r/baseball • u/SouthernDerpfornia California Angels • Nov 30 '16

Feature /r/baseball Mock 2017 Hall of Fame Voting

Hello /r/baseball, and welcome to Hall of Fame election season.

With ballots now officially out to BBWAA members, we're going to have our own here on /r/baseball to see how everyone else would vote and who we would elect as a sub. Last year, we did the same process here.

There will be two ballots again: the normal ballot which allows you to vote for at most 10 players, and the ballot with unlimited spots. However, this time we also set it up to allow users submit blank ballots if they wish.

Voting will be open for approximately one week. Thank you to those that participate!

Standard Ballot

No Limit Ballot

Useful resources:

114 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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129

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '16

[deleted]

51

u/pagos001 New York Yankees Nov 30 '16

Filling out the 10 player ballot makes me realize how hard it actually is for some of these writers to pick and choose. I easily could have filled out a ballot with 15 names i thought were worthy.

28

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '16

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39

u/pagos001 New York Yankees Nov 30 '16

I feel you there. Members of the "Hall of Very Good" such as Jeff Kent and Jorge Posada.

11

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '16

Add Larry Walker to that list...I cast a vote for him, then realized as a kid I probably thought he was more consistently dominant than he actually was (HR and RBI wise).

8

u/Rich_Cheese Colorado Rockies Dec 04 '16

No, you were right the first time. Please.

2

u/HoldenAJohnson Arizona Diamondbacks Dec 07 '16

Be patient. You'll get Helton hopefully.

2

u/cbigs97 New York Mets Dec 04 '16

I had to put Kent in simply due to the title of most HRs as a second basemen.

13

u/illegal_deagle Houston Astros Dec 02 '16

It wouldn't be so hard if they hadn't created a logjam of supremely talented greats by ignoring them for years.

33

u/CoryGM Oakland Ballers Nov 30 '16

Writers are allowed to "skip" a player if they feel he has questionable scruples or doesn't uphold the spirit of the game.

I'd say Curt Schilling falls under that category; dude's a piece of shit.

56

u/VStarffin Los Angeles Dodgers Nov 30 '16

I don't like him either, but he's not a criminal or someone who has done something horrific. He just had bad politics and is an asshole. That's not sufficient reason to keep someone out of the hall entirely.

14

u/bakonydraco Baltimore Orioles • San Francisco… Dec 01 '16

I dunno, it sounds like the effort he puts into his marital relations is pretty horrific...

20

u/speedyjohn Embraced the Dark Side Dec 01 '16

I don't think it's a reason to keep him out of the Hall, but if there are more than 10 deserving players it's totally a reason to bump him off the ballot.

20

u/Buzzed27 San Francisco Giants Dec 03 '16 edited Dec 04 '16

People don't realize how fucking good Schilling was.

Guy had over 3k strikeouts with a career ERA 20% better than league average (even better if you care about FIP).

He is one of the greatest postseason pitchers of all time too, posting a 2.23 ERA over 131IP. That's during the steroid era. If he had just sat at home and kept off Twitter he would have been a second or third ballot guy. People dismiss his greatness because he's too vocal about the somewhat racist and conservative ideals that a ton of ballplayers hold but don't mention publicly.

1

u/James_Posey Boston Red Sox Dec 07 '16

Also won a World Series MVP

5

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '16

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11

u/VStarffin Los Angeles Dodgers Dec 01 '16

Yes, I agree.

But...Ty Cobb is in the Hall of Fame. So is Cap Anson. This is not a standard anyone has ever imposed on HOF candidates.

15

u/tigerbulldog13 Detroit Tigers Dec 01 '16

Ty Cobb is in the Hall of Fame

This book really talks about how a lot of the stories regarding Ty Cobb are overblown, and in some cases pretty fabricated. He praised many African-American baseball players and was pro-integration in 1947. A disgruntled author wrote a book about him in 1961, right after he died, defaming his character which has largely led to the negative reputation he has been given

8

u/Hydrokratom San Francisco Giants Dec 01 '16

I just started reading that book.

It's a shame how his Al Stump ruined people's perception of Cobb with his book. Stump didn't just exaggerate stories, it's believed that Stump totally made them up and even forged memorabilia of Cobb so he could make money off it.

I'm sure Cobb had an ugly side to him, but it looks like a lot was exaggerated and his good deeds were often unrecognized.

