Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1775: Ask the Audience

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley follow up on an earlier conversation about ERA vs. FIP and banter about Seiya Suzuki being posted, Noah Syndergaard’s explanation of why he left the Mets, the rumored Sandy Alcantara extension and the future of the Marlins, how Canada’s new policy about unvaccinated athletes could affect the Blue Jays, and […]

Now the rest of us are living in a daze Keep thinking about the choice to be made Here come the handmaidens of in time Lost treasure from a primitive race All your lies written on your face Can't fill the canyons of your mind The fire is in your blood. You follow the signs of love.

We're the magic wand. And hang on. Hello and welcome to episode 1775 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. And another thing about FIP.

I didn't mention this last time when I went on my little mini rant. Wait, you really have another thing? I do. I've been stewing on this all weekend. Okay, hit me. When we talked about awards last time, I went on a little mini diatribe by Ben Lindbergh standards about people who suggest that FIP is some sort of abstract, made on a spreadsheet, baseball lab kind of hypothetical stat. Whereas ERA is actual results. That's what actually happened. As we discussed, FIP is what actually happened, too.

And it actually focuses on what the pitcher himself did. It's an individual award. But in our new Discord group for Patreon supporters, some patrons were discussing that discussion, and one of to isolate the pitcher's performance from the fielders, right? It's called earned run average because it accounts for errors. And thus it tries to give pitchers a pass for mistakes made behind them and subtract that from their record. from their record. And so if you're going to say that ERA is results and FIP is not, maybe that makes that an even more tenuous case when you consider that ERA is not just did he allow runs or not. It's did he allow runs that were his responsibility. ERA is kind of trying to do what FIP does in that sense, but not well. It's just it doesn't do it very well because errors are sort of nonsense. And sometimes fielder's mistakes are not counted as errors, and we know all the problems with errors. But that kind of suggests to me that, okay, maybe they are more philosophically aligned.

So if you're okay with ERA removing unearned runs and deciding what is an unearned run, well, that's sort of what FIP is doing it's just doing it better right right I went on a journey with you there Ben I was like oh no we're gonna come away from this and Ben's gonna say and that's why ERA is great um right I think that I think that you've hit upon something like there is an acknowledgement even within the most traditional stats that you know a pitcher shouldn't be held accountable for the worst version of fielding. And what FIP and other estimators like it try to say is, what if we didn't need an error though?

What if we were even more precise in that? So yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, not that FIP is flawless. Again, discuss the issues there and why you shouldn't necessarily rely on that one stat or any one stat. But that seemed like a worthwhile point that Thomas made.

And I find that often when people suggest that someone is over-reliant on stats, they themselves are relying on some sort of stat. It's just often an inferior stat. Right. So I figured I'd mention that. So a little bit of news roundup before we get to today's topic so we don't have any huge transactions to discuss but maybe there are some that are rumored or in the works i guess say a suzuki has been posted now officially by his team in japan

the hiroshima carp so now he's got about a week i guess before a possible lockout a little more than that 10 days and if there is a lockout and a transaction freeze then his 30-day posting window will just be suspended right and so he has to decide do i want to sign quickly and teams have to decide that they want to sign him quickly or will they wait and see what happens with the CPA, assuming that there is a lockout and a transaction freeze, in which case, whatever compressed transaction period we have after there is an agreement, he would have to decide where to go. So that's something to watch and monitor. I guess there could be developments quickly with him, but not necessarily. Maybe it'll be a holding pattern. Yeah, I think there was some confusion about how exactly his posting process works, developments quickly with him, but not necessarily. Maybe it'll be a holding pattern.

Yeah. I think there was some confusion about how exactly his posting process works given the possibility of the lockout, but he does not have to suffer an abridged posting. He just will have a weirdly disjointed one, assuming that he doesn't sign before the first and of course, assuming that the league and the players are not able to reach a new cba by then and and thus go into a lockout so i imagine he will wait i just really don't i don't know maybe we will see a flurry of activity i'm gonna say no we won't and then teams will be like hey meg how's that thanksgiving i shame if something happened to it. But I expect that we will see some more transaction activity before morning dawns on the 2nd, but I don't imagine it'll be a lot. It seems like the combination of the holiday with the quickness with which they would have to strike deals

seems like it'll tend toward being more abundant. deal seems like it'll it'll tend toward being more abundant one deal that may be done or may get done soon is the marlins extension with sandy alcantara who i guess often extensions tend to get done right around the end of spring training and before opening day that's when teams and players often knock these things out but we saw the jose Barrios extension with Toronto. And now the Marlins reportedly are closing in on a five-year deal that would be for more than $55 million. So that is encouraging, I guess, in that the Marlins are spending some money and Alcantara is quite good. And the Marlins are in that category of teams that are pretty interesting to me.

And in some ways, it's even more of a shame that we might get a lockout here than it would be in a normal offseason, because there are a lot of teams that are kind of in an interesting spot that I don't know which way they'll go and will they invest heavily and will they rebuild? There are just so many teams that are kind of on the cusp of something. And I think the Marlins are one of them. We talked about the Tigers and the Mariners on an episode last week and how it seems like they're poised to, quote unquote, turn the corner and maybe invest more heavily in their roster. And the Marlins seem like they should be in sort of a similar situation. Maybe they're a bit behind and they're the Marlins.

So I don't think anyone's expecting them to make a big splash the way that the Tigers and the Mariners might, but you'd think that they are sort of set up for it because they have the pitching and Alcantara is a big part of that. So you have Alcantara, you have Rodgers, you have Pablo Lopez, you have Eliezer Hernandez, you have Jesus Lizardo, you have Sixto Sanchez presumably returning, you have the top prospects, Max Meyer, Edward Cabrera, their other maybe more mid-rotation, back-of-the-rotation, homegrown arms that are around there. So they are just lousy with starting pitching and most of it young and homegrown and cost-controlled for now, but just not a lot of offense to go with it. And Alcantara knows that from experience. He had one of the lowest levels of run support of any

regular starter last year. He got 3.1 runs per game, and that was partly bad luck, but also just partly a reflection of the Marlins' offense, which was one of the worst in baseball and has been bad really for a few years now and i guess there might be some help on the way but not enough internally that you feel like oh they can mix and match and put together a good core position players out of that it seems like they're gonna have to either spend or trade from that surplus of pitching and they just don't have a lot of track record of doing the former. So that means either Kimming has to be busy on the trade market, or maybe the Bruce Sherman, Derek Jeter ownership group actually has to spend some money for once. But they're kind of, you know, in the next year or two, it's going to be put up or shut up time for them.

Yeah. I mean, I think that now is the time for them to trade for that surplus if they're going to, but I think you're right that they will either have to trade or spend their way to something. They have two players with guaranteed salaries next year. I mean, they have a bunch of players who will go through arbitration, so it's not like they don't have any players on their team, but it's like Miguel Rojas and Anthony Bass, and that is all. So there's certainly room to spend here, even if not extravagantly, to improve the team. But yeah, I imagine that they will look to some of their surplus.

I mean, it's a tricky thing because on the one hand, it's an obvious point of team strength and they won't be able to roster all of these guys. But on the other hand, you sit there and you're like, hey, so you have one of the few enviably deep pitching situations in baseball? Yeah. What if you kept some of those guys because you will always need more depth than you think you will and just spend a little bit of money?

Now, I imagine that they will do some combination of that, and I wouldn't be surprised if they looked around and sort of brought in some guys in the middle tier of free agency expecting that their real sort of open window will be the year after when that scant group of position player prospects does come up. But yeah, it's a very weird team. I mean, it's a cool team. I like some parts of this weird team.

