Regardless, great post!

If everyone leaves a guy off the ballot because they don’t think he deserves to go in the first year, he never gets another chance.

And I note you STILL can’t find space to respond to the real example I provided, namely Joe DiMaggio. Which means, of course, you don’t have a response because you know that the example proves you wrong.

Biggio did get 3,000 hits so, I guess, he gets in, But he doesn’t deserve to do so on the first ballot. Let him wait a while as did many far, far more deserving inductees. Morris, if elected, will join a goodly number of good pitchers who were never great. He is not deserving of election. Morris would join pitchers like Lemon, Newhouser, Jenkins, Fingers, Gomez, Drysdale, and several more in the lower level of the Hall. Election of guys like that merely detracts from the true greats like Mathewson, Johnson, Alexander, Young, Spahn, and Koufax.

Oh well, argument solved then. Just say “the problem will work itself out” and it does…every time!…No need to have a basis for your argument! Currently, yes, PED players are split. But now players who were never accused of using PEDs, (Bagwell) are being left off a number of ballots. When you add in the large number of players who are coming on in the next few years, that’s just going to split those votes further.

” The sky is not falling and many if not most deserving players will get their induction”

This is a great theory…if the HOF was made up of Babe Ruth’s and Willie Mays. It’s not, there are a lot more Willie Stargell’s, Ryne Sandberg’s and Billy Williams in the hall. Your basically creating a HOF where only the elite of the elite of the elite will be in, and the merely incredibly great will be on the outside. Maybe this is the Hall you want, *but this is not what the hall is!*. Based strictly on the merits of their performance, most of the players above would have gone into Cooperstown. And when you have a ballot of 20 players who are deemed worthy and can only vote for ten…yes, that is a problem. And very obvious problem.

Further, The Schmidt, Morgan, etc. example was not a straw man. It is an illustration of what happens when you have more worth players than ballot slots.

Reading comprehension: Not your strong suit, is it?

1. Tim Raines was a much better base stealer. Brock stole 938 bases at a 75% success rate, Raines stole 808 at an 85% success rate.

2. Raines was much better at getting on base. His career OBP was 40 points higher

3. Raines had a much better peak. Brock’s career high in OPS+ was 127, a mark that Raines topped 8 times.

The only thing Brock has over Raines is that he was healthier at the end of his career…which doesn’t really matter because Raines was much, much better during the other parts.

So…what will the 2017 ballot look like with those names removed?

Barry Bonds (7 time MVP, home run king)

Roger Clemens (7 time Cy Young Winner)

Larry Walker (141 OPS+, 230 steals, 7 GG)

Curt Schilling (216 wins, 127 ERA+, 77 WAR, 11-2 in postseason)

Jim Edmonds (Top 10 CF of all time, offensive numbers comparable to Duke Snider with 8 gold gloves)

Mike Mussina (270 wins, 123 ERA+, 78 WAR)

Jeff Bagwell (448 HR, .948 OPS, 78 WAR)

Tim Raines (one of the greatest leadoff hitters of all time)

Rafael Palmeiro (569 HR, 3000 hits, 132 OPS+ sustained over 12,000 PAs)

Fred McGriff (493 HR, 134 OPS+)

Kenny Lofton (great defensive CF who brought along a .372 OBP and 600 steals)

Manny Ramirez (one of the best right-handed hitters of all time)

Ivan Rodriguez (great defensive catcher and all-time hits leader at position. Was also named in Jose Canseco’s “Juiced” as steroid user, so it’ll be interesting to see if voter exclude him for that reason)

Mark McGwire (583 HR, all time leader in HR/AB, 10th all-time in OPS)

Mike Piazza (Best hitting catcher of all time)

Gary Sheffield (500+ HR, 140 OPS+)

Vladimir Guerrero (449 HR, 140 OPS+, MVP)

Sammy Sosa (600 HR)

Jeff Kent (1st in HR, 2nd in RBI all time for 2nd basemen)

Edgar Martinez (.418 OBP, 64 WAR, 147 OPS+)

That’s *20 players*, who, due to voter ignorance or continued steroid era exclusion will likely not be admitted to the hall. Now, I don’t think all of them deserve to go, but I think any serious baseball fan would have to admit that a compelling case could be made for each of them.