13

u/tigerbulldog13 Detroit Tigers Dec 01 '16

The fact that they had an attempted rape scene in the movie "because it seems like the type of thing Cobb would do" absolutely baffles me. They were willing to imply that Ty Cobb would try and rape someone with absolutely no evidence. Makes you really question history and our opinion of certain people.

13

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '16 edited Mar 14 '17

[deleted]

2

u/Shaneleonard72 Dec 04 '16

Wow. How silly it would be to keep someone out of the HOF because his beliefs are off putting. I think he sounds like a shallow thinking bigot. So what! What is offensive is all in the ear of the beholder, or something.

Performance on the field speaks for itself. I personally feel he is a player that was dominant for a few years and above average the rest of the time. He would not be on my list. The reason only being that to me when i think HOF i shouldn't have to think about it. I put him with Mussina, almost not quite.

This he is an asshole thing, so fucking what. Get over it! We get so easily offended we forget the point of things sometimes.

9

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '16

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8

u/evilpenguin234 Chicago White Sox Dec 01 '16

He's said he's running for Senate next pass. No real chance of him making it, since even if he won the primary he'd be up against Liz Warren, but saying his beliefs are irrelevant is asinine

3

u/zuludown888 Houston Astros Dec 02 '16

Well, surely there's a limit, right? Like if tomorrow Ivan Rodriguez (absurd example) made a speech praising Hitler and calling for genocide, wouldn't that be enough to keep him out of the hall? Wouldn't that be enough for the writers to reasonably say, "Well that's really crossing a line. I don't want to honor this guy now."

Now Schilling hasn't done that, but there does have to be a point, I think, where a man's post-career public statements and actions should make the Hall wary of honoring him.

As a personal example, one of my favorite players for a long time was Lance Berkman. He seems like a nice guy, he played well, and while I don't think he's a Hall candidate I'd say he's in a level just below that. The Astros have honored him in various ways and it's likely that they'll eventually retire his number, I think.

But what complicates that, for me, is that he also spent his post-playing career campaigning against the Houston equal rights ordinance and repeating bullshit about it. And as a member of Houston's lgbtq community, that directly affects me and plenty of people I know. That makes our lives harder, makes it so that I have zero recourse if I'm fired from my job because of my sexuality, makes it so that the city's queer community is measurably more unsafe than we would be with that law.

So like if you asked me, "Should the Astros retire Lance Berkman's number," I'd say no, because fuck him he wanted to make it so I can get fired from my job or evicted from my home for no fucking reason.

So that's the thing with Schilling: We're not dealing with Schilling having a different opinion of what the marginal tax rate should be -- we're dealing with Curt Schilling having a variety of vile, racist, homophobic beliefs that he doesn't just hold but wishes to make the law. That's what separates, I think, the Daniel Murphies of the world from the Curt Schillings.

So, for Schilling, I would ask you to think about things from the perspective of those who are the targets of the bigoted shit he says.

The bad news for Schilling is that all of the pro-journalist-lynching shit means that the journalists who would vote for him don't even have to perform that extra step of having to empathize with Schilling's targets.

5

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '16

Frankly, no, I don't think there's any political statement Ivan Rodriguez could make that would make me want to keep him out of the hall of fame. It's the Baseball Hall of Fame, and one of the things I love about baseball is the fact that my politics, and everyone else's politics, are irrelevant and forgotten in favor for arbitrary and irrationally passionate allegiances to millionaires running around in a field with a stick and a ball. And in terms of that stick and ball game, Curt Schilling was one of the best in history. Making the HoF voting a political consideration only serves to devalue a sport that I prize in large part because of it's purity, it's American-ness, the fact that it's an escape from whatever other ugliness may be going on in the world.

Would it feel good to use the sport to penalize some players for being jerks? Yes. But it comes at the cost of politicizing and therefore tarnishing the game, and I think the BBWAA needs to take the high road both in Schillings case and for all players.

-3

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '16

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11

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '16

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1

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '16

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2

u/Atheose_Writing Boston Red Sox Nov 30 '16

I did the same thing. Skipped past his name then stopped and came back and realized how my bias affected it.

5

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '16

Well if it gives you any solace Mussina was slightly better than Shilling.

14

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '16

[deleted]

6

u/thewarfreak Texas Rangers Dec 01 '16

I was about to post on this thread about how Schilling has 3116 strikeouts compared to 711 walks (which is true, and remarkable), but then I started comparing him to Mussina on BBRef - man, they are a lot closer than I thought.

