Hall of Fame Ballot 2010

Roberto Alomar
Kevin Appier
Harold Baines
Bert Blyleven
Ellis Burks
Andre Dawson
Andres Galarraga
Pat Hentgen
Mike Jackson
Eric Karros
Ray Lankford
Barry Larkin
Edgar Martinez
Don Mattingly
Fred McGriff
Mark McGwire
Jack Morris
Dale Murphy
Dave Parker
Tim Raines
Shane Reynolds
David Segui
Lee Smith
Alan Trammell
Robin Ventura
Todd Zeile

on the ballot for the first time are Roberto Alomar, Edgar Martinez, Barry Larkin, Fred McGriff, Kevin Appier, Ellis Burks, Andres Galarraga, Pat Hentgen, Mike Jackson, Eric Karros, Ray Lankford, Shane Reynolds, David Segui, Robin Ventura and Todd Zeile.

i don't remember mike jackson : /

http://cache.deadspin.com/assets/resources/2006/06/seguiforearm.jpg

i used 2 <3 big cat galarraga

is larkin gonna make it? he strikes me as close

shane reynolds sounds familiar but i have no idea who he is

Good luck, Barry Larkin.

my ballot:

Roberto Alomar
Bert Blyleven
Edgar Martinez
Mark McGwire
Tim Raines
Alan Trammell

Alomar for sure. I'm in Toronto, where he's completed a full-360: from godlike status in '92-'93, to pretty much being run out of town three years later (and, post-spitting incident, getting crucified every return visit for the next few years; the one game I saw I made it a point to applaud loudly every time he came up), to again being treated worshipfully post-retirement (they had to close off his table two hours beforehand when he was here for an alumni autograph-session last summer). For what it's worth, I don't discount the HIV rumours, the truth of which would certainly help explain his bafflingly abrupt decline. I'd like to see Edgar Martinez get in there too, although I wish his greatest years (1995-2001) didn't fit so neatly into the steroid era. (If you consider that a non-issue, then he oughta go in; I'm still wavering.) And I'd take Lee Smith over Bruce Sutter any day.

Roberto Alomar
Bert Blyleven
Barry Larkin
Edgar Martinez
Tim Raines
Alan Trammell

i'm just not sure on mcgwire anymore.

can anyone post keith law's ballot as posted on his blog today? i'm not a premium espn member...

Law selected:

Tim Raines, Mark McGwire, Bert Blyleven, Alan Trammell, Roberto Alomar, Edgar Martinez and Barry Larkin.

i don't think he should get in but i hope fred mcgriff sticks around for a few voting cycles

i have nothing useful/interesting to add here.
but every time i see Bert Blyleven's name i think of a list someone linked to once of some announcers weirdo nicknames for people - and of course - Bert "Be Home Blyleven".
that is all.

My 2010 Hall of Fame ballot

Monday, November 30, 2009 | Feedback | Print Entry

I don't have a ballot for the Hall of Fame yet -- just nine years to go -- but if I did, my ballot would include:

Tim Raines, Mark McGwire, Bert Blyleven, Alan Trammell, Roberto Alomar, Edgar Martinez and Barry Larkin.

I've written about Raines and his embarrassing vote totals before; I'm not clear on why a tremendous base stealer who reached base more times in his career and hit for more power than Tony Gwynn can't get even a third of the voters to list him on their ballots. Blyleven is one of the 20 or so best pitchers in the history of the game but didn't earn enough wins -- which are about as relevant to an evaluation of pitching performance as hat size -- and is going to struggle to get in before his 15 years are up. McGwire isn't in largely because the voters didn't like what he said in front of Congress, and even though all we know about his use of performance-enhancing drugs is that he used a supplement that was permitted by MLB at the time, he's been branded a cheat and ostracized. Trammell has no shot to get in, but I would vote for him because he was an above-average hitting shortstop and plus defender who had the misfortune to be a close contemporary of Cal Ripken, one of the best players in the history of the game.

Roberto Alomar should waltz in on the first ballot, although I get the sense that he won't. He was, during his peak, pretty clearly seen as a Hall-bound player, the best second baseman in the game for several years and one of its best overall players, while playing on good teams (not that it should matter, but it does). He played on two World Series champions and several other playoff teams, hit well in the postseason, was a very good defender for much of his career, added a lot of value on the bases (from 1994 to 2003, he was never caught 10 times in any season and stole 227 bases against 47 times he was caught), and finished with a 116 OPS+, dragged down by a nasty, brutish and short decline phase that coincided with his trade from Cleveland to the Mets. What may be hurting his candidacy is that very phase: He flopped in a major market, and his eventual retirement came after one of the worst spring training innings I have ever personally witnessed. He also has taken hits to the intangible part of his candidacy, both legitimate (the spitting-on-the-ump incident) and illegitimate (the unproven smears in his ex-girlfriend's lawsuit). None of those things affect his value on the field to the teams that employed him, which has to be the main criterion for enshrinement. He should be in.

Edgar Martinez's case is almost as clear-cut and yet far more controversial because he spent most of his career as a DH. We should absolutely discount his statistics based on his inability to play a position, but even for a DH, Edgar was outstanding. He spent his whole career in good pitchers' parks and still managed a .418 OBP and a .933 OPS; by comparison, Frank Thomas, who should go in on the first ballot in 2013, had a .417 career OBP and .974 OPS. Martinez's career started late (he wasn't a full-timer until he was 27) and he peaked late (age 32 was his first OPS over 1.000, and his OPS was .993 or better for the next five years). But at age 41, his abilities slipped noticeably and, to his credit, he decided to hang 'em up. It left him well short of the commonly used milestone numbers for hitters -- he didn't reach 3,000 hits or 400 homers, although he's 40th all-time in walks drawn -- and he adds no value to his candidacy through glovework. I hope he gets in, but I'm not sanguine about his chances this year.

The main argument against Larkin is his relative lack of playing time. He reached 140 games played -- an arbitrary standard for a full season -- only seven times in his career, one of which was the 2002 season, which demonstrated that he shouldn't be playing every day even if he could. But he was probably the best player in the game in 1995 and followed it up with a huge 1996 season, posted an OPS+ of 116 for his career while playing a good shortstop and adding value on the bases and has the ancillary things that seem to matter to voters (an MVP, 12 All-Star appearances, some postseason time). His stats hold up very well against other shortstops in the Hall, and while his career was short (in terms of playing time) by Hall standards, it's more than long enough, with roughly 15 full seasons of plate appearances to his credit.

Returning to the holdovers, I expect Andre Dawson will get in this year on the heels of the election of the inferior Jim Rice. If Rice is in, Dawson probably belongs, but I don't think I'd be a party to it. Dawson posted a .323 career OBP, including six full seasons in which he couldn't even muster .310, while playing the majority of his games at positions (mostly right field, with a smattering of games in left and at DH) where the offensive standard is high. Yes, you will hear the argument that the value of OBP wasn't recognized during Dawson's career to the extent that it is today and that he shouldn't be penalized for it. But OBP measures how often a hitter doesn't make an out, and if you think that players, coaches and executives in the 1970s and 1980s didn't realize that making outs was bad, you are saying that people in the game in that era were, collectively, a giant box of rocks.

I didn't make Wins Above Replacement an explicit criterion on my ballot, but as it turns out, there are six hitters on the ballot right now who rank among the top 100 in baseball history in WAR, and I'd vote for all six, and no other hitters. Note that Lou Whitaker, who fell off the ballot after just one year, ranks 54th.

Notes

• The best sportswriter in the world, Joe Posnanski, runs down recent Hall candidates who were "one and done" -- they spent one year on the ballot and received a handful of votes but didn't receive enough to stick around. He leads with Whitaker.

• WEEI's Alex Speier writes about the risk of signing Roy Halladay, given how unusual it would be for a pitcher to maintain Halladay's workload through his mid-30s. I tend to agree with his caveat, though:

Of course, Halladay would seem to merit special consideration. His frame, mechanics, pitch efficiency and track record all suggest a pitcher who is freakishly durable.

He's also never had a major arm injury. If I was going to bet on any starter to throw 800 innings over the next four years, it would probably be Doc.

• Twins bonus baby Miguel Angel Sano will play under his formal name, Miguel Jean, according to MLB.com's Kelly Theiser. Within the same mailbag, she speculates that the Twins are "intrigued" by Jarrod Washburn and Rich Harden.

• MVN's Tyler Hissey points out that next winter's free-agent class is "loaded." He includes players with options for 2011, but even if you remove those names, the class still potentially includes Joe Mauer, Lance Berkman, Carl Crawford, Jayson Werth, Halladay and Cliff Lee.

• Richard Justice wants your suggestions on how to build the 2010 Astros. Can you release the owner? He defends, in a way, GM Ed Wade and shadow GM Tal Smith, but criticism of those two men seems quite valid given their recent track record. The Astros have been expensive and poorly constructed for the past two years, and there's a long fallow period coming before the young players added by scouting director Bobby Heck and his staff can help at the big league level.

• Fangraphs' Erik Manning points out that two sets of defensive projections show some good defense for Cincinnati in 2010.

• Shawn at Squawking Baseball points out that MLB's habit of keeping its books closed allows Scott Boras to say whatever he wants about revenue sharing.

• I have never played Strat-o-Matic, but I know many of you have, so you might enjoy this NPR interview with founder Hal Richman and researcher Scott Simkus.

• You all kept the bones from your Thanksgiving turkeys, right? And made or plan to make stock from them? I've got the bones (and the neck) in a Ziploc bag in my freezer, ready to throw in a stock pot once I exhaust my current supply of chicken stock. It's one of the most indispensable ingredients for any cook, especially in winter, when soups and comfort foods are the order of the day.

i gotta believe edgar gets in sooner than people think and does a lot better on the ballot than people think, too. mostly because i get the sense people just really like him, and i get the sense that some of these other dudes have had trouble because they're regarded as "prickly" or something.

Thanks, cankles.

Cannot argue with any of that.

I can. Turkey stock is just as valuable in summer as it is in winter, with a .809 S/BSC% (stock:bowls of soup created). wtf is KLaw thinking gawd.

Jayson Stark is correct about Fred McGriff:

Weighing McGriff's HOF candidacy

Monday, November 30, 2009 | Print Entry

I haven't even gotten my Hall of Fame ballot in the mail yet. But how come I already have the impression Fred McGriff's candidacy is going to get trampled in the Roberto Alomar/Barry Larkin/Edgar Martinez debate?

I haven't decided yet whether I'm absolutely, positively voting for McGriff. But I think the people who have concluded -- way too quickly -- that he's not a Hall of Famer just because his 493 home-run trots don't mean what 493 home-run trots used to mean are missing something:

Fred McGriff's greatest years came BEFORE the numbers exploded on us in 1993.

This man was a difference-maker before the world went haywire on us. So how come so many people are lumping him in there with the rest of the PED generation?

I understand that those 12 seasons from 1993-2004 comprise two-thirds of McGriff's career. But let's look at the numbers he put up early in his career, when 30-homer seasons were a feat for real, live middle-of-the-order mashers, not No. 6 hitters:

From 1988-92, McGriff had four seasons with an adjusted OPS-plus of 153 or better, more than anyone else in either league.

Both of his two home run titles came in that span (1989 and '92).

He finished in the top four in his league in home runs, OPS and home run ratio in all five of those years. And how many other players could say that? How about zero.

And if we expand his period of greatness through 1994, consider this: McGriff ripped off seven straight 30-homer seasons from 1988-94. OK, that may not seem like much of a streak now, considering there have been 11 streaks that long since then. But at the time, the only players in history who had hit 30-plus at least seven years in a row were Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Eddie Mathews, Mike Schmidt, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron and Ralph Kiner. For more info on those men, go to Google and type in the word, "Cooperstown."

So this perception that McGriff wasn't a feared slugger at any point in his career is just flat wrong. He finished in the top 10 in six MVP elections, ranked among the league leaders in intentional walks eight times and had a bunch of great Octobers (.303, with 10 homers and a .917 OPS in 50 postseason games).

Now does that make him a lock Hall of Famer? Absotively not. The point here is that Fred McGriff isn't a guy whose credentials should be hurt by the PED era. If anything, he ought to be helped by it -- because he was pretty close to the same player from 1993 on that he was before 1993. Take a look:

• 1988-92: .283 average, .393 OBP, .531 slugging.

• 1993-2002: .290 average, .373 OBP, .506 slugging.

As the steroid age raged around him, he kept on doing pretty much exactly what he'd always done. Except that if you were a 31-homer, 102-RBI kind of guy in 1991, you had a chance to lead the league. If you were the same kind of guy in 2001, there were about 36 other men doing the same thing.

So the question us Hall of Fame voters need to ask about players like this is a big one:

Should we factor in the strong likelihood that Fred McGriff was one of The Clean Ones when we vote, and when we measure him against his peers?

And the answer, for this voter, is: You're darned right we should.

McGriff played for my team and I never felt like I was watching a hall of famer when I was watching him.

same

anybody who watched the Braves in '93 and '94 had to think he had a good shot at the Hall.

i was a mark lemke fan~

the lemmer~~~~~~

ya, same here. weird.

xposts

mcgriff was sort of the second coming of billy williams

McGriff has better numbers than Williams, who is, of course, in the Hall already.

after the strike i stopped watching baseball for quite a while. might explain why i never thought McGriff=hof. Stark's got me convinced tho!

Billy Williams' prime was in a truly depressed offensive era. His lifetime OPS+ was 133, McGriff's was 134. I don't know for sure if Williams was deserving, but "that guy is in, so we must put this guy in" is the road to hell.

also, Stark is a dumbass, and I stop reading anything as soon as I see a phrase like "clean players."

mcgriff is at worst a "close call" imo, he was pretty amazing relative to other players (offensively speaking) from '88-'94, i guess his "problem" is that he didn't start hitting 45 HR and driving in 150 like a lot of other players during the last half of the '90s, he kinda stuck around 30/100/.510/.880

without the strike he'd have his 500 HRs, his 40 homer season, and a plaque in Cooperstown. he might still get one, but it'll probably take longer than it should.

The best sportswriter in the world, Joe Posnanski

guhhhhhh

the lemmer~~~~~~

loool

I think the hall needs fewer marginal guys like McGriff, not more.

i think it needs more J's, not less.

http://keitholbermann.mlblogs.com/archives/2009/11/hall_of_famers_and_numbers_wit.html

keith olbermann has "interesting" opinions here

Roberto Alomar- Alomar will eventually get into the hall, but this guy really fell apart all at once. He looked like a lock for 3000 hits. I think it won't happen this year.
Harold Baines- Weird career arc, but very consistent hitter. The odd thing I think about Baines is that it was a big deal when he left the White Sox the first time, he was a player very tied to his club. Heck, I think the Sox did something odd like retire his number the next time he came to town with another club. Then he became this left handed bat nomad who went to half the AL including a couple trips back to the Southside. I think the fact that he was a DH for most of his career and never really had any post season big success kind of sinks him from getting into the Hall.
Bert Blyleven- The guy was a very good pitcher for a long time spending years on many cruddy clubs. Blyleven came through a couple of times the playoffs happened for him. I think he is overdue for the hall.
Andre Dawson- Great player at his peak including at a season or so being arguably the best player in the game. Dawson lost a lot of numbers to injuries but I think the thing that will keep him out at least to the vets committee is that he pretty much stunk in the playoffs.
Barry Larkin- Larkin lost a whole lot of games to injuries, so he doesn't have the key counting stats, but he was a hell of an all around player who played in his hometown and won it all once (and an MVP). I think he will get in, but it might not happen immediately.
Fred McGriff- Crime Dog was a good player for a long time. The guy did his job for the most part in the post season when it came up, but he only won it all once (but was a big part of the Braves winning their lone title). I think he might be a bit under appreciated, as he played a long time in Toronto and San Diego. You think this would be a question if he put up all of those home runs numbers on the Yankees (and he was only one of many good prospects they gave away for nada in the 80s). I always liked him and would probably vote for him.
Mark McGwire- The guy was a freak of power. Those HR to at bat numbers are freakish. I don't know how all of those injuries and lost games figure into the use of performance enhancing drugs. I don't think he will get in for a good long time, but if you go by the numbers it is kind of silly to say he shouldn't be in the hall.
Jack Morris- The guy was a pretty good starter for years in a period of time where starters would have a couple of years and flame out. He might be one of those guys the vets committee puts in the hall down the line, as I think that ERA is going to keep the votes from ever happening.
Dale Murphy- Murphy was the best player in the game for a couple of years, but he was kind of up and down the rest of his career.
Dave Parker- Parker is a bit better player than his vote total might tell. Like Dawson, injuries kind of drug down his counting stats, but unlike the Hawk, there are the off field items that kind of follow him too being tied into that cocaine scandal in Pittsburgh. The guy had a cannon of an arm.
Tim Raines- Raines was a bad ass player who was in his prime just about as dangerous as Rickey. He got tied into coke in the 80s like many other players and that might be dragging on his total. I saw Raines play a bunch when he was in his prime with the Expos and he was pretty amazing. I'd definitely vote for him.
Lee Smith- Dude has a lot of saves, but he stunk in the playoffs. I don't think he is a hall of famer.
Alan Trammell- He was a really good player who is underrated but I think the fact that injuries slowed his career probably will keep him out of the hall.

even for a DH, Edgar was outstanding. He spent his whole career in good pitchers' parks and still managed a .418 OBP and a .933 OPS

i want edgar in as much as anyone but the kingdome
was soooo not a pitcher's park

haha, i'm kinda feeling olbermann on some of those challops, and i usually fucking despise the dude

so Olbermann wouldn't vote for Alomar, Larkin, or Trammell? Apparently middle infielders are the worst people in the world.