Of course, I don’t have to just come up with hypothetical scenarios, because this has ALREADY HAPPENED. In the 1950s, there remained a backlog of players (since the HoF had only been open for about 12 years). Further, they tinkered with the eligibility rules a couple of times. The result was that obvious Hall of Famers, notably Joe DiMaggio, were struggling to get elected. Surely you’d agree that Joe DiMaggio is a clear-cut Hall of Famer, right? And yet, he had to wait until his third ballot.

http://www.johnny-web.com/dimaggio_hof.htm

I don’t think anyone would be bothered (at least, nobody outside of Cooperstown business owners) if a year went by with no player elected. But circumstances are unfolding in such a way that it could be a run of several years.

And I think you assume too much when you suggest that the majority agrees that the Hall is “watered down.” Some people feel that way, yes, but it’s hard to argue that too strongly if the Hall does not have the career leaders in hits, home runs, walks, on base percentage, Cy Youngs, and MVPs.

Finally, it would seem that Jim Caple does see 10 to 15 HoF worthy players, so your assertion that nobody feels that way is demonstrably false. I myself see eight players who I think are unquestionably worthy (Bonds, Clemens, Bagwell, Trammell, Raines, Martinez, Biggio, Piazza), and I would give serious consideration to several others–Schilling, McGwire, Sosa, Walker–if I had a vote. There isn’t a single guy among the 12 I have listed that would not be at least average for their position among Hall of Famers.

Caple suggests he might vote for as many as 15 players, if he could. Because he can’t, he has to remove 5 players from his list. He has removed the five players he deems to be the least deserving. If every writer used the same basis for evaluation, perhaps there would not be a problem. But some writers are certainly going to use some other basis–most obviously some variant of an anti-steroids approach. Put in more concrete terms, compare Caple’s ballot to a hypothetical writer #2 who won’t vote for ANY steroid-tainted candidates, and hypothetical writer #3, who will only withhold his votes from proven steroid users, and only votes for “clear-cut” Hall of Famers, particularly power hitters:

Caple’s ballot: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell, Mike Piazza, Edgar Martinez, Curt Schilling, Jack Morris.

Writer 2: Craig Biggio, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell, Edgar Martinez, Curt Schilling, Jack Morris, Fred McGriff, Larry Walker.

Writer 3: Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, Larry Walker, Sammy Sosa

In this hypothetical scenario, multiplied by 100, Larry Walker–who has never been linked to PEDs–loses out on induction, because writers like Caple can’t find room on their ballots, when they otherwise would. This is only going to get worse as more and more candidates clog up the ballot, splitting the vote and keeping ANY player from getting 70%.

And incidentally, the last time the BBWAA inducted three candidates in the same year was 1999 (Brett, Sutton, Ryan). Since then it has gone like this: 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1. So it’s entirely possible that a logjam could create many years without any inductees.

Remove the BBWAA from the equation, or at least add-in or trade-in other knowledgeable minds within the game, and you lessen the impact of the truly ridiculous voting patterns of some writers. Maybe make rules about blank ballots, too:

- A ballot returned blank will not be counted.
- A pattern (say, three or five consecutive years) of blank ballots will result in revocation of voting privileges.

There are changes to be made, but I don’t think it is as simple as adding spots on the ballot.

Aside from first-ballot inductees, worthy players establish a low baseline vote percentage and then it increases over the years…or dwindles away to nothing. This reflects a years-long baseball conversation. Plus there’s the whole steroids aspect, which deserves its own long conversation, possibly with respect to each player.

Thanks to the ten vote limit, that conversation is going to be cut short on several players who (in a different year) would otherwise merit this long baseball discussion. And so players like Fred McGriff, Larry Walker, or Edgar Martinez will fall off the ballot after only one year and that discussion will be lost.

Sincerely,

Lou Whitaker