Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

DId a double take when I heard CC Sabathia was voted in. Never struck me as a dominant pitcher. Looking and comparing his stats is think he compares to Curt Schilling. Yankee bias?
Really do not care, but wanted to hear others thoughts.

More personal pronouns please! Sorry, it's a bug-a-boo of mine.

With 87% of the vote, Sabathia's selection can't be explained by East Coast bias. 250 wins, 3000 K's. Why not put him in the Hall!?

Schilling's post-retirement comments about this and that turned off enough voters to torpedo his selection. He was at 71.1% his second to last year of eligibility. Instead of playing nice, he asked to be removed from the ballot his last year. One of the committees will probably vote him in.

It looks like Carlos Beltran will get in eventually. This despite his leading role in Banging the Can Slowly.
Apparently voters feel he was penalized enough by losing out on the Mets manager job.

I was way more surprised somebody DIDNT vote for Ichiro, than Sabathia getting in....how could you NOT vote for a 3000-hit elite fielder/base runner, and arguably he got his 3000 hits in fewer seasons than anyone else, save for possibly Cobb

Palmtana "more personal pronouns please! Sorry, it's a bug-a-boo of mine."

I didn't understand that comment/joke, was I missing something ?

"87% of the vote, Sabathia's selection can't be explained by East Coast bias. 250 wins, 3000 K's. Why not put him in the Hall!?

Schilling's post-retirement comments about this and that turned off enough voters to torpedo his selection. He was at 71.1% his second to last year of eligibility. Instead of playing nice, he asked to be removed from the ballot his last year. One of the committees will probably vote him in.

It looks like Carlos Beltran will get in eventually. This despite his leading role in Banging the Can Slowly.
Apparently voters feel he was penalized enough by losing out on the Mets manager job."


this is what is totally wrong about HOF voting....it should be 100% about performance on the field, not liberal writers disagreeing with Schillings or anyone's personal viewpoints....schilling didn't take PEDs, he didn't victimize women or others, he didn't gamble (or get caught).....he just spoke his mind

so having an opinion, is WORSE than PEDs ?....or other aspects of one's character ?

This country was built on free speech......

NO player should have to "play nice" if that means saying words that liberal writers won't disagree with.....that's censorship at best and downright dirty pool at worst

Sabathia had the #s to get in, although I agree he was more of a compiler like Tommy John, rather than having been dominant (aka HOF caliber) pitcher for any length of time

for us (are we all ?) old guys, I think it's been a difficult transition from the HALL of GREATNESS to the HALL of VERY GOOD (ex. Baines, etc.)

but I think that's what happens in every aspect of society.....the noise passed off as "music" the last 35 years is 100% crap, and that's been a hard-to-understand change, how modern generations can tolerate that lack of creativity and excellence and don't demand more

OK< soap box is getting creaky ;- 0

Specific to Beltran getting in the HOF. With the recent additions of Baines and Parker, Beltran is the only hitter with 300 HR's and 2,700 hits not in the hall of fame (excluding all of the PED tainted hitters from discussion). It seems to me that is where the line for "compilers" has been drawn.

If they opened the HOF vote up to the fans, like they do the All Star Game, would we see any difference?

If Gillette issued ballots with 10 names on it and told fans to pick 2, what would we see?

Yes, suspected there were bias and non-performance reasons. Same kept Santo out for a long time.

ScumbyJr wrote:Yes, suspected there were bias and non-performance reasons. Same kept Santo out for a long time.

exactly.....only need enough writers that probably never even played the sport, and with some axe(s) to grind, and using the "power of the pulpit" to unfairly deny others......

it might be impossible for most sportswriters to be 100% unbiased, especially if it was about a hometown favorite player they covered, but the HOF voting conglomerate can certainly do a better job than it has/does.....way too much personal reasons of sportswriters come into the current and past versions, IMHO

Hard to take the HOF to serious when Bonds and Clemens are not in. If what they did was so awful, then take there season stats away, but since baseball did not do this, one can presume those stats are still ok by baseball. If that is true, how can the HOF not have them in, but start taking in a bunch of very good, but not necessarily great/dominant players just because writers like them more.

The PED argument rings hollow when Ortiz, Bagwell, Biggio, etc. have been let in with similar clouds of PED use hanging over there heads.

To much power for the writers to be able to exclude or include for persaonal bias on personality, etc. rather than on field performance.

I think Sabathia's career stats are hard to argue with. And the 86.8% BBWAA vote showed very strong support.

Sabathia had 251-161 wins. A .609 career w/l %. Lots of years with records like 17-5, 19-7, 19-8 (twice), 21-7, 15-6, 14-5. That's pretty good in a era of 5 day rotations and tight pitch counts. Two Cy Young Awards. Six rankings CYA-5 or better.

Schilling was 216-146, .597 w/o %. No CYA. Very good--but maybe not quite as good as Sabathia, who has a 36-15 w/l edge.

In my mind there are three types of players who typically make the Hall of Fame. These are 1) super-dominant over a very long career (Walter Johnson); 2) super-dominant over a short career (Koufax); 3) very, very good over a long career--with maybe a short spurts of super-dominance--as indicated by his 22 year career featuring a CYA. Sabathia fits into category three, as many other HOF pitchers also do. The type 1s are the super-duper-stars, but there aren't a lot of them.

IMHO, he was a worthy pick--and he is the sort a choice that the HOF voters will consistently make. Just my two cents, of course.

Any HOF that doesn't include Sabathia is dismally small. There are 278 players in the HOF. You're telling me Sabathia didn't have one of the 278 greatest careers ever? Get real.