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kcghost

Lifer
May 6, 2011
13,149
21,412
77
Olathe, Kansas
I am almost stunned at Jiminks image of the hall. If we adopted his attitude we'd only have an admission to the Hall once every five years or so. The Hall would wither and die away. To deny Larry Walker his due when he rates as just above the median of rightfielders elected to the Hall would be a travesty of justice, particularly while espousing the election of Kent. Election to the Hall is serious business and just because you don't like WAR doesn't mean it isn't a very good tool for ranking players. Any stat that rates HoFers and you come out in the top 50% at your position you have to go along with it barring other factors. And you objection to many players getting like Harold Baines can be attributed to the Veterans Committees in all there guises. That committee is useless. Tim Raines was the 2nd best leadoff hitter in the game. His problem was playing in Montreal all those years.
 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
As a White Sox fan, I only need to tune in on baseball every eighty years, but I will say, Derek Jeter was a phenomenon to watch. His speed was such that he seemed to drop into a kind of timeless slow motion when he had time to do a number of moves that should have taken longer, with complete economy of movement. My wife lived in New York City and area for most of her adult career, so she was a Yanks fan. To me they were only a perpetual impediment to my Sox, and in a distant way to my family's Cubs. But the times I've watched Jeter, it's felt like a movie dream sequence. The lone dissenting vote ... reminds me of some damned fool thing I'd do for no good reason. It's merely amusing.
 
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Bowie

Part of the Furniture Now
Oct 24, 2019
980
4,352
Minnesota
I side with JimInks on this one. It's the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Very Good or Hall of Players Who Meet a Minimum WAR Threshold.

WAR is useless stat, and it doesn't even have a standard formula. There are at least three different ways to calculate it, depending on which organization is using it. So the stat itself has subjectivity built into it, depending on what someone determines makes for a "good" sub-statistic to measure "Wins Above Replacements."

There's some subjectivity built it to the entire process. People have a hard time accepting this every year and every time a sport has a HOF election. It's why we have the Veterans Committee vote, aka the Pity Vote.

I do not know how anyone could seriously put Larry Walker in the same class as Jeter. There are many many fans like mso who remember seeing Jeter or Mantle or the like play. But no one has ever said "man, I saw Walker play one spring day at Coors field, and it was just magic the way he swung the bat."

And if we only get a new elected member every few years, so what. It's the top of the profession. I personally wouldn't want to go to a HOF that was full of a bunch of weak rag-arm slap-hitting jabronis.
 

JimInks

Sultan of Smoke
Aug 31, 2012
60,848
553,771
I am almost stunned at Jiminks image of the hall. If we adopted his attitude we'd only have an admission to the Hall once every five years or so. The Hall would wither and die away. To deny Larry Walker his due when he rates as just above the median of rightfielders elected to the Hall would be a travesty of justice, particularly while espousing the election of Kent. Election to the Hall is serious business and just because you don't like WAR doesn't mean it isn't a very good tool for ranking players. Any stat that rates HoFers and you come out in the top 50% at your position you have to go along with it barring other factors. And you objection to many players getting like Harold Baines can be attributed to the Veterans Committees in all there guises. That committee is useless. Tim Raines was the 2nd best leadoff hitter in the game. His problem was playing in Montreal all those years.

Larry Walker only played four full seasons out of 17, and only once did he play over a 150 games in a season. That is not a Hall of Famer to me. He won three batting titles in the light Colorado air, but Bill Madlock won 4 and he's never got a sniff at the Hall. He doesn't belong either. Walker is a near great, and not a Hall of Famer. I think he got in because the only competition he had this year was Derek Jeter. Otherwise, he wouldn't have made it, nor should he have as far as I am concerned. A Hall of Famer plays every day. Walker doesn't belong in the same class as Aaron, Clemente, Mays, Frank Robinson, Ty Cobb, Yaz, etc.

Jeff Kent was a fairly good defensive second baseman and one of the best hitters at that position. Raines had some very good years, but hung on for the last few years, and I think he's in the Larry Walker category as a near great instead of an all time great. Baines got to the Hall because he had friends on the Veterans Committee. That's not a new thing. Ford Frick got several people in who never deserved to be in the Hall.