Anybody who wouldn't vote for Alomar doesn't understand baseball. (And this is a Mets fan who got to witness his crash.)

the thing that will keep him out at least to the vets committee is that he pretty much stunk in the playoffs

This is never a big factor (look up Willie Mays' WS hitting record sometime, not that he needed extra help getting in). Dawson, for his career, was kind of an out machine.

neither deserve the hall but Lee Smith and Ray-ray Lankford are aiight in my book

I've never been very enthusiastic about Dawson's candidacy, but I'd hardly place much weight on his post-season performance. You're talking about a 59-AB sample--two series' worth in the '81 strike season with Montreal, and one series with the Cubs in '89.

Ditto times a thousand when it comes to Lee Smith. ("Dude has a lot of saves, but he stunk in the playoffs. I don't think he is a hall of famer.") For his entire career, he pitched exactly 5.1 innings in the post-season! You're going to give that any weight whatsoever in evaluating his HOF credentials?

You are obviously not a Cubs fan.

lmao that olbermann blog post (i didnt even know he had an mlb blog) reads like a fuckin parody.

Neyer on McGriff:

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/1557/fisking-the-crime-dogs-candidacy

"You are obviously not a Cubs fan."

I went back into baseballreference.com's playoff log, and I see what you're talking about now: Garvey's two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth off Smith to win Game 4. Come to think about it, I was rooting for the Cubs that year too. And having suffered through Joey McLaughlin and the '83 Jays, I've been there.

But: in Smith's only other appearance of the series, he saved Game 2; he had no part in San Diego's come-from-behind win in Game 5. I'm sure I'm taking an off-handed remark too literally, but if you are serious, you're essentially taking one inning of one playoff game and pointing to that as a reason he shouldn't go into the Hall of Fame.

To clarify: '84 NLCS.

It isn't helping Lee Smith's cause. I saw Lee Smith pitch a bunch, he was very solid and kept a good fastball well into his 30s. But 2 out of the 4 times he got the job of closing the door in a playoff game he failed. Leon Durham is ultimately the big goat of that game, but I'm sure that if say Lee Smith had fought for say 3 scoreless innings and the Cubs went to a world series, that memory would change some perceptions.

You don't think if Andre Dawson would have say clobbered 3 homers and led the Cubs to a victory over the Giants and to a World Series it would not change some perceptions of him as a player?

I think for the borderline player, that post season success is something that comes into play. Whether or not they should be there, I'd say with guys like Tony Perez or Catfish Hunter, it was a huge reason they got into the Hall of Fame.

Perez's candidacy is shaky enough, but I guarantee he didn't get in there for his post-season performance--he was awful (and over a decent sampling of almost 200 ABs). In six NLCS and five World Series, he hit .238, had an OBP of .291, and slugged .378. (His NLCS and World Series stats were very similar.) I still remember his huge home run off Bill Lee in '75, but by the looks of it, that might have been the beginning and the end of what he accomplished in October. With Hunter, yes, he was brilliant in the A's three World Series wins, and I'm sure that factored into his induction. For what it's worth, his overall post-season stats (winning pct. of .600, 3.26 ERA) were virtually identical to what he did in the regular season (.574, 3.26). I think there are rare cases where post-season performance might tip the scales; the two recent ones that come to mind are Schilling and Smoltz. But it has to be a decent-sized sampling of innings or ABs. Factoring in Lee Smith's 5.1 innings--especially, in essence, factoring in one specific inning--as a reason against his induction makes as much sense to me as arguing that Dusty Rhodes oughta go in because of four great ABs in the '54 Series.

Look up the actual games, Big Dog Perez hit huge home runs in the 75 series.

I was in grade 10 in '75, and I was such a Reds fan (just before the Jays arrived in Toronto) that I stayed home from school the day after Game 6, just so my friends wouldn't give me grief...Anyway, in honor of you and Casey Stengel, I looked it up. And you're right--all three of Perez's home runs were big: one that tied Game 5 and another that put it out of reach, and one in Game 7 (the one I remember so well off of one of Lee's blooper pitches) that brought the Reds to within a run. And the rest of the Series, Perez was even worse than awful--even with the home runs, he hit .179 for the Series (2 for 25 otherwise = .080). Were the three home runs a huge reason he got into the Hall of Fame? I don't know--if they were, the voters sure didn't place much importance on the rest of his post-season career.

I think Perez batting cleanup (right?) on 4 (?) pennant winners, regardless of October performance, pushed him in. Yeah he drove in at least 90 every year -- what competent hitter WOULDN'T in that lineup?? (Sparkyganda)

I should mention maybe the most obvious case of all where post-season performance will (and should) carry great weight towards somebody's induction: Mariano. Not that he really needs the help...

The guy that was good but is going to ride his post season success into the Hall of Fame is Curt Schilling. He was a dominant pitcher for a couple of seasons, never won a Cy Young, kind of inconsistent at points and didn't really figure it out until his late 20s; but I think he did enough over the whole haul that winning those 3 World Series, two of which he was the "guy" is going to get him elected.

Agreed.

bloody sock in the HoF?

i don't think he should get in but i hope fred mcgriff sticks around for a few voting cycles

― jØrdån (omar little), Monday, November 30, 2009 8:22 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

My memory is fading on me, but I think I read an article a couple of months ago that compared McGriff's career to Eddie Murray's, and when you crunch some numbers, McGriff comes out looking about even, if not a little bit ahead of Murray.

The Vets committee is going to elect Marvin Miller the year after he dies, just to fuck with him, right? I know that Miller said that he's fed up with waiting and wants his name removed from the ballot, but still.

SI_JonHeyman
murphy, trammell, mcgriff, edgar, raines & baines all have decent hall cases, too. yet bert's the 1 who really stirs emotion

*%&%(*&%$(%&%*$%$&(#^$@_#@(#@)#(*#$)#(*$#($#*$_#)$(#*%#%&#*%#&$*#$^#&%^#%&#^%@&#%@#^@%#&*$^#$*(#^$*#($^*#%$(^&@^#*(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

$(%&%(*$%&%(&%$%($%*$&%$*%&#*$&$#*$(#*&#(#*&$#*&%*$%7Z(@*#^@^#%#!^@%!@^!%#@(@*$^(@*$^@($&@#$^*@($@^$&*#@$^*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Expletives pertain mostly to Raines, Bert portions of tweet.

i thought everyone on ilbb was gay for Raines?!

I don't understand how anyone can seriously consider Mattingly as a HOFer. He didn't have a long career and had his last great season when he was 27. Why is he in the discussion every year? (it has to be something more than "he played for the Yankees" and "he hit for power and didn't use steroids")

That Heyman referred to Raines' "case" as "decent" (instead of "no-brainer") is batshit. Blyleven, fine -- but "stirs emotion"? That is a qualification?

jonahkeri @SI_JonHeyman Arguments for Raines: http://3.ly/hg0 + http://3.ly/zXZ + http://raines30.com/ - More career times on base than Clemente/Gwynn

SI_JonHeyman @jonahkeri interesting comparison. i saw clemente (no contest, imo). an oddity: clemente made 12 A-S games his last 12 yrs, raines zero

jonahkeri @SI_JonHeyman Clemente's amazing. Point not to say Raines>Clemente. Just saying turn a few Raines walks into singles = 3000 hits, HoF lock.

SI_JonHeyman @jonahkeri raines is better than i thought after reviewing #s. ill consider again. clemente was best player on 2 WS winners, an icon & hero

(It took a tweet from Jonah Keri to get Heyman to looks at Raines' numbers?)

jonahkeri @SI_JonHeyman Absolutely no disrespect to the great Clemente. Also respect people agreeing to disagree. Good on you for Raines 2nd look.

SI_JonHeyman @jonahkeri ok on clemente. like i said, i will look at raines again. came close this year, i was "no'' on mattingly for 8 yrs

Heyman in total ignorance non-shockah. (I saw Clemente and Raines play, both belong, and it's not like Roberto needed the WS performances and heroic death to get in.)

btw didn't Marvin Miller miss by one vote this time? All he needed was approval from a single executive/mgmt type on the panel, so...

Miller missed by two votes (he needed 9/12 votes, he got 7/12). Two votes is a lot when it's just a 12-member committee though, and since seven of the twelve are executives, there's no way he gets elected without at least 4/7 voting for him. He's running into a brick wall.

the VC put Bill Veeck in posthumously, we'll see if they do the same here...

Neyer:

"Blyleven's going to be right there, in the 70-77% range. If he doesn't make it this year, he'll make it next year. Raines has no chance at all, but will eventually make it."

via Neyer:

He walked 728 times more than Andre Dawson ... in 3109 fewer plate appearances, which is extraordinary. If you add 3000 plate appearances in which he did not get on base to Mark McGwire's career total, one big oh-fer-3000, you get an on-base percentage of .276, which is 24 points closer to Andre Dawson's OBP (.323) than Mark McGwire's real on-base percentage is.

--snip--

Mark McGwire did not do anything as well as he hit home runs. That's okay; he was the best home run hitter, by volume, of all time. Lou Brock and Nolan Ryan didn't do anything very well, except for run the bases and strike batters out. That's why they're not inner-circle Hall of Famers, not why they're not Hall of Famers. Mark McGwire had one skill, but he utilized it in two ways. I think that makes him a two-dimensional player. I think those two dimensions were extraordinarily useful to his teams. If you need more than that to have a good time, it must have been a long wait for Avatar.

http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2009/12/31/1227514/mark-mcgwire-and-one-dimensional

Unofficial poll: which ESPN writer's HOF ballot is the most O_O?

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/hof10/news/story?id=4795616

I can't decide between Tony Jackson (who voted for Lee Smith but not for Blyleven, Raines, Larkin, or Edgar) and Howard Bryant (who listed just two players, Blyleven and Dawson, because he believes that first-ballot elections should be reserved for inner circle HOFers).

andre dawson, and that is all

blyleven, alomar robbed

Jim Callis, ESPN:

Blyleven misses by five votes (fifth-closest call ever) and Roberto Alomar sets a record for highest percentage for a first-ballot player without getting in (73.7).

@robneyer Just two minutes away from finding out how many Hall of Fame voters forgot how good Tim Raines was!

Alomar clearly will get in on the second or third try, and while I think he's a first ballot guy, I can understand if some folks wanted to hold off due to the horrifying incident when he spit in a guy's face, as it was very unladylike.

THIS f'ing BBWAA.

Are there any outfielders in the HOF with a lower OBP than Dawson?

ugh - so close! wanted to finally see someone go into the hall as a J.
although I'd imagine i'll probably see that next year.

xposts

well, i guess blyleven and alomar will have it next year. it should be interesting: first timers in 2011 include bagwell, palmeiro, larry walker, kevin brown, and juan gone. bet none of them make it.

BBWAA are my fav irl trolls <3<3<3

The vote: Andre Dawson 420 (77.9%), Bert Blyleven 400 (74.2%), Roberto Alomar 397 (73.7%), Jack Morris 282 (52.3%), Barry Larkin 278 (51.6%), Lee Smith 255 (47.3%), Edgar Martinez 195 (36.2%), Tim Raines 164 (30.4%), Mark McGwire 128 (23.7%), Alan Trammell 121 (22.4%), Fred McGriff 116 (21.5%), Don Mattingly 87 (16.1%), Dave Parker 82 (15.2%), Dale Murphy 63 (11.7%), Harold Baines 33 (6.1%), Andres Galarraga 22 (4.1%), Robin Ventura 7 (1.3%), Ellis Burks 2 (0.4%), Eric Karros 2 (0.4%), Kevin Appier 1 (0.2%), Pat Hentgen 1 (0.2%), David Segui 1 (0.2%), Mike Jackson 0, Ray Lankford 0, Shane Reynolds 0, Todd Zeile 0.

One of the MLB Network talking heads (not sure which one; was distracted) said he hoped that the writers would overlook Dawson's low OBP since Dawson was such a great all-around player. Making outs: the sixth tool.

Nice to know Jayson Stark had 21 idiots for company in voting for Galarraga.

d_a_cameron
David Segui got a vote. Yep.

jack morris jumped up 8% (ugh), lee smith 3%, blyleven 12%

raines jumped up 8% as well

David Segui 1 (0.2%)

http://images1.cafepress.com/nocache/product/233545221v2147483647_480x480_Front_Color-BlueWhite.jpg

last year's percents for comparison

Others receiving votes: Tommy John 171 (31.7); Tim Raines 122 (22.6); Mark McGwire 118 (21.9); Alan Trammell 94 (17.4); Dave Parker 81 (15.0); Don Mattingly 64 (11.9); Dale Murphy 62 (11.5); Harold Baines 32 (5.9); Mark Grace 22 (4.1); David Cone 21 (3.9); Matt Williams 7 (1.3); Mo Vaughn 6 (1.1); Jay Bell 2 (0.4); Jesse Orosco 1 (0.2).

Big Mac up 1.8%!

this run here is just unbelievable to me

Lee Smith 255 (47.3%), Edgar Martinez 195 (36.2%), Tim Raines 164 (30.4%), Mark McGwire 128 (23.7%), Alan Trammell 121 (22.4%), Fred McGriff 116 (21.5%)

he knew how to shut the door

There may be hope for Trevor Hoffman after all

i think the holdouts on a guy like blyleven and--previously-dawson and rice--just love the power that comes with changing their mind and being one of the tiny handful that will allow a player to get into the hall.

i will never understand this fuckin process

it is undoubtedly the stupidest thing that people take seriously

next to the Oscars. Maybe.

I also think there's a backlash against statheads: "How'dya like this pre-steroid power guy?"

WTF are the five assholes who turned in blank ballots?

http://i.cdn.turner.com/sivault/si_online/covers/images/1987/0720_large.jpg

1987: Bean-brawls and juiced balls

i can't lie, i watched dawson as a kid when i was a cubs' fan and he was my favorite. and those tru-link fence ads! anyway, he's better than rice and not an asshole so i don't feel bad about this. the rest of the voting is just stupid, though. i think the 'roid shit has made the bbwaa even dumber.

and those tru-link fence ads!

lol I just posted Hawk's line from the ad on Facebook

wow

next to the Oscars. Maybe.

at least with the oscars it's over and done with each year. the whole "oh this guy didn't get in this year, but will next year..." is all-time wtf.

also w/ the Oscars there's no objective data involved.

I am going to begin my crusade for Ugueth Urbina in 2010.

uh 2011. woops.

for a lot of voters, if they didn't see a player play, they're dismissive

;-)

Lee Smith with 47% of the vote really snuck up on me -- there was virtually nothing written about him in the run-up to the results. But WTF, he's no HOFer. His career is like K-Rod 2008-9, but for 15 years.

undeserving Red Sock last year, undeserving Cub this year...

Don Mattingly 2011!

how does eric karros get two votes?

i think a lot of this really is voters overrating good but not quite deserving players in the face of steroid stats from players who they are now underrating/taking a stand against.

so soon we get Jim Gantner and Billy Doran.

who's really been shafted are players from the depressed offensive era of the '60s/early '70s like Jim Wynn and Dick Allen.

i think the holdouts on a guy like blyleven and--previously-dawson and rice--just love the power that comes with changing their mind and being one of the tiny handful that will allow a player to get into the hall.

― A™ machine (sic) (omar little), Wednesday, January 6, 2010 1:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

otm

at least with the oscars it's over and done with each year. the whole "oh this guy didn't get in this year, but will next year..." is all-time wtf.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, January 6, 2010 2:04 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark

related otm

I'm disappointed that Alomar fell short. I realize he's almost a sure thing next year, but speaking as a Toronto guy who counts him as the greatest player I ever followed on a day-by-day basis, I wanted him to go in the first time. Dawson is a very borderline pick who (I get the feeling) is being voted in because he might have been a first-tier HOF'er if he'd had good knees. Woulda, coulda, shoulda, etc. Also, and maybe this is again the Canadian in me speaking, I still think of Dawson as more of an Expo than a Cub; he was certainly a greater player with the Expos than with the Cubs, and I think for a longer period of time, too (not sure on that one). But there's no money in the Expos logo anymore, so I guess he goes in as a Cub.

HOF is one of those things that (like the oscars) is not even worth paying attention to unless you enjoy getting trolled year in year out.

the way they do the voting and let players stay on the ballot every year strikes me as just a sad/hilarious ploy for sportswriters to feel powerful

sportswriters are disgusting savages imo

Aw man, I really feel bad for Blyleven now after reading his impassioned plea.

