Kuzul

Before gaining entry to the Baseball Hall of Fame, a player must wait five years after his retirement to become eligible and then be named on 75 percent or more of the total ballots cast by members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

Former pitcher Bert Blyleven did not achieve entry until his 14th try, and he is not alone in the annals of Cooperstown when it comes to having a long time to wait.

Because so few players were getting elected and inducted to the Hall in its early years, other mechanisms have been put in place to ensure that the Hall properly honors baseball’s true heroes. Still, the most prestige, and the greatest joy, is conferred upon those who are able to reach the promised land the old-fashioned way.

Setting aside (for now) those men who got into the Hall via either the Veterans or Old-Timers Committees, some 15 Hall of Famers went in on their 10th ballot or later.

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The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is very much like a gated community, and in order to gain residence, a player must be exceptionally good at politicking with the gate-keepers. Bert Blyleven needed over a decade to gain entry; Ron Santo never did, though he unequivocally ought to have. Finding a way to woo 75 percent of those baseball writers who have votes can be a tricky needle to thread.

Fascinatingly enough, no one has ever gotten 100 percent of the vote, nor even 99 percent. Many, many players have scraped by with between 75 and 80 percent. A round dozen have come within two percentage points of the margin, garnering 77 percent or fewer of the votes. Those men are the subject of this article, which will break down what kept their numbers so low, who should never have made it in at all, and who deserved more votes than they got. Read on.

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At any given time, there are arguably 30-35 active players in the Major Leagues who are deserving of a spot in Cooperstown once they call it a career. Whom among those on an active roster for 2011 are most likely to be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame sometime in the future?

The following is a position-by-position list of players who, in my opinion, can start thinking about their acceptance speeches right now.

Disclaimer – In writing this list, no special consideration was given to the “Steroid Era,” and no players were excluded from the list because of suspicion or admission of steroid use.

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This is a difficult time for many of those who believe the game will forever be tainted by the Performance Enhancing Drug era.

I refuse to call it the “Steroid Era” as many of the so-called cheaters never actually took a steroid. If you’re going to label something, it may as well be accurate.

I will admit that some of the things MLB players did during this time disgusts me. It’s not so much the fact that they cheated, but that they were so smug and arrogant that they thought they could get away with it.

So here we are with Hall of Fame ballots in our hands with blank looks on our faces. How are we supposed to vote? From this point on, how are we supposed to determine which players from this era deserve enshrinement and which deserve to be left outside with their noses pressed against the windows of the Hall of Fame?

In my opinion the players have to be taken on a case by case basis.

It is patently unfair to just take the players from the PED Era and lump them all together in one uniform group. There are some players that have never been linked to a PED, but have had guilt projected upon them nonetheless. I’m in favor of protecting them because they are being hunted as well.

I am going to look at not only PED users, but also those who have been unfairly targeted by some as being guilty by association.

I know this is a passionate subject for many, but passion should not suspend a person’s rationality. Unfortunately for many, it does.

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The Hall of Fame selection process has, and likely always will be, the center of much controversy.  The debate rages on year after year about who should and who should not be a Hall of Famer and why.

Take Kirby Puckett as an example.  Puckett was a very productive player whose career was cut short after he lost vision in one eye due to glaucoma.   While his career batting average is an impressive .318, Puckett did not play long enough to accumulate what one might consider Hall of Fame numbers.

Beyond the numbers, Puckett’s personal issues were also a point of contention when his Hall of Fame selection was made.  In the early 2000s, tales of infidelity, domestic violence and a sexual assault charge tainted Puckett’s reputation.  His selection was then called into question not only due to his short 12 years in the majors, but for apparent character flaws, as well.

Similar questions have been raised about a multitude of other players over years.  What follows is by no means a complete list of every player who probably should not be in the Hall of Fame.  However, these 10 are some of the worst selections ever made.

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On Wednesday, the Baseball Writers Association of America announced the 2011 class of Hall of Famers.

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Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven were voted in as the only two players in the 2011 National Baseball Hall of Fame class. Alomar made it in just his second year on the ballot, garnering 90 percent of the vote.

Blyleven, on the other hand, had to wait until his 14th year of eligibility, picking up 79.7 percent of the vote.

I believe that both deserved the honor. If not for Alomar’s infamous spitting incident in 1996, he likely would have been a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer.

Blyleven, who threw his final major league pitch in 1992, joins the exclusive club with just one year to spare before his name would have been wiped off the ballot.

