The Oddity In Hall Voting

In the wake of the big reveal on this year's Hall of Fame election, we can quibble, even gladiate, over who, among those on the ballot, deserved a bust in Cooperstown. Those whose enshrinement is being debated were among the greatest baseballers on Planet Earth, regardless of whether or not they make your cut or mine.

I can't plausibly argue that Sammy Sosa doesn't deserve consideration, even though he doesn't get my vote. Nor can you argue likewise against Tim Raines or Curt Schilling. It's not as if F.P. Santangelo's immortality is at issue here.

In fact, the one concept about which nearly everyone agrees is that this year's ballot positively bulges with legitimate candidates. It's the very basis of Jayson Stark's complaint. In a previous post, I counted 12 certifiable no-doubters, without even taking into account several who merited further consideration.

Yet the average voter only selected 8.4 names. How could that be?

Some Theories That Don't Hold Up
I understand that a couple of writers handed in blank ballots. However, it would have taken 85 blank ballots to skew the results so low.

I understand that much of the electorate refuses to check the box next to the names of known steroid users, like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, even though they were the best in the game before they evidently began using. (I mean, I don't understand it, but I understand that it is the case.) Nonetheless, there were available down-ballot candidates to fill their spots, like Edgar Martinez (the greatest DH of all time), Alan Trammel (one of the 15 best shortstops of all-time) and Mike Mussina (every bit as good as John Smoltz except he never accumulated stats out of the pen).

I understand that not everyone with a BBWAA card can comprehend, or come to terms with, those newfangled sabermertronics invented by Billy Beane in Moneyball. So they vote on standards -- like 300 pitching wins -- that were actually discredited by Bill James starting in 1977. In other words, before Ronald Reagan was president; before Germany was one country; before Microsoft existed; before today's 54-year-olds graduated high school.

I understand that not everyone shares my enthusiasm for Mike Piazza, or Jeff Bagwell, or Raines. Presumably some of those who would (inexplicably, to be honest) eschew one or more of those three would find some merit in Jeff Kent, Mark McGwire or (the transparently unworthy) Lee Smith. One way or another, it's hard to fathom failing to find 10 qualified candidates from among this gaggle.

The "Me" Decade
So how do these voters average one-and-a-half blank spaces? It appears that as the number of voters has grown, now above 570, the number of voters seeking their own unique identity has ballooned. There is some significant minority of voters who want to stand out, or make a stand, or stand aside. They vote exclusively for steroid suspects, or exclude anyone with a PED whisper in his dossier. (How else to explain the lack of support for Bagwell, a guy with a 149 OPS+, a great glove at first, 202 stolen bases at a 72% success rate and MVP votes after 10 seasons?)

Or they employ some pretzel logic that would make Michele Bachmann blush, so as to appear cooly contrarian, enigmatically erudite, or just plain inscrutable. Swathed in the downy comfort of 570 other votes, their franchise has become an expression of their individuality, rather than a referendum on the players' Hall of Fame credentials.

In short, it appears that for a small but growing number of BBWAA members, the Hall of Fame vote is about the voter and not the Hall. And it's going to cost some all-time greats their place in Cooperstown.

Let the Gnashing of Teeth Commence

Your guy didn't get into the Baseball Hall of Fame this year. He was the best player on your favorite team or he once signed an autograph for your kid when he didn't have to. Enlightened voters recognize how great he was but the majority has failed to achieve that exalted state. Or he's one of the greatest players of all time and you feel that the bellyaching about unproven drug use is utterly beside the point.

He didn't get elected by the Baseball Writers this year but he might next year, or the year after, or in 2016.

Or a guy you despise did get in. You hate him. He always killed your team. He cursed out your kid in a parking lot. He wasn't as good a player as that other guy who is still waiting.

Whatever the reason, you are taking it out on the Baseball Writers this year. They're a sclerotic old lot who get positions for life even if they haven't covered a game since Duffy Dyer's Expo season. Their ranks don't include broadcasters, meaning cantankerous Neanderthal Murray Chass has a vote, but Vin Scully does not. They couldn't find their way to enshrine seven or eight surefire Hall of Famers this year after failing to elect anyone last year. Let the gnashing of teeth commence.

At the risk of defending a generally incompetent lot, calm down. The selection committee, whoever they've been over the years, has done a pretty good job of honoring the worthy eventually and declining the rest. Who's the worst player elected in the last 40 years by the writers? (Not by the Veterans Committee, which has an execrable record of throwing the doors open for their friends.) Tony Perez? Andre Dawson? Kirby Puckett? Catfish Hunter? Bruce Sutter? There's a level of nitpicking there, no?

It's not like U.L. Washington earned a spot because of his unique toothpicking abilities. Within a couple of percentage points, the crowd wisdom, even of baseball writers, knows wheat from chaff.

Who is the best player definitively barred in the last generation? (Let's skip Mike Piazza, Mike Mussina, Curt Schilling and their ilk. They are still eligible for election.) Lou Whitaker? Bobby Grich? David Cone? 

The BBWAA sometimes takes a circuitous route, but they ultimately get it right 98% of the time. It's a standard we'd be thrilled to apply to government social programs (they'd all disappear), blog predictions and gas gauges. (But not to airplane flights.) Cell coverage is spotty and you have to reboot your computer a lot more than two percent of the time.

So cut the Hall some slack. The backlog will work itself out. Biggio and Bagwell will get in. The steroid guys are a complication whose code no one has yet cracked. And if they crash on Edgar Martinez or Tim Raines, well, we all have our blind spots. As Mets announcer Bob Murphy used to say, that's why they put erasers on pencils.

And in case you're wondering why Jack Morris ultimately fell short, consider this: To end his career with Morris's IP and ERA+, Kevin Appier would need to throw 1228 2/3 more innings with a 6.23 ERA. If you think Kevin Appier's career, with seven full seasons of well below-replacement level pitching added on, equals a Hall of Famer, then you have a right to be upset. But you wouldn't have the acumen of a baseball writer.

Catching Up . . . Awards, Goodbye Brian McCann, So Long Turner Field

Baseball events have continued apace despite a Braindrizzling hiatus. How can that be? Perhaps Joe Posnanski kept things afloat in the interim.

The Cy Young Awards were announced this week. There's not a whole lot of room for debate on Clayton Kershaw or Max Scherzer. Kershaw led the planet in ERA, and that includes Little League. Scherzer's 21-3 record and nearly six runs of support per start don't accrue to his credit, but he shouldn't be penalized for them either. Scherzer gets the prize because he dominated AL batters to the tune of a nifty 2.90 ERA, 240 strikeouts in 214 innings, and a best-in-class .97 WHIP.

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The same for Rookie of the Year awards. The trophy would have gone to Yasiel Puig in almost any other year. He punched balls all over the yard, 60% better than league average, and added dynamite to a moribund Dodger offense when he arrived. In years when such luminaries as Geovany Soto, Jason Jennings, Angel Berroa and Bobby Crosby earned top honors, Puig would have run away. Sadly for him, his freshman season coincided with Jose Fernandez's, which awoke ghosts of Fernandomania en route to a 12-6, 2.19 with more whiffs than frames pitched. 

In the AL, Wil Myers and his .293/.354/.478 in slightly more than half a season was the pretty clear choice over shortstop Jose Iglesias and a couple of nice pitchers. In all, not much to complain about.

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The MVP Awards went as expected to Andrew McCutchen and Miguel Cabrera. Both were excellent choices. That Cabrera wasn't the best choice doesn't change the fact that he had another  MVP-caliber season. It's difficult to be disappointed when a great candidate, the second-best of the league's 600 players, secures the honor. It's easy to be disappointed that Major League baseball writers don't know the difference between a great hitter and a great player, and can't fathom how one player's value isn't dependent on the performances of his teammates, but if being disappointed in baseball writers were a virus, we'd all have a permanent case of Ebola.

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You probably heard that teams made $14.1 million qualifying offers to 13 players, every one of which was declined. This is a ritual dance carried out by GMs and players under the new collective bargaining agreement. The players are now free agents who may seek multi-year deals. The teams may or may not want the players back but they will receive compensation draft picks if their former player is signed elsewhere.

Let's take the case of Braves backstop Brian McCann. The Georgia native is leaving by mutual decision, a net benefit for both him and the team even if he inks a five-year, $12 million/year deal with a catcher-starved franchise. (Hello Yankees! By the way, $12 mil is going to be cat pee compared to what McCann commands.) That serves McCann, who at 29 is headed into his decline years, but would guarantee the McCann family $60 million, rather than $14.1 million. It serves the good people of Atlanta -- or Marietta -- because the Braves have cheaper options and serious budget constraints. Leading the parade to replace the seven-time All-Star is Evan Gattis, whose above-average hitting comes with a half-million-dollar price tag and whose value is much greater behind the plate than in left field, where he attempted to hide in 2013. In addition, Atlanta would receive a first round supplemental pick from the signing team.

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Speaking of the Braves, they've flipped Turner Field into the trashcan after just 17 years, like it's a disposable lighter. Shame on the the various entities (which included NBC and the Atlanta Olympic Authority) for paying the massive retrofit costs to turn Centennial Olympic Stadium into Turner Field without requiring the Braves to sign a long-term lease.

The franchise and its new hosts, suburban Cobb County, claim the new home will be a "public-private partnership." This is code for an arrangement in which the public pays the bill and the team reaps the benefits.

In most "public-private" arrangements around sports stadiums, municipalities foot the bill and then lend their borrowing authority to the team for a portion of the costs. The team repays its loan at a discounted rate because the bonds are low-interest and tax-free. The municipality restricts its future borrowing ability for things like schools, hospitals, sewer systems and infrastructure that teams regularly complain about. 

Many econometric studies have demonstrated that even after accounting for all the possible spending resulting from relocated sports teams, municipalities rarely earn back the value of their investments in stadiums unless those edifices are key cogs in new downtown development. Baseball teams are relatively smal businesses whose payrolls generally leave the state from November through March. The stadiums lay empty roughly 250 days-a-year and their use often generates as many costs for the city as tax income, all while the bonds demand repayment.

So the Braves will begin play in their third home in 21 years when they move to Marietta while the Red Sox have competed in the Fens for more than a century.

Hall Aflame

At the risk of driving over an old road: I understand how baseball writers can deny steroid users Bonds and Clemens first-ballot Hall of Fame status.

But how do they justify slamming the door in the faces of Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Tim Raines, Curt Schilling and Edgar Martinez?

And Mike Piazza? If the greatest hitting catcher of all time isn't a Hall of Famer, then Bowie Kuhn really does belong.

Just for grins, let's recap the career that two of every five writers dismissed. In 15 seasons (plus a cup-a-Joe) he hit .308/.377/.545, the highest OPS for any catcher in history. He belted 427 homers, the most all-time by a guy who primarily caught. That's despite playing all but five games of his career in bomb shelters -- Dodger Stadium, Shea Stadium, Petco  and whatever they call that monstrosity in Oakland.

He hit 43% above average, which is to say twice as well as an average backstop. He hit .300+ for eight straight seasons and finished in the top 10 of MVP voting seven times. With the lumber, he is the superior of everyone in the history of the planet who has ever squatted behind the plate. 

By no accounts was Piazza an asset defensively. Baseball-Reference.com rates his career about replacement level in the field. But that hardly offsets his 63 wins above replacement at the plate. The average HOF catcher is at about 49 wins above replacement. 

There has been some sniffing among the voting writers that links Piazza with steroids. Any journalist  relying on innuendo to besmirch one of the greatest careers in the annals of the sport deserves to be fired, much less have his BBWAA card burned. Since when is innuendo a credible source?

The writers whiffed this year and the result is a HOF ceremony in August that will induct three men long dead before a crowd of dozens and a flood of empty Cooperstown hotel rooms. Bu Selig has got to be cringing. 

The baseball writers have managed the impossible. They've made Gary Bettman look good.

The Man in the Mirror

Do you remember how exciting the '98 season was with Big Mac and Sammy crashing their way through the magical land of Sixtyone? Remember how thrilling it was when McGwire reached out one of his Popeye arms and deposited a pitch just over the opposite field fence and into the record books before embracing the Maris family? Remember how every time he came to bat thousands of camera flashes would sparkle against the summer night?

Remember what cognitive dissonance we all felt when a reporter found androstenedione in Big Mac's locker? Remember how it threatened to spoil the fun? Remember how the rest of the sports media world attacked --  the reporter! -- and how we all breathed a sigh of relief that we had been given permission to ignore the signs that the home run race was artificially sweetened?

We so wanted the history to be made. We wanted to be there for it. We rooted for Mac over Sosa even though Mac was moody and brooding, while Sosa was joyful and effervescent, because the massive redhead was the rightful heir to Ruth and Maris.

Remember?

No, actually, you've forgotten, particularly if you're a voting member of the BBWAA. All week we've heard the wailing, the gnashing of teeth, and of course, what about the children! In the wake of his quasi-admission that he juiced, Mark McGwire has been called everything but a Tonton Macoutes, and seems to have sealed any chance he might have had of winning free admission into the Hall of Fame.

Now I'll give you this: McGwire's mea culpa was overdue, self-serving, semi-graceless and stinking of denial, and the orchestrated Tony LaRussa follow-on was downright mendacious and insulting. McGwire uncorked that old shibboleth about steroids not giving a guy the ability to hit. He flexed that pathetic excuse that he shot up for a decade to recover from injuries. LaRussa insisted he didn't know his slugger juiced, even after McGwire's admission by omission before Congress five years ago. (It's worth noting that LaRussa is a lawyer. He knows what obfuscating sounds like.)

But here's the truth that no one, particularly those 20-year BBWAA members with HOF votes, wants to acknowledge: we're all collaborators. We liked being on the record-breaking train and we didn't want our trip upended by a hormone scandal. More than that, steroid use was widespread, if not rampant, for years, but not a single reporter whom I'm aware of ever documented it. Many of the very best players of the day -- Jose Canseco, Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Ivan Rodriguez, Miguel Tejada, Jason Giambi and Rafael Palmeiro -- were apparently poking themselves with needles, and not a single reporter knew? Please.

So spare me the righteous indignation. You were in on it. The main difference between you and Mark McGwire is that Mark McGwire has finally taken some responsibility for his role.

b

The Blind Squirrel Theory

Several readers have asked why no diatribe about the award choices. The answer: I'm still recovering from shock. Writers managed to get all six major awards right. What's to say?

It doesn't hurt that the choices for all but AL MVP were Yale locks. Would anyone really argue that Geovanny Soto wasn't the NL Rookie of the Year? (Well, yes. Three so-called expert baseball writers cast ballots for Edinson Volquez, who didn't qualify for rookie status. Good thing we limit the voting to the people who follow the game daily.) Or that Tim Lincecum was the best pitcher in the Senior Circuit?

In the AL MVP race, there were two best choices and the BBWAA chose one of them. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.

I could quibble over the large minority of voters who think Ryan Howard, he of the .339 OBP and miserable fielding, is his league's most valuable. I still shake my head over writers' mancrush on Justin Morneau, whose major accomplishment seems to be hitting behind Joe Mauer. But really, down-ballot debates are for geeks, obssessives and childless...um, uh, well I just don't want to engage in them.

Notice that I haven't mentioned the Manager of the Year Award. The truth is, there is no such award. There is simply an award for the manager whose team most out-performed expectations. I don't believe that anyone knows who is having a "good year" or "bad year" managing, short of an outright mutiny by the players. And the proof is that managers never repeat, even though it's fair to assume that whoever is the best manager in baseball is probably the best several years running. The reason is that once a team achieves success, they can't be a surprise the next year.

So bravo for a year in which the deserving were acknowledged. Don't count on it happening again. Blind squirrels don't generally regain their sight.

Up for Grabs

What do Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youklis, Milton Bradley, Ian Kinsler, Carlos Quentin, Alex Rodriguez and Cliff Lee have in common? Each of them can make a case to be the AL MVP. At the same time, none of them can make a strong case.

Cliff Lee, of course, has been spectacular for the Indians. While his team's offense has sputtered, he's posted a 22-3, 2.54 record and a 5-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 223 innings. He's been not just an innings eater; he's been an innings killer. His value, relative to the value of a AAA-level replacement at his position, has been the highest in the American League.

But pitchers have their own award, which Lee will win over Roy Halladay in Johnson-Goldwater style. Besides, no one really has confidence that there's any way to compare pitchers to everyday players.

Milton Bradley has been the best hitter in the AL when he's been healthy. He's gotten on base safely 44% of the time and pounded 22 homers and 32 doubles in just 500 plate appearances, and played a creditable outfield on those 37 occasions when he's been asked to. The problem with Bradley's candidacy is that during the nearly 40 games he's missed this season, his value to his team has been zero. That and the park effects of whatever they're calling The Ballpark at Arlington these days really hamper his claim.

As is his wont, Alex Rodriguez has been the best player in the AL this year. His .963 OPS, his 11th straight season with 35 homers, his 18 steals in 21 attempts and his good defense at an important position are straight out of MVP Central Casting. But there is no doubt that ARod has peed his pants everytime the Bombers have needed him to come up big.

Dustin Pedroia seems to have a lot of support for AL MVP. He's been the Red Sox sparkplug, hitting safely 38% of the time with surprising power -- 54 doubles and 17 jacks -- while swiping 20 of 21 bags. On top of that, he's an excellent middle infielder. He may not have the numbers of competitiors at DH and first base, but he'd be significantly more difficult to replace.

Paired with Pedroia is Ian Kinsler, whose resume is eerily similar. His on-base percentage matches Pedroia's and he's hit for even more power and succeeded in 26 of 28 steal attempts. He's also a very good second-sacker. But Pedroia gets the edge because he's played nearly 40 more games and batted in a tougher home park for offense.

Carolos Quentin's problem is not just that he's missed 32 games, but the 32 most critical of the year. As the White Sox struggle to hold off the Twins, Quentin can't contribute a thing to his team because of his broken wrist. It's not his fault that he got hit by a pitch, but it's the fact nonetheless. Lo siento, Carlos.

Kevin Youklis is a fine first-bagger with a .965 OPS who has been a steady force on the Red Sox all season, but an MVP? His credentials are more like "she has a nice personality" than "man, she's hot!" Much the same can be said for Justin Morneau, whose .883 OPS as a first baseman is just not MVP material.

I don't know how many baseball writers have slept with Morneau's wife, but something about him engenders love from the baseball media far beyond his baseball accomplishments. We already know he wasn't Deep Throat, right? With the prospect of another Morneau MVP unforeclosed, Bud Selig should agree immediately to apply the video replay rule to the BBWAA vote. That call would get overturned by a knowledgable umpire so fast it would leave Usain Bolt in the dust.

As a matter of fact, Justin Morneau is the second best player on the Twins. Imagine if you could find a guy who hits just as well, but plays a position where hitters are scarcer than truths in a presidential election. Batting champion Joe Mauer's .867 OPS comes out of a squat. The OPS of the next best fulltime AL catcher? Dioner Navarro's .756. That gives Minnesota a giant advantage over other teams.

To beat a dead horse, notice that none of the candidates has been examined in the context of his team's place in the standings. All they can do is contribute wins to their teams by swinging the ash and pumping the leather. Whether those are wins 90-99 or 70-79 is a matter for their teammates to answer for.

One more thing from the equine mortuary: there is little place in this discussion for late season heroics. Why give extra credit to a player who saddles his team with a weak first-half performance and then turns it on in August? How is that better than carrying your team to a big lead and tailing off as the summer turns to Fall? Or just playing consistantly well all 162 games?

Dustin Pedroia and Joe Mauer are my MVP guys and frankly I'm not sure how to distinguish them. Baseball writers who mark their ballots for ARod or Quentin or Lee will be excused for their mental absence. But if Francisco Rodriguez gets even a third place vote, the perpetrator(s) should be hunted down and forced to watch Pirate games for the next decade.