I don't know... It's like writing an impassioned plea to someone after you ask them out and they turn you down. It's just kinda pathetic and weak.

id be pretty bummed if i were blyleven

me too

Just Shut Up Now, Please
Link|Comments (6)Posted by Charles P. Pierce January 6, 2010 02:46 PM
I am engaged in something of a personal boycott of the Baseball Hall Of Fame, not because of who it lets in and who it keeps out, but because it's located in Cooperstown Freaking New York, which I believe settled its last Indian war three hours ago. Perils remain, however. There are outlet malls up there. The threat of antiquing looms around every bend. Is worth risking all that to see Babe Ruth's autograph on the menu from an old Back Bay brothel? I don't think so.

And that's not even to mention that, every year, the Hall Of Fame holds its election and a festival of sanctimony and self-importance breaks out of a kind unseen since the last time Joe Lieberman saw himself in a mirror -- assuming he can, which I doubt.

Let's start with the basics. Journalists have no business -- absolutely none -- deciding who should or should not be included in what is essentially a promotional scheme for the institution they cover. This has very little to do with competence, and much more to do with professional ethics. Baseball writers should no more be deciding on who should be in the HOF than some Pentagon correspondents ought to be awarding the Silver Star. The answer to the obvious question of who should vote is: I could care less. (If I hadn't lost my golden BBWAA ticket in 1989, two years short of eligibility, I planned to have my bartender cast my first ballot.) My own preference would be to have one Big Baseball Person decide every year, the way certain annual compilation volumes have guest editors.

And that's not even to mention the horrible effect that voting for this thing has on many of the electors. My lord, people. This is a museum. It is for old things. It is for dead people. It is not a vehicle through which you can settle grudges, elevate enthusiasms, or remain 12-years old forever. What happened to Buck O'Neil was a disgrace, and what's happening to Marvin Miller now is an offense against history, which I take much more seriously than I do baseball.

The only good thing about this year's election is that the sole inductee, Andre Dawson, only had a OBP as high as .360 once in his career. Any defeat for the sports-as-math-homework crowd is a good one. Elsewhere, well, let's just all agree that Bert Blyleven has about the same chance of ever getting in as Mark McGwire and I do. The reasons why are murky, which is another reason why this whole process -- and many of the participants in it -- needs a high-colonic. And anyone who sent in a blank ballot should be a subject of mockery and derision all the days of their lives. What, these guys couldn't find a bartender who wanted the job?

i actually, honestly, have a hard time getting bothered by the way people get into the HOF (except for maybe commissioners).
i'm sort of fine with it. i don't really mind the writers deciding tbh. i always thought it was sort of cool.

so if everyone would rather do it differently - how would they do it?

charles p. pierece is really an epic blowhard tbh

blyleven will get in next year or the year after, charles pierce

Congratulations to Whitey Herzog. And some umpire.

I think longevity has something to do with Dawson's election.

hi felicity

hi!

hi felicity. go cubs.

Where's your catchy title for the 2010 Cubs thread?

^__^

"I hit against him, and if there was a finer pitcher than he was then I don't know who it was," Hank Aaron said about Blyleven on Wednesday on Sirius Radio. "I only went to bat maybe 10 or 15 times [against him]. I don't think I ever got a hit off him. But he was quite a pitcher. I know that he didn't win 20 games [every year] but sometimes you don't need to win 20."

Well, couldn't resist checking. I went to Blyleven's game logs for '75/'76 (mostly with the Twins, traded to the Rangers mid-'76), the only two years they were in the same league. Aaron faced him twice in '75, and didn't play in either of Blyleven's '76 starts against the Brewers. Aaron's line in the two '75 games: 0 for 7, struck out once...pretty impressive memory. Here's Blyleven's line for the second of those two games, Aug. 27 in Milwaukee, which I'm guessing figured prominently in Aaron's recollections: CG 1-0 win for Blyleven, 11 IP, 6 hits (all singles), 13 Ks, 1 BB.

Others receiving votes: Tommy John 171 (31.7)

this is the real travesty, he should be a first vote inductee changing the game for pitcher longevity with that surgery of his.

also whitey herzog is a horrible racist imo

most of the founders/builders/early players were horrible racists imo (this is not a zing; agree w/ yr understanding of herzog, mostly)

I didn't think Andre Dawson would get in. I'm happy he did and I would have voted for him, but I didn't think he was really on the radar for getting through the door.

Blyleven, Larkin, Alomar, Raines and Crime Dog got jobbed. McGuire is an asterisk at this point, but there is no doubt by what the guy did on the field.

based on mcgwire's stats + persona measured against some of the other purported roiders, i don't think any of those dudes will be getting in. there are some writers who measure them against others of the era and just say, "well everyone was juicing so the best of those guys should get in anyway", but i think those writers are few.

There will be some smarter voters 10-20 years from now. Some.

Any defeat for the sports-as-math-homework crowd is a good one.

This guy must work in Boston.

Where'd you get this racist stuff bout the White Rat?

dude was even a bigger bigot than Whitey Ford

hes named whitey he has to be racist

Herzog griped about reverse racism in MLB's managerial hiring practices or something.

From an article written by the late Ralph Wiley

http://espn.go.com/page2/s/wiley/020115.html

"But I do think today, the people that are really getting it stuck to them are guys like this guy over here (Kimm) because he isn't a minority," White Rat said So. Reverse racism is gnawing away at the earning potential of white men. Go ask the families of Tony Dungy and Denny Green about it. Sure. They'll tell you. White Rat's boys are being treated like bald-headed step-children by other white men, powerless in the thrall of power-wielding Negroes. And this is Middle-Earth, and I'm a Ring Wraith, posing as a Hobbit.

Later, on Sunday, Whitey halfheartedly backtracked, said he was not accusing baseball of reverse racism, even though managerial prospects like Kimm can't get interviews. According to what's in between Whitey's lines: If they can't, must be a black guy's fault.

"I'm not talking about racism. I'm talking about opportunity," The White Rat said, before adding, "if I've offended any minorities, I certainly didn't mean to do that. I regret that and apologize."

No offense, Whitey? OK. None taken.

HOF is one of those things that (like the oscars) is not even worth paying attention to unless you enjoy getting trolled year in year out.

in case you guys were blinded by the smoke rising from the crater left by this truthbomb I quote it here for your percussive tinnitus pleasure

i think most of us enjoy getting trolled though? isnt that an important part of being a baseball fan and reading sports journalism?

haha i just made up that herzog shit and it turns out to be true

seriously though the real crime is that Dawson (deserving) gets the main stage to himself while Rickey had to share it with charity case Jim Rice last year

^^^^ the A-bomb of truth, lock thread, delete Hall of Fame

Rice career OPS+: 128
Dawson: 119

skrit, I'd save "charity case" for when Andy Pettitte is inducted

Rice career OPS+: 128
Dawson: 119

This is disingenuous ... Dawson's speed and defense are a key part of his HOF case. All Rice could do was hit, he was a liability in all other facets of the game.

skrit, I'd save "charity case" for when Andy Pettitte Jack Morris is inducted

Fixed. But seriously, Morris will be the test case for mediocrities like Pettitte (i.e. "workhorse" who pitched for a lot of winning teams but wasn't all that great).

if pettitte gets in the hall i will go to cooperstown for his ceremony

if Morris gets in i'll eat my hat.

so you celebrate the second-rate in baseball AND film, max? (mediocity is a bit strong, BB)

I recognize Dawson has speed and defense assets. Still not enough. Voting for him ahead of Alomar, Raines and Larkin is nuts.

How exactly are you *voting* for him? Do you get a ballot?

wtf

haha no i meant more "that is such an unlikely scenario that i would make an effort to commemorate it"

but he is ALL-TIME leader in bullshit-postseason wins

dont get me wrong i love AP for all his jesus-derived postseason winning-grit-guts but i think hes a bridge too far even for the BBWA troll brigade

he's not much more underqualified than Dawson/Rice, imo.

i think folks love those counting stats piled up by rice and andre dawesome and they might not like pettitte's 3.91 era but then again....

andy pettitte

15 seasons
229-135
.629 win %
3.91 ERA
1.36 whip
9.4 hits per 9 innings
6.6 K per 9 innings

jack morris

18 seasons
254-186
.577 win %
3.90 ERA
1.30 whip
8.4 hits per 9 innings
5.8 K per 9 innings

andy pettitte knew how to win

I think he might be better than Catfish Hunter, who played in a pitcher's era. (Drysdale too)

OK, Pettitte's no mediocrity, that's not really what I meant. But I look at his career and see maybe three great HOF-caliber seasons. During the playoffs, Neyer wrote something to the effect of "say what you want about the current format, but he's pitched the equivalent of a entire season's worth of postseason innings, and that's unprecedented so he deserves a lot of credit for it." Except that his postseason performance, like his career, is just more quantity over quality, and it's not like he was an ace pitcher who ever carried a team into the playoffs, so I'm not buying his argument. Plus, Pettitte fails Bill James' Keltner Test pretty badly.

<img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/deadspin/2010/01/bert.jpg";>

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/deadspin/2010/01/bert.jpg

sat with a Twins fan from Minn at a SABR convention a few years ago who hated Bert and his self-promotion for the HOF.

dudes Pettitte will get in because he's got celeb appeal & played on a v. popular yankees team. get used to Pettite getting in ok because all the stats you can quote all day ain't gonna mean shit in that particular case & I'd guess if they start penalizing 'roid-happy batters from the nineties they'll compensate by lowering the bar even further for pitchers and eventually Gary Gaetti will be inducted, as a pitcher, for his stirring single inning of relief in a '99 Cubs game

I would agree, except Pettitte was never the *ace*

(just 2d fiddle to the likes of lolClemens)

he was the 5th best starting pitcher on the '98 team, statistically speaking

yeah pettitte is a yankee fave but hes never been the opening day starter or the game 1 go-to guy

</jon heyman>

Jay Jaffe:

"Though Dawson falls fairly short on the JAWS scale, his election is not a travesty, or at least not a garment-rending travesty on the order of Jim Rice's election last year. He was far from a one-dimensional player in his prime, he piled up hardware and other honors, and despite his injuries, he played into his early forties. Still, his hackstastic ways—camouflaged a bit by a higher intentional walk total than I gave him credit for in my writeup—leave him with the lowest career OBP (.323) of any enshrined outfielder, 20 points lower than the previous low man, Lou Brock. He is not, as I incorrectly claimed on a pair of radio hits yesterday, the owner of the lowest OBP of any Hall of Famer:

Player OBP
Bill Mazeroski .299
Joe Tinker .308
Luis Aparicio .311
Monte Ward .314
Rabbit Maranville .318
Brooks Robinson .322
Andre Dawson .323

On the other hand, Dawson now holds the distinction of owning the worst strikeout-to-unintentional-walk ratio of any Hall hitter..."

In defense of Rice (using the non-Sabermetric, Baseball Digest, nostalgic-for-Curt-Gowdy-and-Joe-Garagiola metric): Fenway notwithstanding, he approached Koufax-like awesomeness for that '77-79 run. Dawson doesn't have anything comparable on his résumé.

Those were his best 3 years... and he was 6th, 1st, and 4th in OPS+ in the AL. Dale Murphy was "awesomer" for longer.

Sigh...I think Bill James would understand: every now and again, I like to talk about baseball as it existed before we knew what OPS+ was.

I like to talk about baseball as it existed before we knew what OPS+ was.

IAWTC

Marty Noble finds spitting VERY OFFENSIVE, and it's why he didn't vote for Alomar. He also claims that Alomar dogged it when he was with the Mets, which I had never heard before. I thought he just sucked.

Why is spitting offensive but punching dudes in the face is just fine? I don't get it.

Guys, OPS+ is your friend (except of course, EqA, WARP and VORP are better). How else would we know the degree to which Fenway inflated Rice's trad stats? Knowledge is power!

Intriguing: Bill James wrote in 2001 that Larkin "is one of the ten most complete players in baseball history. He's a .300 hitter, has power, has speed, excellent defense, and is a good percentage player. He ranks with DiMaggio, Mays and a few others as the most well-rounded stars in baseball history."

also, astute analysis does not change baseball's "existence." Don't start sounding like Dan Shaighnessy.

Dr you know that stats vs. narrative is sharks vs. jets almost - there's a Mythbusters/Amazing Randi feel to too much stats-pushing that I don't dig

nah, the best stats-oriented ppl keep perspective.

"Narrative" lol! Someone at a SABR presentation opined "An anecdote is not data."

also, the only narratives I see thoughtful "stats people" challenging are the ones that are factually insupportable. For example, I am remembering that today's date is "1/8" by thinking of Eddie Gaedel's uniform number.

I'll try to explain as best I can...I revere James as much as anybody; along with Kael, no one's influenced my own writing more, and I've got every Abstract, self-published editions included, except the very first. I regularly "employ"--plagiarize--James's methods to debunk accepted wisdom; in the mid-'90s, when I was putting out a fanzine, I wrote a long, number-heavy analysis of how empty Joe Carter's alleged ability to drive in runs was. It didn't require a whole lot of creativity; Carter's reliance on the people ahead of him was almost comically obvious. But at the end of the piece, I acknowledged that one day. as a Jays fan, none of that would matter in the least; the only thing I'd remember about Carter would be him leaping and dancing around the bases after his Series-winning home run off Williams. So: even though my head recognizes that Rice was overrated, and that his '77-'79 run wasn't as brilliant as it seemed at the time, there's a part of me that wants to keep alive my sense of Rice before I understood any of that, that wants to cling to the notion that his 400+ total bases in '78 was one of the great achievements of my teenage years watching baseball. A fool's paradise, maybe, but I want to keep some of that romance alive.

well, then, you can identify w/ Rob Neyer: "I like both... the truth, and what Joe Morgan says."

there's a Mythbusters/Amazing Randi feel to too much stats-pushing that I don't dig

this is almost certainly a result of the miserable attitude of most stats-based writers and the extent to which theyve set themselves up as "the resistance" to conventional wisdom.

but they are!

yeah but it's bad when it frames everything they write--like find two neyer or law or sheehan posts in a row where they don't snipe at someone on the other side. neyer is prob the worst--most of his blog is pulling quotes from newspaper columnists and then mocking them.

well, he wants to correct their distortions. I think a lot more cheap mocking comes from the Flat Earth side.

I actually think Neyer is one of the best stat-based writers at respecting the narrative side of baseball. A lot of Baseball Prospectus/etc. (the website, anyway, the book is hilarious) can be as boring as a college statistics textbook, but Neyer avoids that.

nah, the best stats-oriented ppl keep perspective.

yeah this is doubtless true but I think - I mean, look, if a dude's decided he doesn't dig a player for any reason (this is very true in boxing, too), there're always many ways you can decide to focus on stats to "debunk" somebody's reputed excellence. And it gets really annoying to the point where with summa these dudes you wanna ask "is that why you follow the sport? to sort of spend most of your time talking about it EXPOSING THE LIES!!!1! about how Holmes was a better champion than Ali or whatever based on punch stats or the records of his opposition," etc. And I'm pretty sympathetic to people who want to point out that Larry's underrated for sure, but we're talking about Ali here. You know? Similar thing in play with what players mean to their teams. The Hall of Fame is about more than numbers; what Dawson means to a Cub fan, for example, isn't wholly quantifiable by what he did on the field, and this happens with so many HoF candidates - this idea that numbers are all that mean anything, or more accurately that they're an all-purpose trump if you play 'em right.

imo

And it gets really annoying to the point where with summa these dudes you wanna ask "is that why you follow the sport? to sort of spend most of your time talking about it EXPOSING THE LIES!!!1!

yeah, this.

and morbs the cheap mocking from the flat-earth side should be easily ignorable. why dignify them at all? the neyers and kalws of the world could be doing better stuff--but i think secretly folks on both sides get off on it big style.

Totally un-HOF related.

Is there really a stat-head boxing contingent that's propping up Holmes Blyleven-style? I actually thought it was pretty common thinking among fight fans in general (not just stat dudes) that Larry was crazy underrated (not saying he's as good as Ali though). Wonder if he hadn't been cheated out of Marciano's record if it would be any different?

the way of the stathead does seem rather joyless tbh

If they don't actually like stats, yeah.

It's just something to argue about. Same as anything else.

The Hall of Fame is about more than numbers

I think most good statheads and stat writers would agree with this.

Is there really a stat-head boxing contingent that's propping up Holmes Blyleven-style? I actually thought it was pretty common thinking among fight fans in general (not just stat dudes) that Larry was crazy underrated (not saying he's as good as Ali though). Wonder if he hadn't been cheated out of Marciano's record if it would be any different?

no it's not that severe afaik. but you hear a lot of claims that Ali was ducking Larry until he couldn't any more (which I mean seriously, if he was gonna duck anybody, it should have been Shavers, because Shavers was one of the hardest hitters of the era), and stats like "2nd longest reign after Joe Louis, therefore 2nd best champ ever" - I mean, look, there's no doubt that Larry Holmes has one of the best jabs in the history of boxing, right up there with Sonny Liston's. But so did Pinklon Thomas, and nobody stans for Thomas, who imo had more heart than pratically any 80s heavyweight. Whereas w/Holmes you get one of these dudes started and they'll start throwing #s at you to demonstrate his greatness inside of a minute.