So while there was very little debate as to Alomar’s Hall-of-Fame worthiness, Blyleven had to play the waiting game for 14 years without actually doing anything on a Major League diamond to sway the last few writers to put a check mark next to his name. In his first year of eligibility, back in 1998, he only received 17.5 percent of the vote. Somehow, 13 years later, that percentage more than quadrupled.

This isn’t the first time a former player has waited for over a decade for his vote totals to take baby steps toward the needed 75 percent, and it won’t be the last. And I just don’t get it.

The question isn’t whether you think Blyleven deserved to get in or not, but it’s about the unnecessarily long 15-year time frame a player remains on the ballot. Other than some of the new-age sabermetric statistics that can be applied to Blyleven’s career, his body of work can be looked at today in the same way it was looked at after his final game in 1992.

Did it honestly take 14 years for some of the baseball writers to think, “Hey, maybe these really are Hall of Fame numbers after all.”?

In reality, it probably didn’t go that way. Without being one of those writers or knowing any of them, I can only speculate, but it’s likely that two things pushed Blyleven into the Hall:

1) Other than Alomar, the 2011 ballot was littered with a bunch of known or suspected steroid users, so Blyleven seemed more appealing in comparison and

2) writers talk to each other, and perhaps peer pressure and politicking by pro-Blyleven writers eventually pushed some of the anti-Blyleven camp to the other side.

I would argue that a lot of writers are ignoring one of the vital aspects of voting. Taken right from the Hall of Fame’s website:

Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.

If the voters didn’t think Blyleven had Hall-of-Fame credentials in these areas when they voted in ’98, why do they think he had them during the 2011 vote?

If it sounds like I’m in favor of only allowing one year of eligibility, I’m not. In fact, now more than ever, voters need more time. There are simply too many questions about many steroid-era players (Jeff Bagwell was hurt by this in this year’s vote), and the last thing a voter needs to do is make a split-second decision to vote for a player only to find that the player was on the juice for most of his career.

The problem is that you often hear from baseball writers and baseball people in general that the Hall of Fame is reserved for the true greats of the game, yet for someone like Bert Blyleven, it apparently takes 14 years for some voters to realize his greatness. If it takes that long to decide, how great could the guy have been anyway?

Again, I’m glad Blyleven’s in. Although I didn’t watch him pitch during his prime, seeing his statistics and knowing the era he played in, I have always thought of him as a Hall-of-Famer. If someone can give me one good reason it took nearly a decade and a half for this to become a reality, I would love to hear it.

Bert Blyleven wasn’t Tom Seaver. I understand that. I admit that a vote for Blyleven isn’t a no-brainer. But it’s as if the voters are creating a tier system. First-year induction has typically been reserved for the best of the best. Perhaps I’m being too simplistic, but I say that a Hall of Famer is a Hall of Famer.

I’m pretty sure Rickey Henderson will be served the same dinner as Ryne Sandberg the night before the induction ceremony, even though Sandberg had to wait longer to get in. Despite the writers’ insistence on trying to divide the group into “legendary,” “great,” and “good enough,” every Hall of Famer has the same sized plaque and the same time allotted for his speech (as far as I know).

I heard baseball writers/Hall of Fame voters Jon Heyman and Tom Verducci on MLB Network yesterday talking about how Barry Larkin getting 62 percent of this year’s vote means he’s gaining momentum and he should get in within a year or two.

Gaining momentum? Is this is a political campaign? Is Larkin doing more marketing for his Hall candidacy on Facebook these days? Baseball writers, you are allowed to vote in 10 players each year; if you think Larkin should be in, vote for him! Don’t worry about too many players making it in one year. Don’t categorize him as a player not good enough to get in on the first or second ballot. If you think he’s a Hall of Famer, give him a vote! If you truly don’t believe his career warrants his induction, don’t vote for him. But either way, stick to your guns!

If it weren’t for the steroid era, I’d be in favor of five years of eligibility. With the steroid era, I still don’t see why 10 years wouldn’t be long enough. That might help eliminate some of these issues I’ve mentioned.

I am well aware that some people will read this and think I’m being too harsh on the Hall-of-Fame voters. If that is the case for you, I ask that you please bookmark this article and read it once every year. Maybe by the 14th year, you’ll come around.

Get my thoughts on sports and life in general at my blog, What’s Wrong with What’s Right

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Post originally published at the author’s blog, with various code removed.

It is the favorite time of year for many a sports nerd like myself: the time when the Baseball Writers Association of America will make their picks for the Hall of Fame, and when the blogosphere is best equipped to mock and ridicule the inconsistent logic of many esteemed writers.

It is also a favorite time for anyone who has ever said, “I cannot believe they voted for…,” or how someone was robbed (see Whitaker, Lou).

