Hall of Fame, 2016
Jan. 7th, 2016 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiNot surprisingly, I continue to have thoughts on the MLB Hall of Fame:
1. Griffey was a lock, and his election is well-deserved.
2. The fact that it took four years for Mike Piazza to get elected is a fucking crime. Full stop.
3. As long as Ty Cobb remains in the Hall, the fact that Curt Schilling is, well, Curt Schilling should not be a reason for him to be on the outside looking in. He's worthy.
4. Also, Clemens and Bond belong in the Hall.
5. Jeff Kent most certainly does not, and any writer who'd only vote for Kent and Griffey shows incredibly incompetence.
6. Tim Raines not making it next year would be so sad. He belongs, but has only one more shot. If he had two years, he'd be a lock.
7. Jeff Bagwell will clearly make it in next year. As he should.
8. The bias against recent players continues to be an issue, although purging the nearly 100 voters who hadn't covered MLB in years was a huge start. But limiting folks to ten votes is also a problem. There a lot of legit HOF-worthy candidates this year (Junior, Piazza, Schilling, Clemens, Bond, Raines, Bagwell, Alan Trammell (who, like Jack Morris before him, is now done on this ballot), Edgar Martinez), with others (Mike Mussina, Lee Smith, Trevor Hoffman, Billy Wagner) being worth having a conversation about.
9. OTOH, voters who had ten slots and wasted any of them on David Eckstein or Mike Sweeney are grossly unqualified for their jobs.
10. Looking ahead, only Pudge Rodriguez, of the folks joining the ballot, would get my vote. I'm tempted to say he should wait five years out of spite for how the voters treated Piazza, but that's hardly his fault.
1. Griffey was a lock, and his election is well-deserved.
2. The fact that it took four years for Mike Piazza to get elected is a fucking crime. Full stop.
3. As long as Ty Cobb remains in the Hall, the fact that Curt Schilling is, well, Curt Schilling should not be a reason for him to be on the outside looking in. He's worthy.
4. Also, Clemens and Bond belong in the Hall.
5. Jeff Kent most certainly does not, and any writer who'd only vote for Kent and Griffey shows incredibly incompetence.
6. Tim Raines not making it next year would be so sad. He belongs, but has only one more shot. If he had two years, he'd be a lock.
7. Jeff Bagwell will clearly make it in next year. As he should.
8. The bias against recent players continues to be an issue, although purging the nearly 100 voters who hadn't covered MLB in years was a huge start. But limiting folks to ten votes is also a problem. There a lot of legit HOF-worthy candidates this year (Junior, Piazza, Schilling, Clemens, Bond, Raines, Bagwell, Alan Trammell (who, like Jack Morris before him, is now done on this ballot), Edgar Martinez), with others (Mike Mussina, Lee Smith, Trevor Hoffman, Billy Wagner) being worth having a conversation about.
9. OTOH, voters who had ten slots and wasted any of them on David Eckstein or Mike Sweeney are grossly unqualified for their jobs.
10. Looking ahead, only Pudge Rodriguez, of the folks joining the ballot, would get my vote. I'm tempted to say he should wait five years out of spite for how the voters treated Piazza, but that's hardly his fault.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-08 03:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-01-08 07:24 pm (UTC)Whether he should be admitted is another story. I find actively betting on games to be more of a concern than PEDs; but it's impossible to deny that he was also one of the truly great hitters in the game, and even if you ignore the final five seasons (when he was basically pushing for the record), he was a fantastic player.
That said, it's not unreasonable to suggest that the damage he did to the game directly affected things (in the same way that WAR measures the good and the bad when determining a number).