Edgy MD

Ceetar wrote: More people will sell their votes. anonymously. Why do you say this? It's an amazing contention.

What's the point of being angry about the malapropisms, though? (And while repeating three of the top ones?) The longest list you saw had 67 of them --- this suggests you've done some reading yourself. To their credit, more than a few obituaries seem to have worked around that or made clear that he was far more than the malapropisms.

Forcing public ballots certainly seems against the spirit of the thing. Think about it for a bit, and you'll conclude that it'll almost certainly lead to unintended worse consequences.

I'd suggest that "not voting for anyone who played after an arbitrary date because the sport was not clean (as if it ever was)" IS "voting for baseball careers of the players on the ballot," whether we like the way they voted for it or not.

Ceetar wrote: Edgy MD wrote: Creatine was a legal over-the-counter dietary supplement. Whatever its merits and demerits, it's far from the same category as HGH. I imagine everybody was using it. I imagine most everybody probably still is. Well, Androstenedione is a little more than Creatine, but also was legal and basically over the counter too no? How many team trainers probably swore by the stuff? especially for power guys? Andro is meaningfully different. I don't know how how many trainers swore by the stuff. How many do you know of?

Creatine was a legal over-the-counter dietary supplement. Whatever its merits and demerits, it's far from the same category as HGH. I imagine most everybody was using it. I imagine a greater part of the league probably still is. It's not banned, but some studies link it to oblique injuries.

What if it takes social campaigning to clarify that somebody was indeed among the elite of the elite?

Kong76 wrote: As much as they pained me year after year after year ... it's kinda nice that the two Los Bravos go in together. No? *runs to hide behind jukebox* Kong76 wrote: Mets just sent out an email congratulating Glavine. Fuck them. Nice.

If anybody should "look good" it's him. He was great in his 20s and faded, seemingly naturally, in his 30s. But that's one of things were trying to sort out. The era not only allowed some buys to disqualify themselves by extending their career, but also hurt other guys (Raines, Griffey, and such) by creating new expectations about what a Hall of Famer's career arc should look like).

Well, then, I mis-read the ballot. Or clicked the wrong link. YAY!! (Yay?)

Korea won a couple of early laps there also. Looks like Seaver's record is out, too.

Jack Kennedy certainly wouldn't have died, the Beatles wouldn't have broken up, and NBC never would have cancelled Manimal.

As per Tom House, Deadspin posted a serious rip job the other day on a softball ESPN story (not actually about softball) in which Tom House was consulted as a mechanics guru for Tim Tebow, and they called into question whether Tom House was any sort of authority at all --- not because he had a baseball background, but because they never heard of him and they're Googling didn't turn up anything. About 120 readers had to log on and let them know that House was pretty well known in baseball circles, and famously introduced to Nolan Ryan late in his career the notion of training by throwing footballs.

Almost all of the arguments I see advancing Morris' case are of the cherrypicking variety; "he was the best at X from arbitrary date A until arbitrary point B" seems to be the most common, which proves only that better pitchers' careers that overlapped with his didn't exactly overlap. I'd add that the cherrypicking argument extends to "he was the best at X from arbitrary date A until arbitrary point B... by the rather arbitrary standard of wins credited." Other outsiders as good as or better: Vida Blue, Dwight Gooden, Mickey Lolich, Dennis Martinez... .

Well, it's both --- a morality issue and an integrity issue. And of course they're intertwined. The case that "we can't trust these numbers" is certainly made. I'm not sure which ineffective steroids users you're suggesting are getting a pass.