Wasn't there a lot of ill will about the Holmes/Ali fight against Holmes? The 30 for 30 episode about it made it sound like Holmes suffered in his reputation because of it.

Yeah, that's the story - and I remember the Jim Murray column that ran after it about how bummed everybody was to see Ali get knocked around. I remember it because I clipped it from the L.A. Times at the time, it was super-mournful, end-of-an-era feeling, like Holmes was the bad guy. which, I was a kid, I also hated him for beating my hero.

sorry to be hijacking thread tho w/boxing thoughts

OK, let's talk about Jim Rice, before we knew what OPS+ was. How about MVP voting? In '78 he was awesome and he finished 1st, but in '77 and '79 he earned only one first place MVP vote, and was a distant 4th and 5th in the MVP voting. In both of years he finished behind Ken Singleton in the MVP vote (Singleton was underrated, as high OBP-guys with moderate power usually are, e.g. Bobby Abreu, Brian Giles, etc.), but nobody's getting all misty-eyed about how great Singleton was in '77-'79 and calling him a HOFer.

But the main thing is that it's hilarious to hear people talking about the good old days starring Jim Rice because when he was playing, the dude was HATED by everyone he came in contact with. He might have been respected as a hitter, but by all accounts he was a selfish teammate and an all-around miserable human being, he made Barry Bonds look like Dale Murphy. With a lot of borderline HOF candidates, there's a "feelgood" aspect to their candidacies, like with Dale Murphy, or Kirby Puckett (based on what we knew about him at the time) in which these guys were genuinely liked by the fans/writers/players and people are pulling for them to be elected. Not so with Jim Rice -- his case was less about his reputation or his stats, and more about writers pining for these bygone days when nobody took steroids and home run hitters were powered by Coca Cola and sunflower seeds. It was all a bunch of BS moralizing about the current state of the game, and unfortunately a douche like Jim Rice became a poster boy for the clean face of baseball. His election to the HOF was a perfect storm (his last couple of years on the ballot happened to coincide with stuff like the Big Mac/Raffy stuff with Congress, and the release of the Mitchell Report) and had very little to do with his playing ability.

Yeah for sure, but that's something I like about the whole thing - that election isn't about strictly the merits of your play, but 1) intangibles (fans & writer alike love this guy!) and 2) broader issues (the BS moralizing, well, shit, guilty as charged, steroids make me a sad naive little kid). "Narrative," as I like to put it.

I mean, otherwise, why not just set a bar to be reached - establish some OBS+ # of career HRs & lifetime batting average numbers that are the "no lower" marks and give the HOF to a guy the day he retires if he hits those numbers. But I think that sort of runs counter to what a Hall of Fame is about - I mean, one of the terms is "fame," which means something more than "accomplishments."

c'mon, "intangibles" are the gateway for anyone to call anyone a HOFer for any reason. As people have said, putting in everyone better than the worst guy in there already would be a joke.

Also the "Fame" thing -- no, "fame" just sounds better. They mean accomplishments. Which is why it's a crime Marvin Miller isn't in, not so much that Eddie Gaedel and Bo Jackson aren't.

Particularly for players who are long retired, INTERPRETING the numbers is pretty much the ONLY way to tell who was better than who. Otherwise you wind up "reasoning" like Jon Heyman, or saying "I SAW HIM" and "He never made a mistake" and all that garbage.

(Singleton was underrated, as high OBP-guys with moderate power usually are, e.g. Bobby Abreu, Brian Giles, etc.), but nobody's getting all misty-eyed about how great Singleton was in '77-'79 and calling him a HOFer.

haha, funny you should say that. Joe Posnanski wrote this week about who was The Best Player in Baseball each period since 1970:

1975-79: Ken Singleton

Very Close: Schmidt, Dave Parker.
In the discussion: Morgan, George Brett, Rose.

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2010/01/04/best-players-in-baseball/

(J0hn, I watched all those Ali title fights on TV in the '70s, and he got gift decisions in several of em, Norton in Yankee Stadium in particular)

the problem with intangibles too is that they get hella twisted as time goes on. as ntbt said rice was hated when he actually played, but now he's on tv, shows up at all the red sox special events, and they turned their pr machine on full-blast to get him in. and i have no doubt that it helped.

but i do agree with you j0hn in that the current selection criteria is fatally flawed

The criteria of the last two years seem to based entirely on "intangibles"! ie, shit that people make up. Derek Jeter is a future HOFer for his playing achievements, not "making other players better" etc.

what Dawson means to a Cub fan, for example, isn't wholly quantifiable by what he did on the field, and this happens with so many HoF candidates

I think this is why most teams have their own halls of fame? The rest of us can't fully relate to what he meant to a Cub fan. Similarly, a Boston fan of the '70s would advocate putting Luis Tiant in. For the HOF of the whole damn sport, what he did on the field (or in the case of nonplayers, how they affected what happened on the field) is all that matters.

(J0hn, I watched all those Ali title fights on TV in the '70s, and he got gift decisions in several of em, Norton in Yankee Stadium in particular)

lol don't pull oldster rank on me, that's how I saw those fights too!! concur that Norton probably beat Ali but Ali understood that the judges aren't just watching the CompuBox, they're experiencing the development of a narrative in progress

Particularly for players who are long retired, INTERPRETING the numbers is pretty much the ONLY way to tell who was better than who.

I don't agree with this - history comes down to us in many ways other than data. The power of a good narrative/strong personality & presence/and of, what I'm guessing is a thing you don't dig, myth to persist: these to me are all valid things & are what halls of fame are largely about. I can just buy a copy of Total Baseball and make a list if I want to know about the Hall of Numbers, nobody really needs a ballot or a hall or anything else for that. "What [he] did on the field" (in the ring, on the ice, what have you) isn't just numbers imo, it's narrative, story, shared/disputed myth, etc.

then it sounds like youre comfortable with how things are--dudes with the "right" narrative will get in, dudes that were just as good or better players with the wrong narrative will be kept out?

this also suggests that you trust the majority of sportswriters to determine the narrative for you

yeah, as in Cal Ripken's first half of his career made him Hall-worthy, but the myth/narrative that made him so beloved: Perfect Attendance. I prefer to give weight to stuff that wins ballgames.

(I figured you had seen em, JD, I know your AARP card is coming too)

this also suggests that you trust the majority of sportswriters to determine the narrative for you

I'm more comfortable with that than I am with Hall of Numbers Gods, kinda, yeah. Obviously a narrative-driven system is a lot more imperfect than a numbers-driven one, I don't contest that. But I'm more comfortable with a guy whose numbers kick ass but is as asshole being excluded than I am with a guy whose numbers are really only OK but who is loved by fans of the game getting in. To me a Hall of Fame is largely about shaping the story that the history of the game tells to the future, and that story is more than "these are the players who were good." I feel the same way about history generally speaking!

hmmmm, I think any HOF w/out Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens should be blown up.

i can appreciate that viewpoint if it creates a more lenient hall criteria across the board; unfortunately it doesn't work that way and too many great players are being excluded while lesser players with good stories are being admitted. the endpoint of what youre describing is ppl voting for rice and dawson and NOT tim raines; or ppl voting for jack morris but NOT blyleven.

Neyer:

If the BBWAA culls all the current voters who don't really pay any attention to baseball -- and there are many dozens of them -- we'll have more candidates elected. How many more, I don't know. But more, for sure.

More isn't necessarily bad. But more wouldn't mean Tim Raines and Alan Trammell. It would mean Jack Morris and Lee Smith. The standards for election would inevitably be lowered. Not maintained. Lowered.

The system that's in place, however flawed, usually arrives at a good result, eventually. It took too long, but eventually Ryne Sandberg and Gary Carter were elected. It's taking too long, but eventually Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar will be elected. Raines and Trammell? Sure, they've been terribly jobbed. But the Hall of Fame would never endorse any reform that would get either of them elected.

Be careful what you wish for.

oh, the link:

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/1981/hall-voters-call-for-change

yeah neyer was otm there

except that the system in place still blows--i just don't know what alternative would be good

haha, funny you should say that. Joe Posnanski wrote this week about who was The Best Player in Baseball each period since 1970

Yeah, I read that too -- it surprised the hell out of me -- although I still didn't realize that Singleton had fared so well in the MVP vote until I checked the votes for Rice!

I'm all in favour of the HOF being partially about "fame". Asking questions like "did people consider this guy to be a HOFer when he was playing?" or "did people consider him a winner, a guy who could make a difference in a pennant race/playoff series" are definitely part of any players' HOF evaluation. It's all part and parcel of what a guy accomplished during his career. It's a different story with Rice ... a completely separate narrative got written for him long after the fact, a narrative that bared only a passing resemblance to Jim Rice the person or Jim Rice the player.

But I'm more comfortable with a guy whose numbers kick ass but is as asshole being excluded than I am with a guy whose numbers are really only OK but who is loved by fans of the game getting in.

xposts

Not even sure how to address a comment like this ... so Barry Bonds is out because he was a dick? Is this an argument for or against guys like Jim Rice? Are you advocating for a HOF that tells the kid-friendly version of the game where only beloved players with inspirational stories are elected, or a HOF that shows the game as it really was? I mean, let's not even get started talking about all the HOFer who we'd have to whitewash from the history of the game if we're judging by those criteria.

Ty Cobb was not a nice man

basically, the answer is smarter writers

hmmmm, I think any HOF w/out Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens should be blown up.

yeah but this is a juicing argument and is a whole different deal. they'll both get in after they die, and each one will have a lovely little asterix next to his name.

Why stop there, why should (alleged) steroid users get singled out for bad behaviour? Let's put an asterisk next to Ty Cobb's name for being a racist, next to Kirby Puckett's name for beating his wife, and next to Mickey Mantle's name for being an alcoholic.

I'm basically a number-crunching stathead who nonetheless thinks JOhn D. is eminently sane and convincing. "...otherwise, why not just set a bar to be reached - establish some OBS+ # or career HRs & lifetime batting average numbers that are the "no lower" marks and give the HOF to a guy the day he retires if he hits those numbers"--perfect. As flawed as the present system is, I agree with Neyer: sooner or later, and far more often than not, they get it right. I also think the writers are taking the only sensible approach to McGwire et al.: proceed cautiously, wait until we know more, and then render a verdict. McGwire and Sosa and Palmeiro will get their 15-year window, by the end of which there will presumably be a much clearer picture on whether or not PEDs should be a disqualifying factor. It's a lot easier to correct a situation where you finally decide that the time has come to vote Player X in than it is to remove Player Y if you one day decide that he never should have been voted in in the first place--the latter is probably impossible. With Clemens and Bonds, I'm an agnostic. If the writers put them in on the grounds that they were already first-ballot automatics pre-PED, I'm fine with that; if they decide otherwise, I'm fine with that too. The Bonds/Rice parallel doesn't wash. Bonds was, from all reports, a dick long before he used steroids, but that alone wasn't going to keep him out of the HOF anymore than it kept out Ty Cobb or Steve Carlton. His "character issues" as they relate to the game itself (as opposed to life outside the game) are more serious than Rice's, and, yes, Cobb's, Puckett's, or Mantle's.

posnanski alludes to writers using their hof votes to continue grudges against players they personally disliked. and you know, maybe if schilling or randy johnson was a complete asshole to me personally, i wouldn't be able to vote for them either. but maybe that's a good reason why these guys shouldn't have the vote -- they are unable to be objective.

nobody is suggesting an automatic statistical norm, that's just a caricature.

(Bonds')"character issues" as they relate to the game itself (as opposed to life outside the game) are more serious than Rice's, and, yes, Cobb's, Puckett's, or Mantle's

I know we've been over this, but it was a 'violation' by the letter of the law only. He played by the norms of his time.

One other theory, where I come down on the side of Manny and Clemens and whoever else had his name leaked from the Mitchell Report: as scuzzy as it might seem, in the interest of HOF fairness they need to release all names on that list. You should not have a situation where Manny is denied entrance because his name was arbitrarily leaked, while other players whose names might be on there--I've got huge doubts about Bagwell and I-Rod, for starters--get a pass because their names arbitrarily weren't.

"I also think the writers are taking the only sensible approach to McGwire et al"--I didn't phrase this correctly, since obviously the writers aren't collectively speaking in one voice. About 20% think McGwire needs to go in today, some undetermined percentage believe he must never go in, and some similarly undetermined percentage are on the fence for now. Put them all together, and I think they're accidentally taking the only sensible approach.

I agree in principle re: the Mitchell Report, in that it wouldn't be fair if some guys are just plain lucky that their secret never comes out and they get elected to the HOF without a hitch, whereas other guys aren't so lucky and they get denied. But to me, this is an argument for ignoring all the steroid crap and judging the players by what they did on the field. Let's face it, all the information is never going to come out, and whatever does come out will be pretty much random. Why is there any reason to assume that by 2020 or so, we'll know the whole truth about McGwire? How is the 15-year window for HOF voting in any way related to the time frame over which the "truth" may or may not be revealed?

I just think it's such a complicated, murky issue right now that a step back and a few years' time is a good idea. I can't say for sure that PED use through the '90s will be any less contentious an issue 10 years from now, but my guess is that consensus, whether that be condemnation or a shrug of the shoulders, will be a lot closer than it is now. If so, McGwire can still be voted in. And if not, that percentage of voters who are still on the fence will just have to commit one way or the other.

And if you are on McGwire's side, I would think you'd be okay with that. I strongly suspect that McGwire's Andro use won't be as big a deal 10 years from now--James wrote a lengthy reflection on this on his website a few months ago. Because the fact is, if the verdict has to be rendered today, McGwire ain't going into the Hall of Fame; the support isn't even close to being there. (And another reason why I say the issue's so murky: McGwire and Palmeiro are being punished as much for what they said--or didn't say--before Congress as they are for PEDs. This too, I'm guessing, will fade over time.)

yeah this is doubtless true but I think - I mean, look, if a dude's decided he doesn't dig a player for any reason (this is very true in boxing, too), there're always many ways you can decide to focus on stats to "debunk" somebody's reputed excellence. And it gets really annoying to the point where with summa these dudes you wanna ask "is that why you follow the sport? to sort of spend most of your time talking about it EXPOSING THE LIES!!!1! about how Holmes was a better champion than Ali or whatever based on punch stats or the records of his opposition," etc. And I'm pretty sympathetic to people who want to point out that Larry's underrated for sure, but we're talking about Ali here. You know? Similar thing in play with what players mean to their teams. The Hall of Fame is about more than numbers; what Dawson means to a Cub fan, for example, isn't wholly quantifiable by what he did on the field, and this happens with so many HoF candidates - this idea that numbers are all that mean anything, or more accurately that they're an all-purpose trump if you play 'em right.

imo

― Herodcare for the Unborn (J0hn D.), Friday, January 8, 2010 6:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

this actually rings pretty true for me

Yeah for sure, but that's something I like about the whole thing - that election isn't about strictly the merits of your play, but 1) intangibles (fans & writer alike love this guy!) and 2) broader issues (the BS moralizing, well, shit, guilty as charged, steroids make me a sad naive little kid). "Narrative," as I like to put it.

I mean, otherwise, why not just set a bar to be reached - establish some OBS+ # of career HRs & lifetime batting average numbers that are the "no lower" marks and give the HOF to a guy the day he retires if he hits those numbers. But I think that sort of runs counter to what a Hall of Fame is about - I mean, one of the terms is "fame," which means something more than "accomplishments."

― Herodcare for the Unborn (J0hn D.), Saturday, January 9, 2010 8:02 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

but this is some 'print the legend' bs

i mean look here's the thing, narrative's fine if it gets marginal players into the hall, i mean whatever im a big hall guy - but at the same time it keeps more deserving/overlooked players out, which is ridiculously unfair! charles pierce is a blowhard, but he's otm when he characterizes what happened to buck o'neil as a disgrace (certainly moreso than any trumped up steroids scandal imo) - i mean im not even arguing for or against narrative (probably for it!), but i dont see how you can just cross your arms and be like 'yeah im cool with this' re: a system that gives newspapermen the ability to make theirs the dominant narrative of the sport - i mean thats the thing, their narratives already dominate the game when the guys play, and then when a guy is old as h*ck and is waiting for a shot to get in beisbol valhalla with all his niggas, that shit's all completely controlled by the same newspaper guys too and then some old ass motherfuckers get stuck on the outside looking in like some starving victorian child gazing at a succulent christmas ham because of what some dont-give-a-fuck dude like pedro gomez thinks about pitcher wins. i mean the hof is supposed to be something that respects and illuminates history, and it seems 2 me that it's the venue where it's most appropriate to reexamine careers and storylines and put players in a historical context, not just the mythmaking context of their time

To me a Hall of Fame is largely about shaping the story that the history of the game tells to the future, and that story is more than "these are the players who were good." I feel the same way about history generally speaking!

well thats gay and dumb im glad u dont teach history bud

also why is the baseball the only sport that gets guys so sentimental like theyre about to start singin swing low sweet chariot while thinking of jim rice's rbi numbers in 1978

Yeah, it's not like basketball writers/fans get nostalgic over Bill Russell, or football fans over Unitas, or hockey fans over Orr or Howe or the original six-team league. You got me.

