THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I actually think the HOF would be much, MUCH worse off with players, managers, and coaches voting.

Does anybody really think most of these guys are qualified and actually can tell who belongs there?

I’m with JD. The writers have done an imperfect job but I doubt any other homogeneous group would have done better. The problem for me is not that the writers have a voice; it’s that they have the only voice. Surely there’s a way to improve the system.

All other things equal, there’s no question that the HOF would be worse off if the players did the voting.  Just as the Oscars are worse off.

However, when it comes to PED, the players will not be all high-and-mighty the way the Holy Writers are.  For this group of players, the players will perform a better job than the writers.

They are supposed to report and comment on news items.  They are not supposed to be the ones making the news.  So, regardless of how well a job they could do, this disqualifies them from doing it.

Who should vote, then?  Seriously, who’s left?  Academics?  SABR members?

Bill James had a system in “The Politics of Glory” where you could apply to be a voter ... you’d have to score high on a test of baseball knowledge.  That might work.  But if you don’t want to do that ... who should have the vote?

Is “10 years” covering a team somehow make someone qualified?  How about “10 years” playing?  Does that make it any better or worse?

I have no problem with passing a test being the qualification.

Maybe it could be like the Supreme Court ... nine voters, nominated by Bud Selig.  They get grilled by the owners and Bill James, who then vote whether to confirm them.

I would have a rotation system.  Say you start with a minimum 100-member panel, each of which can serve no more than 10 years. 

Every year you add 10 new members.  By the time you are in the 21st year, you will have had 200 ex voters, and 100 new ones. 

No reason this has to be a lifetime appointment.

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Also, minimum one player selected per year.  I’d even go to two or four.  You can do an “inner circle” if you want to give out special notices.  The NHL has no problem electing 3 or 4 players every year, and I’m always bugged at the good players who aren’t in there.

Tango/7: Sounds good to me ... let’s do it!

But until that happens ... who should vote, if not the players and the writers?

The issue is this “integrity” clause, which puts the voter on some moral high ground that he has no place being on.  MLB punished players already.  There’s no need for additional punishments beyond that.

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I like the way the Hall of Merit does it, and that’s by forcing everyone to vote for 10 or 15 names, with no blank slots or ballots.  Then, it’s simply an elect-2 or elect-3, whoever the top vote getters are.

(And personally, I would put the eligibility based on birth year, say when the player is 45-55 or 50-60 years old.  Kirby Puckett is younger than Rickey and Raines, and those guys are his peers, not whoever he was voted in with.)

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Once you streamline this process, it probably doesn’t matter a heckavu lot who the voters are.  Hall of Merit shows what 50 or 100 dedicated fans can give you.  The only thing they don’t have is the Cooperstown building.

I think some testing procedure is easy enough to implement.

Kirby of course is dead. 

James did a good job in “The Politics of Glory” of explaining how the BBWAA made sense at first because nobody else saw players play, but doesn’t make sense now. 

I don’t like the players idea because the players they were talking about are the same ones eligible to be voted into the Hall in the first place.  Nor has the reconstituted veterans’ voting group, made up of all the living Hall of Famers, shone in its selections and non-selections.  Put another way, either is a great way to get Joe Carter into the Hall, if that’s your idea of a good time.

I like how the Pro Football Hall of Fame does it, with a committee that actually meets in person and discusses the candidates and inducts a certain number each year.  And I’d definitely be in favor of the way the NHL can induct someone like Gretzky or Lemieux without a waiting period.

Is there any doubt that player voting is perhaps the worst idea anyone could ever posit?  This guy should be excommunicated just for suggesting that.  Seriously.  Players like Erstad and Eckstein could easily garner some votes.  Carlos Lee and Joe Carter would probably be locks.  There is at least a reasonable attempt to logically and soundly look at career statistics and other such things by the BWAA voters.  If the players actually voted, it would be a travesty.  Worst.  Idea.  Ever.

Buster Olney interviewed at Freakonomics (click on name).  Some standard MSM crap responses such as a manager using batter-pitcher matchups as an example of “the habit of using statistics”.

More interestingly, he acknowledges the ethical question of the writers voting and creating the news while saying that the writers are the most qualified voters.  I’m surprised that there are writers that are able to pull themselves out of their bubble to recognize that.

What Perry and the other scuff artists did was cheating.  That is plain and simple.  There were particular rules against it, they knew about it, and they tried to circumvent those rules.

But, most people follow the “it ain’t stealing if you aren’t caught” line, and so, we are pretty forgiving.  Plus, we accept that the punishment on the field they get is sufficient.  We move on from these (baseball) crimes.

For drugs, some treat it differently than the plain cheating.  Most are happy that Manny satisfies the conditions of his punishment from breaking the baseball rule against drugs.  Some aren’t.

This is either because they are slave to the numbers, and therefore, hold the numbers, and not the players, to lofty heights.  Or, that drugs is a different kind of cheating because it forces the other players to make a moral and health decision that they don’t want to confront.  And so, these holy writers make the decision.  EXCEPT, all other players could have, as a union, decided that this is a health workplace issue, and instituted their own bylawys against drug use.

They didn’t.  It’s not up to the holy writers to set the moral ethical and health playground that the players themselves considered and rejected (by inaction).

Tango- The reason I don’t like players doing drugs, is that it revolts me to F$#% with your body like that.  I don’t mind the cheating, but something about chemically enhancing yourself disgusts me on a deep level.

Nick: I agree with you.  But, MLB is not our personal puppet theater. 

Do you have a problem with The Beatles doing drugs?

Some standard MSM crap responses such as a manager using batter-pitcher matchups as an example of “the habit of using statistics”.

I love/hate when batter pitcher matchups are cited as example of sabermetrics or “using statistics,” often as an example of what an astute sabermetric-oriented manager does.

It is just the opposite of course.  If you knew much about sabermetrics (or at least if you read The Book), you would know to throw those batter/pitcher “cards” away.  It is actually a good example of the danger of putting a loaded gun in the hands of someone who does not know the first thing about how to shoot one.

I’m not saying that it should have any bearing on their accomplishments.  I still consider Barry Bonds to be the best player of all time (and by a pretty significant margin if you adjusted the change in league quality, which I don’t think Rally does); however, whenever I think about Bonds, I think about his head growing 2 inches and his voice getting higher.  It doesn’t change my opinion of Bonds as a player, but it does change my opinion of him as a person. 

I’m sure that a lot of the BBWAA feel that way, and they are having a hard time separating it.  Or, they are intentionally using the “he cheated” defense to keep worthy players out of the hall of fame because of how they feel about them as a person.