But yeah, it seems like there is definitely some work to do there. Yeah. I don't know if it'll be 2022 or 2023. Even for all of the teams that we just talked about, even the Tigers and the Mariners are not certain to succeed as soon as next season. If you have everything break right, I think it could happen. as soon as next season if you have everything break right i think it could happen but maybe there's some more consolidation and supplementation that has to go on there to add to the the current course but a lot of teams kind of in that interesting approaching make or break time when they will either ascend or not and so we will see which way they go and speaking of i guess another

one of those teams that is trying to ascend and just has failure to launch every year, the Angels. We talked about the Cinderguard signing from the Angels' perspective. We didn't talk about it so much from the Mets' perspective, losing him. We talk about the Mets enough as it is these days. But Cinderguard spoke a little bit after our initial discussion about why he left the Mets and signed with the Angels and the upshot seems to be that he just didn't hear from the Mets much maybe they were busy with other things maybe they were trying to hire a baseball operations president or ultimately GM but he said that he didn't hear from them much in the two months

from the end of the season until he signed with the Angels. Obviously, he got the qualifying offer, but he's someone who seemingly had wanted the angels did and perry menezean had a long dinner with him and said some things that cinder guard was happy to hear but one quote this is an important year for me this is kind of a make or break time for me i didn't want to gamble on that kind of uncertainty that's been going on with them them being the mets so imagine like what level of dysfunction you have to reach for a pitcher to say i don't want to gamble on the mets i'm going to sign with the angels yeah because that's where pitchers want to go when they want to stay healthy and have a great year heading into maybe getting a long-term deal you want to go go to the Angels, not the Mets. I mean, that's how far they've fallen. Yeah. It's just, look, I don't want to make it sound like running a baseball ops organization is easy. I am given to understand that it is very, very difficult,

in fact. But it does seem like one of the benefits that you are granted as a team who extends qualifying offers to guys who are your guys until they say, no, thank you. I do not want that qualifying offers that you have this period of exclusive negotiation. Like forget the two months before, which we should not do. The fact that this was not sort of done and dusted earlier is a little surprising in its own right. But like, you know, you have this exclusive window where you get to talk to them and other people don't. And it seems like you should take advantage of that. It seems like the list of calls you have to make, it's not a long list of calls, right? Like, you know, it's far shorter than the list of calls you have to make to try to find a new general manager, for instance. So yeah, it doesn't speak well of the

organization. And I think this was one of the things that folks were talking about when they discussed sort of the issues that were attendant with the way the Mets process was playing out, which is that these sort of just nuts and bolts roster things get missed and get lost. And you don't end up treating people the way that they would expect to be treated

given the role that they've played in your organization previously. And it seems like it's an easy thing to anticipate. So you have the existing process failure of not being able to have hired a GM before all of this happened. And then that process failure is compounded by someone not being like, hey, you're the person in the front office who's going to call Noah and be like, hey, Noah, we think you're keen. And maybe they didn't do it on purpose. But it seems unlikely that that's true because they went to the trouble of extending him a qualifying offer in the first place.

So it's just another example of how this stuff really can have a meaningful impact on your roster. And we don't know what shape Noah Syndergaard is going to really be in next year. I mean, we saw his sort of cameo at the end of the season. But I think the upside here is tremendous. And the fact that you could have secured that guy who wanted to remain a Met, you know, and didn't doesn't speak well of the org. And I don't know, maybe the Mets weren't as high on him as the Angels were. Maybe they wouldn't have matched that offer. Maybe they know more about him than the Angels do because they were more involved in his rehab. Who knows? But if you go to another team because your own team is just such a tire fire at times and not the tire shops outside of Citi Field, but the actual inside the stadium in the offices, things are on fire constantly. That's not great if you have a homegrown guy who a lot of fans like. And, you know, like he hasn't been his old self for a while now. And they haven't won with him kind of in a diminished state or unavailable. And we talked about whether he's the best fit for the Angels, too, just because they really need innings and pitchers they can count on.

And he's not necessarily that. But yeah, if you've reached the point where it actively makes it harder for you to retain players or attract players, either because they're just scared away by the mess that you've made of everything or just because things start slipping through the cracks because you're just trying to figure out your basic business not the best so the last bit of news i wanted to mention kind of along those lines of maybe making it harder to attract free agents last year around this time we talked about whether it's harder for the blue jays to sign free agents because of various factors, such as the use of bagged milk, for instance, in Ontario, but also taxes and living in a different country and artificial turf and various other things that have been cited as reasons why it's harder for the Blue Jays to sign players on the open market than maybe your typical team. And we talked about that when the Blue Jays were whiffing on a series of

their top targets, and ultimately they managed to land some. So clearly it's not a complete impediment to signing players. But it occurs to me now that the Blue Jays may go from having a bit of a home field disadvantage, at least when it comes to free agency, to having a home field advantage on the actual field next year because Canada is updating its rules about unvaccinated people and athletes being able to enter the country. So up until now, pro and amateur athletes have had sort of a special dispensation to travel to Canada. So that is changing, according to a comment by the Minister of Public Safety last Friday. As of January 15th, there will be no exemption in place for professional and amateur athletes. So if you are not vaccinated, you will not be able to enter the country,

no exceptions. And obviously the NBA and NHL seasons are going on now, so that has an immediate impact. But in theory, this means that when the 2022 MLB season starts, hopefully it will start, that unvaccinated players will just not be allowed to play games in Toronto. Which seems like, I mean, assuming the Blue Jays players are vaccinated, and I guess this means they could have some extra trouble signing free agents who aren't. But if visiting teams, like, have to leave all of their unvaccinated players at home, like, it seems like it might work out kind of nicely for the Blue Jays. I don't know, like, how many unvaccinated players will remain in MLB by the start of next season. Hopefully not that many obviously the vast majority were vaccinated last year and given more time that will continue to be true to an even greater extent but like that is uh kind of a nice built-in advantage that comes from sort of unfortunate circumstances like if you actually are a rival of the blue jays and occasionally you'll see a player not being able to make that trip because of visa concerns maybe but

if you just can't cross the border which is already the case for normal people like i i don't think that an average american can go to canada without being vaccinated now and once that applies to athletes too you might see some teams having to leave their players at home and in theory at least that means that the Blue Jays when they are in Toronto might face weaker rosters so I don't know if there's a perfect precedent for that sort of thing but you'd think that could add up into a little home field advantage for the Blue Jays not that they necessarily needed help I mean they seem like they are built to be a playoff team as it is, but they are going from not having a home field really for the last couple of seasons to maybe having one where occasionally other teams, good players

can't come play. Yeah. I hadn't really thought about it that way, mostly because I've been in quiet denial about how big a problem this would necessarily be. Yeah, it might not be. I hope it isn't. But yeah, I mean, I imagine that particularly for teams in their own division who are going to be making that trip more often, that this is an additional incentive for people to get vaccinated, right? people to get vaccinated, right? Like we, we saw that some of the measures that the NFL was enacting were pretty draconian when it came to their willingness to reschedule games, if there was an outbreak as a result of, you know, unvaccinated players. And this is a, you know, much smaller version of that, but still potentially a meaningful one, especially in a competitive division. So, you know, like you,

I don't know what the current state of the other teams in the, in the East is relative to Toronto from a vaccination perspective, but you have to imagine that, you know, if you're the GM of any one of those, this is another point that you're going to emphasize with your guys that it's like, if you want to show up for the team when we have to travel like you need to get the shot if you haven't already so maybe it will i guess that the the best outcome is that it doesn't result in any home field advantage because it it manages to persuade whatever um remaining stragglers there are to get vaccinated but yeah i mean like i don't know how much that matters and in the the samples we're talking about but like you want your better dudes on the field rather than not so it matters some yeah and i suppose it's possible that the mlbpa could also adapt something like that nfl system where there are other pressures to get vaxxed before opening day like minor leaguers will have to right because they are not part of the union and

and so they are subject to just the mandate it seems like but for MLB players I suppose there might be some movement there between now and opening day but if not you might get some strange situation where some prominent player just sits out a trip to Toronto and that would be to the Boucher's benefit yeah I mean other leagues have demonstrated that while the incentives seem to be pretty powerful and persuasive for a lot of people there are some high profile exceptions to that rule and it seems as if the incentives have sadly made some folks dig in deeper so. Yeah. I don't know. Won't it be nice when we don't have to worry about this anymore. When will that happen?

That would be nice. That time would come. Yeah. And the last thing is that it's been a bad few days for Williams-Astadio and for fans of Williams-Astadio. Yeah, man. So on Friday, he was designated for assignment by the Twins. And then later that day, he was playing in a game in the Venezuelan Winter League. And he was involved in a brawl, very involved in a brawl very involved in a brawl and in a way that does not present him in a positive light so there was a big brouhaha here and there was some history

between these two teams and there was a plunking that was believed at least by some, to be intentional. And the benches cleared and people started throwing hands. And Williams-Ostadillo ran in from the sidelines and just completely clocked the pitcher in this case who was not facing him. This is Marlins pitcher Luis Madero. And Williams just took him down and Madero did not see him coming and it was sort of a sucker punch it looked pretty bad it seems like Madero did not suffer any immediate serious consequences as far as we could tell he was up and kept moving and there were

other players who contributed to this beatdown. I think someone was kicking him too. Tomas Tellis, the other former twin, was also in on the action here. But this was not a good look for Williams as we record here on Monday afternoon. I have not seen any news about him being suspended, but it seems like his suspension could be forthcoming here. So not great, not great. And there was another incident I had forgotten, maybe we discussed at the time, but last January, January of 2020, Astadio was involved in another brawl in Venezuela, which was not as egregious, but I think he kind of had like a flying kick. He like launched off his catcher and kicked at someone else.

