Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1636: A First-Ballot Hall of Fame Voter

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs Hall of Fame expert Jay Jaffe (the author of The Cooperstown Casebook) discuss Jay’s experience as a first-time Hall of Fame voter, the case of Curt Schilling, weighing on-field contributions and off-field transgressions, the players on Jay’s ballot, the candidacies of Billy Wagner, Gary Sheffield, Omar Vizquel, and others, […]

The High Five Hall of Famers have no regrets Exposing their love is too compressed The High Five Hall of Famers Are just screaming from your knees When you have the colors of the home scene Hello and welcome to episode 1636 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined as always by Meg Riley of Fangraphs. Hello Meg. Hello.

I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined as always by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. And we are also joined by our pal Jay Jaffe, also of Fangraphs. Hello, Jay. Hello. So you're an expert on the Baseball Hall of Fame. You wrote the Cooperstown Casebook.

You developed the JAWS system. Jaffe wins above replacement score to evaluate Hall of Fame worthiness. And it's sort of an effectively wild tradition for us to have you on every year, roughly, at this time to talk about the Hall of Fame. I guess it's a tradition of everyone in baseball media to talk to at this time of year. But as Bud Selig once said, this time it counts, right? Because you actually have a ballot. And if you are listening to this on Tuesday, you can go read Jay's ballot and his explanation of his ballot at Fangrass, but we

wanted to have him on here to talk through it all and all of the issues surrounding the Hall of Fame these days. So I'm sure you've been asked this many times and hopefully won't mind one more time, but what did it feel like to get your actual physical ballot in the mail for the first time after all these years of waiting, 10 years of being in the BBWA, but even more years than that of writing about this and I guess imagining that you might be filing a ballot someday or not even imagining that it might happen. It was very cool. You know, the longest awaited envelope since my college applications process, which was a long damn time ago um you know so uh but i do remember how that felt and this was uh um you know similarly sized uh thick envelope and uh bursting bursting with with

with some goodies and it's something that yes i did imagine uh and wonder what it would be like to get it and it feels you know it feels like a validation of all the hard work that I've put in over the years. And, you know, it also is a reminder that in some ways I'm kind of standing on the shoulders of giants. There are a lot of people who came along before me and who did a lot of great work, you know, in baseball analysis in general and crossing over into the Hall of Fame territory who never got the chance to vote in Hall of Fame elections, including, you know, some of our former colleagues at Baseball Prospectus and some of their forebears. You know, it's an honor to be the one to pick up the baton and carry it forward into that realm. At the same time,

I know that the work that I've done in this area has already influenced voters, and I'm gratified for that. So this is not just, you know, this is not that big a point of inflection. We've already seen... You've probably had a much bigger influence already than you could have with one... Yeah, I mean, I'm one vote. I'm one vote, but I'm somebody who, you know,

has gotten the ear of dozens of voters. And that's, in some ways, the candidates I've championed, especially the ones, the stat head favorites who kind of rallied from low percentages. Maybe that all would have happened without me and without Jaws, but I do think that my work has played a part in the elections of Tim Raines and Edgar Martinez and Larry Walker and some of the other guys in there, maybe Mike Messina. So the ballot itself is more a symbol of that, that they finally let me into this club. The particulars of this ballot, though, are something else. And we'll get to that. or something else. And we'll get to that. Yeah, but before we do, because some of those particulars are a little less than fun, I wanted to ask you just sort of a general question, which is how you find the current discourse around the Hall of Fame. It seems like we have come an awful long way. And sometimes it's hard for me to know if that's the sort of narrow curated view of the baseball world that I have, but it seems like the discourse around both the individual candidates and sort of the general approach

that one should take when assessing a player's career and putting it in context with his peers has sort of moved forward, but you are in the trenches even more than I am editing your profile, so I'm curious if that is consistent with your sense of how we talk about Hall of Famers individually and collectively. Yeah, I mean, I think things have changed a lot and probably mostly for the better. You know, it used to be that voters would rarely give much insight into the candidates that they were selecting for their ballots, even when they were only, you know, including two or three of them on their ballots. I think the industry has changed such, you know, and it's a storm of, you know, numerous

forces involved, you know, including nearly unlimited space on the internet, the rise of social media, you know, both of which have helped to produce this appetite for Hall of Fame related content. And, you know, I'm one of the beneficiaries of that and even more than that, one of the leading purveyors of that. And I think that, you know, people do expect more coherence out of a voter's ballot. They do expect some level of accountability. You know, more than 80% of the electorate now publishes their ballots either before or after the election. And, you know, if you weren't willing to, you know, in some way stand behind your choices, you wouldn't be doing that. You would be one of the, you know, 15 some way stand behind your choices, you wouldn't be doing that.

You would be one of the, you know, 15 or 20 percent or whatever it is still doing it anonymously. And, you know, in some ways, this is this is this expectation of accountability, I think, has improved the dialogue. It still has the potential to be very shrill when somebody disagrees with you, because that's the nature of the Internet. That's the nature of social media. You're always going to get the cranks who are shouting the loudest and who have the least to lose, you know, because they're hiding behind some, you know, anonymous handle or whatever. But, you know, you endure that. I've endured it.

You know, I'm catching it today with my piece about Curt Schilling. But, you know, I fully expected this. And 10 years of doing this within the BBWA has kind of steeled before this. But I think there's more consideration to this. We have better tools, including wins above replacement and Jaws, to help evaluate the candidates. There's not as many apples to oranges comparisons. The comparisons are more well-grounded in objective analysis and less in mystique. And I know some people bemoan, you know, the,

the way things have changed, but there's always going to be some people who bemoan the way thing, the way anything changes and, you know, including some much less palatable things than, than an improved hall of fame process. So, you know, you know, I think, you know, we've generally moved forward in a lot of ways. And the caveat of that being the discourse around performance enhancing drugs is still fairly shrill and still, I think, in some ways is a bit of a bummer that it kind of dominates, you know, a good chunk of the annual process. So I got into the BBWA a year after you did, which means that I'm in line to get my ballot next year if I don't do anything to get kicked out before then. And even just thinking about

filling it out next year, it still seems more real to me, I think, than I imagined it would. Suddenly, I'm questioning candidates that I imagined. In the past, we've all published our mock ballots, or we've just said who we would vote for, wouldn't vote for. But when you actually have the thing, and it's going to be on record, and it might actually decide something, I've found myself thinking, huh, maybe I should actually revisit that, or at least I have to think about this more than I have in the past. So I wonder how much you've deliberated because you've been writing about this forever. You've been talking about it forever. You literally wrote the book on it, the Cooperstown casebook. So you'd think your mind would be made up about a lot of things.

