Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 361: Jay Jaffe on the Top Takeaways from the Hall of Fame Election Season

Episode Date: January 9, 2014

Ben and Sam talk to Jay Jaffe about the 2014 Hall of Fame voting results, election-season mud-slinging, the 2015 ballot, and more.

Here in the Hall of Heads, you look through the keyhole. This is the Hall of Heads, one step through the doorway. Roll out that special hand, this is our favorite one. This is our favorite one. Please don't try to leave. Don't leave the Hall of Fame. Good morning and welcome to episode 361 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from baseballprospectus.com. I am Ben Lindberg with Sam Miller as always. Hall of Fame election day is over. Hall of Fame election season is over and we're not entirely sorry to see it go. But before we put these debates to rest for another year or so, we wanted to do one more show on this topic and do a little post-mortem on the election day results. And to do that, we brought on the man who has made himself

one of the more prominent voices of reason in the Hall of Fame debate and discussion. So we are joined by SI.com's Jay Jaffe. And I was going to say his traditional election night bottle of arrogant bastard ale, but apparently if I'm reading Twitter right, that is not the case. It's just about the case. I usually get a 22-ounce bottle of the arrogant bastard ale by Stone Brewery out in San Diego. This is the oaked arrogant bastard ale.

It's a slight variation. I don't normally do the Oaked, but it was what was available, and it's still an Arrogant Bastard, and I'm sure somewhere I've been accused of being an Arrogant Bastard several times in the last five or six weeks, so I will take this as the beer of choice for tonight.

I do also have something called the stone sublimely self-righteous uh ipa uh waiting for me so i will i will i will move to that after after i'm done with this one all right well you should you should distribute those to some of the voters yes um uh so well i wish we could say that this is an exclusive interview but this is about the farthest thing from an exclusive interview because you have done probably more interviews than anyone in America over the last few weeks on this topic. And maybe this is – is this your last hurdle to clear until you can – It's my last media appearance of the day. It's my last media appearance of the day.

I'm going to have a couple more hall-related things at thestrikezoneonsi.com, one looking ahead at next year and the other looking a few more years into the future about how the elections could go. But the pressure is kind of off now. And this is a nice last stop to have on the media tour here. Okay, so we can stop speculating and looking at ballot collecting gizmos now. We know what happened. Greg Maddox, Tom Glavin, and Frank Thomas are in on their first ballots. Craig Bichiot is barely not in. and many other deserving candidates were further away from induction than Biggio. But I guess before we start nitpicking and complaining about the process, which we probably will, I thought we should begin by accentuating the positives, because there were

some good things that happened today. So what are the positive takeaways for you? Okay, the positives are that, you know, on a ballot that was easily the most accomplished of any, at least since the BBWA went back to voting on an annual basis in 1966, we got three players in. This is the first time since 1999 we've had three players go in in the same year, three first ballot players at that. So that's great. And Greg Maddox, Tom Glav and Frank Thomas all slammed on first ballot hall of famers, no doubt about it. Guys that I certainly enjoyed watching myself, you know, and guys who I think a lot of us enjoyed watching. So I'm, you know, I'm elated for them.

I'm relieved that we've cleared a bit of backlog or that we've avoided a bit more extra backlog. The three guys getting in is as many as the BBWA had voted in in the previous three cycles combined. So that's the good news. So that's the positive spin. I guess you could also then point out that the number of deserving candidates that were on this ballot was higher than probably any since maybe the first one so yeah uh from that perspective you would perhaps like to see more than ever inducted i would have i would have loved to see five uh i would have loved to see 10 um but you know i thought there was i thought even as late as a couple days ago that we maybe had at least a 5% chance of getting five based on the gizmo at Baseball Think Factory,

the job that they've done over there tracking the ballots and stuff like that. Biggio was pulling above 80% up to a certain point, and I guess it was Monday when tons of ballots started rolling in. And Piazza was, I think, in the low 70s before he fell down, and he ended up about 62%. So, you know, it was maddening that Biggio missed by two votes. We can all point to individual ballots that were just absolutely horseshit, indefensible processes.

Murray Chass, Howard Bryant, Ken Gurnick, Mr. Blank Ballot, anonymous blank ballot. Those are just some of them. If any two of those ballots don't even make it to the BBWA post office box, Craig Biggio is in the Hall of Fame today. Yeah, it seems like there are several things that you could blame for Biggio being in, even without pointing to specific people, which you can certainly do. But just process-wise, the fact that there's the 10-player limit, the fact that ballots don't have to be public, probably each of those things could have contributed to that. And I don't know that it's a tragedy because he'll get in, right? But probably, I mean, possibly as soon as next year, even though there are some more qualified candidates coming on. But is there one specific thing that you blame for that over all the others, or could we just equally blame any of those things?

