that he received 98.23% of the vote for the HOF, and I wondered whether that the highest? So I looked it up and man was I surprised by the results. A few true false questions below and then the link the HOF voting by percentage.

1. Chipper Jones got a higher percentage of HOF votes than Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, and Willie Mays?

2. Tom Seaver has the second highest percentage of all pitchers, behind only Mariano Rivera (who is the only person with 100%)?

3. Ted Williams, Stan Musial, and Roberto Clemente all had a lower percentage of votes than Chipper Jones?

4. Both Tim Raines and Goose Gossage got over 2% more votes in favor of HOF than Walter Johnson?

Did voting change at some point to make it much easier for modern players to get a larger portion of a vote than earlier players? Going strictly by voting percentage (link below), you would have a very warped sense of the best players of all time.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/b...ng_Percentages

[MVSNYC]

Ryan, I'm not sure 100%, but I'd imagine that in the 30's, 40's, 50's there were way less voters than there are now (I think there's close to 400 writer's who vote now). Point is, with much less voters, the percentages can get wonky and seem misleading.

But...I agree, some surprising numbers you posted.

PS- Took Joe D. three times on the ballot to get in. That's crazy.

[GeoPoto]

I thought the phenomena correlated with advances in communications, media, and now social media. Over time it has gotten easier to identify the voters, shame them into revealing their votes, and shame anybody who declines to, for example, vote for Mariano Rivera on the first ballot. Once it became feasible, hounding voters became a popular internet sport. The hyper-scrutiny has virtually eliminated blank and near-blank ballots, which used to occur as a result of voter negligence, incapacity, or caprice. It used to be nobody had to reveal or explain their vote. Modern reliance on statistics makes it much easier to rebut the "I didn't vote for him because, as a sportswriter, I saw him play" explanation. Now everybody can see him play and the numbers don't lie, etc.

[Fred]

I think the first player to get 100% is Mariano Rivera. He may be the only one to date at 100%.

Totally mind boggling how a few voters neglect to select what should be "auto" inductees. Not that there are many that I feel are "auto" inductees, but come on, Ruth, Mays, Aaron and all the others. How the heck do you not vote for them.

[molenick]

There are a lot of reasons why the voting percentages don't always reflect the greatness of the player. In 1936, players were competing with everyone who played in the 20th century (there was a separate vote for 19th century players). I don't even think there was a ballot...you just wrote-in 10 players and it seems like there were different rules in effect (or maybe no rules at all). There was no five-year rule (Ruth got in) and active players could be voted for (Hornsby, Gehrig, Grove, Foxx, and others got votes). I doubt there was even a ballot because Young got votes in both the 19th century and 20th century (I assume because people weren't sure where to vote for him). The theory is that this is what kept him out of the first class...if he was on one ballot or the other he probably would have gotten in.

If you look at the list of all the great players with votes, it's a pretty good result that five people were named on over 75% of the ballots (even if, in retrospect, these choices are obvious to us). Especially because the voters couldn't just sort by WAR and pick the top 10 players.

As someone mentioned, for many years after that, there was a large backlog of great players who weren't in yet, so the competition was much tougher in terms of getting the 75% needed.

So, it is true that Walter Johnson got 83.6% of the vote on the first ballot competing with all the 20th century greats who had played up to that point, and that is less than the 86% Raines got on on his tenth ballot competing with Jeff Bagwell, Ivan Rodriguez, Trevor Hoffman, etc. and the 85.9% Gossage got on his ninth ballot competing with Jim Rice, Andre Dawson, Bert Blyleven, etc.

I think there is a lot to question in the HOF voting but at least these results seem okay to me....Johnson as one of the the five greatest players in baseball through 1936 and Raines and Gossage as tenth and ninth ballot HOFers.

I think there used to be some voters who simply did not vote for a player on his first ballot out of some "principal". I think that's what kept Williams, Musial, Mays, Aaron, etc. from being unanimous (or from getting higher percentages). I think now that we know pretty much who everyone voted for, that "principal" no longer exists because of the "public shaming" aspect someone mentioned.

