1/16/13: Three Ring Circus; No Honor in Cooperstown Debate
The Baseball Hall of Fame vote was revealed last Wednesday. As you’re well aware by now, nobody got in. More on that later.
Just after Thanksgiving, when the annual ballot is released, it’s another holiday for me. I scan the names and I’m inundated with images of baseball cards I had as a kid, of summers spent imitating batting stances in backyard wiffleball games (who hasn’t done the Julio Franco?), of cool autumn evenings spent with my books open but listening to the very best competing in the World Series. “The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.” As a baseball fan coming of age in the late 80’s and 90’s, I followed a number of talented characters and eventually, some of those superstars dismantled the record books before my very eyes.
Picking guys for the Hall of Fame used to be a relative breeze. It was still a debate, but nothing like what we have today. I’ve always relied on the “does it walk like a duck?” approach. Or, “was he good in RBI Baseball?” Tried and true methods to determine a Hall of Famer. I mean, it should be easy for a bunch of people to agree “this guy was a great player; let’s memorialize his contribution to the game with a bronze plaque.”
Some years, like 1996, nobody got the call and backlash quickly followed. Whadda ya mean Phil Neikro and his 318 career wins aren’t good enough for the Hall? See, it used to come down to the argument of “compilers,” guys who played a long time and racked up counting numbers (2013 example: Craig Biggio) vs. guys who were more dominant but might’ve been on top for a shorter period of time (2013 example: Curt Schilling, who had some great years and postseason runs but also spent a lot of time on the shelf). These arguments were fun, ripe for some “when I was a kid” storytelling and subject to heavy regional bias (that Don Mattingly was a bum!).
The Hall of Fame vote is determined by the Baseball Writers Association of America, or BBWAA. Why they make the call, I’m not exactly sure, and a cursory appeal to the interwebs to find out didn’t reveal any origins. But it’s their decision. Of course there’s an objectivity issue with the irresolute writer, one minute penning a nostalgic paean, the next scribbling from atop a salty soap box, making that call. Yet, to this point, an imperfect science has yielded a pretty satisfactory Hall of Fame.
Recent years, however, have brought out the stat heads, predictably lobbing grenades at the writers for their antiquated methods. Listen, the statistical revolution in baseball has been great. That “Moneyball” movie made a lot of dough. In all seriousness, a number of teams (not just the A’s — think about how good the Rays have been the last five years) have used advanced metrics to gain a competitive edge in a marketplace full of big-spending sharks. The use of OBP (rudimentary), WAR (more advanced), and other analytic tools with acronyms I’ve yet to figure out have helped shine the light on useful players who can help a team win, despite not having stats that jump off a baseball card.
During the old Fire It Up days, we were thrilled to be joined in studio by two such forward thinkers, sabermetrician Andy Andres and Joe Bohringer, now director of pro scouting for the Chicago Cubs. These guys looked at the game in ways I hadn’t before, and it was valuable to consider an objective analysis of baseball.
However, when you’re talking Hall of Fame, it’s not all WAR and UZR (an admittedly imperfect defensive metric). Some of it definitely is; it’s unavoidable at this point. But the reason you visit a Hall of Fame is the subjective, the “wow” factor of baseball, that which stirs the senses. It’s why the game has fans; the fans turn men into icons. The Hall of Fame honors the icons of baseball for the benefit of the fans who are the heart of the American Pastime.
Andre Dawson certainly made me go “wow.” He was The Hawk, the man, more than capable in every facet of the game until his knees broke down and he gamely continued to mash the ball. But disciples of the spreadsheet tear down the Hawk due to his low career on-base percentage. I don’t go “wow” when a guy draws a walk. Sorry. I certainly appreciate a player’s selectivity and see it as a nice complement to other skills (example: Frank Thomas, masher with the best eye in the game), but I never once went to Fenway to see J.D. Drew leave the bat on his shoulders and trot down to first (if not back to the dugout).
Then, there’s the slobbering over Tim Raines’ candidacy. Again, stat heads chip away at the reputation of Jim Rice, admittedly a borderline Hall of Famer who was ineffective past the age of 33. It’s not enough to stop there and “tip your cap,” to use an exhausted baseball cliche. Rice might as well be a bum in their eyes, with Raines one of the all-time greats by virtue of his WAR. And I know WAR accounts for ballpark factors. But I’m willing throw my hat in the ring and say that Jim Rice and Tim Raines are one in the same.