I guess like the charitable interpretation of this would be that, hey, he plays hard and he fights hard too. And he's not one of these baseball brawlers who just, you know, mills around aimlessly. He is actually going to take it seriously and start throwing punches. But when you come in from the side and you knock someone down who doesn't even see you coming, it's not very sporting. And so this is not great.

I don't know how much we can conclude about Williams' character or anything based on this incident or these incidents, but not something I wanted to see. And as I noted to you, the post on the baseball subreddit about this that had the video, the top comment was, oof, nobody tell Ben Lindbergh. And then the reply was, he's going to be devastated. And then another reply, at least he has shohei now i love that internet

commenters are just debating my state of mind and my reaction to this brawl but that is kind of how i feel at least i have yeah it's it's like i was talking about last week when we talked about otani's mvp win and how i'm like more invested in otani the person than i typically am in a baseball player like Something bad comes out about Otani, I'll be the apocryphal person standing outside the courthouse saying, say it ain't so, show. But for Astadio, very invested in Astadio the player. And he is entertaining on the field, but not quite as invested in Astadio the person as I am in Otani the person so not devastated if it turns out that Astadio is is not the best guy and you know I don't know really anything about him beyond

these incidents and I guess the fact that he was not happy about giving up that home run to your mean Mercedes that caused all that stir last year but you know he is lovable in a lot of respects and he does these things on the field that make you think he is a happy-go-lucky fun guy. And it seems like a lot of his teammates have very nice things to say about him, but presumably not opponents he has punched in brawls. Yeah. Yeah. And it's tricky. Like, I think that we can maybe and we don't know that this was what was at play. Like, I think you can understand the context that might lead someone to behavior like this

without excusing it, but it is important to sort of understanding it. And I don't know, if you've been DFA'd, maybe that shakes you and puts you on your back foot from a mood perspective. But yeah, you can't punch someone without... Don't punch people, first of all. We can stop at that. We don't really need, first of all. Like we can stop at that.

We don't really need to qualify it. But if you're going to engage in punching in the baseball context, which, you know, some baseball players seem really motivated to do despite us thinking that it was, that it's not the best way to resolve conflict. Like it's generally best for people to have a sense that you're coming because you can really hurt someone that way. It's good that that doesn't seem to have happened here but don't cold cock someone that's bad all right so let's get to today's topic the hall of fame ballot was released today monday

and i need some help here because any day now before the end of the month i will be getting a hall of fame ballot in my mailbox for the first time ever. I got the email today notifying me that my ballot was mailed or was going to be mailed today. I am eligible for the first time. I've been a member of the Baseball Writers Association for 10 years now. So my privilege as part of that is that if I want to, I can vote on the Hall of Fame. And my inner 12-year-old is pretty pumped about this. My outer 34-year-old is sort of hoping the ballot gets lost in the mail somehow.

So I genuinely do not know what to do. And I don't mean that I'm kind of conflicted, but really I've made up my mind already and I just want someone to endorse my decision. I really have not made a decision and I could use some advice from you, from the listeners, from anyone who wants to weigh in here. And we talked a little bit about the issues with Hall of Fame voting these days last year. And episode 1640, we had a couple of philosophy professors on to talk to us about the ethics of Hall of Fame voting. But this is really real to me now. And I guess it's a year closer to being real for you and i am pretty conflicted here and i don't want to sound super self-serious and act as if this is the weightiest moral decision anyone has ever wrestled with because i think baseball writers can be a bit precious about this at times not naming any names but in the grand scheme of things the hall of fame ballot doesn't matter that much but this is a baseball podcast so most

of what we talk about doesn't matter that much so i basically picked the worst possible time to enter the voting body i mean my timing is the opposite of impeccable here i am it's like the donald glover in community meme where he walks into the room with the pizza and he's smiling and then the room is on fire. Like that is me walking in with my first ever Hall of Fame ballot in the final year of eligibility for Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, and Curt Schilling. The first year of eligibility for Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz. And of course, you have the lockout potentially contributing to a dearth of other baseball news. So December might just be like

Hall of Fame all the time. Yeah, man. That will not be the most pleasant discourse, I don't think. So this is basically like, you know, I'm the contestant on who wants to be a millionaire who's like torn between two answers. And so i'm using a couple of lifelines today i'm phoning a friend that's you and i am asking the audience and i'm not gonna necessarily abide by anyone else's opinion about

what i should do here but i do value anyone else's opinion about what I should do here because this is not necessarily what I envisioned when I thought about voting for the Hall of Fame someday to the extent that I ever thought I would. And once I was in the BBWA and I started looking ahead and said, oh, hey, 10 years down the road, I could potentially vote for the Hall of Fame. That's kind of cool. And I can have a little impact on history here and I can join the rich tradition of baseball writers voting on the Hall of Fame. And I care about baseball history. And in theory, it's sort of a, it's a fun activity to participate in, but a little less fun now. And I know I'm not the only writer who shares that opinion. So basically, it's like, you know, I always envisioned that this would be about picking who were the best baseball players. Like, that's kind of always what I thought the Hall of Fame was. Not the museum portion, which is separate, of course, but the plaque part.

The part where we decide, is this guy a Hall of Famer or not? And he gets to have his plaque in the room. That to me was always about, well, were you one of the best baseball players ever? And it was basically only about that more or less. And now it is not only about that. And I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it is definitely different. And so when I was looking ahead to this, I was like, you know, I can be in on the next Burt Blylevin or Tim Raines or Larry Walker. You know, I can support those candidates who maybe deserve more support than they get. And I can prevent or help prevent a future snub of an Archie Vaughn or a Bobby Gritch or an Alan Trammell or a Kenny Lofton, someone like that. I can cast my righteous vote for the sabermetrically supported candidate. Almost every legitimate candidate has some sort of controversy associated with them that makes it bigger than just baseball, than just the stats and just the numbers and just the Jaws score.

And so it's a different exercise and one that I feel more ambivalent about than I expected that I would. about than they expected that I would. Well, perhaps we can start with a couple of sort of ideological questions that might help you to put some bumpers on this, right? Because I think that there are a couple of things that as a voter you need to answer for yourself. And perhaps first and foremost, well, do you want to do the character stuff now? Or would you like to save it for a second question? Well, it all comes down to the character stuff now or would you like to save it for a second question? Well, it all comes down to the character stuff, I suppose.

I guess so. It depends what your other question is. I don't know. Well, let's start with a question that is relevant both to some returning candidates and also to some of the newcomers. So have you developed your opinion of where performance-enhancing drugs factor into your ballot? Well, because I think there are a couple of ways that you can go about this, right? I have always thought that Jay's approach, Jay Jaffe's approach to this is sort of a reasonable one, right? bifurcates the group between those whose association with PEDs was part of what he dubs the Wild West period, right, before there was like a collectively bargained policy,

the one that we know now that governs enforcement and suspensions for performance-enhancing drugs. And I think that if you look at this year's ballot, like the most notable new candidate that is going to be affected by this view is going to be Ortiz, right? Who was associated with the survey test, but didn't face any subsequent suspensions or failed tests, and who Rob Manfred seemingly exonerated with some of his statements about Ortiz and the survey test when Ortiz was going through his retirement tour. So like there's there are guys like that. And there are other guys. And there's A-Rod, a far more flagrant case. Right. And there are some other examples in that sort of Wild West period that are on this ballot.

And then there are guys like A-Rod who served a year-long suspension for his association with PEDs. So I think that one question that you will want to answer for yourself is, how do we sort these guys? Does it, and the answer, I also think that like, that is not the only approach that one could take, right? Like you could look at this ballot and say, I think that Alex Rodriguez used steroids.

I also think he's one of the best shortstops who ever played baseball. And so he should still be in the Hall of Fame, even though he has this stain on his record and i think that you know i think you're going to get some tweets about that but i don't think that that is necessarily an indefensible position to take right i think a lot of it has to do with what you think the hall of fame is for so i i think that one question that you probably want to answer for yourself as you're getting ready, pen poised, is how do I account for PEDs on this ballot? So I think that that's the first question.

