Cooperstown Calls Again Today, Who We Would Vote In

Today, baseball will announce who, if anyone, will be joining Fred McGriff on the podium in Cooperstown this summer being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Is there anyone on the writers’ ballot who deserves induction into immortality. Every year, some writers make their ballot public and being what the social media world is, many of them are skewered for not voting for certain players.

We don’t do this, because, after all, it is the voter’s choice. We are sure they can give you a reason for their selections, although again, they can probably give you a bunch of reasons why a certain player should be inducted.

First of all, we favor a “small” Hall of Fame. Meaning, the elite of the elite. That doesn’t mean a player can only get in on the first ballot, so only the obvious players get in. When Tim Raines first was eligible, we weren’t positive he should be in, but over time, looking at his numbers, we changed our mind, and we were glad he got in.

FYI…hopefully, the various Veterans’ Committees will do the same for Kenny Lofton.

On the other hand, we think the analytical experts out there can find a reason for any candidate to get a vote. One writer on the MLB Network said he voted for Torii Hunter because he was one of four players to play 1500 games in centerfield, hit 350 home runs, and win nine Gold Gloves.

We like this writer’s work. But Hunter spent most of his career in the AL Central Division (Minnesota and Detroit) and at no time did we think we were watching a Hall of Fame player. He was a very good player, but as many have stated, the building isn’t the Hall of The Very Good.

If we had a vote, we would not vote for anyone who was involved with performance enhancing drugs. We understand there are players already enshrined who did use them, but if we knew about it, those players wouldn’t have received our vote.

We would also stay away from Carlos Beltran because of the Astros’ cheating situation. He has 435 career homers and was an excellent defensive player and baserunner, and he’s a guy with a very good case.

And we refute the argument of “they were great before they started using” too.

All of this said, we would vote for Jeff Kent, who is in his final year on the ballot. We have supported Kent’s candidacy for several years. He is the all-time leader for home runs at his primary position, second base, with 354, won the 2000 NL Most Valuable Player Award, and finished in the top ten three other times.

He also knocked in 100 runs eight times in a nine-year span from 1997-2005 and had a career OPS of 855.

We could be convinced to cast a vote for Scott Rolen as well. Rolen had several outstanding seasons but finished in the top 10 in the MVP voting just once, in 2004.

It is strange to us that neither Kent nor Rolen ever led their respective leagues in any major statistical category. And while Kent’s Bill James Hall of Fame Career Standard is 51 (the average enshrinee is 50), Rolen’s is just 40.

Todd Helton is another in that class. Helton is a victim of playing at Coors Field for his entire career, where he had an OPS of 1048, compared to 855 on the road. He has just three top ten MVP finishes, the highest being 5th in 2000, when he led the league in batting, hits, on base percentage, slugging, OPS, and runs batted in.

Other than that year, he led the league in a major category just one other time, on base percentage in 2005.

It’s also probably not fair to players like Dale Murphy and another player on the current ballot, Andruw Jones, that they had a bad ending to their careers. Had Jones retired after 2007, when he was just 30 years old, he would probably garner more support.

But he didn’t, and spent the last five years of his career with a batting average no higher than .247, and in none of those years was he a regular.

As we said, we don’t want a Hall of Fame where the very good are honored, or guys who had a very good five-to-six-year stretch. It should be for the best of the best.

Our Two Cents On The Baseball Hall

Times have changed, that’s for sure. It used to be people could have a good debate about things, particularly sports and walk away friends.

It’s still possible, but in today’s times, usually the argument ends with one person calling the other stupid and criticizing them for having that opinion.

The voting for baseball’s Hall of Fame is one of those discussions. Some voters have their selections made public and then are ridiculed for not putting an “X” by a certain player.

Hey, the writer earned a right to vote by covering baseball for many years, and that’s who he thinks should get in. Most of the voters take the job very seriously.

We don’t have a vote (obviously), but if we did, here would be our criteria. And a few months ago, we posted on social media who we would vote for and several people took the time to tell us we were wrong.

Again, we aren’t saying we are right, it’s just who we think should get in.