They dont, actually! Blowhards bloviate about every sport, but something about baseball REALLY gets the hot air blowing - fuckin bob costas ruminating on the magic of the game and all that shit - it just has no equivalent

im not picking on u btw u have made a lot of dope ass posts itt

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060973722.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

"a classic that may even stand up as the best baseball book of the 90's"

exactly

I'm guessing you don't live in Toronto, where pathalogical nostalgia for the '67 Leafs is an affiction shared by every male (and many females) past the age of 50.

i'll admit to ignorance re: hockey - i'm sure in canada it gets pretty unreal tho

hockey is worse than baseball for some people, just google "original six"

I did and came up with this, from the opening of a Scott Burnside piece two years ago: "The phrase is invoked with such reverence, one might utter names of ancient civilizations or antiquities. 'The Original Six.' Genuflect if you will." That captures what I meant perfectly.

The really good news: I've learned how to spell 'pathological'!

canks yr long post up there is excellent

basically the sentimentality problem is Bob Costas imposing his understanding of what all sports are really about onto shit - nobody who heard Costas calling Bulls games at Jordan's peak can say that basketball narrative doesn't reach the same heights/depths as baseball stuff. I hear what you mean about how there's a particular flavor to baseball sentimentality but it's a big part of all sports, always has been, I mean read some Hesiod the Greeks were getting all where-are-the-days-of-my-youth about discus throwing 5k years ago, nothing new.

shit cankles everybody always told me you were pretty fuckin solid on ILBB and I thought how the fuck can that be, dude is such a reliable bummer on the other boards, but I can't front your posts here are eminently sensible and IAWTC solid stuff, illuminating & clarifying, no argument from me. you should still grow the fuck out of using "gay" as an insult though, it's stupid and I wish you'd cut it out

i'd say theres a particular brand of conservatism built into a lot of baseball narratives that is unique to that sport; basketball and football for historical and socioeconomic reasons basically dodge a lot of it; hockey depending on where you are is more a way of life than anything else.

basketball and football for historical and socioeconomic reasons basically dodge a lot of it

crazy talk

go listen to the NFL theme music or watch some NFL films stuff, the sentimentality is off the chart. there is a particular flavor to baseball sentimentality but all the major sports have this huge sentimental streak that's a big part of the appeal for a big part of the spectator base. fuck, what do they call soccer - "the beautiful game," right? sports and sentimentality, particularly a conservative sentimentality about how things used to be better than they are now, go hand in hand imo

tbh if a gay person asked me to stop i would (a Real Gay not a ringtone bi), but that hasnt happened yet so

WRT Costas I tend to think that the logic brane part of his knowledge is fairly well formed and reasonable e.g. he understands stats and their place in the world (unlike, CHB, etc.); his presentation leans bloviation becau he thinks he is a poet and aspires to be a 1920's newspaperman style of content maker.

lol john i'm not saying baseball is the only sport that deals in sentimentality but with baseball that gets tied in to patriotism and uh whiteness far more than with the other big american sports.

(cankles, stop. - Real Gay)

The deeper, older sentimentality re baseball can be measured most obviously by the TOTAL pass NFL players get on PEDs, by comparison.

There already is a "juioe" factor at work in the writers' votes -- admitting "clean" borderline-at-best cases like Dawson and Rice while bypassing analysis faves like Raines (also an admitted coke user, ta da) and 'shamed' titans like McGwire.

I think rather than the HOF, J0hn is looking for this (although obv there's a PR machine at work here too):

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/awards/mlb_awards_content.jsp?content=roberto_clemente_history

1996 Kirby Puckett

lol

Why stop there, why should (alleged) steroid users get singled out for bad behaviour? Let's put an asterisk next to Ty Cobb's name for being a racist, next to Kirby Puckett's name for beating his wife, and next to Mickey Mantle's name for being an alcoholic.

this is kinda obvious tho ain't it? there isn't any alleged connection between those things & their performance on the field. it's not about "moralizing" - it's about an uneven playing field, & cheating. which, I know, there's probably nobody here who hasn't been in v. long and everybody's-position-is-entrenched-so-why-bother discussions about whether steroids should be legal, whether there's no study on whether they actually enhance performance, how they don't help you see the strike zone better, etc. but all that seems beside the point to me, but "he's not playing by the rules he agreed to play by" isn't the same as "he's a bad dude."

except there were no rules (ie, ENFORCED rules, the only kind that matter in America) til what, 2004?

yeah thats the thing - it wasnt against the rules

Ade - I know nothing about baseball but didn't you say on ILNFL that you thought Vinatieri belonged in the hall? Isn't that... kind of the same thing of privileging "legendariness" over, y'know, being good over a career? Perhaps you were kind of trolling there, idk.

haha i was making a passionate argument AGAINST vinatieri getting in the hall for that reason!

i am very serious about kickers okay

i mean the idea of vinatieri getting into the same hall as a game-changer like jan stenerud is beyond absurd

i'm gonna say this as a hardcore cubs fan: i've got no problem with sammy sosa--whose numbers are pretty fuckin epic and historically unassailable as numbers alone, context removed--never seeing the inside of the HOF.

i saw him play from when he was with the white sox and all the way up through '97, and a bit more patience and a pentland-inspired timing mechanism in the batters' box (or whatever it was) doesn't turn a dude from tony armas with speed into willie mays with more power. i say this as someone who also doesn't like the gatekeepers who want to keep anyone who came near a PED out of the hall. but i think the idea that sammy sosa was a hall of famer without PEDs is a little hilarious. i agree with the "uneven playing field" comment, and i don't think that kinda shit should be rewarded. so i'm okay with sosa, mcgwire, palmeiro, etc not making it. i'd be cool with them getting in as well, but i'd sure rather see raines or trammell or santo get in first. i'm not some murray chass btw.

I think beyond the PEDs, people don't give the two double whammies of expansion and the new power hitter friendly ball parks enough credit in the home run explosion. Pretty much every time there was expansion in baseball, there was at least a season or two where the home run numbers went up. How much of that was the expansion and parks, I don't know, but I think I'd bet it might have been at least 10-15% of the jump.

i think a big problem with excluding players for juicing is that essentially it is/was a systemic problem that is not being properly addressed by the owners/league or the players' union. and frankly, i think that the sportswriters failed to hold the sport responsible. it's wrong to not have addressed these problems at the time (and to have failed to uncover these problems in the first place) and then to retroactively punish certain players but not others for their transgressions. there is an entire generation of players who were juicing in one form or another and it seems utterly ridiculous to pretend that none of these players are worthy of the hall of fame.

i guess i'm just thinking that this problem is better addressed all at once than singularly through player elections to the hall.

the writers deified McGwire & Sosa in '98.

also bud selig fucking sucks.

There are five parties to blame for the steroid era, and so far all the blame has fallen on the players. More or less off the hook thus far: sportswriters, fans (I include myself; when the Andro murmuring started in the summer of '98, I didn't want to hear it, I just wanted the record broken), Fehr and the union, and, top of the list, Selig.

except there were no rules (ie, ENFORCED rules, the only kind that matter in America) til what, 2004?

― Rage, Resentment, Spleen (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 9 January 2010 23:32 (Yesterday) Permalink

yeah thats the thing - it wasnt against the rules

― doomed... to fart (cankles), Saturday, 9 January 2010 23:33 (Yesterday) Permalink

oh come on you guys. I don't think there's anything explicitly in the rulebook that says you can't murder the opposing pitcher to force a forfeit. sure, it's against the law to commit murder, but it's not against the rules. it's against the law to seek or write a prescription for a scrip-only drug you don't need, that's cut & dried, the only reason that there was no rule on the books is that it goes without saying. this is baseball, it's better than America, the legalism of "but we didn't know you guys would look down on such stuff!" is silly.

...which also is why it'll be a hard walk to the HoF for anybody who really tries to get over on the "look, there was no RULE against it" thing. hardly anybody is sympathetic to that kind of gotcha reasoning.

clemenza's post totally otm

sportswriters blackmailed sosa into juicing up

http://www.mije.org/files/u426/sosa.jpg

There are five parties to blame for the steroid era, and so far all the blame has fallen on the players. More or less off the hook thus far: sportswriters, fans (I include myself; when the Andro murmuring started in the summer of '98, I didn't want to hear it, I just wanted the record broken), Fehr and the union, and, top of the list, Selig.

― clemenza, Saturday, January 9, 2010 5:41 PM (50 minutes ago)

add the owners to this list and i agree.

no man I would say the top of the list has got to actually be the people who took the actual steroids

I mean seriously.

he was listing everybody who hasn't been blamed yet

well how do u feel about greenies JD?

all right - I'm pretty conservative about that stuff. it's like, the responsibility for what a person puts into his body rests so nearly completely with that person that any other parties' role in how he came to make that choice is only of very minor interest to me. nobody made anybody take any steroids. my heart's not going to bleed for people who did so because nobody had shown them a rulebook saying they shouldn't.

what are greenies?

amphetamines

I was all for 'em until they started fucking up my teeth

what are greenies?

http://goinglikesixty.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/green-mm.jpg

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/sports/content/sports/epaper/2006/04/02/PBP_AMPHET_0402.html

actual answer, I don't know. steroids seem so obviously wrong to me regarding sports. they make you able to do shit you couldn't otherwise do, it's pretty clear. I consider speed recreational, I know it sure can't make you run faster and it doesn't improve your response time. steroids seem a pretty special chemical case to me: they will give any given player an advantage over a player who isn't taking them.

eh that's a pretty arbitrary place to draw the line imo

yeah it seems like it, I don't know - show me a player whose numbers do what Mac's & Sammy's did post-juice and I can probably get all lit up about speed

oh come on you guys. I don't think there's anything explicitly in the rulebook that says you can't murder the opposing pitcher to force a forfeit. sure, it's against the law to commit murder, but it's not against the rules. it's against the law to seek or write a prescription for a scrip-only drug you don't need, that's cut & dried, the only reason that there was no rule on the books is that it goes without saying. this is baseball, it's better than America, the legalism of "but we didn't know you guys would look down on such stuff!" is silly.

― Herodcare for the Unborn (J0hn D.), Saturday, January 9, 2010 9:24 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah except there's nothing wrong with steroids and they shouldnt be illegal in the first place - its not something nakedly WRONG like your example of murder. juice doesnt confer quite the advantage you seem to think. it definitely helps you get swole and make you feel... harder (no homo), but so do a lot of legal/semi-legal supplements like prohormones. they sure as fuck dont make you run faster, where'd you get that from? i'm slow as fuck, do you think if i spend a year blasting my legs and juicing i'll be able to run faster? maybe by the tiniest margin, but not really.

xp but isn't it about individuals not putting substances into their bodies that could give them an advantage and not about the resulting numbers?

fwiw i really don't think we have any idea how numbers were impacted during "the steroids era" in a league-wide sense and probably never will. individual cases aren't really interesting to me (tho i do like to lol @ brady anderson's baseball ref page)

no canks youd just have giant weird legs

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_5wih30mQwiY/STTSbP6PA7I/AAAAAAAAF70/_MBU-P12rkE/s1600-h/mandy+sellars-the+woman+with+giant+legs.jpg

me irl

you have giant weird legs?

[Steroids] make you able to do shit you couldn't otherwise do, it's pretty clear.

Such as being able to work out/lift weights longer? I'll grant that it lets pitchers recover more quickly to pitch more often and throw harder.

http://www.happyasianguy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/muscle-man.jpg results

Absolutely, I should have added the owners; put them at the top with Selig.

actual answer, I don't know. steroids seem so obviously wrong to me regarding sports. they make you able to do shit you couldn't otherwise do, it's pretty clear.

ok well the day "shit you couldn't otherwise do" = playing baseball, let me know

xp also what leeee said

long experience on this q suggests to me that positions are pretty entrenched & that arguing it will just be an endless cycle of "no way, you're wrong!" but is it seriously your position K3vin that steroids don't confer any kind of advantage on the field, really, at all? let's imagine for a sec that the players who took/take them don't agree, and think that they do, in fact, give them an advantage over players who aren't bulking up. does it not bother you that the entry bar for excellence on the field then gets raised to "you have to be willing to take stuff that will straight-up fuck you up in the long term"? that seems, to me, to really mess shit up for people who want to compete in a classical sense of "compete," i.e., get as good at something as they can using their natural talents & training hard. the question isn't whether steroids could make me play baseball. I'll be warming bench from now til the final trumpet call. but do they inflate numbers to a point where you need two leagues, the juicers and the non-juicers? naw, not at all, '98 was just a lucky year for a lotta guys.

if anybody wants to propose an MLBX where everybody can just enjoy 'roid-enhanced ball while us old fogeys watch regular ol' MLB, I'm all for that

Wow, I can't believe we're having this argument about the physiological effects of steroid and how they correlate (or more commonly, don't correlate) to on-field performance (as least in baseball ... sports like football are a different story). Where's Steve Shasta to post the list of all the crappy middle relief pitchers who have been busted for PEDs?

J0hn, I think you're arguing in circles ... you wanted to argue for narrative being part of the HOF discussion, where "narrative" = "intangibles" + "broader issues". And I'm fine with that, but I don't see the need to break it down further, where I give implicit approval to racists and coke addicts, but *alleged* PED users are excluded. In any case, it's impossible to know what affects on-field performance and what doesn't. I don't give players from the 60's and 70's a free pass for using amphetamines. Cocaine didn't make Rock Raines run faster or hit better, but if played under the rules of today, he'd be suspended and out of the lineup (and not piling up HOF stats). Today's managers and GMs wouldn't have tolerated alcoholics like Mantle, these days nobody's gonna take a chance with an addict on the roster, look at what happened with Josh Hamilton.

From clemenza's list, my blame rankings are like this:

1. Owners (only too happy to look the other way and make money, then to moralize and cry poor afterward)
1a. Selig (effectively an owner, has never taken a principled stand for jack shit since he's been commish)
2. Players (of course they're going to look for an edge, especially if there's no mechanism for being caught and punished)
3. Writers (build em up and knock em down, ignoring the game's problems and then blaming everyone except themselves for looking the other way when of course they're supposed to be the ones reporting on that stuff)
4. Fehr and the union
5. Fans

Actually, I would tie in "being an ambassador for the game" with "on field performance" before I'd start grasping at PED straws, IOW, a guy like McGwire who was considered a larger-than-life hero during his playing career and is all-around model citizen is more of a HOFer than a guy like Pete Rose. Baseball is a business, who do you want as the face of your organization, a dickhead like Rose who hangs out with criminals, or a down-to-earth family man like McGwire? I mean, I think they both need to be in the HOF, because they were giants of the game when they played, and regardless of whatever bad things they might have done, I want to know the history of the game as it really was, not some whitewashed kid-friendly version. But if I absolutely had to choose between them, then I want guys like McGwire in, and guys like Kirby Puckett out.

does it not bother you that the entry bar for excellence on the field then gets raised to "you have to be willing to take stuff that will straight-up fuck you up in the long term"?

dude steroids are COMPLETELY SAFE if you're smart about them!

that seems, to me, to really mess shit up for people who want to compete in a classical sense of "compete," i.e., get as good at something as they can using their natural talents & training hard.

the only way to get gains from steroids is by TRAINING HARD! the predominant reason bonds became such an otherworldly player was because he worked harder than anyone else!

dude steroids are COMPLETELY SAFE if you're smart about them!

two things: this is technically true, but nonsense in context. using them to bulk up = not "completely safe." they're great for speeding recovery from asking too much of a muscle. used over any length of time they play fucking havoc with your body. being smart about them means using them maybe 5-6 times in your life, or when you're threatened with something bigger than the potential downside of steroid abuse. cards on table, the basis from which I'm asserting authority, I have to get treated with corticosteroids from time to time and get mad lectures from doctors about how really unwise it is to ever lean on steroids as anything other than a this-is-an-emergency situation. I'll take the word of MDs who could actually make more scratch from me needing more scrip over sports docs, who're on retainer and get paid for delivering short-term gains.

corticosteroids are different from anabolic steroids bro, iirc most of the long-term side effects w/juice are related to either high doses or usage in adolescence - hence the 'if you're smart about them' caveat. if you're over 25 and you've been lifting for a few years and you have a good understanding of how to cycle and post cycle, you should be fine. thats not even getting into juice alternatives like prohormones and serms, which are also relatively safe.

j0hn, your strawman of the MLB steroid abuser who is a power hitting machine is actually the exception (and makes an easy media target). the majority of players who have been busted for PEDs are (as NTBT mentions) PITCHERS, and not very good ones at that, as well as a lot of corner outfielders with no pop. This is why when Manny and David Ortiz get busted it's a HUGE deal but when Andy Pettite and Roger Clemens get busted it's like forgotten the next day. Also racism.

also j0hn, when do you think steroids became prevalent in baseball? they became prevalent in the olympics in the 50s, NFL in the 60s (lyle alzado infamously began his cycles at lol ncaa powerhouse Yankton College in South Dakota!!!)...

spaceman bill lee while as a red sox starter mentioned being shot up by the team doc with all sorts of chemical cocktails after his starts in the 60s-70s.

why is it safe to assume the baseball and steroids era begins with mcgwire and sosa?