You wouldn't have to reconsider a lot of things, but as I said, this time it counts. Yeah. I went into this having pretty much made up my mind about a half a dozen candidates and with another half a dozen where I was like, okay, I'm going to review this here and think about it, but let's just do the whole process as if we, you know, just like we did it before. There's new information that comes up. There's, you know, some of which helped uncover and, you know, I think has thrown, you know, has thrown some new elements into people's decision-making process. But I wanted to go through it again because I've always been, you know, I've always tried to keep things transparent. I've always tried to show my work. And in case I missed anything, I wanted to go back and do it all again. But you're right,

it feels, the heat is on the you know there's definitely a little you know you're this comes with more scrutiny than it did before and you know we are playing for keeps here and even though it's just one ballot out of 400 uh give or take you know it's it it opens it opens up to you know it opens me up to a lot more criticism and a lot more exposure and and uh so yes i yes, I am thinking twice about everything here. And I've refrained from filling out the ballot until I got through this whole cycle. And getting it done just in time, I'll take it to the mailbox tomorrow. And feeling as though I have gone through this as thoroughly as ever and that I'm as prepared to stand by it as ever.

Well, it might be a way to enter the discussion of your actual ballot then to ask. And this is a bit of an odd question because as you said, you go through these profiles with a fine tooth comb every year and there are always changes that necessitate me editing them again from top to bottom. But I'm curious if there's anyone, and perhaps this is just a roundabout way of me asking you to talk about your decision with regards to Schilling in particular, but if there's anyone who in either the last year or the last couple of years, your viewpoint on has shifted significantly to either merit inclusion or to say you're not getting a vote from me. Yeah. Well, first of all, the Schilling one is the easy one to point out. I had included him on six out of eight previous virtual ballots dating back to 2013 when he got on the ballot. That was

the start of – that was the first year that I analyzed ballots for Sports Illustrated's website and kind of got the real estate, so to speak, to go through this whole process. And the only times I left him off were 2014 and 2019, both for reasons of space. I'd thought about whether the things he was saying post-career were distasteful enough to exclude him. But I kind of weighed that against the idea of, you know, playing the character Claus Card, which I'm really loath to do because I don't have any respect for Judge Landis, who came up with the Claus and who upheld the color line for 24 years.

He can kiss my ass from his cold grave. from his cold grave. So I don't really feel like I've invoked it here so much as I just came to a breaking point with him because in addition to all the well-known things that he said, including tweeting in favor of the Rope Tree Journalist Some Assembly Required thing and his social media posts about likening Muslims to Nazis and the trans bathroom one, and that stuff that got him fired from ESPN and all these other things. In the past year, he's had quite an adventure. And I just included some tweeting about COVID being a hoax,

And I just included some tweeting about COVID being a hoax, a lot of tweeting recently about the unfounded election fraud conspiracy theories, QAnon stuff. And lately, he likened Dr. Anthony Fauci to a Nazi. And you know what? That's just, I mean, all that stuff is just so far beyond the pale. I refuse to let anyone tell me that I have to vote for this guy just because he's got stats, even my system, he's a top 30 pitcher by Jaws, just because he's got the stats and the postseason credentials. You can't make me vote for him.

I can't look at myself in the mirror in good conscience and say, yes, I'm still going to let this guy have a platform at Cooperstown and, you know, spew his garbage and reward him for, you know, basically veering into what's, you know, generally been taken to be a blind spot. Not in my name. So anyway, I'm not voting for him. I tossed and turned a little bit about this one, but he made it easier and easier with every passing week with his every conspiracy tweet,

including the Fauci one last week. So, you know, thanks for that. Yeah. As I said on Twitter this morning, and the only place I've really acknowledged this, it's not the hall of comparing Dr. Fauci to a Nazi and not being held accountable for that bullshit either. Yeah.

So there you go. Do with that what you will. I think I've been aligned with you in the past on him and probably in the present too. I think he's a deserving candidate, statistically speaking. And in the past, I'm sure I've compared him favorably with other pitchers who were in the Hall of Fame.

So if it were purely on that basis, then I would say, yeah, he was a good pitcher. He had a Hall of Fame career. And then it just comes down to, well, is the world a better place with Curt Schilling in the Hall of Fame? Do we want to give him this platform? It's not a free speech issue. He can and does spout off all the time. But that is not the same as saying that we want to memorialize him and give him a plaque and a bigger platform.

And, you know, it's not a political issue, as I've heard you say elsewhere. It's not a matter of just disagreeing over politics or political candidates. It's we're talking about someone who could do actual harm and maybe is doing actual harm and probably could do more harm if he is in the Hall of Fame and gets to be introduced as Hall of Famer Curt Schilling and gets to get on that stage, I mean, this is someone who has political aspirations, seemingly, and who knows how getting in the Hall of Fame could further that. So it's really, I mean, I'm reluctant to delve into this stuff. It's much easier to say, yep, he's got the stats. And in the past, that is what I would have said. But he has just ascended or descended to a level of odiousness, or at least his odiousness

has been revealed to the point that it would be very difficult to vote for him. And maybe I'll be spared this decision because if he does get in this year, despite not appearing on your ballot, then I won't actually have to make that call officially next year. But I know you are far from the only one who has come to the same decision via the same thought process this year. Yeah, it's not politics. It's spreading disinformation and intolerance. And yeah, I can't get behind that. And yes, I did secretly hope that he would get in last year, just to spare me this round of deliberations. He's at 70% last year. 20 out of 21 previous candidates who had eligibility remaining got in. Oddly enough, the one who didn't is the one who

went on to a career in Congress, and that's Jim Bunning. But his politics hadn't really entered the frame of view at the time that he got bumped back. I think he just had some bad luck on the ballot and, you know, eventually got in via the Veterans Committee. I think it's an inevitability that Schilling gets in. It's just not going to be with my name. And that is certainly true. But, you know, I guess we're not bound by the past assholes. We don't necessarily have to put more in. I mean, it's not just your garden variety assholery in Schilling's case. It's not just that he is an unpleasant person or, you know, bad to be around or something. It's like by giving him this platform and this microphone, are we going to advance whatever harm he is doing and bile he is spewing? And it's difficult because like, if you just take the hard line and say, I'm just going to hold my nose and vote for the deserving statistical candidates, then it's easier in a way, you know, not to have to like, I mean, when we talk about the Hall of Fame, we're talking about

like, was this player good enough to be there? But now we're talking about morality and utilitarianism and what is moral and right in the world. It's a bigger conversation than just, was this a good baseball player or not? And it's not even necessarily a conversation that baseball writers are well-schooled in or particularly equipped to take part in. So if you could just say, oh, he's got the Jaws score, he's got those baseball credentials, it's easy. He's a yes. Then

that's great if you can do that. But I guess once you open it up to not doing that, then does that force you to ask more questions? Because there are, of course, issues with other players on the line, whether it's cheating, obviously, or whether it's domestic violence allegations, which comes into play with Barry Bonds or Omar Vizquel or Manny Ramirez or other, you know, things with Roger Clemens and accusations of underage relationships and all these things that if you just say, well, I'm judging him as a baseball player, you don't even have to consider. But once you start, does that open the door where you were questioning other things, too? But once you start, does that open the door where you were questioning other things too? Yeah, it does. And, you know, the domestic violence thing is certainly an issue. We've got five candidates on here credibly accused of domestic violence. I believe only one of them ever reached the point of a plea, a guilty plea, and that was

Andrew Jones. a plea, a guilty plea, and that was Andrew Jones. But Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Manny Ramirez, and Omar Vizquel have all been, at the very least, accused. Some of them arrested on charges. None of them actually convicted, at least to this point. But the Vizquel one is relatively fresh news. During the playoffs, his wife came forward with a video post on Instagram that was in Spanish and so got almost no attention at all, even from the Spanish or bilingual press. And I actually found something about it when I was bantering with somebody about Vizquel calling out teammates in Toronto and all of a sudden

realized that, hey, this hasn't gotten any play. And before we knew it, yeah, we had, there were people investigating this and they came up with a lot of ugly stuff, two domestic violence incidents and some other stuff that may not be directly linked to that, but partially explains why he's not working in baseball right now and would be subject, perhaps subject, to discipline by MLB if he were to get another job in affiliated baseball. So, yeah, this stuff weighs on me. I sympathize if people feel like that should be disqualifying, too.

With the domestic violence stuff, in all the ones except vizquel and jones i guess the other the other three it's also clouded by the ped stuff um and the ped issue is one that i've been dealing with you know since mark mcguire hit the ballot in 2007 you know when i was when when uh i was still at baseballpectus, and the idea of having an actual ballot was far from anything more than a twinkle in my eye. But the line that I came to is that, you know, what happened before the testing era, you know, which began in 2004, should be distinguished from what happened after the testing era began with the suspensions and all that, because what you had before was kind of the Wild West, where there were no consequences for doing anything. And I don't think applying a retroactive

morality is the way to go there. So I've always been of the opinion that Bonds and Clemens should be in the Hall of Fame, that their PED usage shouldn't stop me from voting for them. I understand that people feel like the other stuff, Bonds with the domestic violence allegations, Clemens with the allegations regarding his relationship with the singer Mindy McCready, and whether or not that was underage. I have noted in his profile that she did offer different accounts at different times over when that relationship turned serious.

So I don't really know who's right there, but I don't think we have a clear answer, any of us. But yeah, that does color my thinking. But in the end, I basically kept that stuff to the side. I guess I compartmentalized that stuff, and I don't know if that's a good thing or not. That stuff bothers me, but it didn't change my vote on any of these candidates. I don't find it particularly satisfying either. inflection point around the conversation with PEDs. And I think we have another one coming next year when both Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez, I believe, are going to make their debuts on the ballot. Obviously, their connections to PEDs are pretty different, right? And that Rodriguez served, you know, a year-long suspension. And we've only heard sort of speculation and rumors about Ortiz having tested positive on the survey test. And I don't want to move on from this year's ballot too quickly, but I'm curious

how you anticipate that sort of reframing potentially the conversation around PEDs and how voters ought to think about this stuff. Or do you think that we are likely to see the sort of strong no's for Bonds and Clemens just stick their heels in and be even stronger nose once Rodriguez and Ortiz make their debuts? Yeah, I wish I had an answer that made sense. I think it's, to me, what's going to be very strange is to see Bonds, Clemens, A-Rod, Manny, Sheffield, and whoever else on the ballot next to Ortiz. And the player on that ballot who is, I think by all accounts, the least complete of those is going to be the one who gets the most Hall of Fame support, potentially.

Right. You know, look, Sammy Sosa only has the survey test too, you know, as does Ortiz. By my line in the sand, the survey test is Wild West era stuff. And I mean, if Rob Manford went so far as to essentially repudiate it, at least in the case of Ortiz, then why am I putting stock in it? Why should any voter put stock in it? So I don't care about the survey test positives. At one point, that was all we had on A-Rod too. It's been more than a decade since we could say that, but at the time, that was all we had on A-Rod too. It's been more than a decade since we could say that, but at the time, that was everything for A-Rod and Manny and Ortiz and Sosa.

We got them in a wave. We still know there's still over 100 other players out there whose names we don't know who were on that list. But I think it's going to look rather ridiculous next year if Ortiz is the only one who's getting enough support to get in. I don't know that he will. He's got, obviously, the DH factor to overcome as well. He doesn't do very well in Jaws. He obviously has postseason credentials to the end of days. I think he was the only exception of the guys I profiled where I was like, you know, I'm not going to vote for this guy. At least not based on what I've got right now. This is too far below the line. So I don't know. It's going to be very strange.

In some ways, I kind of feel like, you know, next year, performance only. It's all bets are off. PEDs, whatever. Screw you, Bud Selig. Screw you, Rob Manfred. I'll vote for Manny. I'll vote for A-Rod. I'll vote for all these guys just as a protest against the stupidity of the way all this is handled. So I don't know. I do wonder if there were voters out there who've been thinking that they would hold out on Bonds and Clemens until their 10th year. We don't see a lot of

people flipping from a no last year to a yes this year. We don't see a lot of people flipping from a no last year to a yes this year. We haven't really seen that much since any of the last three cycles before this one. The election of Selig did cause a lot of people to say, you know what, if he's in and he presided over the era, then why am I battling against Bonds and Clemens? I think it was Susan Sluster who said, I'll hold my nose and vote for them. So I don't know. Maybe there are more people who are going to do that in the 10th year because we've got no further information or no better resolution, but I kind of suspect that there's a large enough group to filibuster them and they'll fall off the ballot and await further hearing from an era committee. And then we can all keep talking about it for another decade or two.

Yeah. I mean, the easiest way to get rid of this conversation would be to vote them in instead. Instead, it's a conversation that is unending. I know you're still wrestling with a few decisions in a sign of how seriously you think this whole exercise. And so if you decide those before I post this episode, maybe I'll note that at the end. But we can talk through what is still giving you some pause and what you have decided. Okay. Let's do the easy ones first. Let's wade out of the muck for a little bit here. So the easiest call for me, beyond Bonds and Clemens,

and the one that I just feel absolutely not a shred of guilt, and this is the happiest one of all, is Scott Rowland. He clears the career peak and JAWS standards of third base despite the fact that his career ended at age 37. We have him as the third best fielding third baseman of all time in terms of fielding runs behind only Brooks Robinson and Adrian Beltre and one of the top maybe 15 or so hitters among third basemen ever. Easy vote for me, and I'm gratified that more people are catching on to him. He only had about 10% of the vote his first year on the

ballot. He was up to 35% last year in his third year. Last I saw on the tracker, he was somewhere in the neighborhood of 50%. So I'd like to think that he's on his way and that it won't even take him 10 years to get in, but we'll see. I think things are moving in the right direction for him. Yeah. I wish they could all be like Roland, you know, then it would be fun to vote. That's what I imagined voting for the Hall of Fame. I was like, oh, I'll come along and I'll just be able to vote for the Larry Walkers and the Tim Reinses and the Burt Blylevins. It'll just be all of these underappreciated guys who really need my vote. And there aren't that many of them, which is maybe a sign of the fact that the electorate has gotten better about voting or at least more aligned with my way of looking at players.

But because of that, you have all these guys where it's like tearing our hair out about the morality of the situation. And then you have Scott Rowland, who's just a good player who is probably still underappreciated and doesn't have any of these negatives that we've been discussing with many others. Right, right. Okay, so the next one, Todd Helton, 15th among first basemen in JAWS, another slow starting candidacy, but nearly doubled his support last year to 29%, and is pulling at about 50% at this writing. He's above the peak standard, but not the career or JAWS standards. But he's not far off in the ladder. He's close enough for me. And despite the fact that the latter half of his

career was not particularly satisfying, particularly his final four years, the big numbers, once you adjust for them by the means that we have, still make him a standout hitter. And, you know, unfortunately, if you want to talk about the minor dings to his candidacy, he's got a couple of alcohol-related driving incidents, which ain't great. But I would say he's taken more ownership of them than Tony La Russa has in his situation. So there's that at least. But that didn't stop me from checking the box next to his name here. Yeah, I was going gonna ask about helton

and jaws because he's just barely below the jaw standard it's like uh you know which way you round basically but i know that you've never been dogmatic like saying that jaws is uh the be all or the end all but because your name is on it and because you believe in it and you know it reflects how how you look at players generally i wonder whether you feel pressure to kind of conform to the numbers now that you're voting and are hesitant about going against the system. Well, it's a first-cut mechanism. It's a tool. And we always have to acknowledge that war is not as precise as we'd like it to be. Further back we go, it's basically built's basically, it's, you know, it's built on certain assumptions, you know, that we have put into it. It's a lot of smart people

have put a lot of energy into trying to make it as good as they can. It's not perfect. But I think, you know, when you're talking about when a guy who's a rounding error that, you know, comes down to a run or two a year over the course of a decade, I don't think that's really worth getting too hung up about. We're basing assumptions on the relative value of positions and how that changes over time. We're putting stock in the judgment of individuals when it comes to the defensive plays that go into scoring for defensive runs saved. We are debating how many years of data we should be using and making park adjustments. There's these subjective decisions that go into creating what is ostensibly an objective metric. So no, I don't feel too high bound that I can't

deviate from it a little bit. And in some cases, maybe more than a little bit. But for me, Helton's close enough and I don't have a problem with that. All right, who's next? Billy Wagner. Now, relievers are an area that I don't think Jaws has ever particularly handled well, because I don't think war particularly handles relievers to the extent that we... There's a disconnect between how they are valued within the game and how they are valued in war and Jaws.

And I think the answer is probably somewhere in between uh those two poles um but when i use win probability added and situational or context neutral wins when i bring those into this beside war i get i have a kind of a hybrid metric that shows wagner is the best player and best reliever outside the hall, and maybe the sixth best of all time by that measure. And on that basis, and then when you combine it with the fact that he was the all-time leader in strikeout rate and lowest opponent batting average, albeit at just an 800 inning threshold for both of those, to me, that's enough dominance over a short period of time that um that i i i favor him and also bringing into it his backstory this is a guy who was right-handed but who broke his arm twice um as a kid and learned to throw a left-handed and not just throw a left hand but throw 100

miles an hour left-handed um and came from some you know pretty significant poverty and was just the ultimate underdog. And, you know, he kind of fits into, you know, I think if there's a mix between the stats and the narrative, I think he kind of touches that for me, and so I've supported him. He was at 31.7% last year uh up from 16.7 percent the year before he's uh what more than halfway through his candidacy now i think he's still got a shot you know i think there's there's always going to be a split within the electorate over how to evaluate evaluate relievers but uh i think he might be the last one that's worth going in for a while. I think he fits more into that than he does into these guys who look like they're petering out,

like Kenley Jansen and Craig Kimbrell. Maybe a role as Chapman has a shot, but boy, that's not going to be a fun one. Wagner's going to be a tough one for me next year, I think, because I tend to fall in the sort of Sean Foreman camp of, you know, all relievers are failed starters, or most of them are. And even if you give them some impact maybe, but you have to compare them to relievers. It's an important position. If we're going to put any relievers in the hall, then you've got to compare like to like, and I'm somewhat sympathetic to that. And boy, he was unhittable. I mean, just literally like six hits per nine, just all the numbers are incredible. And it's just the 900 innings that really gives me pause. yeah i i wish that he had pitched a little longer because he really went out on top you know i mean he he went out on one of his best seasons and i wish he had just hung around a year or two more it would have made it easier for me yeah that's the thing

it's like why but then why are we getting hung up on you know his last his last two years well i guess we can't really count 2009 much because he only pitched 15 and two-thirds innings. But his last year, he posted a 143 ERA and a 210 FIP in 69 and a third innings. Yeah, all-star his last three seasons. Yeah, I mean, that was, you know, by some measures, that was his most dominant season. You know, he was striking out, what, 13 and a half per nine innings. That was his career high once he, high. Sorry, not his career high. His career highs were earlier, over 14 in his days with the Astros. His career highs look like today, which for a player from his era, it's not that long ago.

Strikeout rates have increased so much. Yeah, 20 years ago, he was producing a role as Chapman, like strikeout rates. And so he was much further above the league then. I guess the question is, what value would there have been to him having, let's just say, two seasons of 60 innings and a three ERA and one of 450 in the next one, where he was essentially replacement level or slightly below? I don't know that I would be particularly edified by that. You know, that gets into a thousand innings. Yeah. But doesn't add any value. I mean, you know, I, I don't know.

I don't know that, that I'd be, that I would be more compelled to vote for him. I can see where some might be, but you know, the fact that he left on top, you know, is again, adds a mystique to it. It's the Sandy Koufax effect to a smaller degree. It's going to be so interesting. And I think we just haven't had this conversation yet, because as you've noted that the guys who would sort of force the conversation around this either aren't on the ballot yet, or are likely to have petered out to the point that they're not really relevant in it once they get there. But as we start to rethink how starters need to be evaluated for

the Hall of Fame, it seems like we're going to have to have a similar conversation around relievers at some point, right? Because the usage is just shifting so dramatically and how they're deployed. So have fun with that when it arrives, Jay. I'm sure it will be very easy to sort out. It might take somebody smarter than me to come along and come up with the next paradigm. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, it's tough. On the subject of starters, I've been playing with some ideas that I think I will maybe throw out there in January just for entertainment purposes and get some feedback on them from people who have some investment in this about how to handle the decreasing workloads. I don't know

that I have an answer, but I do have an idea. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about that because, spoiler here, the likes of Hudson and Pettit and Burley are not on your ballot, at least this year. And I see people suggest, well, this is just what a Hall of Fame pitcher looks like now. They're below the historical standards. But then you have the Verlanders and the Scherzers and guys who right are from that era or even later and maybe have better credentials so you know but they are I guess one of the top I don't know like 20 25 ish pitchers of the past couple decades and so I guess if you have to decide if you're a big haul or a small haul person. And for me, I'm probably with you too, as much as I enjoyed those guys and like their

careers and love Mark Burley and Andy Pettit, who I grew up watching, but probably just a cut below for me right now, but I could see how my mind might be changed on that in the future. Yeah, I think, you know, I still think there's a lot of middle ground between, you know, between Hudson and Burley and Pettit on the one hand, who rank from 84th to 91st in Jaws, to you've got, then you've got, you know, CeCe Sabathia and David Cohn and, you know, significant step up in Jaws, 71st and 64th for those two. John Smoltz is 63rd, although he's kind of held down by the stint as a reliever. Brett Saberhagen is also in that zone.

Dave Steeb somewhere. Dave Steeb is in there too. There's just a higher class of pitchers than, you know, Hudson, Burley, and Pennant. I mean, those guys really weren't ever factors in Cy Young races. I mean, I guess Hudson had a second place maybe, but it was because he had 21 wins and a four ERA. You know, so I'm not really that impressed by that. Whereas these guys, those guys I mentioned had at least one Cy Young

and were maybe in contention for a second one. And then you've got Verlander, Granke, Kershaw, and Scherzer, who are another tier up from them. Scherzer's a little bit behind because of a late start, but those guys, I think, will all come close to the Jaws standard. And somewhere in that mix, you've got Roy Halladay, who had a bit of a short career, fell a little bit short, but is still clearly a tier above the aforementioned trio. And also Kevin Brown in there, too, who never won a Cy Young, but who was certainly a cut above the guys we're talking about here. So I can't really bring myself to just all of a sudden start voting for Pettit

and Burley and Hudson with you know, with all due respect for what they did in their careers. And even when I've, you know, done my preliminary playing with this system, which is basically kind of a governor on high volume innings that kind of lowers the peak standard a bit. It's not, those guys don't really come into the frame. It's like, oh, it's time to rethink them here before we dismiss them. But it looks like they'll probably all stay on the ballot or have a shot at staying on the ballot. So maybe we'll have this discussion again next year and reevaluate. I don't know. I'm not, but I'm not jazzed about those guys. And, you know, as much respect as I have for their careers,

they're just not dominant enough at any point to really move the needle for me. So who is next on the JJFE official ballot? The next one that I've been on multiple virtual ballots of mine and I left a spot for here is Andrew Jones, who's 11th among centerfielders in Jaws, surged from about 7.5% to 19.5% last year, is polling at about double that right now. The system used to baseball reference has him as the number one defensive centerfielder of all time. I know there's some dispute about whether that's

appropriately capturing the discretionary plays where he was compensating for a very slow Ryan Klesko or even Chipper Jones in left field. Chris Dial, who has himself come up with a defensive system that's part of the ones used in the Gold Gloves process, is rather critical of the inflated value of Jones in that regard. But the other defensive systems that are used in the Gold Gloves all uphold Jones's place. We've kind of illustrated that. So I'm going to go with a sort of majority rule there. And, you know, again, I think 11th all-time, and that's even while his career petered out at age 31 and faded away playing only 400-some-odd games in his final five seasons.

He's above the peak standard. He was clearly an elite fielder. And, you know, when you think about the fact that, you know, of the Braves triumvirate of Greg Maddox, Tom Glavin, and John Smoltz, only Smoltz was really the strikeout pitcher there. The other two racked up over 3,000outs you know they compiled them but they weren't guys who were you know striking out 250 a year they weren't dominating in the same way and so they needed defensive help and nobody gave them more defensive help than andrew jones yeah it wasn't like he

wasn't busy out there yeah you know he he Yeah, he could play shallow and take away the singles and then run down the extra base hits, and that's why his defensive values are so high. And then his career collapsed because he was out of shape and his knees went and he could no longer do it. But I have him, Kenny Lofton, and Carlos Beltran, 9th, 10th, and 11th in Jaws, and I think all three of them should be in.

Tremendously bummed that Lofton hit the ballot the same year that Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, Piazza, Biggio, Schilling all hit the ballot, and he was just, you know, left out in the cold with 3% of the vote. But I think all three of them should be in, and I'm hopeful that Andrew gets his due here. It seems like he's getting some momentum, but he's still got a long ways to go. And you're also yes on an outfielder

on the opposite end of the defensive spectrum. Yes, I am. I am. Gary Sheffield, and I think I would be with you on that if I were to vote today. And I've kind of questioned myself. Am I voting for him? Because I saw him at least the latter half of his career and was very impressed by him and always enjoyed him as a player. And I've been thinking, like, is this the am I falling into the Jim Rice trap where I'm remembering him being so feared and I'm overrating him? No, he was a better hitter than he was.

He was a fucking beast. It really was. And the defensive stats are so bad. I mean, you know, with all due respect to Jim Rice, who, you know, in his day certainly had a stretch where he was, you know, one of the best hitters in the league. Jim Rice has a 128 career OPS plus. That's actually the same as two other right fielders on this ballot who come into the discussion here, Sammy Sosa and Bobby Abreu. Gary Sheffield's at 140.

He is, you know, 12% better than those guys and over a longer period of time than either of them too. I mean, you know, 140 over 10,000 plate appearances. I mean, that's just... And even the peak, like, you know, people talk about Jim Rice's 1978 MVP year. I mean, Sheffield had multiple years better than that one. Yes, yes, yes. And, you know, Sheffield wasn't playing in Fenway Park. He spent a lot of time in pitcher's parks. And, you know, one thing about Sheffield, you know, for all of the, you know, the controversies that enveloped him in his career, can't get over how you know mistreated

he was by the brewers early in his career they just didn't know what to do with him they you know they when dwight gooden got busted and sheffield was in was in the car they made sheffield you know they subjected sheffield to non-random drug testing they sent him down to the minor leagues when he said he you know he had an injured foot turns out he had a broken bone that they didn't catch you know they they messed with him and he messed with them back and it was just an ugly marriage when he said he had an injured foot. Turns out he had a broken bone that they didn't catch. They messed with him, and he messed with them back, and it was just an ugly marriage. And I'm sure that that played a part in the extent to which he always spoke up for when he felt like he was getting a raw deal,

and it made him perhaps unpopular in certain places. I looked into the so-called intentional error issue where he was quoted as saying he would throw the ball away. There's not much to that. There may have been an example in the minor leagues, but there was nothing that defends the description of the major leagues, and both I and Tom Verducci have independently debunked that one. But yeah, and I wonder, his defensive

metrics are extremely bad. They don't jibe, however, with other defensive measures, whether you're talking about UZR or BP's fielding runs above average or the fielding system that's used at the baseball gauge, defensive regression analysis. So I've always kind of taken that one, as well as like Derek Jeter's defensive numbers of, okay, these are extreme outliers and let's be suspicious of outliers in both directions too. So, and I also, the other thing about Sheffield is that, you know, he played almost two thirds of his career in the National League. So it wasn't like his managers could DH him, but we would probably view him a little bit differently if he'd been, you

know, a full-time DH. He might stand as the best DH to the side of Edgar Martinez. But, you know, so I did not, I could not find room for him on my ballot until last year. And I put him on there. He did have, you know, watching him every day with the Yankees, he did have a very visceral impact on me. You know, there's like both him and Manny Ramirez, watching those guys hit on a day in and day out basis.

Oof. You know, I'd pay money for that. I would easily pay money for that. And even though we're the numbers people, we're not saying there's nothing you can glean from having seen a player. I mean, sometimes it can steer you wrong and give you an inflated sense of how good a player was. If you remember, you know, if you were 12 and you were idolizing someone, maybe the numbers don't match up with your memory, but in the case of Sheffield, they do. So yeah, it sort of

supports the memories. Remarkably quick hands, just some of the quickest hands you've ever seen. I thought he was going to kill Larry Boa, you know, like when Boa was a third base coach with the Yankees. I mean, just Sheffield hit the fiercest foul balls I've ever seen. I want a super cut of Larry Boa. I wish we had stat cast for Sheffield. Oh, God, yes. I mean, yeah, he would have been routinely going 110 and above.

I have no doubt about that. Yeah. So we're up to seven. So we're up to seven. So we're up to seven. And then we've got Sammy Sosa and Bobby Abreu. And Sheffield is below both of those guys in Jaws. And all three of those guys are below the standard. But they're all in the general vicinity of Vlad Guerrero, who was elected in 2018.

Sosa has the PED issue, but he's above the peak standard at the position. I don't really know what to do with Sosa. I do think in some ways he's been subjected to a different standard than Barry Bonds or any of the other players who stand accused. We have less information about what Sammy Sosa did with regards to PEDs than any of those guys. He never was suspended for PEDs. We don't even know what substance it was he used because he never, you know, we don't have a confirmed positive. You know, it's just the eyeball test and, oh, and he also corked his bat.

And, you know, I just, it's just a lot of, and then we've got the Cubs basically disinvited him from any festivities. And we've got, I think, some weird Sammy Sosa post-career stuff that I think is kind of racially charged and really kind of discomforting to unravel. And I don't know that anybody really wants to go there, but I think that plays into the way that he has been received. So I'm kind of sympathetic to Sammy Sosa even though there's also some icky stuff in his past including a 1991 domestic violence issue that was incredibly underreported at the time

and even really didn't escape didn't even get noticed by anybody when he was a star it just completely faded from view so I'm deliberating about him I'm deliberating about Abreu who was criminally underappreciated in his day and was just an on-base machine. And at the same time, he was also a legitimate five-tool player. Maybe the glove wasn't as good as people had hoped.

He grades out about average over the course of his career. He won one gold glove. He probably should have been an all-star several times over, especially when he was with the Phillies, but he couldn't buy his way onto a ballot. And that's kind of sad. But he was a 30-homer, 30-steal guy, and a guy who put up a 395 on-base percentage for his career. I left him off last year.

He got 5.5% of actual voters. He looks like I left him off last year. He got five and a half percent of actual voters. He looks like he's doing better this year. And I'm kind of leaning towards including him and Sosa on the ballot because having only Gary Sheffield from among that group, the lowest jaws, I kind of feel a little bit awkward about that. So in the end, I don't think Abreu or Sosa are threats to be elected. I am happy to have people continue the conversation about them, though. So in the interest of that, in making sure that they get

the 5% needed to stay on the ballot, which I think they will easily do, I will add my name to that list. Well, and we're sort of in a position, right, where you can do that, right? We can continue these conversations because the ballot has cleared some and pretty significantly, really, in the last couple of cycles. I don't want to move off your ballot entirely, but I think this is a good opportunity to ask, when should our listeners anticipate the return of ballot clog? Because I imagine there will be more qualified candidates you know it's it's gonna be a while it's gonna be a while when I did that five-year outlook last year I was like holy Toledo it's it's it's gonna be a while before we experience what we have again what we just did and you know I I go back to in that was it 2015 I think it was I was on that BBWA committee that you know we were trying to get the hall of Fame to change its rules and allow more ballot space for voters because it was just felt like an untenable situation. And the proposal we came up with, which was, you know, a compromise proposal because the committee was formed with the idea of finding a very middle of the road position instead of a very much, you know, an aggressively outlying position was, you know, would you please expand it to include 12 slots? And the hall said, no.

And officially they tabled the matter and they made their own decision to shorten the eligibility cycle from 15 years to 10, which only further contributed to the club. But I do think it's going to be a while before we get anything similar to what we have had. I mean, we've got some interesting, we certainly have, we'll have slates that are going to be interesting in terms of the first year candidates. I think the one, the one that's, to me, that's going to be very interesting is 2024. Adrian Beltre, Chase Utley, Joe Maurer, and David Wright, as well as Bartolo Colon, will all be first-year candidates that year. Beltre is an easy first ballot guy. I think Joe Maurer should be a guy who gets in.

I think there'll be some debate around him. I'm certainly pro-Chase Utley. I think he's going to be a guy about whom there's a lot of debate, perhaps some rancor. David Wright's going to be a sad story about what might have been. You know, we'll see from this class, this current crop, who the holdovers will be. I anticipate that guys like Vizquel and Scott Rowland and Todd Helton and Billy Wagner might still be on the ballot by then. So that could be when things get really interesting again, from the standpoint of needing more

than 10 slots. get really interesting again from the standpoint of needing more than 10 slots. So I guess the only notable omission that we haven't talked about, at least in a baseball sense, is Omar Biscayle, who has become a notable omission because so many people have included him. I would not have even thought of him as a notable omission if you had asked me several years ago, probably. But I mean, I know that we're sort of on the same side of this one. So we're just going to be agreeing with each other here, I think. But really, even before Fizkel became

a much more difficult guy to root for after the recent revelations, because for a while it was like, well, I don't see the support, but at least he seems to be an okay guy. Like, you know, generally when someone gets into the Hall of Fame, you don't think it's a deserving candidate.

It's like, well, it's, you know, it's just baseball. It's not life or death, at least in most cases. And you can at least be happy for the guy who got in, you know, maybe Harold Baines brings down the Jaws standard, but, you know, he seems like a good guy and you can be happy for him. In Vizquel's case, that's more difficult now. But even putting that aside, it's just, it's tough for me to see the case that so many other people seem to see, because

with the way that he hit, he really would have had to be Ozzie Smith, and he just wasn't. And really, Ozzie was a better hitter than Vizquel was to begin with, you know, by a not insignificant margin. So, I mean, I understand it because he was around forever. He racked up the counting stats and, you know, meant a lot to certain people and people remember the defensive highlights and everything. But boy, it's just one of those cases where the post-career evaluations differ so dramatically from the mid-career evaluations and not as it is with some players where you have some sort of sabermetric reappraisal where you realize they were underrated in their

day it's not that it's not the numbers saying that people were underappreciating it's just you know he didn't get the mvp support then but suddenly all the people who were not voting for him back then have decided that actually he was a hall of famer all that time yeah it's it's strange and i think a lot of it is is that you know the highlight clips are still there and they and they hold a certain spot and he certainly had flash you know he was uh he was very sure-handed his range was not as as maybe not his best facet uh his arm was maybe not his best facet but he was very sure not his best facet, but he was very sure-handed. And, you know, when you're talking about guys who don't make errors, which was the standard at the time, you know, Vizquel certainly fit into that. You know, but he had flair and he played on a lot of

very good teams, those Indians teams in particular. You know, he was on two pennant winners and nearly won World Series. But, you know, his proponents want to say that, yes, he was the second coming of Ozzie Smith. But to the extent that we can measure it, you know, he's about more than 100 runs behind Ozzie as a fielder, you know, with very good defensive metrics, but not elite defensive metrics. And then he's more than 100 runs behind Ozzie as an offensive player, which includes base running, where Ozzie had considerable value beyond just his hitting. And while his slash stats look superficially similar to Ozzie's, Ozzie was doing it in a much lower scoring environment and had a mid-career improvement that made it so that he had a long stretch where he was basically an average offensive contributor, which when you've got the best fielding shortstop of all time is a significant boon. Omar, I think, had only a couple of years where he was even a remotely palatable hitter.

He's more like Mark Belanger, who you guys are certainly too young to have remembered seeing play, but who was the shortstop staple on the Orioles teams of the 60s and 70s, playing next to Brooks Robinson. Now that is the most impenetrable left side of an infield ever. You know, when you think about getting back to what I was saying about Maddox and Glavin being in the hall, thanks to Andrew Jones, Jim Palmer's in the Hall of Fame, thanks to Brooks Robinson and Mark Belanger, because he wasn't a high strikeout guy himself. You know, he needed his fielders, and he had some of the best ever,

also including Bobby Grich at second base for a while. But Vizquel is, you know, a guy who had a bunch of three and four win seasons. Maybe four is even a stretch, but he would rate by Jaws as the lowest ranked shortstop in the hall supplanting Rabbit Moranville, who himself is kind of an odd case in that he once got an MVP award for very average season, but happened to do it with the so-called Miracle Bra of 1914 and that i guess he was actually second that year in the mvp voting i take that back but he had 246 with a 306 on base percentage and a 326 slugging percentage and all that boils down to a five win season but you know really captured must have

captured the imaginations of those who saw him and those who read about him because it wasn't like there was a lot of uh highlight footage circulating in those days yeah but yeah i you know i think you know viscal people are are going by the visual memory without actually you know paying i think full respect to the comparisons and the fact that we can break this down uh to a greater degree and that while he scores well as a as a fielder he's is not Ozzie Smith and that there is a huge difference in what they provided on the other side of the ball.

All right. So I guess we've covered the ballot. Looks like as we speak it, at least you're leaning toward nine spots, probably. Yeah, I think I'm pretty comfortable with nine. It would feel silly.

It made me feel a little bit silly to go seven after so many years of ten. I'm happy to continue the discussions of Abreu and Sosa. We'll only have one more year to kick around Sammy Sosa. Anyway, there are certainly standards by which we could say Sammy Sosa is a Hall of Famer

because, as John Thorne would say, he was famous. And he was as famous as anybody in the game for a while so you know this isn't my this isn't my favorite crop of nine or ten players uh to vote for either virtually or actually but you know i'm proud to have earned my spot in this process and uh um you know i always uh i i appreciate that people put you know put their stock in what i'm doing and pay attention to what I'm doing.

I guess I'm going to feel some heat about some of this, but that comes with the territory, and I've been prepared for that for quite some time. Well, we will link to that post where everyone can read through your explanations there. Before we let you go, put the finishing touches on that post, we just wanted to close with a couple of broader questions. the finishing touches on that post, we just wanted to close with a couple of broader questions. One is about the fact that unfortunately you've been a very busy obituary writer this year. It's just nonstop. So we lost Phil Necro over the weekend, the seventh Hall of Fame player to pass away this year. That's a record, not a record anyone wanted to set. There were, I guess, seven Hall of Famers did die in 1972, if you count George Weiss, the executive. But this is a record for players and not even counting some near Hall of Famers and possible future Hall of Famers like Jim Wynn and Dick Allen, two guys who were almost exactly the same age and overlapped perfectly in their careers.

So you've just you've amassed quite a body of work of remembering these guys, which sad that that's the occasion. I guess it's good that we all get to remember them and talk about them and marvel at how great they were, which I was doing with Necro just this weekend, because I mean, he's really the most prolific pitcher of the live ball era. And a lot of comparisons are going around of Necro and Nolan Ryan, for instance, and Necro comes out quite favorably. So I guess that's the one that you haven't written up yet, or at least hasn't been published yet. So that's next. I gathered a bunch of information on him yesterday when I heard the news and thinking about it, I think of the Hall of Famers,

he might be the one that I have, certainly the one that I had the most firsthand experience watching. Firsthand being, I guess, just TV as opposed to highlight clips. I remember his career well. He played longer than Joe Morgan. I remember kind of being impatient and rooting for that 300th win. I remember marveling at just how small the type on the back of his baseball card was. I mean, fascinated by the knuckleball ever since I read Ball Four when I was 10 years old. So there's a certain, you know, wish that there were more knuckleballers in there and that he's, I mean, he stands as the greatest knuckleballer ever. I don't think it's really that close, you know, if you're talking about career length. No, he didn't win a Cy Young the

way R.A. Dickey did, but probably should have somewhere in there. But he was on some crappy Braves teams. And so when he was, you know, going 21 and 15 or whatever, he was having better seasons than a lot of guys who were winning it with, you know, with higher earned run averages and more sterling one loss records. And by all accounts, he just sounds like he was a really good guy. I didn't know him, but the people who are around the Hall of Fame process every year say that he was somebody who really enjoyed going up there annually. He was a very big proponent of equality within the game. He coached what was effectively a barnstorming women's team in the 90s for four years

called the Colorado Silver Bullets and believed that they deserved a fair shake. Just seems like an all-around good dude. It's a lot of sadness. I've written at least

10 of these this year and it weighs on me every time, but I also feel like you know gotta you know i try to do justice to them you know because i especially because i did have a first-hand experience with watching a lot of them and you know because they are hall of famers that's kind of my purview too and so putting their you know their feats in perspective and with necro the fact he didn't start a second even his second major league game until he was 28 years old and then he pitched until he was 48, well there's hope for all of us

it's been one of the things I've been both very grateful for and dreaded as an assigning editor to have to slide into your slack every couple weeks it seems and say Jay there was that barrage in the fall that was just really sad just grim but I'll have was really sad. Just grim.

But yeah, I'll have a tribute on him this week, and hopefully we'll get out of 2020 without any further casualties. Yeah. Ben mentioned Dick Allen, and I wanted to maybe close with this because, I mean, hopefully both in terms of the racism that he experienced that colored the way he was covered as an active player. And then, you know, he was one of these guys who didn't get to be a beneficiary of sort of how we think about baseball now. When his career was assessed, there's this great tragedy that he, you know, if this had been a normal year and we had not had the pandemic, he may have heard the day before he passed that he had finally been elected to the Hall of Fame. And obviously, we have this sort of injustice that we'll never be able to write because

of his passing and the timing of it relative to learning that he would have been inducted. And I guess I'm curious if there are mechanisms that you think institutionally the Hall could institute to do a better job of honoring these guys when they're alive? Because I'm sure that it will be a small comfort perhaps to his family when the time comes and he is named to the Hall of Fame, but that's pretty cold comfort for him that he never got to enjoy that when he was alive and was never recognized and sort of celebrated for what a great player he was so i'm curious how you think we might do a bit better by some of the the game's earlier players who didn't really get the shake they deserved on the writer's

ballot and haven't yet been brought in by the the various committees so that we don't have more of these yeah well you know i was among those who applauded the decision the hall made with regards to the error committees when they reorganized them a few years ago to stagger it so that the older errors got considered with less frequency. was not cutting the golden era group, the mini Minoso and Dick Allen and Tony Oliva and Jim Cott, the guys who are now in their 80s or, in Minoso's case, unfortunately deceased, to the front of the line to make sure that they got one more shot before they had to wait five years for the next turn. Because I think we'll be lucky if only Dick Allen, if Dick Allen's the only casualty there and Maury Wills is 87 years old,

he's in that group too. And while I'm not a Maury Wills proponent for the Hall of Fame, I do sympathize with the fact that an extra year is a long time to await one's Hall of Fame verdict. I think looking back, you know, if they could have done that, move them to the head of the line, get one more vote out of the way after the 2015 one where Allen and Oliva missed by a single vote, I think that would have been good. I think now the best thing they could do would be to do some kind of special committee 2006 Negro Leagues type process where you get a full panel and they just review all

these guys. And it's basically, you know, an up or down vote on these guys. And if 15 of them get in, 15 of them get in and, you know, you, I guess, more or less close the books on that era. And this group also includes the late Gil Hodges, who's the, I think, the most near missed Hall of Fame candidate ever. He's the exception I have to cite every time. Fact of Hall of Fame trivia I will forever have implanted in my brain. Yes, exactly. I mean, he gets mentioned every time. every time you know if if maybe the right thing to do would just be like let's get a panel together and consider these 12 candidates or you know or however many and vote up or down no limits

on how many you can vote for and we'll induct those hopefully while these guys are still alive but then you look back at how they how the special committee bollocks things with respect to buck o'neill and you just wonder if that's going to work either. Yeah. So I don't know. But I think that would be the I think that would be the place to start. You know, and I think that individual voters, you know, they wish, you know, I wish they weren't such hard asses. And I think that a lot of it comes down to the players, you know, if nobody's good enough for their country club, you know, then why are why are we letting them participate in this process? By which I mean, the error committees of which the hall of famers make up half yeah and you know it's nice it is for someone to get to experience being inducted while they are still alive it's also

nice for us to get to see them enjoy that and give that speech like a lot of the time a hall of fame speech they're memorable examples that come to mind of guys who you know that was much more memorable maybe than the plaque even was what they said so and you know that's part of of history too that gets lost if they don't get in while they're alive and so maybe lastly along those lines you brought up the negro leagues and i wonder what effect you think mlb's reclassification of the negro leagues as major leagues may have on Hall of Fame candidates who either were Negro Leaguers or spanned both the Negro Leagues and the AL and the NL because it's been a long time. It's been since 2006 that a Negro League player got in and other players

maybe have had their candidacies hurt because their time was split across leagues. Yeah, it might be too early to tell what the effect is going to be, but I do think it favors Mendoza. I know in 2006, the voters weren't allowed to consider his major league career in the context of, of, of those deliberations. And at that point, he'd only played three years in the Negro League. So he was a star, but he did not have a long career. So I can understand why if you're limited to that basis, he's not going to turn up at the top. But if you're considering his whole career, you know, he might better. Now, there is conflicting information out there. I have reported that based on what was said by one of the participants

in that 2006 committee, that also applied to when he was on the era committees that they could not consider both his Negro Leagues and Major League career. I've been told by a writer who's working on something about Minoso and about the decision in general that that is actually not accurate, so I will have to publish an update on that at some point. But I do think that if you were to combine his stats and credentials in both realms and see him as whole, I think you would see that he really does deserve to be enshrined. Other crossover candidate that comes to mind is Don Newcomb. I don't have any doubt that there are more Negro Leagues candidates who probably deserve a more full airing. I can't say that I am particularly well versed in who those might be. I think that's an area of expertise that I certainly could stand to increase my knowledge.

And if, you know, we'll see as this process continues, and I think there's a lot of debate about how it can and should continue, we'll all have to, you know, charge ourselves with learning more and getting better acquainted with these candidates and doing what we can to evaluate them and see that the best of them get their due. All right. Well, always happy to hear and read your thoughts on the Hall of Fame like this. It's great to have you on every year. And congrats again on getting a ballot. And I guess we'll let you go to mail it so that it actually gets counted and uh have you i haven't really monitored the uh tracking our pal ryan tibideau's ballot tracker as closely this year because i guess there are fewer guys who are kind of on the bubble so it's really just

you know shilling will he or won't he or who's gonna make a jump is there anything based on those early results or buzz you've heard that you think anyone will make a notable leap or do you think Schilling is a shoo-in or is there still some doubt about that? Well, I don't think Schilling's a shoo-in. I think he's, I mean, he's at 74% of the tracker right now. So, you know, he's got a shot at it. You know, I think that it remains to be seen what other voters felt. If you've been tweeting about Dr. Fauci, Nazi comparisons three weeks ago, maybe he'd be doing worse. It looks like Omar Vizquel's support might take a hit.

I think really the action right now is the middle of the ballot. is the middle of the ballot. It's the guys that I'm championing, like Wolin and Helton and Jones and Sheffield, that I think are moving into position where they're going to be viable candidates for election in a couple of years. Maybe not two years, maybe three or four years, but they're trending in the right direction

after kind of scraping by in the 10%, you know, 15% range, their candidacies are starting to look healthy. And I think for me, you know, in the absence of having a likely honoree that we can fully embrace, I think I'm going to take my joy where I can find it in seeing those guys, those mid-ballot guys become more viable in the future. And this is a stepping stone towards their eventual election. All right. Well, we will link to all of your coverage. We will link to the Cooperstown casebook, which you should all pick up if you haven't yet. You can find Jay on Twitter

at Jay underscore Jaffe. And thanks as always for your work and sharing your thoughts with us. All right. Sure thing. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. Depending on when we post our next episode, this may be our last episode of 2020. Thanks very much for sticking with us and supporting us throughout this often trying and troubling year. Your appreciation meant a ton to us. We're glad we could help keep you company, and we hope we can continue to count on your participation and patronage in 2021. Speaking of patronage, you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up

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thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We'll be back with one more episode this week. Talk to you next time. To feed Dupin As the rain beats The streets of Cooperstown