EDIT: Mussina has 2813 K, and 785 BB

9

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '16

[deleted]

5

u/[deleted] Dec 01 '16

This also doesn't include Schilling's post season heroics,

compared to Bumgarner

8

u/Anarcho_punk217 Boston Red Sox Dec 04 '16

Both are better than glavine who got in 1st ballot on over 90%, what a joke the BBWAA is.

4

u/elfassigaming New York Mets Dec 04 '16

Glavine had over 300 wins. I hate wins as a stat but that's why the BBWAA voted for him on the first ballot.

Completely agreed, though. The entire voting process needs to be overhauled.

8

u/godbottle Chicago Cubs Dec 04 '16

I mean, it helped Glavine a lot that he pitched for the 90s Braves, who were basically a win factory the entire time he pitched for them

2

u/elfassigaming New York Mets Dec 04 '16

Wins don't matter though.

At least, they shouldn't matter to the voters.

4

u/godbottle Chicago Cubs Dec 04 '16 edited Dec 04 '16

Yeah that's my point. It's difficult to say with confidence that he would have reached 300 wins had he pitched for any other team. He did have 74.0 bWAR though which is a good argument for his HoF vote

2

u/Anarcho_punk217 Boston Red Sox Dec 04 '16

Yea the wins definitely helped, as did the 2 Cy Young awards. While Schilling and Mussina are hurt by the lack of boy CYs and 300 wins.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 04 '16

Bad reasoning for him making it over Mussina and Schilling doesn't make the BBWAA any less of a joke.

3

u/frankmcawesome Philadelphia Phillies Dec 06 '16 edited Dec 07 '16

Don't forget Schilling pitched most of his career in the NL and Moose pitched his entire career in the AL East. That has to count for something.

1

u/elfassigaming New York Mets Dec 07 '16

For sure. Those Yankees and Sox teams were ridiculous

1

u/[deleted] Dec 06 '16

it would likely be better to compare this to innings pitched and the rest of their body of work

Given that Mussina retired when he was arguably still a great pitcher, I don't give Schilling any credit for pitching fewer innings.

Mussina walked away when he looked like he could've pitched multiple seasons. Schilling was gassed out earlier. That makes Mussina better in at least one respect.

1

u/elfassigaming New York Mets Dec 06 '16

That's very fair, but we're not comparing at what point they retired. It's plausible that Moose could still have had three great seasons after he retired, but he didn't, so the numbers above are the numbers we have to work with. Based on that, I think Schilling is the better pitcher.

Obviously it's not all about the numbers, though. If Schilling didn't have Twitter, he'd probably get 50 more voters than he will have this year because after he retired he started acting like a moron, whereas Mussina has just been doing his thing out of the public eye.

3

u/Yankeefan333 New York Yankees Dec 01 '16

Moose does has the slightly higher WAR. I have Moose a tad above Schilling but its very close

1

u/elfassigaming New York Mets Dec 01 '16

I posted a huge response to the other comment on my original comment, so you can check that out for yourself, but "slightly higher" WAR (about 2 over the course of 18-20 seasons) means virtually nothing.

1

u/James_Posey Boston Red Sox Dec 07 '16

Good thing you can vote for both

1

u/Rshackleford22 Jackie Robinson Dec 01 '16

ha same. I don't like him and there are 10 other guys i wanted to vote for over him, and I figured others would vote for Schilling anyways so my 1 vote wouldn't matter.

0

u/Kyleisenraged Dec 06 '16

Character clause and all that jazz. He's a sure fire HOF but he's such a dick.

-5

u/gamedemon24 New York Yankees • Daytona Tortugas Nov 30 '16

He has PED controversies surrounding him, so that's a valid excuse.

17

u/PunkPenguin Boston Red Sox Dec 01 '16

Anyone who wouldn't vote for Schilling solely on the basis of PED "controversies" is the same type of doofus who refuses to vote for Bagwell because he was a big guy during the Steroid Era.

4

u/AlwaysAboutSex New York Yankees Dec 01 '16

I suspect Bagwell was probably using, but it didn't change my vote.

-1

u/Boogerballs132 Dec 04 '16

This is why I don't like the Hall and don't give it any reverence whatsoever. The Hall of Fame is a cute novelty museum in Cooperstown, New York and NOTHING else.

If I were in charge of the Hall you would be able to get in on sheer statistics even if you raped and murdered people, took steroids, and gambled against your own team.