First of all, we would not vote for anyone connected with PEDs. We understand there are players already in the Hall who used them, but we would not have voted for them, but if the electorate decided they were worthy, we aren’t going to go crazy.

And we understand Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, the poster boys for illegal enhancers, were great players before it appears they started to use, but they knew it was wrong and did it anyway.

As someone once said, if those players thought it was no big deal, they would have used them out in the open, not someplace out of view.

The world is filled with people who did many good things, committed a crime, and still were punished.

And by the way, we would not have voted for David Ortiz.

We are also a “small hall” baseball fan. We see many of the ballots that are published with votes for 10 players. Sorry, there are very few times, if any, where there are 10 Hall of Fame players on a single ballot.

Nowhere does it say you have to vote for that many, and in our opinion, writers shouldn’t be voting for the Top Ten candidates.

For the most part, you know a Hall of Famer when you see them play, but that doesn’t mean time and studying doesn’t make a person change their mind. Look at Tim Raines, for instance. He’s definitely worthy of the honor, but it took a lot of people time to realize it.

As for a Cleveland connection, we hope the veterans group does the right thing and put both Kenny Lofton and yes, Albert Belle in Cooperstown soon.

Lofton was a tremendous player and did it for a very long time, accumulating 2428 hits, with a lifetime batting average of .299 and an on base percentage of .372. In terms of players similar to Lofton are three players already enshrined (Raines, Harry Hooper, and Fred Clarke) and a fourth, Ichiro Sukuki, who will be soon.

Belle was a dominant offensive player for a decade (1991-2000), averaging 40 HR and 130 RBI per 162 games. Had he not retired due to a hip injury at age 33, he likely would have hit 500 home runs (he had 381) and had nine straight 100 RBI seasons when he left the game.

Let’s say he would have knocked in 500 more had he been able to play until 40. That would put him in the top 25 all time.

He had three top 3 MVP finishes (he was robbed of it in 1995) and is still the only player to hit 50 home runs and 50 doubles in the same season.

Instead of saying the Baseball Hall of Fame is irrelevant because of who is not in it, it should be and is a great source of discussion if you are a fan of the game. It’s also not the reason the sport has lost popularity. There are many more reasons for that.

As for the Bonds/Clemens debate? We’ll see how the former players who now hold their fate feel about putting them in. It might even be tougher for them to get in.

Hall Of Fame Voting Should Be Debated, Not Condemned

There’s an old saying that any publicity is good publicity, and in that vein, it’s been a good week for Major League Baseball. The debate around the Hall of Fame voting has certainly brought attention to the sport on shows that normally don’t talk about the sport.

We are a “small Hall” person. Cooperstown is the most difficult Hall of Fame to gain admittance to, and that’s fine. You should be a great player to be enshrined there.

Unfortunately, the social media era has changed things. Many voters are shamed according to who they vote for or don’t vote for. That’s wrong. The person voting earned a vote by covering baseball for many years and they are entitled to their opinion, something that isn’t taken into consideration these days.

Should some broadcasters be given a vote? People who cover the sport on a daily basis should obviously be considered along with writers. No problem with that at all.

One continuing controversy is what to do with the players who used PED’s. We feel they should not be included in the Hall. We hear the argument that many of these players were great before they started to enhance their performance, so they should be enshrined.

Try that argument on your significant other.

And please don’t use the tact that some PED users are already in Cooperstown. It’s a bad argument. It’s the same as using the fact that Rabbit Maranville (look it up) and his .258 batting average (658 OPS) are in the Hall, so others with similar statistics should be in.

That the writers (in this case) made a mistake does not mean more mistakes should be made.

We find it fascinating that people don’t vote for Curt Schilling because of things he has said or written, which gave him no advantage on the playing field, but vote for Bonds or Clemens. Bonds made himself a player you basically couldn’t pitch to after he turned 35 years old.

His best years were ages 36-39. That’s not unusual?

Look, we wouldn’t want to hang around with Schilling, and understand his views make a lot of people uncomfortable. But he’s a Hall of Fame pitcher, and despite his wishes about not wanting to be on the ballot next year, we are hoping he gets elected in 2022.