I don't think there's a single thing to blame for it. Certainly the fact that Murray Chass believes and is not shy about sharing his belief that Biggio may have used PEDs isn't helping him. But Murray Chass is widely viewed as a crackpot, even by members in good standing of the BBWA. Those who generally couch their criticism very carefully are more than willing to unload on him both in public and in private. And so I feel no remorse towards joining that little parade. It's maybe one of my less redeeming features about my coverage. But, you know, you're asking me at the end of a 26 mile race here how I feel about him, and it ain't good. No, I think but I think other than that, you know, the huge crowd of first ballot,

of first year, strong first year candidates has hurt Biggio both this last year and this year and it will again next year. It's going to make it another photo finish. I mean, I think obviously he probably finds the two votes, but it's still just, you know, for a guy to have to put his life on hold for a year there's a whole lot of stuff that happens when you get into the Hall of Fame a whole lot of positive publicity that comes your way I don't know if his parents or his relatives that are still living

that have to hope they make it through another year boy that would really suck if they didn't They have to hope they make it through another year. I mean, boy, that would really suck if they didn't. You know, and I just think that there's a real human cost to making these guys wait. And one of the changes that I am most in favor of is not necessarily expanding the 10-vote rule, although I think that's a very good place to start. I would lower the necessary percentage. Once you get to 50 percent, everything else is just meaningless bureaucracy. It's voters who suddenly become more important than the process itself.

It's like the last guy who holds onto a parcel of land that's been divided that's been divided up and they're gonna make some new construction there. The last, if you can be the last holdout, you're gonna reap a significantly higher profit. That's what the Murray Chasses of the world are doing in some ways, is they're making themselves more important in this process than they really are. Do you think that there should be any recourse toward removing an individual's ability to vote? Because you see that a lot when someone puts out a particularly egregious ballot. Oh, he should be stripped of his vote.

He's not taking it seriously. But it's sort of a slippery line between misusing the privilege and just voting in a way that we disagree with. Yeah, I do want to be careful there. I think that the blank ballot brigade, of which there was only one this year, I think you can kick them out, kick them to the curb ASAP. I have no sympathy or patience for them. Ken Gernick, you know, I didn't like what he did. I understand his reasoning, but it's

so hopelessly flawed. The fact that he's decided to voluntarily give up his vote, you know, fine. You know, that's, I think that's the more preferable route. I mean, if you, you know, rather see people surrendering or surrendering voluntarily. Beyond that, I mean, I don't think you can just, you know, decide somebody's a cranky voter and take it away. But I think you can decide that unless you're still covering baseball or whatever – I mean, Murray Chess, for example, you're not going to take him away because he's a spink winner. That ballot's going to his grave with him, whether he promises to give up the voting or not. I think that for the most part, I would like to see the BBWA take on an audit of who's voting because I think there are retired sports editors on the rolls who don't really have much connection to baseball that I think should be, you know, they should consider taking it. But, you know, I've read the, I'm a member of the BBWA. I'm seven years away from a vote.

I've read the bulletin boards. There was a, you know, the internal bulletin boards for the organization. There's, you know, there are some, there are women in the organization who fought tooth and nail to get into the BBWA to get locker room access whose stories resonate with me to take their votes away after that hard one, you in the position to be saying who should be in and who should be out. I will leave that to the rank and file. Um, you know, I, the research that I've done, uh, on, you know, the voting patterns or whatever is something that, that, that, uh, I think will, you know, maybe, um, be part of this process to look at the 10 man ballot. Um, but, uh, there's other, there, you know, there's, there are the voting, who gets to vote is a more

sensitive issue. And I think there's, there's, that's probably for somebody besides me to, to address. Jay, has the, has the, has the voter pool changed over the years? Is, has it, have, have the requirements for voting been changed? Have the, I mean, certainly the numbers have because the number of media outlets have. But have the rules become more liberalized to allow more people? Have they have has there ever been a purge? Has there ever been really any focused attempt at redefining who votes? I don't have a great handle. I mean, the Baseball Writers Association, the Hall of Fame put the Baseball Writers Association in charge of the ballot for the more contemporary players back in 1936.

And that has never changed. It used to be that all those voters came from daily newspapers or whatever. And I think some other outlets have been added. Weekly's, Wire Services, you've got editors in there, you've got cartoonists in there even back when that was a thing that mattered to people that helped sell papers

the past decade has seen the admission of people from non-print publications from online outlets like Baseball Perspectives and Fangraphs and a few other entities that have become part of it. I think that's a big change.