Each had a streak of great seasons when he was one of the very best in the game. The difference: Raines hung around until he was 43 years old. He was a beast up to 1987, then spent 15 years being somewhere between above-average and mediocre. Raines was top 10 in WAR only twice. That’s as many appearances in the top 10 as Padres starter Ed Whitson. Who? I remember I had his baseball card, but I never considered Ed Whitson much of anything just because his WAR was up there a couple of years.
These days, I’m told All-Star selections don’t matter. If Player A had eight All-Star selections, while Player B had four but had a better WAR, Player B belongs in the Hall of Fame and Player A is junk, a false idol concocted in the minds of fans who don’t understand advanced metrics, of old geezers pecking away at their typewriters who still do their taxes with an abacus.
As I said earlier, I like how WAR helps shine the light on guys who may not get the recognition they deserve, but it is far too often used to achieve the inverse result. To tear down. I’m not cool with that. I can’t sit around and watch Jack Morris be treated like a pinata while Bert Blyleven is treated like royalty. When Blyleven was elected after sitting on the ballot for a long time, it was considered a triumph for the Internet and its community of statistical analysts. Now, Morris has sat there just as long and become the unfortunate scapegoat in the new blood’s rebellion against the old guard.
Just because Blyleven pitched forever and struck out a lot of guys doesn’t mean Jack Morris was chopped liver. I offer this hypothetical: if the GM of the Indians or Twins in the 80’s tried to trade Blyleven to Detroit for Morris, he wouldn’t have been able to do it. Thankfully for Blyleven, the numbers helped shine the light on him in his retirement. But Morris was a star when he played. And he had a better mustache than Blyleven. If that helps his Hall of Fame candidacy, so be it. At least it means we can lighten up a little.
Speaking of lightening up, let’s talk about the mess that was the 2013 vote. The stat heads have little to no culpability in the utter failure of the electorate, one crippled with indecision over what to do with players from the so-called “Steroid Era,” that amorphous blob of time between the late 80’s and the mid-2000’s when everybody, most everybody, or definitely a number of players used illegal substances to enhance their performance.
Voters are changing their minds more than Sugar Ray Leonard. Their strategies for dealing with this controversial factor have been vast in scope. Some submitted ballots rife with steroid cheats, as they feel the Hall is a place for the most famous players, regardless of troubling intangibles. Others invoked the character clause and chose to play judge and jury, because being members of the BBWAA makes them arbiters of what’s right and wrong.
This brand of thinking has blocked the door to the Hall for Jeff Bagwell, a man never implicated of steroid use, and now does the same for Mike Piazza, the best hitting catcher of all time who similarly hasn’t been implicated of steroid use (though once reported to have bacne, which clearly means he was on the stuff). Unfortunately, given the environment, this approach seems completely within reason.
Another subset of voters were so revolted by the process that they abstained from voting altogether.
We don’t know enough to determine who was using and who wasn’t during the greatest offensive era in baseball history. Truth is, we’ll never be able to make that determination. Baseball didn’t have a sound policy in place. When prompted, the union refused to submit to testing. The owners (and therefore the Commissioner’s Office) were fine with it as long as the cash registers were ringing.
And many of these writers were on the beat in the 90’s. They’re journalists; they saw what was going on. Many of their peers in J-school embarked on careers uncovering important stuff. Our voters are mere sportswriters, yes, but note, these people spend their lives getting all worked up over the smallest things; they can create or tear down legends with the click of a “submit” button. And they did nothing. So to enact an ambiguous moral standard after the fact is absurd.
The only responsibility writers have today is to build a representative Hall of Fame, one fans can visit and say “these were the best players in baseball when they played.” To say Biggio was clean and teammate Jeff Bagwell wasn’t, Curt Schilling was clean and Mike Piazza wasn’t, that Bonds and Clemens, two guys we’re certain used steroids but are among the best ever statistically, can’t garner the votes of the aforementioned players the gumshoe electorate is arbitrarily sorting out, is madness. At least the stat heads have numbers to support their argument.
Finally, you have some voters who want to re-do the system. There’s credibility to this argument, but I’m not sure it would work. In the wake of the 2013 vote, the BBWAA is admittedly biased, to some degree uninformed and mostly incoherent regarding Hall of Fame standards. But would revamping the selection process bring more clarity, or would it wind up being like the BCS for college football?
On Wednesday, @PeteAbe (Boston Globe writer Peter Abraham) tweeted: “Nothing riles up the baseball fan base like the HoF.” Touche, Pete.
My ballot:
Bagwell, Biggio, Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Morris, Palmeiro, Piazza, Sosa.
The BBWAA ballot:
Nobody.
Looks like we’ve got a lot to think about in 2013.
This post was originally published to The Fox Hole on WordPress, January 16, 2013.