Yeah. I think if it were solely about that, I would largely be inclined to discount that, even probably for post-testing players. It's tough for me because when it was all hypothetical, if I was filling out a fake ballot or just saying who I would vote for and it didn't actually have any weight behind it, then it was easy for me to say, oh yeah, these are some of the best baseball players ever. I think they would have been without the PEDs, so I think they should be in. Now that I have or could have an actual ballot, I think about it a little more because it's like, well, am I just condoning cheating? Am I saying that you should cheat? Am I tacitly saying, hey, yes, by all means cheat because it will not prevent you from

getting access to this revered body of baseball players. And I'm not holding it against you in that sense. And so I have more misgivings about it now that it's real than I did when it was fake and hypothetical. But I still just sort of default to, and I guess this is where the character clause enters into it too, in that because I traditionally viewed this as, well, we're deciding whether this was one of the best baseball players ever, that is the entire purpose of this exercise. Because there are people who say, oh, it's the Hall of Fame. So if you're famous, you should be in, right? And I'm not saying that there's no place for a body like that. And there are things like the baseball reliquary and the Shrine of the Eternals and all of that where you can just put famous people in. But the Hall of Fame has never really worked that way. That's not really what the established precedent of it is. So you don't put Mark Fidrich in the Hall of Fame because he was famous. I mean, definitely a cool figure,

very famous, not a Hall of Famer, and most people would agree that he's not. So to me, it's were you one of the best baseball players? And once you start excluding the best baseball players, really for any reason, then the entire exercise gets muddied and murky and closer to pointless for me because if it is supposed to be a place for the best baseball players but you are excluding Barry Bonds and you're excluding Roger Clemens and you're excluding Manny Ramirez who would all be easy yeses for me and for almost everyone when it comes to their actual on-field performance. Well, then what do you have exactly? What are you left with? And you could lump in other players there who are maybe more borderline statistical candidates, you know, your Sosa's and your

McGuire's and your Palmeiro's, guys who probably would have gotten in even just based on the milestone numbers that they had. But war-wise, Jaws-wise are a little bit more on the borderline. But once you don't have those players in there, then what is this exactly? Okay, it's no longer the place for the best baseball players. It's the place for the best baseball players who didn't take PDs as far as we know, who didn't take PDs as far as we know, except that we know that there are players who are already in there who have taken PDs and have certainly cheated in other ways.

So it's like already not a place where you're reserving it for just the most honorable, just the players with the greatest integrity. So I almost lose interest in it if the likes of Bonds and Clemens and Ramirez are not in there because I no longer know what it is exactly. And I guess that's what it comes down to for a lot of people with, you know, for some people like Bud Selig getting in was the last straw or Harold Baines getting in was the last straw. I think it was

Rob Nyer I was listening to last week said that about Baines getting in was the last straw. I think it was Rob Nyer I was listening to last week said that about Baines that he just kind of stopped caring at that point. And not that anyone wishes ill upon Harold Baines as far as I know. No one really was opposed to Harold Baines being happy. It's just that, well, if Harold Baines is in here, then what does that even mean about what we're doing here? And Harold Baines isn't even the least statistically qualified member of the Hall of Fame. There are plenty of veterans committee selections who just snuck in there somehow and you wonder, how did they get in? Then it turns out, oh, it's because Frankie Frisch got all his friends in or whatever so that kind of thing like you put one of those in then suddenly it's like well now you can make that case from the lowest common denominator that if this guy's in

then that guy should be in and this player is not actually one of the best players ever and so now what is this group of plaques anymore so that's kind of what it comes down to with the PD stuff to me. I think that you can certainly make a case that especially the post-testing players, and obviously steroids were illegal in baseball and in the country when people were taking them in the 90s. But it was a much more permissive atmosphere, certainly, where players were, if anything, almost encouraged to take this stuff. But yeah, if A-Rod's not in, like A-Rod, at least until recently, I mean, during my years as a fan, at least, he was the best player I ever saw. And so if Alex Rodriguez is not in the Hall of Fame, then what is the Hall of Fame or what is the plaque part? Especially because he's on Sunday Night Baseball every week and on pregame shows, it's like he's very much around baseball already. So he's not exactly banned or ostracized or anything. And so to keep him out, I don't know. I certainly see the case, but it almost just chips away at the legitimacy

or the purpose of the entire exercise for me. I get that. I mean, I do think that on the point of prior users have been inducted and we know that we don't know everyone who used, like, I would maybe encourage you to not get really fussed about that part because, like, there are a lot of bad hall of fame votes to your point but you don't that's not your problem those people's bad choices aren't your fault like you don't have to you know you you are coming to the exercise with a completely clean record right and so you get to decide with this ballot like here are my parameters for voting and if those are a little inconsistent with you know the parameters that other people have had in the past, like, I don't think that you need to worry about that overly

much because the body changes and the people who vote change and what matters to us change and the stats that we use to evaluate those cases change over time. And so all you can do is the best with the ballot you have in front of you. And if, you know if you decide that it is sort of important to our understanding of the game to include Alex Rodriguez, even if we know that some of the seasons he had were likely tainted from a statistical perspective by PDs, I think that's a defensible position. I don't think that you need to worry about the entire exercise being sort of pointless if he's not in, because i do think that it's fine to say yes there were likely rule breakers who sort of made their way into the hall without us knowing and there are guys who we know used other stimulants in the hall but like we know that

this guy did right and so regardless of who may have in the past like when we are confronted with someone we know to have violated the rules in a way that we think is meaningful, we're going to say, sorry, but you don't get to be part of this very special group. I think that if you say, you were a Hall of Fame player before we know you were using steroids and it's weird for you to not be in here because you were, in addition to the best player, one of the most important players in terms of like free agency and our understanding of what players can ask for and and receive like i think that's fine too but like just worry about yourself just worry about your job yep that's good advice you know other people's jobs not not your problem

and i think i'm a little less of a believer in the power of PDs than maybe some people are, which is not to say that I don't think that they helped Barry Ponds and co., but I do think that they're hardly automatic improvements for many players and that those players in particular would have been Hall of Famers anyway is what I think. Of course, it's impossible to know. And I do believe that there is some utility in the concept of having a Hall of Fame. I mean, obviously, the museum part is invaluable for the preservation of baseball history. And I suppose you could say that the plaque part probably helps the museum part, because the museum part is a museum in a little town in upstate New York where most people don't actually

get to go or don't get to go often, whereas the plaque part brings a ton of attention to the museum part. And you could have the museum part without the plaque part, but I don't know if there would be issues with attracting people to the museum or attracting funding or what have you. And I think that there's some value in just the conversations that the hall of fame starts and I know that a lot of those conversations can be repetitive and tedious but I do think it provides a prompt for us to talk about these players and talk about the past in a way that

we wouldn't otherwise like I think a lot of people are of the opinion that, well, why should I care? Why should we collectively care about who these writers decide are Hall of Famers or who some small subset of people on a committee decide are Hall of Famers? And that makes sense to me. I mean, like you were just saying, you know, you can reach your own conclusions about that. saying, you know, you can reach your own conclusions about that. And so if you think that someone was one of the best baseball players ever and the baseball writers disagree or the veterans committee disagrees, like you're not bound by that. I mean, that's sort of my attitude about awards votes. It's like, yeah, I guess all else being equal, I'd rather have them reflect my understanding of value, but it doesn't change my thoughts about how valuable a player's season

was necessarily if some subset of baseball writers decide that it was or wasn't valuable. So I think that there is some value in just shedding light on these players. And I know Craig Calcaterra, for instance, has expressed the point of view that he thinks that the Hall of Fame debate and discussion actually deadens some discussions that we should be having about players who are not in the Hall of Fame. You know, he thinks that whether you're a Hall of Famer or not decides whether anyone remembers you or talks about you. And so if you are not in the Hall of Fame, then you are sort of unfairly neglected because all the oxygen in the room is

sucked up by the Hall of Famers who've received that stamp of approval. I disagree. I don't think we would be talking about those players more if there weren't a Hall of Fame. I think we would just be generally talking about former players a lot less. I just, I don't think that the Hall of Fame like crowds anyone out of the spotlight so much as it is that each generation tends to forget and think about and care about earlier players less. And that's just the way human nature and memory work. And if anything, having some players be Hall of Famers means that their names get mentioned every year and they get dredged up and you get some curiosity and you think, oh, I'll look up that guy and there's more attention shed on them or even a player like, I don't know, like Lou Whitaker or Bobby Gritch or someone else who's like always mentioned as, oh, he should be in and was snubbed.