WAR is a useless stat to many. Judging a star player by a minor leaguer or a fill in is a bad idea. Comparing full time players to full time players is a better way to look at it. There are many good analytic programs, but WAR isn't one of them. And analytics don't tell the whole story, anyway. You have to see the players play. I'll trust a seasoned veteran's opinion based on what he sees over a bunch of stats more often than not. Stats don't cover all the intangibles. You have to watch the game.
 

elasmo

Can't Leave
Mar 23, 2019
328
790
So hard to care about the Hall these days with all the cheating going on. Baseball Commisioners have let us down for a long time now. The greatest pitcher (Clemens) and hitter (Bonds) were juicers. I dunno...does it matter anymore?
 
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JimInks

Sultan of Smoke
Aug 31, 2012
60,848
553,771
So hard to care about the Hall these days with all the cheating going on. Baseball Commisioners have let us down for a long time now. The greatest pitcher (Clemens) and hitter (Bonds) were juicers. I dunno...does it matter anymore?

Not like it used to. The steroid users hurt the stats comparisons for the Hall and during the time they played. I mostly quit caring about the Hall when they let Piazza and Bagwell in. David Ortiz will get in and even though he was nice to me when I met him, he still cheated and doesn't deserve the Hall.
 
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Spinkle

Part of the Furniture Now
Sep 16, 2019
892
5,950
42
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
If we adopted his attitude we'd only have an admission to the Hall once every five years or so. The Hall would wither and die away.
I disagree strongly with this and I agree with Jim that the baseball hall has been diluting itself to some extent the last few years. One of the things about Cooperstown vs. say, the Hockey Hall of Fame is that the NHL uses its induction ceremony every year as a PR event to draw attention (at least here in Canada), and in my opinion the desire to generate buzz leads to "pretty goods" getting inducted. I always respected the baseball HOF for the reason that the bar was so high. If we have a year where someone doesn't get in then so be it, no feel good story for the newspapers that year. The hall is not going to wither and die, but I think its possible that if it gets too diluted people will lose interest.
 
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kcghost

Lifer
May 6, 2011
13,149
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77
Olathe, Kansas
I said if we used Jiminks definition of what's a HoFer. If you look at it the BBWAA it does a creditable job electing HoFers. It's the Veterans Committee that's the problem. Electing the likes of Harold Baines and Bowie Kuhn.
 

kcghost

Lifer
May 6, 2011
13,149
21,412
77
Olathe, Kansas
There are only two real differences in Big Papi and Bonds and Clemens is that he is a nice guy and the other two are not and Big Papi is not one of the true giants of the game while the other two are. By your own admission you are excluding the all-time HR leader and one of the three best pitchers who ever lived. You also don't want the all-time hits leader in there but that's justified and I can support that.
Larry Walker was elected despite missing many games due to injury not because of it. Also he was a stellar defender which Kent was, at best, average.
 

davidy97

Starting to Get Obsessed
Jan 20, 2017
148
161
Tx
Which MLB HOF player from the 90's did not take steroids? Griffey? Frank Thomas? Pudge? Only the ones that got caught or admitted to the accusations? I have to think it was more wide spread even if only used to recover from injuries.
Over his 15 years with the Astros, Bagwell hit .297 with 488 doubles, 32 triples, 449 home runs, 1,529 RBI and a .948 OPS (.408 OBP/.540 SLG) in 2,150 games. And I agree he looks different from his rookie card to his early 2000's card....Bruce Banner -The Incredible Hulk
 

JimInks

Sultan of Smoke
Aug 31, 2012
60,848
553,771
Which MLB HOF player from the 90's did not take steroids? Griffey? Frank Thomas? Pudge? Only the ones that got caught or admitted to the accusations? I have to think it was more wide spread even if only used to recover from injuries.
Over his 15 years with the Astros, Bagwell hit .297 with 488 doubles, 32 triples, 449 home runs, 1,529 RBI and a .948 OPS (.408 OBP/.540 SLG) in 2,150 games. And I agree he looks different from his rookie card to his early 2000's card....Bruce Banner -The Incredible Hulk

It's the steroid users that mostly ended my caring about the Hall.
 