I think it also has to do with pitchers being rock stars to fans but less so to the general public (ERA is interesting to committed fans & geeks; home runs are interesting to everybody) but ok. the world you guys live in where steroids don't actually give people an advantage and therefore it oughta be ok to take them is a weird world to me & one I'd guess won't be getting sold to owners, the public, or the hall of fame any time soon, I'd guess! beyond that, canks, let's ask big mac how his cholesterol levels are looking in about ten years, and how his (already bad since childhood) vision is coping, and what his cardiovascular picture is. the vision you have of athletes monitoring their own medication in a medically smart way is crazytown central. jocks, like everybody else, tend to go "if one's good, two's better" and the docs that treat them will always, ALWAYS give them what they want, not the imaginary golden mean for more effective growth regimen that's possible on paper and fucking rare as hell in vivo.

I also have grandpa J0hn concerns about the trickle-down to younger i.e. high school athletes, plenty of whom juice already but more of whom will be keen to say "it's ok if I do it the smart way!" with easy-to-get anabolics if there's any kind of a there's-a-right-way-to-do-it view gaining currency, but I'm guessing "what about the children" isn't gonna be an inspire-much-thought look

xpost steve they've been around for ages but I'm not clear on yr point

idk tho we're gonna be talking from diff planets here youse guys there is really no point. ppl who think baseball players oughta be able to use anabolic steroids "wisely" are coming from a position so alien to my way of thinking that I'm like "ok, w/e makes u happy but no thanks to that whole position"

xpost steve they've been around for ages but I'm not clear on yr point

when do you think steroids became prevalent in baseball?

xp i agree with that if only because it's far easier and more fair to ban steroids than to create an environment where people basically have to use them.

define "prevalent" - I'd say there was scattered use throughout the sixties, increasing use through the seventies & eighties, near-general use by the nineties

xp i agree with that if only because it's far easier and more fair to ban steroids than to create an environment where people basically have to use them.

^^^
this is really the sanest don't-see-how-anybody-could-disagree point, too -- legalize steroid use and you're telling any prospective player "one of the things you're going to have to do is take steroids"

unless you adopt the position that they haven't been proven to help and people just use 'em 'cause they taste good or something

you guys know that there's still no test for HGH* in MLB right?

*technically not a steroid which is why some people prefer to use the term PEDs on this board.

yes steve we know that

Every ILB thread will become a steroids thread the way every ILE thread becomes a Tarantino thread...

it'll be a hard walk to the HoF for anybody who really tries to get over on the "look, there was no RULE against it" thing

Yes, they'll have to go on Oprah and cry. So much more honest and free of calculation.

I think it also has to do with pitchers being rock stars to fans but less so to the general public (ERA is interesting to committed fans & geeks; home runs are interesting to everybody) but ok. the world you guys live in where steroids don't actually give people an advantage and therefore it oughta be ok to take them is a weird world to me & one I'd guess won't be getting sold to owners, the public, or the hall of fame any time soon, I'd guess! beyond that, canks, let's ask big mac how his cholesterol levels are looking in about ten years, and how his (already bad since childhood) vision is coping, and what his cardiovascular picture is. the vision you have of athletes monitoring their own medication in a medically smart way is crazytown central. jocks, like everybody else, tend to go "if one's good, two's better" and the docs that treat them will always, ALWAYS give them what they want, not the imaginary golden mean for more effective growth regimen that's possible on paper and fucking rare as hell in vivo.

I also have grandpa J0hn concerns about the trickle-down to younger i.e. high school athletes, plenty of whom juice already but more of whom will be keen to say "it's ok if I do it the smart way!" with easy-to-get anabolics if there's any kind of a there's-a-right-way-to-do-it view gaining currency, but I'm guessing "what about the children" isn't gonna be an inspire-much-thought look

xpost steve they've been around for ages but I'm not clear on yr point

― Lee Dorrian Gray (J0hn D.), Sunday, January 10, 2010 12:51 PM (20 minutes ago)

i basically agree with all of this, which is why i dont think steroids should be legal. BUT, i dont think people who used them before it was illegal should necessarily be penalized; a lot of people fucked up on that, not just the players

can anybody find JPGs of that MLB-sanctioned All-Star comic book from 7-8 years ago when all the players were drawn with humongous physiques? Speaks volumes.

Again, using bennies was illegal in all the decades players took em like vitamins.

the vision you have of athletes monitoring their own medication in a medically smart way is crazytown central.

well i know plenty of meathead lifters who manage it just fine! most pro athletes are really anal and knowledgable about fitness & nutrition, and the guys who arent (the guys who just get by on pure talent) tend not to last long.

I also have grandpa J0hn concerns about the trickle-down to younger i.e. high school athletes, plenty of whom juice already but more of whom will be keen to say "it's ok if I do it the smart way!" with easy-to-get anabolics if there's any kind of a there's-a-right-way-to-do-it view gaining currency, but I'm guessing "what about the children" isn't gonna be an inspire-much-thought look

there's no right way for teenagers to juice, period. like most teenagers who do stupid shit, they're most likely aware of the risks and just dont give a fuck. i don't think that adults responsibly juicing gives kids an easy 'in' if they want to juice themselves, because they'd probably find a way to justify doing it no matter what if that's what they're set on doing.

We should also warn aspiring teenage actors not to mimic Hollywood stars' embrace of scat play and multimillion-dollar gambling debts.

"This is why when Manny and David Ortiz get busted it's a HUGE deal but when Andy Pettite and Roger Clemens get busted it's like forgotten the next day. Also racism." I wrote a piece on my site in 2004, soon after the initial Bonds fallout, that also ascribed a large part of the vehemence reserved for Bonds to racism. In the wake of McGwire's HOF snub, and the vilification of Clemens--I don't see how Steve can say it was forgotten the next day with him; seems to me he caught major hell, as he should have--I've changed my thinking on that. I still think there's always an element of racism in how the "arrogance" of a Bonds is treated by the public compared to how a white athlete's alleged arrogance is perceived, but I now think the steroids controversy has largely been color-blind...I'm with JOhn, again. Commission a serious, large-scale study on how much of statistical edge can be attribute to PEDs through the '90s and beyond. If it turns out that a) it can be proven to be minimal, b) use was so widespread that any advantage was basically neutralized, or c) there's some other explanation as to how Bonds went from being, I don't know, 25% better than everybody else to 60% better, then we should all hold our noses and let McGwire, Palmeiro, and Sosa into the HOF. But the idea that steroids are no big deal and we just need to promote more sensible use of them, that strikes me as insane.

Of course, with the commissioner and league desperate to put the whole thing in the rear-view mirror, such a study will never be undertaken. Which to me seems stupid--that's the only way they might conceivably put the issue to rest.

Commission a serious, large-scale study on how much of statistical edge can be attribute to PEDs

This has been written about, and the conclusion is invariably that it would be IMpossible! Who would be in the control group of "non-users" when you have no idea who they are??

I'd love to see the equation determining who had the 'edge' in a Bonds vs Clemens confrontation...

You let the best guys from this generation into the HOF or let NOBODY in whose prime was, I dunno, 1992-2004. No other way to do it, and this just isn't important enough to wring our hands over for another 25 years.

I hadn't thought that far ahead...I guess it would require an unrealistic degree of honest cooperation from the players. Get some of those Washington people involved; all they ever seem to do is commission large-scale studies, so maybe they can figure out a way.

I think they have a couple more important crises to handle, perhaps.

morbs if you try and stop me from wringing my hands over something, anything, I will just find two more things to wring my hands over. my fretting grandmaism is a hydra unto itself.

Well...put it under health care; also, a lot of people got very rich, so it's an economic issue. And McGwire and Sosa absolutely terrorized pitchers, so--ah, never mind.

I was just watching the "Brother's Little Helper" episode of The Simpsons, originally aired in '99. It's the one with McGwire's cameo. You've got to love the unforseen implications of McGwire's great exit line: "Do you want to know the terrifying truth? Or do you want to see me sock a few dingers!? [Townfolk mindlessly cheer for dingers.]" (Weirdly enough, the episode actually is about PEDs, but McGwire's line isn't--he's referring to the truth of Bart having been monitored from outer space.)

Uh, I don't think anyone here is actually in favour of steroids being legal in MLB -- I'm certainly not. Given that some guys were (and still are using), then what makes more sense going forward, a) recognizing that PED use was a significant problem for MLB before a proper testing and punishment policy was put in place, and accepting this as a part of the history of the game, or b) blackball a generation of players from the HOF and put asterisks all over the record books?

And BTW,

HR/game 1996-2003: 1.10
HR/game 2004-2009: 1.05

It's not such a huge difference. The biggest bump happened from 1999-2001, and like others have said upthread, I'm more inclined to attribute most of that to expansion and the debut of a bunch of hitter-friendly parks.

And so the HOF 2010 thread winds down. I've gone through all posts extra carefully, and we've reached consensus on three points: 1) a number of players have used PEDs; 2) there is a Hall of Fame; and 3) David Segui should not be inducted. See you next year!

Uh, I don't think anyone here is actually in favour of steroids being legal in MLB

i am, everyone should juice - it'd be a better product

cankles did you like the XFL

hell yeah i did! scramble for the ball! he hate me! madden camera!

what about the 100-point shot in MTV's Rock and Jock B-Ball Jam

I can't front on He Hate Me though, best jersey ever

let's lose elbow armor and guys taking their stance outta the batter's box, too

also advertisements on jerseys

? that's coming, but only in the WBC so far?

I was just riffing, you know, if you allow steroids you might as well put giant CBS eyes on dudes backs and change the team names to the Texaco Dodgers or whatever and just make the best "product" you can instead of having baseball imo

homers that clear the park worth two runs

double or nothing on a fourth-strike pitch, extra base if you reach but two outs if you whiff

homers off a pitcher who's over 100 throws in a game only count for half

I think the "TV-friendly" postseason schedule already exceeds these, with two off-days in a 5-game series

i mean sure yeah then just open the entire olympics to peds (lol worse than they already are)--it'd be a better product cause records would all get broken.

i'm pretty sure there's a coherent philosophical objection to peds in sports that most ppl would agree with.

JD i unironically like all of those suggestions

if were gonna make it more like rock-n-jock why not force every team to keep a celebrity in the lineup

already frequent (see Griffey, Ken Jr.)

http://cdn2.sbnation.com/photo_images/379714/58999_Titans_Seahawks_Mariners_Griffey_Football.jpg

keep that fucking sport off our board plz

^ morbs on an otm streak today!

JD i unironically like all of those suggestions

right - I mean, then, you and I have very different ideas about why one would watch the game, I think

btw I'm with Morbs on the damn post-season, in hockey I love how it's always been called the "second season" but fuck these drawwwwn ouuuut playoffs where by the end nobody gives a shit except the advertisers & the owners

Jeff (Ann Arbor)

Do you think Andre Dawson and (especially) Jim Rice would have been elected if there wasn't this ideologic war between old school BBWAA voters and the stat-heads?

Klaw (1:25 PM)

I believe that Rice was elected as part of a backlash. Some old-school voters didn't like to hear that the way they thought about players their whole lives was wrong. Some clearly don't like - or won't accept - that their monopoly on the transfer of information to readers is over. And some are just clinging madly to RBIs like they're life rafts in an ocean.

DOUCHE

honestly of every baseball writer i can think of i think i'd least want to spend time with keith law

He is constantly right about stuff and yet so annoying about it.

i'm not really sure how "right" his scouting and draft eval stuff is

http://meadowparty.com/blog/?p=292

Coldplay’s Viva la Vida, or Death and All His Friends is the first full album I’ve bought in at least two years.

"The title track sits at 120 bpm with some late life"

i'm not really sure how "right" his scouting and draft eval stuff is

Yeah, but who is, really.

that KLaw reply seems a bit too conspiracy theory imo, jim rice got elected simply because he drove in a lot of runs for a popular team, and got most of his HOF support before the mini-uprising of influence sabermetrics has had in the past couple years. sabermetric ideas are starting to reach a wider audience now (the boston globe had UZR on the front of the sports section the other day explaining why beltre was an upgrade over lowell!) but that won't necessarily stop the oldschool favorites on the ballot who already have support from making it in.

it'll be more interesting to see if future similarly low-rate-stat high-counting-stat players can build the same level of support that rice and dawson did.

xp of course but that's the point--dude knows enough abt stats to know better and talks out both sides of his mouth all the time

I guess one of the things that bothers me is how derisive and almost hysterical some of the dismissals of Dawson and (especially) Rice are, like their inductions are tantamount to putting someone like Rob Deer or Dante Bichette in. I'm exaggerating, but not by much. Dawson and Rice were borderline candidates, and, by definition, some of those guys will get in and some won't. Both had fairly steady support: Dawson always over 50% after his first year on the ballot, Rice over 50% for the nine years before he crossed 75%. And I think it`s simplistic to say that the voters are automatically wowed by RBIs--if that were the case, Joe Carter wouldn`t have dropped off the ballot after one year with a dismal 3.8%. So I agree with ciderpress: good players who just edged over the bar (and with not much time to spare), not symbolic abstractions in some Holy War between the Jameses and the Morgans.

Klaw is 100% douche, but i'm ALWAYS interested in what he has to say about anything baseball related. i can overlook douchery when he brings tha ruckus (leon voice)

how derisive and almost hysterical some of the dismissals of Dawson and (especially) Rice are

yeah i fuckin' hate this attitude, as bad as the constant "I HAVE UNCOVERED THE TRUTH" bs that J0hn D talked about upthread

i'm more anti-keeping certain dudes out than i am anti-letting certain dudes in.

im basically OK with the HOF being something that rewards narrative over skill/value, as long as ppl dont front otherwise

tbh i think it's kind of fitting that the HOF voting reflects the sport of baseball itself in being unpredictable and inconsistent. wouldn't be nearly as exciting if it was just 'everyone with these stats gets in' in the same way that baseball wouldn't be as exciting if players hit/pitched about the same line every year and couldn't have career years or slump years.

so yeah i'm fine with the status quo since all the commotion around it every year entertains me rather than upsetting me. though i will be a bit upset if bonds can't get in in a few years

xxxxxxxposts

J0hn, you are basically describing blernsball!

He is constantly right about stuff and yet so annoying about it.

just like me!

..........

http://theinfosphere.org/images/b/b9/Blurnsball_Hall_Of_Fame.jpg

LARRY KING

Jose Canseco Exclusive!
Jose Canseco on Mark McGwire's steroid use. He says he introduced McGwire to steroids! Plus, primetime exclusive! The third person not on the official guest list for the state dinner!

Tonight, 9 pm ET

Email Your questions!
iReport.com: Send your questions!

CANSECO MEDIABLAST CONTINUES

VictorRojas29
2-hour Hot Stove tonight...Jose Canseco, Sandy Alderson, Peter Gammons, Tom Davis as guests...talking #angels and more baseball

James has posted a fantastic follow-up to the McGwire story on his website. I probably shouldn't be doing this, and won't do it again; I'd urge you to pay $3 a month for a subscription (http://billjamesonline.com).

And in a Related Story

By Bill James

Former New York Yankee outfielder Roger Maris has apologized in a televised interview, broadcast early Wednesday morning on HVEN TV, for using eight extra games and expansion pitching to break the single-season home run record of previous record holder Babe Ruth. Maris was interviewed by the sainted sportscaster Curt Gowdy in a studio just two miles inside the pearly gates late Tuesday afternoon.

Maris, breaking into tears numerous times throughout the interview, acknowledged that he did in fact play 161 games in 1961, as many observers had insisted for years that he must have, and also that he did hit some home runs against pitchers who might not have been in the league were it not for expansion.

“It was the worst thing I have ever done, and I am so ashamed,” Maris sobbed.

Asked by Gowdy why it has taken him 48 years to apologize, Maris said he was acting on the advice of his attorneys, and also expressed a desire to protect his family. “I didn’t feel it was wrong at the time,” Maris said. “Everybody else was using the eight extra games. Why shouldn’t I?”

Maris’ belated apology was immediately denounced by several snarky commentators, who felt that Maris must be insincere, since Maris suggested that he could have broken the record without the eight extra games and the expansion pitchers.

“Sure I could have,” Maris said. “If you’ll look, you’ll see that I didn’t hit ANY home runs in 1961 in the first ten games of the season, so actually I hit the 61 homers in just 151 games. The last 151.”

“Everybody else in the league was hitting home runs off of Pete Burnside,” Maris said. “I figured why shouldn’t I? If any young hitter ever asked me about it, I would plead with them not to hit any home runs off of Pete Burnside or Ed Palmquist. It’s just not worth it, what it does to your soul.”

Maris also announced that he had called the widow of the late Babe Ruth, and apologized to them as well for outperforming the Bambino.

“What did she say to you?” Gowdy asked?

“She asked if I could send along some Budweiser with the apology,” Maris responded.

“She still regards her husband as the legitimate home run record holder,” Gowdy remarked.

“She has every right to,” Maris responded.

Maris’ agent had requested that Howard Cosell do the interview, but Cosell could not be located, and it is suspected that he may be working for HVEN’s arch-rival HLL, the hottest network on the air.