The writers do make mistakes. As Tribe fans, one of them that we hope gets rectified by the Veteran’s Committee is Kenny Lofton. The leadoff man on the great Indian teams of the ’90’s received just 3.2% of the vote in his first year of eligibility in 2013 and was removed from future ballots.

However, Lofton deserves the nod. With a .299 lifetime batting average and a .372 career on base percentage along with 2428 hits, we think Lofton was overlooked because he played in the same era as the greatest leadoff man of all time, Rickey Henderson.

It took Tim Raines, a similar player, ten years to get in. In fact, of the top ten similar hitters to Lofton (according to Baseball Reference.com), four are in the Hall, and a fifth, Ichiro Suzuki, will be.

The Veterans Committee has made mistakes too. The selection of Harold Baines raised some eyebrows.

For what it’s worth, if we had a vote, we would have voted for Schilling and Jeff Kent. That’s it.

The point is voting for the Hall of Fame is a subjective process. And because of sports, it should be fun to have arguments about it. It’s also a privilege for the writers who participate, and most of them take it very seriously.

A small Hall is fine for us. We’d rather that than the NFL’s method of putting in a lot of players simply because they now work on the broadcast side of things.

Thome In ’18, And Other Hall Of Fame Thoughts

A year from now, Cleveland Indians’ fans will be waiting for the results of the Baseball Hall of Fame voting with great anticipation.

Jim Thome will be eligible for the first time and with over 600 home runs in his career and not even any anecdotal connection to performance enhancing drugs, he should be a strong candidate to get elected next year.

He would be the first player to play the majority of his career in a Cleveland uniform since Larry Doby was inducted in 1998, and we believe he would be the first Indians to be elected by the baseball writers since Lou Boudreau in 1970.

It says a lot about the state of the franchise from 1960-1994 that it has been 46 years since the Tribe had a Hall of Famer that played to the Indians in the prime of his career.

Thome played 55% of his games with Cleveland, and coincidentally hit 55% of his 612 home runs in an Indians’ uniform. He also played every one of his games with the Tribe through age 31.

He belted 200 more long balls with the Indians than he did with any other team.

Omar Vizquel will also be eligible for the first time, although he likely will not get in on his first year on the ballot.

The shortstop, best known for his defense, won 11 Gold Gloves and managed to get 2877 hits in his long career. He was a solid offensive player through age 39 with the Giants when he hit .295 with a 749 OPS.

With Trevor Hoffman and Vlad Guerrero just missing enshrinement this year and Chipper Jones being eligible for the first time along with Thome, it may be tough for all four to make it into the Hall.

That makes it doubly tough for Vizquel in 2018.

As for yesterday’s results, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens received over 50% of the vote for the first time, and only three players who attained that level did not finally get into Cooperstown.

Many experts are saying the increase is due to younger voters, who didn’t cover the game in the “Steroid Era”.

Our opinion is they should talk to the writers who did cover the sport then and talk about what happened. This is a situation where the statistics do not tell the entire story.

We weren’t alive when Lincoln was assassinated, but we know what happened. Not doing the research is not doing your due diligence.

Those players blatantly cheated, and we understand some players who used may already be enshrined, like Ivan Rodriguez and Jeff Bagwell. We would not have voted for Pudge, who was mentioned in Jose Canseco’s book.

There is nothing that concrete on Bagwell.

After watching the last installment of Ken Burns’ documentary on the game, which addresses the best hitter and pitcher of that generation using PEDs, we can’t understand how anyone could vote for either after watching.

And yes, they were great players before they took performance enhancers, but that doesn’t mean you should overlook that they used.

What they did wasn’t fair to the players who didn’t use, and their accomplishments have hindered the candidacies of players like Fred McGriff, Jeff Kent, and Mike Mussina.

Hopefully, a year from now, we will have cause to celebrate Jim Thome, the first true Tribe player in a generation to make the Hall of Fame.

Another thing many of us have never seen in our lifetime.