HOF voting

This goes along with the factoid revealed on MLB network recently that stated players before 1950 were 4 times as likely to make the HOF as today. Note this was pre color barrier break. So logically there should be more hall worthy players after than before. But not true. Factor in the influx of latin and asian players since that time and to me it is clear there is more talent now than before 1950. So why fewer HOF worthy players?

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/211484874/how-many-hall-of-famers-will-you-see-in-2017/

This article found on mlb.com states that on average historically there have been 31 future HOF players playing in any given year. Reading the article got me thinking prior to expansion 16 teams. Now 30 teams. Roughly twice the teams in theory means roughly twice the players.

Yet the ballot process has not changed. There is the same requirement to show up on 75% of the ballots cast. But that cutoff was likely twice as easy to hit when there were half as many potential players to vote for.

It got me thinking on a second direction too. If this is an average year then there logically would be 31 players playing right now who should end up being future HOFers. But I bet if most of us were challenged to name 31 we thought would eventually be worthy our list would bee too short.

rburgh has a point. And maybe a good point about players playing their entire career in one place. That raises a question. Who is the best player to spend their entire career in Montreal?

Steve Rogers.

Baseball reference has it this way:

CARTER 55 WAR
Raines 48 WAR
Dawson 48 WAR
Steve Rogers 45 WAR

But the best player who wore the Expos uniform gotta be Pedro.

The problem is that now there are several hundred writers voting, when there used to be probably 100 or less. It's a lot harder to get 450 of 600 guys to vote for you than 75 of 100, especially when half of them see you play rarely.

Also, TV and the internet have totally taken the focus off of the historical aspects of the game. Dozens of good players from the 70s and 80's are now totally unknown to all but geeks like us. George Foster, Graig Nettles, Reggie Smith, Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, Dwight Evans, and many more would be making $20 million a year today and less than 10% of the fans in any ballpark for a random game could identify more than one or two of them. So the writers have no incentive to keep up with those guys' places in history, therefore they don't.

The proliferation of talent also has flattened the landscape a bit, since there are a lot more "good but not great" players around. My guess would be that the standard deviation of WRC+ and FIP are both way, way smaller than they were in the 1950's.

It's also a lot harder to move into the top 10 in counting stats, it is now extremely rare for a pitcher to win 20 games while when I was a kid is was pretty common and when my parents were kids it was routine. Cy Young's record is forever safe. In fact, I doubt that any pitcher will ever crack the current top 10 in career wins.

And then the roids scandal has knocked out a half dozen obvious candidates, despite the fact that the HOF is littered with known brawlers, drunks, jerks, and doubtless a few unsuspected cheaters.

Finally, it should be noted that probably more than half the current inductees were induced more than 10 years after their careers ended. Keep the faith, Tim Raines.

And then the roids scandal has knocked out a half dozen obvious candidates, despite the fact that the HOF is littered with known brawlers, drunks, jerks, and doubtless a few unsuspected cheaters.

Actually, even unrepentant and unatoned cheaters!! Gaylord Perry, everyone?

The problem with baseball fans or players if they ran the hall of fame you’d end up pretty much like this web site with 3,500 players listed in the Hall of Fame or the 2,500 in the Hollwood Walk of Fame, because of course you have to be great just to make a major league roster and player X was so special. You’d end up with additions like Dennis Hopper on the Walk of Fame by having Starz pay $25,000 for a spot in order to have advertising for their new series Hopper was starring on. ESPN would add Jason Heyward to their announcing lineup and pay to get him in Hall of Fame so they would be able to add gravitas to their announcing core.

There are only 217 major league players in the Hall of Fame,— 15,213 have played the game that would be 12 players based on percentages of players playing now not 31. That averages out to under 2 players for every year baseball has been played making the Hall of Fame. There were 20 players added in the first 10 years of the Hall of Fame. 9 players were added in the last 3 years, 21 in the last 10 years —— 10 percent of the total players added. This dearth of additions to the Hall of Fame is merely a review that requires a test of time not a rubber stamp Bill James approved WAR rating additions to the Hall of Fame. The reason it is valued is because of the difficulty in obtaining a vote to get in, I would hate to see the Hall of Fame become the same process as player additions here where comparisons to worst player becomes the eligibility critera or a specialty in one specific aspect of the game becomes minimum requirement.

It is sad how many deserving players are not getting in. The pre 1950s Hall of Famers regularly faced pitchers who would not make double A rosters of today.

That is a complete myth that is impossible to prove. Even if it was true HOF players are not voted in by trying to think about how they would fare vs players 20-30 years (or more) in the future.

What's not a myth is that the player pool world wide has gone from including a couple million white people to billions who live in baseball playing countries now. I know old guys like LM think that racism had no effect on baseball but the truth is much more complicated.

Just look at ANY sport, just 30 years ago no NFL lineman weighed 300 pounds or more. Now there are QBs who are bigger than the lineman of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. And there wasn't even a rule excluding all non white people. Most MLB pitchers from the 1880s to the 1940s would struggle to make minor league rosters of today. The players who played back in the day that could compete against the competition of today would be the exception, not the rule.

It's kind of funny that someone would even try to argue this point, the numbers alone make your debate embarrassing. The player pool is literally 10,000 (or more) times bigger. I have to question why some hold on to this belief that the pitchers Ruth homered off of could come close to the pitchers today. What makes someone ignore such facts and hold onto such beliefs? White privilege is evident in this line of dream thinking.