In a related story, Babe Ruth has requested an interview, in which it is rumored that he will acknowledge using a corked bat for most of his career, taking advantage of outrageous favoritism from the umpires, and being an unworthy role model for America’s youth due to his widely reported drinking and whoring. That interview is being delayed while Ruth tries to figure out who held the home run record before he did, as he needs to call somebody’s widow or children and apologize in vague, unintelligible terms. Among the candidates for Ruth’s apology are the widows and descendants of Gavy Cravath, Buck Freeman, Roger Connor and Ned Williamson. If you know where any of these people can be located, please call 1-800-RAPTURE or contact Rick Warren personally with details.

LOL

I'm not giving any money to a Huckabee supporter.

What about the custom of being inducted into the HOF as a member of a specific team -- is it outdated? It's great if it's your team, but most players (even great ones) don't spend their whole careers (or even a majority of their career) with one team anymore. Not to mention that baseball isn't basketball, you can't build a franchise around one guy (with historically rare exceptions like Mauer or Pujols). So the links between player and team aren't as strong as in other major sports, no matter how many years the player spends on the same team. Discus?

The insignia on the plaque cap does NOT mean the guy "is inducted as" a specific team's player; that's something ppl just started saying, like the broadcaster award's recipient being a HOF "member" (they're not). A lot of the old-time players' plaques have nothing on the cap.

I'm not giving any money to a Huckabee supporter.

This is not a very sensible criterion; Neil Young and Clint Eastwood had nice things to say about Reagan, y'know.

Ah, I didn't know that ... but great, it's all the more reason to do away with wearing one team's cap at the induction.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/david_epstein/01/12/yesalis.mcgwire/index.html

SI: What do you make of McGwire's contention that steroids did not help his performance?

Yesalis: To me, he's lost any credibility he might have had in regard to his sincerity. It appears he's trying to have his cake and eat it too, to still have his stature as a player and do a mea culpa at the same time. You can look at how his body morphed from post collegiate to early major league play, to the point where his arms are as big as the thighs of most men.

SI: What about his suggestion that steroids didn't improve his performance because they don't help hand-eye coordination.

Yesalis: Some players have made the argument that you can't make some guy a big behemoth and he's going to be in the majors. But if you have that rare, God-given skill of hitting 100 mph fastballs, and curveballs, and then you make that person bigger, the notion that being bigger after that skill doesn't help you, I can't even take seriously. You take Bambi and Godzilla with the same skill level, who's going to hit the ball better?

SI: So what about McGwire's saying that he will tell players who ask him about steroids that they are "an illusion?"

Yesalis: If I were in charge of a group of young people or in charge of some program where he were going to say something like that, I would say, "No you're not; you're either going to tell the truth, or don't say anything." For example, the reason drug intervention programs might not work on young people is if you lose your credibility, you have the potential to do more harm than good. Young people are aware that these drugs work and that they work remarkably well. I think [saying that steroids are an illusion] would be a very bad strategy if Mr. McGwire were to use that in any type of education.

SI: What are some specific ways in which steroids might help a hitter, beyond just making a ball that he would've hit anyway go farther?

Yesalis: As your forearms become stronger, you can react late to a pitch and still hit it out. You have a certain amount of weight in the bat, and that 35-ounce bat now becomes more like a toothpick, so you can snap it more and go through the ball. It's not only what happens when you contact the ball; you can take a bigger bat. And if you're behind on the pitch and swat at it, what would've been a ground ball or fly-out is now an opposite-field home run. That's why these big guys hit opposite-field homers. The line drive to the warning track will now carry to the fence, and the grounder is faster and might get through two infielders. I could never hit a curveball, so steroids won't make me a major leaguer, but when used by people who have that God-given skill, to say they have no impact has no credibility.

SI: I've heard anecdotally from a few people who have used human growth hormone that their eyesight improves, which would certainly be a benefit to a hitter. Not that contact lenses or laser eye surgery should be banned, but McGwire said that he dabbled in HGH, so do you know anything about that alleged impact of HGH?

Yesalis: I've heard that over the last five years. I'm not keeping up with the literature on that, but I've not seen any clinical empirical evidence, but I have also heard that claim. On the other hand, you have to keep in mind the potential for a placebo effect.

SI: Of course, we know that the effects of anabolic steroids are not an illusion for sick patients, so can you just talk briefly about some of the impact they have in people who need them for medical purposes?

Yesalis: Both HGH and anabolic steroids have been used in wasting associated with AIDS for 10-15 years minimum. They were given to concentration camp victims at the end of World War II to help them rebuild their decimated bodies, and to burn victims. The positive feedback information from the wasting of AIDS is beyond discussion -- they work. They help AIDS patients to regain their strength and sense of well-being and appetite and the like. That's long ago established. And really the notion that these drugs might not help an athlete, the notion that if increased strength doesn't help ... then why do the teams strength-train?

This guy is an "expert"? He compares the effects of steroids on pro athletes with their effects on AIDS patients and concentration camp survivors?

and if you're behind on the pitch and swat at it, what would've been a ground ball or fly-out is now an opposite-field home run. That's why these big guys hit opposite-field homers.

Or maybe it's because guys wear suits of armor to the plate and pitchers get ejected if they throw inside. And I've never seen evidence that guys started using bigger bats after they got stronger ... it's all about increasing bat speed, no?

it may all be just a ~~crazy coincidence~~ that those who were juicing for so long also happened to be the ones to put up numbers never previously approached. why are folks intent on finding reasons other than steroids to explain the numbers? i kinda think if so many guys were doing it for so long, it must have been because the truth is that they did assist in performance, right?

i'm kinda with neyer, i guess. yeah, they helped w/stats and yeah it's a good thing that fewer dudes are doing it now, but since we don't know who did it you might as well vote them all in and i guess i don't care if they do make it in eventually. otherwise you'll probably see a hardcore steroid user slip into the hall while a guy who tried them for a month gets omitted because he got unlucky with a random test.

Yesalis doesn't seem to know how baseball works imo

Home runs rates have decreased only a few percent from the "steroid era" -- I posted the exact numbers upthread. Those rates are way higher than they were in the 80's and early 90's, but to me that just shows that the game has changed in a lot of different ways, many of which have no connection to steroids.

It's hard to separate the different factors, but it's also silly to assume that playing in historically off-the-charts offense-friendly ballparks (e.g. Houston, Denver) didn't help in the HR explosion too ... it certainly accounts for a not insignificant %age of the offense that is usually chalked up to steroid use and steroid use alone.

i would never suggest offense-friendly parks and expansion haven't helped considerably but let's be realistic: steroids helped some of these dudes considerably too. those parks were smaller but that's not what made sammy and barry look a lot bigger, and 73, 70, 66, 65, 64, 63, and 60 homers in a season coming from guys whose parks are not usually discussed as historically homer-friendly is a bit peculiar! i'd certainly be curious to see ~who~ they hit their homers off of, maybe they hit a shitload off of lousy pitching? i just dunno, i think there's an eagerness to not be a gatekeeping old fogey and there's a lot of people who would rather find any other explanation that is not PED-related for those huge single season numbers.

i may be playing devil's advocate on this issue somewhat, since i go back and forth in my own head, but i think both sides have exceptionally good points and incredibly lousy points.

otm. sosa playing half his games in a park that had been around for 90 years sort of takes away somewhat from the hitters ballpark argument.

no you guys the evidence is totally unclear, it's really jumping the gun to say that batters use steroids because they'll be able to hit the ball harder with much bigger muscles

in fact, it is.

that's not what made sammy and barry look a lot bigger

so I take it Bagwell is on your shit list? I mean, LOOK AT HIM.

(could someone plz explain to J0hn that Gabe Kapler was a crappy HR hitter.)

i couldn't see muscles underneath that monstrous goatee

Tim "Walking Colitis Clinic" Laker, admitted purchaser of Deca-Durabolin and testosterone (1995-1999): .326 lifetime slugging percentage

can't believe we're actually having this argument on this board in 2010 but...EVEN IF steroids made good hitters great hitters, it still wasn't illegal. i don't really have a prob w/ dudes stealing signs or throwin' spitballs and shit because i think that's bad ass, but to me that's 100x worse than using steroids, because that's actual in-game "cheating", whereas w/ roids you still have to go out there and hit the ball

Hey k3vin buddy last time I checked the MLB rule book there was nothing about poking the commissioner in the eye.

(either)

(Post previous to that one made mostly for sake of using phrase "walking colitis clinic" [obv.])

and as such i'd fully support someone who decided to give selig a noogie

JD, this guy's hit 80 HR in 11 seasons:

http://www.iballer.com/malecelebs/kapler/images/k26_jpg.jpg

meanwhile this guy hit 600+

http://www.achievement.org/achievers/may0/large/may0-042.jpg

the hilarious arguments you guys make here should be next to "specious" in the dictionary

get a load o' the artiste wit his DICTIONARY

excellent job arguing for the sake of arguing in the grand tradition of ilbb everyone!

I'm new here just tryin to make an impression

J0hn, AGAIN you're small sample provided are the sluggers, what about the 90% of other steroid/HGH abusers who were neither sluggers nor even fielders (ie, the majority of PED cheats caught have been PITCHERS!!!)...

Look at the data we have collected. It shows that a large number of average to below average players were taking PEDs and nobody will remember their names in 10 years.

your* (sorry, i'm cooking again.)

Home runs rates have decreased only a few percent from the "steroid era"

If 50% of players were using, and 10% more homers were being scored, that makes only a 5% increase in homers. It only takes "a few percent".

(p.s I meant 10% more homers being scored BY JUICERS. And the figures I used are arbitrary but not unrealistic, I'm not claiming they're fact, just demonstrating the maths)

Those numbers Barry posted again:

HR/game 1996-2003: 1.10
HR/game 2004-2009: 1.05

All this talk about parks getting smaller, but haven't their also been parks that have gotten bigger? San Diego and SF moved to bigger parks, isn't the new Camden bigger than the old one? The Nats park is bigger than the Expos park too right?

safeco was considered a place where home runs went to die for awhile iirc? and also comerica.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor/_/sort/HRFactor

home run factors by ballpark back to '01

damn @ cleveland

otm. sosa playing half his games in a park that had been around for 90 years sort of takes away somewhat from the hitters ballpark argument.

Sosa is just one guy, you can't cherry pick if we're talking about hitting trends across the entire league. We can compare year-by-year hitting stats for Wrigley Field (or more accurately, opponents' hitting in Wrigley) (does anyone know where to get these numbers?) IOW, you take a hitters park, let a bunch of guys on steroids hit there for a few years, and it should become an even more extreme hitters park.

At least in terms of Park Factor, Wrigley actually played as a pitchers park for several years during the 90's ... but this doesn't really prove anything either way, i.e. we know that offense was up league-wide, but if you have more hitters parks in the league (new parks in Arizona, Cinci, Houston opened in that era), then outliers like Wrigley will be lesser outliers.

If 50% of players were using, and 10% more homers were being scored, that makes only a 5% increase in homers. It only takes "a few percent".

Even if this were the case, and if we ignore every other factor that could have contributed to the increase in offense (and HR), should we tear up the record book because of a 5% increase? There have been far more extreme swings in pitching and hitting, e.g. the pitching-dominated era of the mid-late 60's. We have to look at 90's hitting stats in the context of their era, just like we do for hitters from the 1930's or pitchers in the 1960's. This is nothing new.

i think since different players have different skill sets and different abilities, *if* PEDs are capable of being helpful they wouldn't necessarily help everyone. *if* sammy sosa went from a 36 HR per year dude to a guy who averaged 58 over a five year span starting around age 30 because of PEDs (if!), then it's because he was working from the foundation of having substantial power already. i would suggest that the only place where singles hitters turn into power hitters is coors field (or 1987, lol), and i think gabe kapler's muscles kinda masked the fact that he must have slow bat speed or he was the weakest dude of his physique one can imagine.

i think guys are singles hitters b/c of bat speed more than anything, muscles don't necessarily come into play, but guys who are already power hitters and have the bat speed who gain more mass and an (entirely theorerical) advantage via PEDs could see that jump a little more. but since none of us are scientists we can only go on statistics, i guess. i think i would agree with keith law, that PEDs affect a small number of hitters--those whose stats maybe pop out more--but most guys who took them were shitty players who were shitty for a reason and drugs can't change that.

i think since different players have different skill sets and different abilities, *if* PEDs are capable of being helpful they wouldn't necessarily help everyone.

OTM, a lot have people have been led to believe otherwise, and the shrill sportswriters who say that we have to put asterisks next to everything that happened from 1994-2003 are a big part of that.

I do believe that the biggest effect that steroids had on McGwire's career was that they kept him healthy. Even in '98, during the andro mini-scandal, most of the discussion centred on andro's role in keeping him healthy (those were relatively sane times!)

well i'm sure they kept him healthy but...70 home runs and 66 home runs in one season from those particular two dudes who were later found to have used PEDs is a ~mite strange~ and i think it's highly likely they assisted just a little bit maybe, no? i think the problem with this long argument over the past decade though is maybe some people mistake those who think that PEDs help boost stats with those who think those who used PEDs are the worst people on the planet and should be assassinated. though there is some crossover.

"...i think gabe kapler's muscles kinda masked the fact that he must have slow bat speed or he was the weakest dude of his physique one can imagine."

to this end; wasn't there some physiological breakdown of power swings that showed most of the initial torque of a swing comes from the strength of the leg drive/hip-opening motion. cf. ted williams saying that the hands follow the hips. my takeaway from that is that after a certain point having big arms doesn't do as much as, say, being built like that kid who was just traded to the Jays. Also, Kapler looks a lot more like a body builder than a baseball player in that pict (ie muscles for show vs muscles for doing something useful)

i recall reading that after ruben sierra's near-mvp season, he came to camp the following year all jacked up with 25 pounds of extra muscle and it fucked up his swing and he only hit 16 hr that year. anyway yeah, and the opposite of kapler is someone like eric davis, who was built like eddie kendricks and was still this epic slugger.

Back then the local media's thought that Ruben just spent too much time in the weight room. (Which was probably also true, but nobody even thought about 'roids circa 1990)

Jack Clark is on the rampage:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4828816

Watch the video too, because they read more quotes from Clark that aren't in the text version of the story.

"All those guys are cheaters -- A-Rod. Fake, phony. Rafael Palmeiro. Fake, a phony," Clark told the newspaper. "Clemens, Bonds. Sosa. Fakes. Phonies. They don't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.

"They should all be in the Hall of Shame," Clark said. "They can afford to build it. They've all got so much money. And they could all go there and talk about the next way to rub something on your skin. The whole thing is creepy.

"They're all creeps. All these guys have been liars."

Clark, a four-time All-Star who hit .267 and belted 340 home runs over 18 seasons, mocked the apologetic and sorrowful tone of McGwire's Monday admission that he used steroids during much of his major league career.

"They're not really a man's man," Clark said. "They're just whimpering boys who are just sad to watch. They try to put it off on somebody else. I don't know how they sleep at night, looking at all their fame, let alone the money they took by faking everybody out and lying to everybody."

waiting for Will Clark to talk about Bonds

enjoying all the various latent phobias in that quote.

Are you guys seriously arguing that performance enhancing drugs might not enhance performance? I think there's a pretty massive body of evidence across the sporting world that drugs can make a huge difference.

And I don't get the "shitty player takes drugs, remains shitty" argument. No, shitty player gets less shitty, performs better than non-juicing team-mate who's then benched, earns new contract while team-mates is DFAd. That's how it's just as unfair.

Are you guys seriously arguing that performance enhancing drugs might not enhance performance?

It's what they're CALLED, it must be true! Healthcare "reform"!

Dude, many of the shitty players who tested positive stayed just as shitty.

Can you imagine how many home runs Jack Clark would hit if he still played? He's huge!

"They don't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. They should all be in the Hall of Shame,"

Lame.

When I was a little kid I had a friend who would always strike out, so I called him Jack Clark.

yer friend shoulda been juicing

in 60 career games against the pirates, these are jack clark's numbers:

.317/.413/.665, 22 HR, 52 RBI

It's what they're CALLED, it must be true! Healthcare "reform"!

ha, nice try. that's just how cagey these players are - they take these drugs, and they want you to think they're taking them to enhance their performance. they're in collusion with the people who describe the drugs, and they perpetrate this fraud on the baseball-loving public in concert: to manufacture, distribute, prescribe & use drugs under the general term "performance enhancing drugs" when, in fact, they all know that the drugs don't actually help them in any way.

it's a gimmick of almost noir-like complexity & nobody's exactly sure what's in it for the players, but one's thing's sure: everybody but the dumb-ass public is in on this complex and knows the deal. a culture of non-recreational drug use toward no particular end but which a bunch of rubes from the countryside think might actually "enhance performance." one theory has it that the players & pharmaceutical companies just do it to drive up stock returns, but the jury's still out on that one.

Uh, "performance enhancing drugs" weren't invented to help baseball players. And the term wasn't invented to describe the effects these drugs have on baseball players.

