The results of this year’s voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame will be announced Wednesday. Scott Behson says it’s a shame that some of the sportswriters with votes take that responsibility so lightly or, worse, wield it vindictively. Here he calls out two.
This time of year, there’s a lot of hand wringing about the balloting for Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame. Most of this attention falls on the Baseball Writers Association of America, whose members have been given the task of voting for the Hall*. Once one is a member of the BBWAA for 10 years, one gets a lifetime vote on Hall of Fame candidates.
This lifetime vote applies even if members no longer cover baseball for a living**. In fact, there are many retired writers who still vote. There are others who cover golf, moved on to news, or moved out of journalism entirely. In short, many Hall voters are no longer more informed than an average fan.
In short, many Hall voters are no longer more informed than an average fan.
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In fact, some observers (like me) will argue many writers are less informed, as the older generations of voters seem to be oddly resistant to/proudly ignorant of new thinking and statistical analysis in baseball. They also tend to overrate how good the game was in “their day” as opposed to the present. No wonder the BBWAA couldn’t find consensus on several numbingly obvious candidates over the past several years.
Considering most ardent baseball fans would give anything for the right to seriously research and analyze candidates in order to cast the most informed votes possible, it really gets me angry when writers treat their votes in an unthinking manner or worse, a vindictive one. In their respective “HOF vote columns,” Dan Shaughnessy is guilty of the former and Murray Chass is guilty of the latter.
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Longtime Boston writer Dan Shaughnessy begins his column by explaining that he’d been procrastinating on his vote, but since the deadline was coming up, he hurriedly put together his ballot. Shaughnessy voted for no-doubt-about-it-HOFers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Frank Thomas, along with pitchers Curt Schilling and Jack Morris. He also justifiably leaves proven PED users, such as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens off his ballot. He had room for five more players on his ballot, but chose not to select any. He then describes his rationale (such that it is) for his votes.
In defending his vote for Jack Morris (who, by the numbers, is not Hall-worthy), Shaughnessy writes, “The sun-starved stat geeks hate him because — according to the new metrics — winning games and pitching well in clutch situations is wildly overrated.” Gotta love the gratuitous pot-shot at “stat-nerds.”
But then later, in explaining why he did not vote for Mike Mussina (who, by the numbers, clearly is a HOFer), Shaughnessy dismisses Mussina’s win total (more than Morris, BTW) by stating his wins were merely a product of being on good teams (as if Morris’s 1980’s Tigers and early-1990’s Twins and Blue Jays weren’t fantastic). Two minutes with google would have also shown Shaughnessy that Mussina also had better “clutch” post-season numbers than Morris. Totally contradictory thinking here.***
Shaughnessy also voted for Curt Schilling. In my opinion, and by the numbers, Schilling is a worthy choice, but old-school baseball writers tend to look at his low win total (waaay lower than Morris or Mussina), relatively short peak, and obnoxious personality as reasons to not vote in his favor. Shaughnessy looks past these demerits for two reasons. First, to make an absurd point: “I consider a vote for Schill a demonstration that BBWAA members do not use the ballot to settle scores. Sometimes I think I vote for him because I can’t stand him”, and second, because he is a raging Bahstahn homer.
Shaughnessy voted for Trammell and Raines last year, but leaves them off this time around. Of Raines, he says, “Not voting for Raines … also feels totally unfair. I just never thought of [him] as a Hall of Famer.” Never? You did LAST YEAR! Grrr. Shaughnessy does not mention Trammell.
To top it all off is his explanation of his votes for Frank Thomas, Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza. “This is where we go off the rails. Like Thomas, guys such as Piazza and Bagwell have Hall of Fame numbers and never tested positive for PEDs. But they look dirty. Something doesn’t make sense. Thomas makes sense.” How’s that for arbitrary? Three burly power hitters during the “steroid era”, but after an exhaustive 5 second gut reaction, one is in and the other two are out. Geez.
Shaughnessy is a hack who treats his privilege too lightly. But he only unintentionally tarnishes the credibility of the BBWAA and the HOF voting system. Stupidity sucks, but it is understandable and forgivable.
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What is unforgivable is noted Luddite Murray Chass, who makes a habit of character assassination. Several years ago, he relied on 3rd party hearsay to declare baseball legend Stan Musial a bigot who wouldn’t let African-American customers dine at his restaurant (wasn’t true). Two years ago, Chass reported that he was told by an anonymous source that Piazza had back-acne and therefore was a PED user, muddying up Piazza’s HOF chances. This year, in his blog, Chass lists Craig Biggio as a probable juicer when there is not a shred of evidence against him, aside from the fact he played in the 1990s. Shaughnessy’s laziness is one thing; what Chass is doing, with no evidence, is contemptuous.
But he has a vote for life because he was once a baseball reporter (actually, he was an excellent writer for many years, and even BBWAA president, before turning into, using NBCsports.com’s Craig Calcaterra’s words, “an unemployed crank with a blog”).
Now, that is mature reasoning—I’ll keep deserving people out of the HOF by sending in a blank ballot just to spite those who disagree with me.
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Further, in his “HOF vote blog post,” Chass stated this would be his last vote. But because others deigned to disagree with him, he recently announced he will continue to vote, writing, “My thinking has changed, and all of you critics can blame yourselves. How could I relinquish my vote knowing how much it annoys you? I plan to vote a year from now even if I just send in a blank ballot. You would love that.” Now, that is mature reasoning—I’ll keep deserving people out of the HOF by sending in a blank ballot just to spite those who disagree with me. SMH.
Not that my critique here will do any good. After all, his direct response to leading baseball writer Rob Neyer’s critique of his ballot was pretty much “nah nah ne nah nah!” “. . . they are jealous of the baseball writers who get to vote. They think they can do better, but they can’t vote and it pains them.”
Maybe it wouldn’t pain us so much if the actual voters took care with their ballots.
* This approach made an amazing amount of sense pre-cable TV and pre-Internet, when the only people who could consistently watch baseball were the beat writers who followed teams around the country. In our information age, giving the BBWAA exclusive HOF voting rights is an anachronism.
** I will note that frequent GMP contributor Carter Gaddis, a former beat writer for the Tampa Bay Rays, is a very thoughtful and well-informed HOF voter, even though he no longer covers baseball.
*** I’ll spare you my diatribe about how dumb “pitcher wins” is as a statistic, considering a starting pitcher controls at most 40% of whether his team wins that day (offense and defense and relief pitching being the other components).
Photo: AP
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Enjoyed the piece. There are quite a few players in Cooperstown who really should not be there but many were voted in during the forties and fifties to fill up space. Tinker and Evers were over the course of their careers no great shakes although Chance was a great first baseman and manager. They just happened to play on a great team and have a poem written about them.
Hi Steve- Agreed. Dave Cameron at Fangraphs.com analyzed the percentage of players by birth decade elected to the Hall and found that, about 3% of players born before 1960 got in the Hall, but that of players born in the 60s or later (who are also retired and hall-eligible) less than 1% have been elected. I attribute this to the “things were better back in my day” thinking of many older sportswriters.
Thanks for reading and your comment!