Like they get mentioned a lot more because they were snubbed, like just because there's a Hall of Fame. I mean, clearly there's something about the concept of a Hall of Fame, which is not exclusive to baseball. I mean, there's a Hall of Fame in just about every field, it seems like, and every state has a Hall of Fame version of the larger national or international Hall of Fame. I mean, people like Halls of Fame. We like ranking things and debating these things and deciding that we are going to anoint this person as a Hall of Famer. So clearly there's some appeal there. And I think there is some value there. So I don't think it's an entirely pointless exercise. No, I don't think it's a pointless exercise either. And I think that

it is a thing that should be taken seriously just given the place that it occupies. And I like, taken seriously just given the the place that it occupies and i like you know for as as much as it means editing some lengthy profiles like i really appreciate the approach that jay takes to it where it's like let's you know let's engage seriously with each of these guys and the the answer is not going to be yes for all of them right we're not going to say that all of them are hall of famers but they all had careers and if they're meaningful enough to be on the ballot which you know there's some selection that goes into the ballot it's not as if everyone who qualifies in any given year gets a place there but i think taking them seriously and and grappling with their careers and having an opportunity to it's not always just remembering

some guys but remember some guys right um and and give them appreciation is valuable because they they played long careers and those are worthwhile so yep so now the character clause which i guess is is not divorced from the ped discussion no those are part and parcel sort of but uh there are some candidates where the character clause goes beyond the pds and the on-field impact of that yeah i mean there's there's like this is a pretty gruesome ballot yeah it's like worst case you know scenario character clause wise right and and i don't think that we and some of some of these guys are late entrants to it being terrible not in terms of the the timing of their harmful misdeeds but in terms of our knowledge of them but

yeah i mean there are some guys on this ballot who are tainted by PEDs, and there are some guys on this ballot who are tainted by being really harmful and dangerous to other human beings, including their intimates. So I don't, and then there's Kurt Schilling, right? Yes, right. Who's managed to be odious to a great many people and pretty harmful besides. So I guess like this is, the way I'm about to describe this is to a great many people and pretty harmful besides so i guess like this is the way i'm about to describe this is perhaps a cowardly way out but like no one's going to fault

you for not voting for kurt schilling ben so yeah i mean i don't want to think of it in those terms it would be disingenuous to suggest that for voters who are performing this task publicly. And if I were to vote, I would not want to do it anonymously. And so there is certainly a blowback that comes from that. And I suppose there has always been some blowback for people who publish their ballots. But in the age of social media, I mean, people are going to be mad at you no matter what you do, really. And so there is the thought of just like, well, do I need that in my life? Will that make me a happier and more fulfilled person to have people in my mentions yelling at me because I did or didn't vote for someone? So that is certainly something that I'm sure enters into a lot of voters' minds, even if it is not a

deciding factor, nor should it be a deciding factor necessarily but also you know practice self-care like twitter can be bad for a lot of people and so if you want to stay out of this exercise because you don't want to just drum up some anger that's gonna make you a target for this optional thing that is not like your sacred duty to do and it's not like something you're being paid for then i totally understand that yeah i mean i think that some of the some of the more odious entrance into this conversation i think take themselves out by virtue of just not being hall of famers like i don't have omar vizcal as a hall of famer like i thought that before we had a full sense of his behavior toward his wife and several people in his employ within the time he was within baseball so there's

that consideration i mean i think that i think it's fine for you to say that like if you supported an insurrection you just don't get to be in the hall of fame and that that's before we even get to you know the transphobia and islamophobia and feeling comfortable making jokes about lynching journalists like kurt jillings just been an odious person for a while and like defrauding a state he's got quite the quite the litany there he does yes i know he has some some philanthropic works to his credit as well but uh don't don't they all? there would actually be some harm done, like not necessarily just, oh, you're rewarding a bad dude or someone who is a bad in a lot of respects, but also you are maybe contributing to the harm that that person could cause because-

Because you platform the guy by giving him a spot, right? Yeah. You're giving him a hall of fame speech in which who knows what he'll say, and you're giving him greater credibility maybe in the minds of the public. And with Schilling, I mean, he is someone who has repeatedly expressed some interest in running for political office. He is a political commentator, fancies himself as one. And so, you know, to be able to say, oh, I'm a Hall of Famer, who knows if that enables his efforts in some ways. And yet, I have a hard time just kind of carving out Schilling alone as character clause, because once you break the seal on the character clause, and you say that your off-the-field actions that did not impact your on-field actions have some bearing on Hall of Fame voting, and according to the rules, they're supposed to, right? I mean, you are supposed to consider character according to the instructions. Now,

the character clause, which I believe has existed since the 1940s and was largely ignored because, you know, it was seen as sort of subjective and vague, and it is. And then suddenly, I think, when some of the steroid era players showed up on the ballot, a lot of people realized, oh, we have the character clause. Here's how we can keep them out. And it just became a justification there. On the other hand, maybe the character clause should have been taken more seriously all along.

And so there are multiple perspectives here and and obviously like there's kind of a larger cultural conversation about like who we make statues of and whose statues we want to stand and represent like the epitome of people who should be valued in society and you know maybe there are things that earlier voters should have considered when they were ignoring the character clause. And maybe was accused of and forget the PD stuff for a moment. But I'm talking about the domestic violence allegations from both his ex-wife and his ex-girlfriend. And I won't get into specifics here, but I'll link to some stories for anyone who wants to read the details. It is pretty horrifying stuff, the things that those women have said that Barry Bonds did. And I think because those things came to light decades ago, they did not get the attention that they would get today. Like I was not really even aware of them when I first followed Barry Bonds and obsessed over his stats and everything. I mean, it just wasn't really something I was aware of or thinking about. Yeah. The perception of those things and the way that they are treated has completely changed. And for the better, I mean, there was no MLB, MLBPA domestic violence suspension policy about that as part of his legacy too. So forget about these guys like being jerks to reporters or teammates at times. I mean, that is serious stuff. And so if there are voters who said, well, I'm switching from voting

for Omar Vizquel to not voting for Omar Vizquel because of the things that came to light about him, I don't know how you can do that and not also apply that to Bonds specifically, and there are others, but Bonds, I mean, you know, and then again, as I said, once you break the seal and once you say, okay, well, Schilling, he has crossed the line enough that he doesn't get in. Well, can I really say that what Schilling has done is worse than what this guy or that guy has done and then suddenly if I'm excluding some what would be inner circle players like Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling I believe are the top two Jaws pitchers who are not currently

in the Hall of Fame and obviously like you know Bonds and A-Rod would be up there too, and Manny Ramirez as well among position players. So then if you end up with a situation where it's like, you know, you're excluding some of the very best baseball players of all time, then you get back to, well, is there even a purpose to this anymore? You know, you're in the room with the plaques and you're walking around and you're saying these are the best baseball players ever and some of the best baseball players ever are clearly not there then what does that mean exactly for for the whole exercise yeah i mean it's a hard question i don't envy i mean like i will have to deal with some version of this i'm sure when i get a ballot i think that the idea that platforming shilling presents a conundrum that is in some ways different than the others you have on the ballot, I don't think that that's an easy way out. I think that there is something to that. Maybe he doesn't want to show up now because he

has to be taken off the ballot. Right. He has to be removed from the ballot and the BBWA said no, but I guess if you wanted to skirt the issue sort of or just avoid the difficult part of this decision, you could say, well, he doesn't want to be in it anyway, so that makes my decision easy. Yeah, but then I think that you're right, that there is a question about what about Bonds would make him different? What about Clemens would make him different? would make him different? What about Clemens would make him different? And you're right that there's the PED part of stuff, but there's also the here's how these dudes have treated real people.

Do we look at the career in coaching that Bonds had after he was done playing as a sign that he has cleared some important bar? Is that actually dispositive? Or does that actually counterbalance some of the other concerns in his past? I don't know. I agree with you that it does seem, it seems really weird to try to tell the story of baseball without some of these guys. But I do think that we get to point to, I don't know, wanting to do right by the current,

by the game as it stands now and say that like this isn't good for baseball either i don't know how you balance those things yeah and they're cheaters and abusers and and racists and so on who are already right there and and as you said we don't have to be bound by those no your standards but if we're saying okay we're drawing the line here then do we say, well, those earlier inductees, they should now be removed the way that certain statues have been removed? I mean, that's a thorny, separate discussion, obviously. But if you're saying that these people are not worthy of veneration, given our current societal values, then should we not apply that retroactively? This is where this becomes a bigger discussion than just the baseball part of it.

And I guess you could say that, well, maybe we no longer need the plaque part of the Hall of Fame the way we once did. Because we have stats now, right? When the Hall of Fame was created, there was no baseball encyclopedia. Like you couldn't even look up stats all that easily. And people didn't get to see these players. And you couldn't even look up stats all that easily and people didn't get to see these players and you couldn't look up highlights and there was no war leaderboard and there was no jaws leaderboard not that i'm saying that you should always just vote party line you know straight down the ticket jaws and and war approved candidates but i'm saying we don't necessarily need the hall of fame to tell us

that these were the best baseball players anymore the way that we did in the 1930s or the 1950s because now the information is out there and it's easily accessible and it's much more accurate and comprehensive than it once was so yeah you could say, we're not going to do the Hall of Fame thing anymore. And you can just look at a leaderboard and you can come to your own conclusions about who is the best and who is not. Because yeah, it's tough to tell the story of baseball without these players. But I don't know that the plaque part is the most nuanced place to tell the story either. The museum, yes like you could have an exhibit where you present the positive aspects of the player and the negative aspects of the player but the plaque

like unless they start changing the plaque so that the plaque like lists their stats and then also says you know this and that and he was accused of this and you know like tell the entire story of the player, then without that, it just becomes this binary in yes or no, and it focuses entirely on the baseball part. And so if you're someone who's browsing the museum and you go to the plaque room and you read about that player, you're probably not going to get the other view and the other side of the story here that can color in your interpretation of that player.

So that's the other thing. And also, like, these players are not dead. I mean, in some ways, it's a shame when a player gets in who is dead and is not able to enjoy that and celebrate it. On the other hand, at least you don't have to worry about, like, what they're going to say or do after that. And so that becomes a consideration, too. So that's why I think a lot of people say

well we don't need this to tell the story of baseball like we can tell it in a nuanced way where we can say yeah this guy absolutely one of the best baseball players ever a lot of people really enjoyed watching this player's career brought a lot of pleasure to fans of that player nothing wrong with that but also you know and then you tell them about what came to light about right yeah exactly and so maybe that is like a better and healthier way to talk about baseball players and so maybe it would be better just to get away from this model or you could say well just having the plaque doesn't mean anything about who they are as people. It's just a reflection of their baseball value. But then, you know, maybe that's kind of like a myopic perspective just to say, like, well, you should even be able to, like, hold up these players as paragons of their profession without also acknowledging the unsavory side. Well, and I think that it is a tricky thing because we, and like Vizcala is a good example of this, like, you know, our knowledge of these guys isn't necessarily static either,

right? You know, we are often, sometimes like bad guys tell you they're bad guys and the full extent of their mistreatment of other people unfurls itself slowly but sometimes we get fooled you know and we don't know until much later what kind of person they were and so i do think that i have some sympathy for concern around this stuff because and i'm not even gonna i'm not even gonna name a player specifically because i don't want to like put into the universe that i think that this person has done anything bad but like i i would hate for, you know, to be presented with a ballot when my time comes and I make my decisions and I think that the people I'm voting for have conducted

themselves reasonably and kindly. And then I come to find out years later that they've actually that they were actually like an unrepentant monster. And I wouldn't want that vote held against me because I didn't know that. But the fact that I don't want that to be held against me suggests that if I were in possession of that information, that it would inform my vote about them, right? And so I look at the ballots of people who I like and respect, and many of them seemed to find a way within themselves to say, I'm voting for Barry Bonds because I think that he was just the best hitter we've ever had, even before his potential connection to PEDs. But they know about the domestic violence stuff, but they don't vote for Schilling.

And so I don't know that many people are like really either striving for or attaining ideological consistency on some of these questions. And then you get into this weird area where having to like grade the severity of this stuff. But also, I am also aware of the fact that when we elevate people who have behaved this way toward others, it is painful for folks. It's painful not only for their direct victims, but for other people who have experienced similar treatment

at the hands of their acquaintances and intimates. So I think it's okay for that to matter. And I don't know if we're going to see a change in our lifetime where we move away from the plaques and just think about it as a museum and and i don't say what i'm about to say as if like i know for a fact that the hall is failing on the score but like if that is the shift that we have you know the obligation to tell that story honestly like is a that's a hard high bar to clear museums are not always great at that you know and i don't say that to knock Cooperstown particularly, but museums do not always do a good job of presenting a nuanced case,

a nuanced picture of the life and times of the people whose work or era they're presenting for future generations to learn about. So I don't know, man. I wouldn't feel good voting for Kurt Schilling. I don't know about the Bonds thing bonds thing the bonds thing is hard for me because it does feel weird to not include him on there the scowl is just not a hall of famer so i get off easy with that one i don't know it's really hard i think it's i think it is okay for it to matter because especially because these guys are alive and they're gonna like be there right yeah you know and and so an actual living person out in the world is being elevated and it does confer prestige yeah it's honored to celebration it's you know you're selling tickets to see this person you're suggesting that they are worthy of

your respect and appreciation not just because they were good at baseball, but just kind of holistically, like we're holding this person up as an ideal in our profession. And yeah, it would be easy to say, well, yeah, but it's just about the fact that he was a really good baseball player. Yes, but you do have to make some judgment at a certain point about how much that matters relative to the other things that he did or didn't do. And so it would be easy for someone to say that, well, I'm not condoning this behavior. I'm just saying he was good at baseball. But you are making some sort of judgment about, yeah, this person should be feted and should get to take the stage and should get a standing ovation and should have time to talk and everything.

Like, it's inevitable that you're making some sort of judgment there. And historically speaking, I mean, you go to Barry Bonds' Wikipedia page, and obviously most of it is about the stats and his incredible accomplishments on the field. And then there's a whole subsection about Balco and the perjury case and Game of Shadows. And then there's like one little subsection on personal life. And there's like one line orsection on personal life and there's like

one line or two about the domestic violence allegations and that just kind of shows you like how much attention those issues have historically gotten relative to the other things and so maybe it just perpetuates that to sort of sweep it under the rug or say that it's somehow separate that you can divorce those things entirely. I don't know. It's a sticky subject. And I would vote for a lot of these candidates if we were going purely by baseball. And do they clear what I understand the statistical standards to be? I don't know that I would use all 10 on this particular ballot.

I might come up a little short, but I would certainly use most of the 10 if I were voting just based on that. But it very quickly becomes a case where as soon as you look at it in a slightly different way and you exclude someone based on other things, then it's hard to draw the line and stop there. And I'm sure that most fans and maybe even most voters are not even thinking about these things that much. And maybe I'm overthinking them and maybe it's good that I'm thinking about them more. Maybe it's bad that I'm thinking about them more. Certainly more voters, I think, have started to think about these things, but certainly some subset of maybe even our audience is like all right you're

belaboring this stuff too much like these were the best baseball players it's the hall of fame just put them in and maybe there's some merit to that but i don't know once you have the vote again without being like super self-important and sanctimonious about this like when you do actually have to check that name and stand by it publicly, it feels a little bit different than it is when you're just sort of saying what you would do hypothetically. Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, I think it, I think you're approaching it with the seriousness that I hope all of our fellow voters approach it with, because it does matter to people. It matters, you know, set aside, like just imagine the nicest,

like think if you'd had a ballot when Edgar Martinez was on in the last year, right? And you've been able to vote for Edgar. Like this stuff mattered to him. You know, it matters to these guys. And so I think it matters to them. It matters to the fans of these teams. It matters to more casual baseball fans

who just remember these men as like a staple of their Octobers. I think it's good for it to matter. Like the history is a big part of why we all like the game. Being able to trace the through line is meaningful. So I think you're taking it appropriately seriously. If you were taking it less seriously, I'd be like, hey, Ben, we got to pause this and edit out a bit because I need to like lecture you about how you should take this more seriously. Oh, I did it sore. Sorry. So like, I, Ben, we got to pause this and edit out a bit because I need to lecture you about how you should take this more seriously. Oh, I did a sore. Sorry. So I think this is the right approach because it is meaningful to a lot of people for different reasons, but for real reasons.

Yeah. I mean, I feel as qualified as any baseball writer to pass judgment on a player's on the field career and statistical accomplishments and all of that. I guess I'm as qualified as most baseball writers to pass judgment on the other career and statistical accomplishments and all of that. I guess I'm as qualified as most baseball writers to pass judgment on the other stuff too, but I don't know that baseball writers as a body or even individually are all that qualified to do that part of it, or at least that part of it is a lot iffier when it comes to, as you said like we may know that certain people did bad things we never know that other people did bad things it's hard to say that anyone only did good things because we just never know and so if it does become a referendum on character well then it's almost like i'm inclined to check out just because like i don't know that i have some useful special perspective there or

that i even want to be involved in like deciding who the good people were you know like the people who who people will say oh he's uh as great a human as he was a player and and all of those cliches like i just i never know and i you know my coverage of the game, the way that I cover it, really has not given me some special insight into the character of the humans in the game so much. And so I don't feel like I have some special window into that. I haven't been a beat writer. I'm not covering teams on a day-to-day basis. And even if I were, I still would not see so much of what goes on. So the closer it comes to just like who are the best people or who are the best baseball players who are also good people or cleared some acceptable standard of behavior, the less interested I am, the less motivated I am to participate, I suppose. But I guess you could say, like, if you think it's important that people take these things into consideration, then am I doing some disservice if I just check out and I say, you know what, I don't want to be a part of this? Like, is it incumbent upon me to consider these things, whereas some voters might not consider them? But again, that is trending toward the sanctimonious territory. Yeah, I understand people not wanting to vote, but I'm glad you are. I think we want to be a part of the body that gets to direct these things, not just for off-the-field stuff, but I think that there is a perspective on the game that we bring that is meaningful and i think we should share it and we shouldn't shirk our chores yeah this is more well i mean this year it's not more fun than a chore for you but like in general i think that it's a really cool thing that you get to do like you said like imagine telling the 10 year old version of yourself that you have a hall of fame vote ben like that's pretty cool yeah in many ways i still

am the 10 year old version of, but in this particular way. Yeah. And if they were to say, hey, voters don't get to vote on this anymore. Like, we're just going to get a panel of experts or the Hall of Fame will decide or whatever. Fine. Like, you know, I mean, there's a tradition associated with this that is sort of nice. But if they were to change that, I would not really be against it. It would certainly resolve some of this uncertainty for the writers, I think. So I would not mind if they just took this out of writers'

hands entirely. Or if they were to provide more explicit guidance, I mean, there would still be the question of like, well, do you want to abide by that if the Hall of Fame says, hey, don't consider a character anymore. It's not part of it just consider the baseball stuff you could still quibble with that and say no i think character should be considered so maybe that wouldn't actually resolve anything but it might actually make it a little neater it's much like the mvp debate where people argue over what value is and no one really agrees on exactly how to define that a word it's sort of similar with the hall of fame not just because some people take the word fame literally but also yeah because people will weight the the character clause and all those things differently and that's okay you can weight

different stats and different aspects of the game differently too but it becomes a bit of a mess and and look it's entirely possible that how I vote or whether I vote will make no difference this year or any year. I mean, it's not like voting in a presidential election or something where your individual vote is almost certain to mean nothing. Even so, probably I'm not going to be casting or not casting the decisive vote for someone. I mean, it's possible. Or not casting the decisive vote for someone. I mean, it's possible. Last year, Schilling missed by 16 votes.

And Bonds missed by 53. And Clemens missed by 54. And traditionally, there is sort of a final ballot boost. Where in your last year of eligibility, a lot of holdouts will say, okay, well, if it really comes down to it, I don't want to keep this person out. I don't know whether that will be the case with these guys because I think most people have made up their minds with Bonds and Clemens, whether it's the PD stuff or the off-field issues with them and Schilling too. I think that something like 22 people who had voted for Schilling, who did vote for Schilling on last year's ballot,

expressed publicly that they either would change their mind or would consider changing their mind after he tweeted some support for the January 6th riots and insurrection. So it may very well be that they will not get the final year bump and that whether I vote for them or not, they're not going to get in. So, you know, I could say, well, maybe it doesn't really matter whether I vote or not. So, you know, I could, I could say, well, maybe it doesn't really matter whether I vote or not, but you know, maybe it does. Yeah. I have one final question for you. Okay. What do you think about, do you think that the first ballot distinction is important? I don't think it's going to end up mattering for your vote this year, but I am just curious, generally, like philosophically, there are voters who seem to think that there there is an inner circle hall of fame that gets the honor of being inducted on their

first ballot and then there are people who are like that's dumb and i tend to fall into the latter category i understand needing to engage in ballot management because you only have 10 votes and some in some years you have more guys than that who have a good hall of fame case and so i think you do have to be a somewhat strategic voter and go through and make sure that you're being mindful of who needs to get in right is there someone on their final ballot does that is that person more deserving this was the argument that i had everyone was so fussed about griffey not being unanimous and i was like well what they should say is that person should come forward and say but i had to give my vote for griffey to this person who needed it more and then we would

say aren't you magnanimous that is not what we would have said we would have heckled them i'm glad for their sake that they are still anonymous but like if you have room on your ballot and you think david ortiz is a hall of famer but you don't think that he's as much of a Hall of Famer as like Mariano Rivera was, would you take that into account when you're constructing your ballot beyond whatever normal strategic voting you might need to engage in? I would not, no. I would certainly not withhold a vote from someone who I think ultimately should be in just because it's first ballot. I mean, there is such a thing. I think it's kind of a useful construct to say so-and-so is a first ballot guy just because historically speaking, it has worked that way where some players are just obvious shoo-ins. Yes, there will be a few people who withhold a vote for whatever reason, but they're obviously going to get in on the first ballot, whereas others have to wait. And in some cases, they may have to wait because there are people who have this arbitrary distinction and

say, oh, he's not a first ballot guy, so I will not vote for him on the first ballot. In other cases, it might be a sincere reappraisal of that player. Like maybe that player is not an obvious inductee who clearly clears the standards, but maybe he's under consideration and he's close enough that someone is persuaded his second year or his third year or his 15th year or whatever it is where he's close enough that your mind could be changed. So there is a distinction there and they're inner circle guys. I'll certainly use that expression. If you were to trim the Hall of Fame down to the top 50 instead of the top 250 or whatever it is, then they would be on there. So I think you can make distinctions within the body

of Hall of Famers for the truly, truly elite Hall of Famers. But no, I would not make any distinction on my ballot. I haven't decided even what I would do about Ortiz, not because of the PD stuff. I would not hold him out because of that. But just like the stats and everything, I mean, compare his stats to Sosa or Palmeiro or others. Like Jaws-wise, he is like borderline or below the borderline

because he was a DH and he got a late start, which I guess you don't have to hold against him. But he has the 500 homers. He has the incredible postseason record and all of that. So I think he will get in. I think he is less likely to have the, you know, kind of tenuous PED taint held against him than other players are. I agree. With him, like the bigger concerns would be performance related for me than PD related. But I certainly would not be disapproving if he did get in and might vote for him.

If I vote, I just haven't made up my mind yet. Yeah, my potential sticking points with Ortiz were resolved once Edgar got into the Hall of Fame. So after that, I was like, fine, I'm way less invested in this. Because I did see the nightmare scenario where Edgar doesn't get in and then later Ortiz does. And then I have to engage in a letter writing campaign. But I didn't have to do that. So isn't that nice for me? I do think Edgar is better and more qualified and more deserving than Ortiz.

At least, well, maybe not if you include the postseason. I guess it's how you weight that, but just the body of work in the regular season. But yeah, anyway. Never did get credit for being just like a perfectly fine fielder for a while, did he? Yeah, he wasn't bad. He was okay. Yeah. But yeah, we don't have to relitigate that Hall of Fame case.

It is already decided. How nice. But yeah, I do think that that is an interesting question just to be contemplating. Again, a little less relevant in this year, potentially just given the space you might have from other omissions. But I think a worthwhile thing to think about because it is seemingly very important to some people. And I agree with you. Like saying someone is a first ballot Hall of Famer, inner circle guy, like we all know what that means.

But having that notion play itself out in the voting is always surprising to me. And I don't think it happens that often, but it does happen some. Like there are some folks who seem to think it is important to have to like wait a year. And I'm like, they've waited years already. They've been engaged in waiting. So yeah. What the heck do I do with this ballot? It's like, you know, Ken Rosenthal voted last year, but he ran down all of these difficulties that we've just discussed and ultimately said he was submitting a sick to my stomach ballot, he called it.

to my stomach ballot and I'm just like torn up about what I'm saying and it's not like bringing me any happiness to fill this thing out then I don't know like basically my choices are between voting and just not mailing in a ballot which I can do I'm certainly not going to make one of those like statement votes where people like mail in a blank ballot no of course no definitely don't do that anyone but if I just don't mail in a ballot then it just won't be counted it won't count Don't do that. covering the players that you're going to be voting on. Some outlets have policies that prevent their writers from voting for end of season awards or even Hall of Fame, or some like Jeff Passan a few years just decided to stop mailing in his ballot because he was just so sick of all of the holier-than-thou steroid stuff. And Andy McCullough doesn't vote. Plenty of people have just sort of checked out and have decided to sit out the process. And I am seriously considering doing that.

If I decided not to vote, I don't think I'd make a big deal of it. I just opt out. It's not in the BBWA bylaws that you must cast a vote. But I would regret that in some ways. So I just kind of wanted to let people know what I'm thinking, throw this all out there, and solicit opinions. I'm thinking, throw this all out there and solicit opinions. And I got some from you and I'm interested in our listeners. If there are considerations that we didn't discuss today that you think have some bearing on this decision or want to offer some advice, feel free to write in. I'm interested in what people think.

Yeah. I think don't feel obligated to submit a sick to your stomach ballot, Ben. Yeah. Yeah, Ben. Yeah. You know? Yeah, I won't. Don't feel obligated to do that. It's okay to, I'm going to say a thing and you're going to go, what? It's okay to listen to your gut sometimes. Yeah. You know?

If your gut's saying, eh, and I, you know, I'm not saying that to like, to knock him or anything like that, but it's okay to say, oh, I'm, I'm receiving a signal here. I'm going to listen to that that but it's okay to say oh i'm i'm receiving a signal here i'm gonna listen to that signal that's okay to do yeah and i'm sure that there were people who would look at that and say like oh you had this privilege this opportunity and you passed it up or it's almost like kind of cowardly not to weigh in here like someone has to make this decision so you're just passing the the weight of that onto someone else i mean obviously the voting and the election is going to happen whether i participate in it or not so it doesn't make a huge difference there but i don't know are we in a post hall of fame era where we don't need this anymore when buster posey retires and we all immediately

say is he a hall of famer like in some ways that can be a fun discussion. In some ways it's kind of a limiting discussion. You can appreciate a player without immediately defaulting to, is he a Hall of Famer or isn't he a Hall of Famer? So I don't know, perhaps the concept has sort of outlived its value, but perhaps not. There are some redeeming factors in it too. So thanks for you and everyone just listening to my hand-wringing here and my crisis of conscience and just trying to figure this out as I go.

So I figured I'd be transparent about it and I'm interested in input. I'm happy to be your Jiminy Cricket. All right. Jimmy Cricket? Jiminy Cricket? Jiminy. Jiminy. I don't know what names are. Okay. I suspect when all is said and done, no one will get in this year via the BBWAA ballot, just like no one got in via that ballot last year. There are some players who have shots,

almost more interested in the early baseball and so-called golden days ballots, and some of the candidates on theirs, especially some of the Negro Leagues players who are under consideration again. But I am not on those committees and I don't have the option of voting for them. Anyway, I have until December 31st to decide whether to mail or not mail my ballot. The results of all the voting will be revealed on January 25th. And if Clemens and Bonds and Schilling are not inducted, get ready to hear about them forever the way we do about Pete Rose and Joe Jackson. Unless some committee in the future sneaks them in the back door. I thought about putting a poll up to ask the Effectively Wild audience how it would vote,

or whether it would, but The Athletic actually did that. Annie McCullough specifically did that last January. And according to The Athletic's audience, the BBWAA shouldn't even be voting. About 20% said that the writers should vote. 75% said a panel of writers, broadcasters, former players, coaches, and executives should vote. 74% said that players who failed a test for PEDs should not be deemed ineligible for entry. 62% said that voters should take a player's off-field behavior, good or bad, into account. What sort of off-field behavior good or bad into account. What sort of off-field behavior was not specified in the question, and about 70% said that there should not be a mechanism to remove past inductees from

the Hall of Fame. Almost 60% said that players on the ineligible list, like Rose and Jackson, should be allowed on the ballot. I'll link to that on the show page. We recorded this episode before the Angels signed Aaron Loop and the Giants re-signed Anthony Discofani and seemingly Alex Wood, so teams are not abiding by Meg's wishes that they be inactive before Thanksgiving. And also before the news of the death of the great reliever Doug Jones at 64 reminded me of a paragraph I wrote about Jones in the MVP machine. I said, players used to come out of college not knowing much. Doug Jones, a third-round pick in 1978, didn't pitch his first full season in the majors until 1987 when he was 30. Jones became an all-star closer at 31 and pitched into his 40s, but before he broke out, he muddled through 246 minor league games, learning through failure and gradually paring down a five-pitch mix to a trusty

fastball change-up combo. I've learned that in baseball, a lot of adjustments are made on your own, Jones told the Newark Star-Ledger in 1989. People will tell you a lot of things, but no one really tells you how to do it. It's something that you've got to develop for yourself. The only advice Jones offered to future minor leaguers who were similarly stalled was, don't give up. That stood out to me in contrast to the way development works today, where players often are given advice from teams or independent coaches, and they have tons of data at their disposal that can tell them whether a given pitch is or isn't working. You don't just have to wander around for years and years and game after game and judge what's working based on the results. Often you can tell from the pitch characteristics, which is not to say that feel and adjustments don't still matter, but often those adjustments are done in a more informed way, which can help some players passage through the minors. One more thought relevant to our recent discussions of a potential player

ranking system that would essentially order every major league baseball player at any given time from 1 to 780 in terms of some system that would rate their past performance and say, who's the best at baseball now? Listener Dana wrote in to draw our attention to such a system that already exists. We mentioned the chess rating system, and those rankings are often derived from ELO ratings. And in late 2019, a couple of people from Wharton at UPenn published a paper on player ELO in baseball. And it's basically exactly what we're talking about. And they actually published a post on the Fangraphs community research blog. So it's all laid out there, and there is an app that shows the rankings for 2019. This was just

a single season thing, but it is more or less exactly what we discussed. So the idea is out there. Some sort of system and framework is out there. I know FiveThirtyEight has ELO ratings as well, but I think just for starting pitchers in baseball and for teams, this applies to hitters and to starting pitchers and to relievers and to everyone in attempts to put them on the same sort of scale. So it's interesting. I will link to all of that on the show page and you can check it out. There may be issues with the specific implementation here, and maybe it's not an idea worth adopting anyway, but people have been thinking about it, so I wasn't aware of this research, and it is very much along the lines of what we said. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount

to help keep the podcast going and help keep the podcast ad free while getting themselves access to some perks. John Springer, Jeremy Pike, Ryan Schechtman, Raymond Chen, and Julie Hain. Thanks to all of you. If you are a Patreon supporter at certain levels, you get access to the Patreon only discord group that I mentioned earlier. Almost 400 people in there talking about baseball and all sorts of other things. You also get access to monthly AMA episodes that Meg and I will be doing for patrons only. We will be doing our first of those episodes before the end of November, though after Thanksgiving. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate,

review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. There is an Effectively Wild subreddit at Effectively Wild. There is also an Effectively Wild Twitter account at PWPod. Keep your questions and comments and Hall of Fame advice coming for me and Meg at podcast at fangraphs.com. You can also message us via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing and production assistance. We will have three episodes this week.

Meg will be traveling next time, so I'll be doing an episode solo, and then I will be back with Meg before Thanksgiving, and we will discuss, among other things, the next four episodes in Stove League, episodes five through eight. So start streaming if you haven't already, and we will be back to talk to you soon. Hey, bartender, what you say? I'm gonna get drunk on election day On one glass bourbon, one glass rye Oh, set me up, Joe, don't pass me by My money's all right, my feet's got soul See, I've been trying to vote

Now, about an hour or more My feet's got sore. See, I've been trying to vote. Now, about an hour or more. I tried, but it didn't get nowhere. Joe, you know, I just don't think they're doing this voting parents' plan.