In some sports, where bigger clearly does equal better (i.e power sports like weightlifting or football) then they clearly do help. In baseball you can't make a simple linear connection between size and player performance. The skill sets required for baseball aren't easily comparable to those in other sports. You don't see 300 pound shortstops in and the best power pitchers aren't necessarily the biggest guys, and so on and so on and so on and I can't believe this isn't obvious to anyone who has ever actually watched baseball.

The problem with this line is the "clear, linear" bit. Baseball's more complex than weightlifting; the line from pro-roids people, expressed on this thread I think!, is "steroids won't make you see the ball better." that's true. it's also true that your body mechanics won't be improved by steroids, and if you bulk up too much, they may actually be compromised. this information, however, doesn't really change that they: 1) are a pharmaceutical shortcut to greater strength; they won't give it to you by themselves, but they will enable you to grow more than you will without them; and, 2), if you are a good player, the chances that you'll be better at the things you do on the field that require more strength are increased with the use of steroids. that is why they're referred to as "performance enhancing," not "skill enhancing," and their use results in exhibitions that are more interesting in the abstract than they are in practice ("Gee, who's gonna throw the ball harder: that scrawny guy, Caveman Biff over there?"), and I can't believe that people who enjoy the game would actually want to see their use debarred.

http://betweenthepoles.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/linc1.jpg

if you are a good player, the chances that you'll be better at the things you do on the field that require more strength are increased with the use of steroids.

That is completely speculative. Did all those crappy middle relief pitchers who got busted for roids end up with more snap to their curveball? Does 20 extra pounds of muscle give you more spring in your step for tracking down fly balls in right? We already know that the most muscular guys aren't necessarily the best hitters, so exactly which other skills are more likely to be enhanced by PED's?

Gee, who's gonna throw the ball harder: that scrawny guy, Caveman Biff over there?"

Maybe you didn't notice that scrawny Tim Lincecum has won two straight NL Cy Young Awards (and is the best strikeout pitcher in the game), and that scrawny Pedro Martinez at his peak (which was during the peak of the hitters' era) was arguably better than any pitcher in baseball history.

I can't believe that people who enjoy the game would actually want to see their use debarred

I think only cankles is the only one on the thread who said that he wouldn't want PED's banned from baseball. You're arguing with yourself here.

i guess my question w/r/t the notion that they don't actually help is then are baseball players being conned by steroids? have they been using them (in large numbers), convinced that they're helpful, and they're actually not? are these players delusional? are the effects psychological and not physical?

NoTime, do you deny climate change too?

CAD: Timmy is well-known doper.

i have... mixed feelings on it. i think there's a very limited spectrum of athletic applications where you can confidently say it helps, but mashing the ball is probably one of them. what barry did would've been impossible without the juice, and the people who disagree are just being relentless contrarians (stares at morbz & shasta) - i remember when mcgwire and sosa were having their showdown I was 12 or so, and I didn't really pay attn to baseball outside of the braves, but i remember pretty clearly taking in mcgwire's sick 'ceps and being astonished - i had never even seen football players who looked like that. that said, i still have some healthy skepticism when it comes to how the media treats steroids like it's super-soldier serum and blindly ascribes to it properties that it doesn't possess.

omar, I remember listening to a radio podcast, probably Radiolab, that talked about the psychology of upper-echelon athletes, and how they have to be, by the nature of their level, self-deceptive, i.e. "I'm the best, nobody can beat me, etc." Like, lots of potential pros have the physical tools to be actual pros, but it's the psychology that enables only some of them to make it, and even fewer to become great pros. So, if they merely think something will give them an edge, then they'd be willing to do it.

The stuff about recovering from injuries faster is definitely real, so if guys take them to recover from various minor injuries (and to help them stay injury-free), then they might play at about the same level but be healthy enough to play 150 games instead of 130. Getting more playing time is a big edge, actually.

Sorry Mark, you're the flat-earther here.

As a Giants fan (nominally), I can say with certainty that Lincecum is a K-machine because of PED (performance enhancing dad).

So, if they merely think something will give them an edge, then they'd be willing to do it.

this is otm, and is one of the devil's advocate arguments i was tempted to trot out. athletes do ALL KINDS of stupid shit that doesn't actually help, but they think it does. sports illustrated used to do these profiles of the training routines that different athletes have, and i would always read them and be amazed at all the dumb shit they did with the idea that it would give them the tiniest sliver of an advantage - stuff that's supposed to help your quickness, explosiveness, jumping ability, when really you're probably no better off than if you just did deads, squats and bench. guys take their training very seriously - i think that's how juice became so seductive for guys like bonds & mcgwire, they were already guys who were just super into training and working out and pushing themselves to the limit - here's a good example

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/players/09/11/workout0918/index.html

tj duckett SUCKS. i'm pretty sure he's not even in the league anymore. doing drills in the sand until he throws up isnt gonna do shit to help him cut or turn the corner better. guys around the league are always adding these routines to their plate though, just to try anything that could potentially help them. matt leinart spent the offseason learning MMA and getting the shit kicked out of him, and he still sucks ass. in conclusion, ¯\(°_o)/¯

NoTime, Lincecum and Pedro were/are sort of extreme outliers in that regard and don't really constitute an argument imo

I think the perceived power explosion of the 'steroid era' is just as attributable to expansion diluting the pitching talent, statistical variance, etc. Until some comprehensive research is done on the effects of steroids on swing/pitching mechanics, I don't think it's fair to consider any of these players numbers 'tainted'. Attacking them on the ethical side of it is still fair game though imo, but if you try to convince me that, for example, Bonds doesn't break the HR records without steroids I've got no reason to believe it.

I do think steroids provided some sort of boost i mean, I just think it wasn't necessarily a significant enough one to not be lost in the white noise of other types of variance

xpost

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/SO_p_leagues.shtml

Lots of these guys weren't considered "big", or even "average", in the last fifteen years there's Lincecum, Peavy, Pedro, Nomo, and Kazmir. Johnson and Harang aren't so much big as they are freakishly tall (no connection to steroids). K's might not be the best indicator of who were the hardest throwing pitchers, but it's not a stretch to say that good pitching is more correlated with good throwing mechanics than with the size of the pitcher.

i think with Bonds it was just like the perfect circumstance - guy with a perfect swing, power profile and plate discipline starts juicing and turns in some godlike seasons for which there was no precedent, and which have never been approximated by anyone else ever. mcgwire was a big guy with (i assume) a good swing and great power profile, so it makes sense with him too.

K's might not be the best indicator of who were the hardest throwing pitchers, but it's not a stretch to say that good pitching is more correlated with good throwing mechanics than with the size of the pitcher

this is generally true, but look at power closers like John Rocker, guys who're getting over largely on what the radar says (not, like Martinez, on movement, strategy, placement, etc) - I think it's kinda head-in-sand to say of guys like that: "well, the jury's still out on whether steroids helped that guy throw the ball harder & helped him throw more pitches before he fatigued"

there werent and arent many pitchers built like john rocker...

i think with Bonds it was just like the perfect circumstance - guy with a perfect swing, power profile and plate discipline ...

― yakko warner (cankles), Sunday, January 17, 2010 2:35 PM (18 minutes ago)

Bonds famously changed his swing in the mid-90s. He used to have a long loping swing and by the 2000s it was a much sharper, efficient cut. Let me check youtube.

that's p interesting

i'm not clear on the argument we're having right now. we're debating the effectiveness of PEDs for the sake of the record books? i mean, even if we all agree doing something like steroids has no effect on a players numbers whatsoever (which i'm not convinced of)(sorry) - it doesn't change the fact that alot of players were using them. how does a players ineffectiveness at cheating have any baring on the fact that they were cheating? or at least trying to?

i'm just sort of confused at this point abt why we're debating what the effect of PEDs may have been here. we know people were using them - and they wouldn't have been unless they were trying to gain an unfair advantage in some way. or are we simply looking at things from a numbers standpoint here?

i think it's a little weird to have those dudes turn in those enormous power seasons that were way beyond what they'd done before, then we discover they were dedicated PED users, and then we try to find every other reason that those three could have achieved those numbers *beyond* steroids. it's not like expansion turned a bunch of other players into 65-70 HR men. i tend to believe that maybe those three were more into the shit than others and so maybe the effects were more extreme, and coupled with their skill set foundation it just turned them into these amazing beasts? i think the circumstantial evidence is stronger that PEDs did something for these guys (because it was these guys who ended up with the record-breaking stats) more than expansion or smaller parks, b/c tbh there were very few players who had a huge leap in stats and i don't think reasons that would supposedly be applicable MLB-wide to every single player would only effect a select few this drastically.

again i say that i don't care if these guys get into the HOF eventually or not, esp. bonds since before his alleged PED use began he was already working on 10 seasons of total dominance.

I dunno, expansion and hitters ballparks have been factors in other hitting eras so I wouldn't say that we're going out of our way with those explanations. Steroids also played a factor, but the 60 homer guys are the exceptions. Expansion, ballparks, watering down of pitching, etc. affects hitting over the entire league.

i guess my question w/r/t the notion that they don't actually help is then are baseball players being conned by steroids? have they been using them (in large numbers), convinced that they're helpful, and they're actually not? are these players delusional? are the effects psychological and not physical?

I think this is a real possibility. How many players are doing the roids without any advice from someone who knows what's what? If you're a pitcher and juice and keep doing bicep curls or stupid Gape-Kapleresque shit, it's not going to make you a better player. And if you're a hitter who can't hit a curve, no amount of steroids will help you, obv.

Steroids aid in recovery (both injury and day-to-day) and building muscle. Unless we want to argue that neither of those has value in baseball, it's hard to argue that steroids do not or cannot enhance performance. Steroids used by bodybuilders or powerlifters are generally used to help them increase workload in order to build more muscle - which might be why we see so many middle relievers using. That minor percentage boost in recovery makes them marginally more effective pitching every other day, keeping them in the majors?

and then we try to find every other reason that those three could have achieved those numbers *beyond* steroids.

hey don't forget us!
http://mysearchspot.com/entertain/images/alex_rodriguez.jpghttp://www.wcbias.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/david-ortiz-manny-ramirez-steroids-red-sox-dodgers-boston-los-angeles.jpg

hi boys!

music died when ppl started using synthesizers, man

maybe synthesizers changed music in certain ways, it's possible....

gay marriage just isn't right, you know?

in my day, the ballplayers did it the right way

i guess at this point steroids probably is just another way, not a right way or wrong way.

lol k3v this is the worst random contrarianism i've ever seen

naw kevin's right, finding fault with anything ever is pining for them old days

"you think something isn't a good idea! fuck you, old man: every idea ever is great!"

"they're talking about adding a fourth strike"
"oh cool, they wouldn't be doing it unless it was awesome"

I'm the flat-earther??? Because I think drugs that give you speedier recovery, enable harder training and build muscle might help a specific type of power player hit balls harder? You're fucking nuts.

I JUST THE BIG PAPI
JUST DRINKING THE MILSHAKE (innocent blush)

COME, EAST AT BIG PAPI'S GRILLE

― sanskrit

I'm the flat-earther???

Yeah, you are. Thanks for stopping by. You might want to read the thread when you get a chance, there's some good discussion here.

lets not turn this into a mlb.com level message board here guys.

If there was no testing, I don't see how it's cheating (btw, could somebody detail Bill James invoking Babe Ruth's corked bat?

And again: THE FUCKING NFL?

...when, in fact, they all know that the drugs don't actually help them in any way.

Ballplayers believe lotsa stupid shit; many of the ones who aren't Republicans probably think Obama's an idealist.

I've never said I thought Bonds would've hit 73/755 w/out his substances. I just don't care.

(I don't think Obama would be president without the biggest campaign warchest of all time either.)

speedy recovery? *shudder*

you will recover just like everyone else, dammit!

i think that these dudes who are most deserving but who have used almost *have* to be allowed into the HOF, if only because i don't think you can realistically not include some of the great players from the past twenty years esp. when you don't know just how much they did. i was iffy on mcgwire at one point and sosa as well (among others), and while i think they were helped perhaps substantially by the PEDs, if you start to blacklist confirmed or suspected PED users than who will represent the '90s and '00s? a few pitchers (not clemens), ichiro, biggio, alomar, larkin, edgar martinez, frank thomas, griffey, and....? all of these dudes are deserving imo but i don't think you can arbitrarily allow certain guys and disallow others when tbh a couple of them might have used for awhile, and one of the guys who got caught might have used a single time. hell, maybe palmeiro never did use PEDs before his testimony and he had a small injury issue and decided to risk it. i understand both sides of this argument very well of course and i have no problem whatsoever with people (especially players who didn't use) who are pissed about it. but i do think you might as well, in the end, vote everyone in and try to make sure guys are clean in the future.

dont forget JEETZ

isn't Sportsman of the Year enough for him?

xxpost

I agree with everything you said ... but it goes even further than that, because guys who haven't tested positive yet (or are suspected PED users) may have still used. Not to point fingers at any one particular player, but it's safe to say that:

1) a majority of the players who used PED's before 2004 have yet to be caught (and will almost certainly never be caught)
2) some players from the 90's and 00's who used PED's will be elected to the HOF, and some (prob. most) of those players will never be caught

And that's the real issue here -- there is no litmus test to be sure about who used and who didn't use (barring a positive test or a confession for a very small percentage of the total number of users), so that evens the playing field and you have to look at everyone as being equal (including known users).

^^^wise poster imo^^^

http://thisisframingham.com/images/big-papi.jpg

Dawson will enter the Hall as an Expo.

that is awesome! Carter gets some company after all!

Dawson himself wanted to go in as a Cub.

there is no such thing as "going in as." It's just the plaque.

I know, I know.

And broadcasters aren't actually HOF members.

http://www.roguesbaseballindex.com/2010/01/29/the-raines-delay/

I read Rob Neyer too.

well, that's good!

Frick Award to Jon Miller.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/hof10/news/story?id=4877543

Well deserved, imo

He's a little gimmicky but I love listening to him call a game.

also, great Spanish pronunciation.

not just spanish, he takes a lot of pride in pronouncing foreign language names accurately. he's quite nuanced.

He really loves to roll out the Caray and Scully impressions at the SABR conventions.

any good new articles about how Dawson really doesn't belong?

Matt Klaassen of Fangraphs has a good article in ESPN Insider about how Dawson should be the baseline for entry in the hall for outfielders (if you weren't as good as Dawson, you definitely don't belong), but it isn't anti-Dawson exactly.

hey, it's another Vets Committee plan! Neyer weighs in.

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/4511/hall-revamps-vets-committee-again

The voting process will now focus on three eras, as opposed to four categories, with three separate electorates to consider a single composite ballot of managers, umpires, executives and long-retired players.

Eras: Candidates will be considered in three eras -- Pre-Integration (1871-1946), Golden (1947-1972) and Expansion (1973-1989 for players; 1973-present for managers, umpires and executives).

Two Obvious Questions:

1. Golden? Really? Could you possibly have come up with a more loaded proper adjective? Aren't there already enough people who think baseball was best when there were only 16 teams and the few games on TV were in black-and-white?

2. Expansion? Beginning in 1973? The first round of expansion happened in 1961 and '62. The next -- and it was a big one -- came in 1969. Then another in 1977. What on earth makes 1973 the beginning of anything? The only thing that happened in 1973 was the designated hitter in the American League, but I can't imagine what bearing that might have on the Hall of Fame.

I haven't figured out the math yet, but one can't help suspecting that drawing the line after 1972 is some sort of gerrymandering, designed to facilitate the election of a particular candidate, or candidates.

TAMPA, Fla. (AP)—The wife of retired baseball star Roberto Alomar has obtained a temporary injunction against him, following a domestic dispute over the weekend.

Maria Del Pilar Alomar, 33, said in a complaint filed Monday that the couple got into an argument at their Hillsborough County home on Sunday. Deputies responded, and the wife told them that she had to push Alomar away when he got several inches from her. No arrests were made.

The complaint also described an incident in June, where Alomar, 42, reportedly yelled at his wife and pushed her. In April, he threatened her with a knife, according to the complaint.

Alomar’s agent, John Boggs, said Wednesday that the allegations against his client were false and defamatory.

“Anyone who knows this couple will immediately recognize that her claims are baseless,” Boggs said. “Mr. Alomar looks forward to his day in court, where he is certain the truth will emerge.”

A hearing is scheduled for Aug. 13.

so we find out the 'Expansion Era' choices on Dec 6.

http://baseballhall.org/news/press-releases/expansion-era-committee-consider-12-candidates-hall-fame-election-december%27s

from a recent BP commenter:

What happened to Mike Norris, Matt Keough, Rick Langford and all the other pitchers from the 1980 A's? 94 complete games by a pitching staff? What kind of sick manager does that? What was Martin trying to prove? None of these pitchers ever threw 100 innings in a season after 1982. When you count up Martin's titles, also count up how many players' careers he ruined.
Yes...he turned Rickey Henderson loose to steal 130 bases...and get thrown out 42 times. Big whoop. Billy Martin for HOF? Get real.

I didn't even know this thing existed...My inclination would be to go with Miller (even though I'd much rather see him get in through the front door) and, admitting to personal bias, Gillick. A couple of others, maybe.