Rivera is the only unanimous player. That doesn't mean voters thought he was better than every previous player ever elected. It just means every voter thought he was a HOFer, which seems like a reasonable opinion. They were not voting for him compared to everyone else who ever played...it was just yes or no as to whether he belonged. No one was thinking, I won't vote for him to stop him from having a higher percentage than Babe Ruth.

I think like all the other stats in baseball from batting average to ERA to complete games, the HOF percentages need to be taken in the context of when the voting occurred...they certainly cannot be interpreted as a reflection of the comparative greatness of a player.

[ParisianJohn]

Originally Posted by GeoPoto

I thought the phenomena correlated with advances in communications, media, and now social media. Over time it has gotten easier to identify the voters, shame them into revealing their votes, and shame anybody who declines to, for example, vote for Mariano Rivera on the first ballot. Once it became feasible, hounding voters became a popular internet sport. The hyper-scrutiny has virtually eliminated blank and near-blank ballots, which used to occur as a result of voter negligence, incapacity, or caprice. It used to be nobody had to reveal or explain their vote. Modern reliance on statistics makes it much easier to rebut the "I didn't vote for him because, as a sportswriter, I saw him play" explanation. Now everybody can see him play and the numbers don't lie, etc.

Rivera got 100% of the BBWAA voters... who voted.

To your point, a few writers knew there was a lot of talk about Rivera having the potential to be the first unanimous vote getter for the HOF and they "didn't want to be the guy who blocked that". Basically these few guys didn't believe Rivera, or any closer with a limited number of innings pitched in a career relative to a starter, deserved a spot in the Hall, especially on the first ballot. But that fear of the online mob (most notably the shouting heads on ESPN and Fox Sports as well as sports radio) coming after them led them to sit out and not vote at all, different than turning in a blank ballot. Rivera got 100% of the ballots cast, but you could asterisk that percentage!

[Mike D.]

Originally Posted by ParisianJohn

Rivera got 100% of the BBWAA voters... who voted.

To your point, a few writers knew there was a lot of talk about Rivera having the potential to be the first unanimous vote getter for the HOF and they "didn't want to be the guy who blocked that". Basically these few guys didn't believe Rivera, or any closer with a limited number of innings pitched in a career relative to a starter, deserved a spot in the Hall, especially on the first ballot. But that fear of the online mob (most notably the shouting heads on ESPN and Fox Sports as well as sports radio) coming after them led them to sit out and not vote at all, different than turning in a blank ballot. Rivera got 100% of the ballots cast, but you could asterisk that percentage!

Did a significantly lower number of ballots get cast that year than say, the prior year and the year after?

[ParisianJohn]

Originally Posted by Mike D.

Did a significantly lower number of ballots get cast that year than say, the prior year and the year after?

I took a quick look now and saw that when Junior was elected 3 years earlier than Rivera in 2016 that he received 437 out of 440 votes. When Rivera was elected he received 425 votes. I couldn't find the number of people who didn't vote in 2019, but it seems there were more than just a handful, though membership could have dropped.

Also keep in mind that in 2016 the BBWAA voted to no longer have anonymous voting for the HOF, with the first year that going into effect being 2018 https://www.mlb.com/news/anonymous-h...018-c210445566.

This was rejected by the Hall, but, the pressure was on to "shame" some, or at least make them answer for their bonehead choices.

[doug.goodman]

Originally Posted by GeoPoto

... and the numbers don't lie, etc.

But, the way people interpret the numbers can lie.

With all due respect to Mr. Rivera, I wouldn't have voted for him in 2019.

https://retrosheet.org/Research/Smit...fTheCloser.pdf

I would, however, vote for Mr. Smith.

Doug

[Jcosta19]

For the prewar players there was also a backlog that took a long time to catch up with voting limits and the HOF not starting until the late 30s.

For 90s and after players the pool is also super washed out due to steroids making percentages for worthy players not connected to steroids super high. (Jones, Jeter, Mariano, etc)

Those are my thoughts on the surface without digging deeper.

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk