...I lost interest in the HOF voting procedure a very long time ago...(in young person speak...a very long time ago means at a significantly earlier stage of my emotional development, which in my case, refers to when I was like 20)..
The BBWAA is a joke. The way the baseball writers think is, quite frankly, inexcusably narrow minded and anti-American (yes, I said anti-American). These men are holding back national understanding of the game by 40 years because, like a bunch of petulent children, they think their way is the only way.
Edgar Martinez is just the latest travesty. A long line of men getting the vote for all the wrong reasons and failing to get the vote for similarly wrong reasons prevails. I have no respect at all for the BBWAA. None. If they offered me membership by some accident, I would refuse it.
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=== DH ===
An argument floated around the 'net this week, pointing out that if you reject the DH on moral grounds :- ) you've got to reject relief pitchers too. Brilliant! :guinness:
(We might add, how about "one-dimensional" pitchers generally -- they only help in one half of the inning, as is true with the DH -- but let's not and say we did.)
While we're on the topic of subjective factors, like hatred of the DH, I personally had guessed that it was going to count for a whale of a lot, that Edgar:
- Played in one, blue, uniform his entire career including minors, and
- Is such a sugar-sweet guy, and
- Was such an oasis of non-covetousness in a greed-crazed era, and
- Personally saved baseball from the soul-burning 1994 strike (the 1995 ALDS re-booted the fan network's love for the game), and
- Personally saved the Mariners from Tampa Bay (without Refuse to Lose, Safeco isn't built) ...
... Would count for a whale of a lot with writers.
However, their negativity about the DH overwhelmed all that other stuff.
Among the subjective factors on Edgar, most are very positive. With this buffet selection of emotional Edgar topics to discuss, national writers have made the sour choice and have grimly focused on what gripes them.
Hey, if you're going to keep Dick Allen and Barry Bonds and Pete Rose (when it comes down to it) out because they're jerks, then you've got to factor it in when a ballplayer is Nature's Perfect Ambassador. You don't get to count personality only when you're in a bad mood.
Edgar stands for everything that's right about baseball. It is not a Hall of the Best. It is a Hall of Fame. The street outside Safeco is named for Edgar, not Randy Johnson.
Edgar's more "famous" in Seattle than the Big Unit -- he is more "widely honored and acclaimed." Acclaiming the Edgar Martinezes of baseball is partly what the HOF is for.
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=== DH's Outside the Hall ===
Lonnie asked me, in the 10 Q's deal at Mariner Central:
Q10 - Do you think the DH position is good or bad for baseball?
In the 1950's, offensive linemen kicked field goals. As the sport progresses, that starts to get kind of silly.
Watching Tim Lincecum try to hit Roy Halladay is like asking Walter Jones to kick a field goal. I don't value yesteryear that much. I'm an old guy, but don't have a lot of desire to argue that everything was better in the 1960's.
James wrote that rules have to flex or pro sports break. There have been 9,000 rules changes in the NBA, precisely to keep the sport from "breaking," becoming boring, as the players and fans change.
Baseball is absolutely unique in its desire to represent -- as much as possible -- that it had everything "correct" in 1906. Baseball changes things only when it has a gun to its head. That's unhealthy.
.....
I think I read 23 articles this week that read, "I didn't vote for Don Mattingly. So I'm not voting for Edgar." However, you and your amigos did vote for 153 other batters who accomplished less than Edgar did.
You might consider the +153 players as well as the -4, now that you're an objective "journalist" as opposed to just a sportswriter.
....
In my view, the condescension against "specialized" players is traditionalism in its worst sense. It is nostalgia squaring off against normal and healthy progress. It is asking others to validate our childhoods, even when it forces others bear a sacrifice that we do not share in.
A lot of the national writers are out there arguing furiously, "Careful, boys, it's a slippery slope and the next thing you know, we'll have five of those slimy DH's in!" -- has been breathtaking. A guy 50 lbs. overweight, with a hot dog in his hand, complaining that an MLB batting champion isn't a real athlete.
Edgar was a great athlete, boys.
.....
It was a privilege Gar,
Dr D
Comments
There are serious, serious issues with their credibility. I'm wit' you.
Problemo is, the HOF means a lot of $$ to the guys voted in. ::sigh::
...this is the group that accidentally elected the wrong Farrell and wouldn't admit their mistake.
The HOF is a joke. Someone should create a second HOF...call it the Baseball Hall of Merit or something...
It's the basically the HOF Monitor. Done.
The BBWAA is a joke that will hopefully perish as newspapers die off and we run out of real 'writers'. And it's not even in the snubs that this is markedly proven. It's also true in the votes for 'real' HOFers. Why weren't Ricky Henderson, Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron unanimous? What POSSIBLE argument could you structure against any of those players? Up coming, there should be no questions on Greg Maddux, Albert Pujols, Ichiro, Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, Alex Rodriguez or Chipper Jones.
The BBWAA really only needs to vote on two things: non-players and 'borderline' players that *should* be tested. The rest of it can be solved by the HOF Monitor and Index Scores like the SAT or something.
We already have the 10 years requirement. Let's go a little further. The writers can hash it out when you have a Kirby Puckett, John Smoltz or Curt Schilling come up. In fact, the writers can be the ones that vote on standards, for all I care. Let's just make it a little more fair and less personal crusades and vendettas.
Too much cloak and dagger for me.
The HOF monitor a junky toy stat...typical for James. Of course in this case, it does exactly what he claims it does...it tracks how the voters have behaved in the past. So that's all well and good.
I want my HOF to be based on real objective analysis blended with adjustments for character issues applied only to borderline candidates.
But yes...the statistical approach works once we get past our stupid golden era prejudices.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/hof10/news/story?id=4755544
Picked this up at USSM.
As Schoenfield says, the most compelling point is the comparison to relief pitchers.
As far as the "Fame" part of the Hall of Fame eligibility issue goes, I think Edgar's one of very few recent MLB players who's been celebrated with a psuedo-epic poem about one of his exploits-I mean the Double:
http://1995mariners.com/2009/12/30/edgar-at-the-bat/
That argument puts "paid" to the ostensible "problem" that one-dimensional players shouldn't be in the Hall.
Of course, starting pitchers themselves are one-dimensional. They help only during 50% of the half-innings. (They get a few hits here and there? Edgar played 500 games in the field.)
Why weren't Ricky Henderson, Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron unanimous? What POSSIBLE argument could you structure against any of those players? Up coming, there should be no questions on Greg Maddux, Albert Pujols, Ichiro, Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, Alex Rodriguez or Chipper Jones.
Right. Aaron wasn't unanimous because writers make it personal. As James put it, the HOF has so many credibility issues that "It no longer can honor a player like Aaron. It can only insult him."
It would never happen, but I would love to see an HOF Monitor trigger at, say, 200 points. You lap the field, we put gold piping on your uniform and the fans get to enjoy watching an inducted HOF'er play baseball.
The HOF Monitor is probably not the best, but at the same time, you don't really want to bog it down with heavy number crunching either.
A lot of sabers complain about stats like Wins, RBIs and ERA, but the truth is, very few bad or borderline HOFers have bad peripheral stats. I would prefer the index simple... Rank in League in OBP, Hits, HRs, RBI, Runs, SB, etc./Season x weighting points, etc. Defense is tougher, but i think this is where you blend stuff like UZR, but with surveys of scouts, players, coaches, etc.
We get tied up in lots of stats, especially stuff like WPA, but I don't see the point of penalizing an RBI/Run because it was scored in a blow out. All things equal, the run is still a run.
Anyways, anything would be better than what we have now.
For Aaron and Mays, there was probably some residual racism.
And when Ichiro comes down the pipe, it will be a debate over NPB production. But the sad part is that few writers will even consider the point that the world is not 'free' and not put a check on Ichiro. MLB is a notorious cartel/business model that has very exclusive controls over its employees. The same applies for the NPB, but the writers will nonetheless insult the sovereignity of other league's rules and its former players by penalizing them for what is essentially not under the control of the player.
would, holding to their apparent logic, have to disallow any AL pitchers, since they didn't have anything to do with the offensive side of the ball.
I know it's too simplistic and there are holes when you take it to the extreme, but in the end the pitcher is just the leader of the defensive unit. He dictates how the game will play out for half of the game. The DH presents the same value on the opposite side of the ball.
If you're going to vote Ozzie Smith into the HOF, you have to vote Edgar. 'Gar was one-dimensional when it comes to his game-changing skills, but so was The Wizard. Ozzie didn't win many games with his bat, just like Edgar didn't win many games with his glove.
There are just too many flaws in the pseudo-logic of the crusty ol' timers who simply refuse to acknowledge that, as Doc pointed out earlier, the game has moved past the version they grew up with. There's a reason the AL dominates interleague. The NL rules are inferior. Time to accept that by inducting the greatest DH ever.