JimInks

Sultan of Smoke
Aug 31, 2012
60,848
553,771
There are only two real differences in Big Papi and Bonds and Clemens is that he is a nice guy and the other two are not and Big Papi is not one of the true giants of the game while the other two are. By your own admission you are excluding the all-time HR leader and one of the three best pitchers who ever lived. You also don't want the all-time hits leader in there but that's justified and I can support that.
Larry Walker was elected despite missing many games due to injury not because of it. Also he was a stellar defender which Kent was, at best, average.
Walker was elected in year where he had little competition. If there were three or four more players on par with Derek Jeter, Walker wouldn't have made it, in my opinion. I'll never accept that Walker, an often part time player, belongs there, no matter how good he was when he played. At least Jeff Kent showed up to play regularly and posted many years of excellence as a hitter. And his fielding was underrated. He wasn't as great on defense as some others, but neither were several guys in the Hall. Hack Wilson and Ted Williams were defensive liabilities, and nobody cares. Except for me. I don't think Wilson deserves to be in either. Nobody can argue against Ted Williams being an all time great, maybe the greatest hitter who ever lived. That's the kind of player the Hall of Fame should be about instead of very good players, which they already have more than enough of.

Frankly, I don't give a damn about Clemens, Ortiz and Bonds. They'd never been the players they were without steroids. I consider Henry Aaron to be the all time champ, and I am certainly not alone in that. The Hall is tainted enough without letting the cheaters in. But, the younger generation doesn't care and those three will probably make the Hall some day. Rewarding those type of people - no matter what their inflated stats say - is not my idea of integrity of stats for being a Hall of Famer.
 
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Bengel

Lifer
Sep 20, 2019
3,116
14,243
same class as Aaron, Clemente, Mays, Frank Robinson, Ty Cobb, Yaz, etc.
This. Maybe if the current players would aspire to be on the level of a Mariano Rivera, or the past players Jim cites, we could have a crop of HOF players (Cobb's’ cleats aside ;)) worthy to be called such.
 
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crawdad

Lifer
Jul 19, 2019
1,471
11,447
Virginia
I’m not ready to give up this post just yet. Am I alone thinking that Vazquez should have been the 2nd pick over Walker? I’m thinking he got bumped down because they didn’t wanted two shortstops inducted at the same time.
 

litup

Part of the Furniture Now
Oct 16, 2015
722
2,206
Sacramento, CA
I assume you mean Vizquel? I don't think the voters would place much if any consideration on not wanting two people from the same position inducted at the same time. I think there's just a portion of the voters that need to warm up to him. Now in his third year, the percentage of ballots he's listed on has slowly increased and is trending to get him there probably in another three or four years. He started out at 37%, then got up to 42.8%, and hit 52.6% this year. His fielding will be what gets him in but his hitting is reason enough (in my opinion) to make him wait several years before getting in. The only offensive category he excelled at was sacrifice bunts. He wasn't even much of a OBP/run scorer.
 
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jpberg

Lifer
Aug 30, 2011
2,904
6,540
Jeter should’ve been unanimous.
And I wonder how many 1900-1980 players would still be lilly white under modern era scrutiny?
 

magicpiper

Part of the Furniture Now
Jul 9, 2018
580
1,536
MCO
I'm all for keeping Pete out of the HOF. It's one thing to get caught and admit it but continuing to lie for years and years gets you nowhere. I also believe that the rules need to be applied evenly and, might I say...fairly. Sorry. I never use that word but I use it in reference to the Astros. Cheating is cheating is cheating. Anyone involved with any kind of cheating in baseball deserves to be banned from HOF...especially when it nets a World Series ring.
 
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JimInks

Sultan of Smoke
Aug 31, 2012
60,848
553,771
And after watching A.J. Hinch dodge the question about whether or not Altuve was wearing a buzzer to let him know what pitches were coming, none of them are looking good in my eyes. They also want us to believe they didn't cheat last year. Uhhhhhhh..... sure, Uh huh.
 
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