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Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Mike Silva Chronicles - Part 8: Hall of Fame
There seems to be a sense of “righteousness” when it comes to people who use advanced metrics to make decisions on the Hall of Fame and awards. Do you share that sentiment? Can you see where someone uses standard thinking (such as Wins and postseason achievements with Morris HOF candidacy) has their own logic as much as an individual who used WAR to make a case for Blyleven?
I think that’s a fair characterization. I also think being righteous is a good thing. It means to hold people to a certain standard that should be accepted. The question of course is who gets to define what the righteous standards are. I don’t think that saying “WAR” is necessarily being righteous.
I think those of us that follow the voting are more flabbergasted by the inconsistent standards being applied. Jack Morris has a debatable Hall of Fame case. You can make a reasonable case for putting him in or leaving him out. You can say the same thing about Bert Blyleven as well. However, you can’t make the case that Morris should be in, while Blyleven should be out. To do that requires you to look at Morris’s accomplishments one way, while limiting his bad outings, while looking at Blyleven’s accomplishments a different way, while accentuating his bad outings. The standards being applied are not fair, nor are they consistent.
I, and some of us, object to the capriciousness of the voting.
There’s not much that separates Dennis Martinez from Jack Morris. There’s some daylight between Dwight Evans and Jim Rice (but to Dewey’s benefit). Exactly what is the difference between Tim Raines and Tony Gwynn? Up-and-down the line, you see alot of strange standards being applied, focusing on this one thing, accentuating it to some single sound bite that takes over everything else.