Well, accepting that as true, it's the presumably effective usage that taints the the statistical case of many of these guys, so that's not as illogical as all that.

metsguyinmichigan wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: metirish wrote: Don't really care about Maddux, the guys rational is silly. Yeah, but he's only one guy. I'm wondering if the HOF induction process is really as broken as many seem to claim. It seems to be that they get it right for the most part. I can't think of an eligible Ted Williams or Tom Seaver caliber player who hasn't gotten in. Sure, there are a few HOF'ers who I would exclude and a few on the outside that I'd include. But that's just my POV. And I'm not gonna trash the induction process just because it doesn't jibe perfectly with my personal sensibilities. The process isn't perfect, but it's no more broken than any other voting process, I suppose. I think last year's non-election despite the plethora of qualified players is more of an indictment. I do think we're seeing more and more people voting for 5 or more players this year. I don't think there will ever be a 100 percent player as long as there are 600 people casting ballots. There are bound to be some self-aggrandizing idiot, and the guy only voting for Morris is a prime example. I'm more outraged by the 20+ guys who didn't vote for Mays or Aaron. Given the era, it suspect they were lacking more than baseball knowledge. I don't know. Things don't happen until they happen. Black presidents, crumbling Soviet bloc, gay marriage. With ever-increasing pressure to fill out ballots responsibly, and an apparent diminishing (or outright disappearance) of the no first-timers-ever contingent, it is bound to happen in the not-too-distant future with some unimpeachable guy with fine teeth and a caring wife name Tamber. (She's stylish, but not huffy.) But I really don't think it's worth getting enraged about. Willie Mays is still Willie Mays, whether 495 people think so or 497. The benefit of liberally embracing outlying votes far outweigh the alleged insult of non-unanimity. I don't want to seem a Morris hater, but he's gotten really far on that most-wins in the eighties brand. I can probably name 10 starters with cases as good as or stronger than him who get little consideration. David Cone. Kevin Brown. Jerry Koosman. Ron Guidry. Bret Saberhagen. Frank Viola. Dave Fuckin' Steib. Who blinked when Dave Steib got 1.4% of the vote and disappeared from the ballot after 2004? But he had 57 pitching WAR and Jack Morris had 43.8. Tack a dubious 10 WAR onto Morris' career for his post-season heroics, and you're still in a predicament. Steib pitched mostly for a struggling Toronto team in an era of fewer post-season opportunities, and he's still ahead.

Ma�ana, I think

Mike Piazza on Tom Glavine wrote: .360 / .467 / .667 // 1.133 with a sample size of 90 plate appearances, the highest number of appearances for Piazza against any pitcher.

Tom Glavine on Mike Piazza wrote: [Was] he a first ballot Hall of Famer? I don't know. There are certain guys like that who are a little bit debatable.

metirish wrote: So, Jack Morris never played in the "steroid era"?... I think, for most writers who believe there is a hard line, it begins after the strike. Ends with the advent of mandatory testing.

I don't think any Rose ballots were thrown out. (Write-ins are legal, and if ballots were tossed, I imagine they wouldn't be counted.) They may have been blank submissions to protest Rose's exclusion, if that's what you mean. Seaver was named on 98.84% (on 425 of 430 ballots), higher than Nolan Ryan's 98.79% (491 of 497), and Ty Cobb's 98.23% (222 of 226). Three of the five ballots that had omitted Seaver were blank, cast by writers protesting the Hall's decision to make Pete Rose ineligible for consideration. One ballot was sent by a writer who was recovering from open-heart surgery and failed to notice Seaver's name. The fifth "no" vote was cast by a writer who said he never voted for any player in their first year of eligibility. (source: USA Today.)

I agree that it's not broken at all. The idea of an election is to get a rational consensus out of by polling a broad enough body all of our flawed perspectives that the particular irrationalities of this voter or that voter is filtered out by (or more accurately, sublimated by) the final process. Last year sucked, but the conversation advanced, and it was an invaluable contribution to baseball understanding where it is and where it wants to go.. But seriously, people... RAINES!

In general, the lack of unanimity doesn't bother me. Broad electoral processes should be a mess, with results gathered from a broad range of opinions. The idea that viable candidates --- including and especially "pre-steroid era" rock stars like Alan Trammell and Tim Raines (both better than Morris) --- are utterly lost in the conversation while we rend our shirts over the roid issue year after year, that bothers me. As for "never" having a unanimous candidate, I think that's ridiculous. Jeter, for instance, has a damn good chance. It'll stink if he breaks Seaver's record and Maddux doesn't (although Maddux certainly still may, one vote being one vote), but c'est la vie.

I miss Jaff Decker.