Last year’s epic battle, in my mind, was the one about Edgar Martinez. Supporters cited his batting numbers that were comparable to legends while playing in a mediocre hitting park, and his career that shows no signs of PED use. His detractors cited that he was a designated hitter, and that his career is short.

When all was said and done, Martinez received a mere 36.2 percent of the vote, less than half what one needs to reach the Hall of Fame. So, what would Edgar’s chance of reaching Cooperstown, knowing this?

Would you believe a 69.09 percent chance?

It seems counter-intuitive that when one is yet to convince almost two-thirds of the remaining voting base of his greatness, six years after his career ended, that anything would change so rapidly.

However, it occurs constantly, as only two men from 1976-97 received a higher share of the vote on their first ballot and missed out on the writer’s election. One of which, Jim Bunning, eventually gained access through the Veterans Committee.

As we saw from yesterday’s post, the logit model can provide a powerful probability estimator given a dummy dependent variable. In this case, we test whether someone reached the Hall of Fame (y=1) or not (y=0).

To perform this analysis, I looked at all Hall of Fame votes from 1976-97, and took the percent share of the vote obtained by all players on their first ballot, excluding those who received less than five percent of the vote (indicating a probability of being elected to the Hall of 0, and a small chance of being elected by the veterans’ committee). Through this process, I obtained a data sheet of 59 players, as can be seen here.

Right away, one can make general assumptions. Thirty-three of the 59 players listed were eventually elected to the Hall, a 55.93 percent success rate. Additionally, three more were elected by the veterans’ committee, leaving the total success rate of the group at 61.02 percent.

Simply clearing the first obstacle of making it past the first ballot seems to bode well for the eventual success of candidates.

However, this analysis is imperfect. The success rate includes players who were elected on the first ballot, and had no resistance in making the Hall. Once again, though, we can easily run a logit model regression on the data.

After performing the data analysis, one comes up with two equations, referred to within the blog post.

The results are probability moderately encouraging for my fellow Edgar fans. Not even including the Veterans Committee option, Edgar currently stands as better than a coin flip’s chance of reaching the Hall, at 56.32 percent. With the Veterans Committee, this probability spikes to 69.09 percent.

So where are the break-even (50-50) points for both equations? For just the BBWAA vote, it is at around 33.8 percent of the initial vote. For overall Hall of Fame chances, it is at around 28.6 percent.

So for anyone concerned with various parts of the ballot, such as Jeff Bagwell’s low initial support, rest assured, the numbers give him a shot that far exceeds a coin flip for being enshrined.

Also note that Barry Larkin has a 91.9 percent chance of reaching Cooperstown, and heck, even Fred McGriff has a 32.2 percent chance of reaching the Hall someday given his first ballot performance.

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Roberto Alomar was overpaid by the New York Mets for his year and a half of service towards the end of his career, but I was happy to see him get the recognition he deserved with a spot in the Hall of Fame.

His career will always be defined by a select few by the spitting incident, and for those of you who think that is enough to keep him out of Cooperstown, I feel sorry for you.

Some fans will never overlook this transgression, using it as the basis of every argument they ever make about his wrongful inclusion.

They will overlook his production and what he brought to the game, rubbishing 17 years of talent for the seven teams he suited up for.

It’s true that he did not shine in Shea Stadium like he had done in Cleveland, Baltimore, Toronto or San Diego, and it’s also true that his numbers from the 222 games he suited up for the Mets are not necessarily Hall-worthy. Still, Alomar would probably have still been enshrined even if he had called it a day after his time with the Indians came to an end.

His .265 batting average and 13 home runs in New York were not representative of his overall production. Rather, they are the statistics of a once-speedy, defensive-minded second baseman in the twilight of his career.

Alomar was serviceable for the Mets, outperforming fan favorite and double play partner Rey Ordonez across the board. Personally, I would have liked to see the Mets make more of an effort to re-sign Edgardo Alfonzo, but they didn’t lose too much in signing Alomar, with the exception of a little bit of pop, a few million dollars and a couple years. Okay, so maybe they did lose more than a little, but I digress.

This man was a 12-time All-Star and career .300 hitter before he even came to the Mets. His reputation preceded him, and we gave him more money than we should have, but simply put, he was a stud.

He was a Silver Slugger and Gold Glove winner, as well as a World Champion on more than one occasion. He was a winner who was simply past his prime when he came to the Big Apple.

He may never have been the biggest name in any of the cities he played, but he still compares more than favorably with other players at his position. Critics lay praise, rightfully so, on lifelong Cub and fellow Cooperstown member Ryne Sandberg, but Alomar put up similar statistics across the board, both offensively and defensively. Some metrics would have him on top.

He played one more season than Sandberg, matching the Cub like for like. A scattering of more hits and more steals were offset by a couple more home runs and more doubles. Sandberg won an MVP, something Alomar did not, but the players really do have very similar figures.

It’s a little harder to compare him with the likes of other sure-fire Hall of Famers such as Jeff Kent because, despite playing in the same era, Kent’s game featured a lot more power and a lot less speed. Still, look at the career numbers and the disparity is nowhere as great as some perceive.

They had careers of similar lengths, and while Kent was a much better run producer, Alomar was a more patient hitter who utilized the whole field better. Don’t get me started about the glovework. While they both played up the middle, they had contrasting roles within their respective teams. Both flourished.

It’s not like Kent was the most loved person in the clubhouse 24/7 either.

Alomar may not be considered the best second baseman of his era—or the second or the third. Mets fans who only remember him for the time he spent with the club in 2002 and 2003 might not see why he has even been selected at all.

Almost everyone has put the past behind them now when it comes to Alomar and the negativity surrounding that one ugly spitting incident. Baseball writers have followed suit, and now it’s your turn. Remember him for what he accomplished with the bat and with the glove. Roberto Alomar really was one of those rare gems, and now he’s where he belongs.

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On Wednesday afternoon, Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame class for 2011 was announced and, as anticipated, Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar amassed the number of votes necessary for their enshrinement in Cooperstown this summer. A Hall of Fame candidate must receive 75 percent of the vote from eligible Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) members to garner induction.

Considered by many to be the best second baseman in baseball history, Alomar fell short of induction by only eight votes in 2010, which was his first year on the ballot. But after garnering 73.7 percent of the vote last year, the Puerto Rican native was named on 90 percent of the ballots to become one of only two players to comprise this year’s Hall of Fame class.

Meanwhile, Blyleven, who was in his 14th year of eligibility, received 79.7 percent of the vote to warrant election in what has widely been considered one of the greatest oversights by the BBWAA.

Despite ranking fifth all-time in strikeouts, ninth in shutouts and 27th in wins, Blyleven received only 17.55 percent of the vote in his first year of eligibility (1998). Astonishingly, his vote total dropped to 14.1 percent the following year.

In the past 40 years, no player who debuted on the ballot had a vote total that low and won election into the Hall of Fame.

However, the sabermetrics boom resulted in a closer inspection of Blyleven’s candidacy, which caused his vote totals to steadily rise to a high of 74.2 percent in 2010, leaving him only five votes short of induction.

But in his penultimate year of eligibility, Blyleven received the call that finally put the exclamation point on his distinguished career.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for former New York Yankees on this year’s ballot, whose respective Hall of Fame bids don’t look too promising for the most part.

Out of the eight former Yankees on the ballot, five fell short of the 5 percent required to remain on the ballot next year, including beloved first baseman Tino Martinez, who received just six votes (1 percent) from the BBWAA.

Joining Martinez in unsuccessful Hall of Fame bids were Al Leiter (0.7 percent), Kevin Brown (2.1 percent), John Olerud (0.7 percent) and Raul Mondesi (0 votes).

On the flip side of the coin, there were former Yankees who weren’t invited to join this year’s class but will remain on the ballot for future consideration, with the most prominent name being Don Mattingly.

In his 11th year of eligibility, Mattingly saw his appearance on the ballots drop from 16.1 percent last year to 13.6 percent this year, a clear indication that the Hall’s doors will remain shut to a man viewed as one of the greatest Yankee players in franchise history.

But the former six-time All-Star and nine-time Gold Glove Award-winning first baseman has been extremely candid about his Hall of Fame credentials.

“I don’t think I’m a Hall of Famer,” Mattingly was quoted as saying. “I don’t think I have the numbers. Part of it is longevity, and I wasn’t able to do that and do the things that I did early in my career.”

Many Yankees fans would disagree with Donnie Baseball’s assessment, which speaks volumes to how popular Mattingly still is in the Big Apple and how memorable his tenure was with the bronx bombers.

In addition to Mattingly, Lee Smith (45.3 percent) and Tim Raines (37.5 percent), who both had brief stints with the Yankees in the ’90s, will also see their names on next year’s ballot.

Raines, a two-time World Series Champion with the Yankees (1996, 1998), has been gaining a groundswell of support for induction, evidenced by the dramatic rise in his vote totals from 22.6 percent in 2009 to 30.4 percent in 2010 to 37.5 percent this year.

Smith, who appeared in eight games for the Yankees in 1993, ranks third in MLB history with 478 saves. 

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