And there's certainly some sentiment within the organization that has gotten away from its key mission, which is to just to guarantee access to working riders. The other perks that come with it aren't, you know, like being able to vote for awards, you know, aren't necessarily, those shouldn't be central aims. Access is the central aim and that, you know, some people feel that, you know, some of the new breed aren't doing it for the access purposes. So there's been obviously a lot of suggestions for how to make sure that the votes are kind of representative and respectful of the game and keep the consistency of the Hall of Fame going and all that.

And one of the central parts of this is that it seems like what we all want is for the Hall of Fame standards to be relatively consistent, that that's kind of what the basis of JAWS, your system is. It's basically figuring out what the Hall of Fame standard is and making sure that, you know, it stays more or less around there, that it doesn't get radically changed upwards or downwards. And so, you know, anytime I see a suggestion for how to fix it, I wonder, well, is this likely to raise or lower the standards? And then I realized today, I don't actually know, does the, if we look historically, does the standard actually change much from, you know, from decade to decade? If you had done your

JAWS scores in the 60s or the 70s or the 80s or the 90s, would it have changed much? Or is the last three, four years really the first significant blip in the Hall of Fame's voting standards? You know, I think it has changed. To characterize it simply, I'm not sure I could do that with much efficiency. But I have been gathering data and looking at, you know, who was voted in. I think I was doing a tally of the number of players on a given ballot that exceeded the Jaws average at that position, just very strict. And it's only, there have only been uh there was a period in the i didn't i only went back to 66 but there was a period from uh 1989 to 1997 where it was about 8 to 12 per year um now

we're up to 17 but that was the only other time that that that uh time span that we that they went into double digits that was an era that that guys like Carl Yastrzemski, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Rod Carew, Jim Palmer, the 70s guys, basically. The stars from the mid-60s into the 70s got in. But when you go back further, you look at the guys who were getting in whose careers were from the late 50s and the 60s, you find that they weren't all slam dunks. I mean, we think of guys like Don Drysdale as 60s, you find that they weren't all like slam dunks. I mean, we think of guys like Don Drysdale as Hall of Famers, but they're kind of below the standard relative to where it's at now, in part because those workhorses from the

70s kind of raised it. I've never tried to actually kind of retroactively engineer what a Jaws standard would look like if you say started in you can't obviously can't you know sample size purposes you can't start with 1936 and say these guys don't measure up to babe ruth screw them um but you can maybe you can maybe start uh you know and then you've got the the veterans committees that kind of break the system down with some very loose admissions in the 40s and 50s. You know, if I was going to do it, I think I would start, again, go back to the single, the annual voting in 1966, which, you know, basically the modern era of voting,

and look at it that way. I think it would be interesting to see where the standards go. I suspect we would see them rise over time, but I don't know that it would be uniform across all positions, and we might be in it for some surprises. I was also going to go back to the 10-player limit. You mentioned something in your latest post latest year, your post results wrap up for SI that 50% of voters had used all 10 slots on their ballot, which was up from 22% last year, which is a big increase in the, I've been, it's probably a record.

I didn't see confirmation that it is, but I'm almost certain that it would be, at least in the, at least in the modern era. And we'll get some confirmation on that. And I've been following the debate on the BBWA message boards also, and there have been quite a few people coming out in favor of removing the limit. And it seemed like no one really opposing opposing it some people more lukewarm on it than others but uh the argument for keeping it basically is is just sort of that you know it will lead to too many players being voted for which seems sort of seems sort of silly if you're trusting the writers to know what a hall of famer is then you should probably also trust them not to vote not

and not only not only that, but when you look at the levels of historical representation in the Hall of Fame, the past 40 years, 45 years, going back to 1969, is vastly underrepresented relative to previous decades. Dave Cameron did something at Fangraphs in mid-December where he showed that I think it was where previous eras had something like 2.4% of all players wound up in the Hall of Fame. It's now down to 1.2% for players born in the 1951-60 era and 0.1% for the 61-70 decade. Greg Maddox and Tom Glavin just doubled the number of players born in that time span who are in the hall of fame um i guess frank thomas too so we've now got five where we had two um but vastly underrepresented the last uh the last 30 or so years of baseball

um you know in terms of in terms of Hall of Fame representation. And I think that's got to change. And, you know, there aren't even enough candidates on the ballot if you were to go simply by that standard. You know, the size of the major leagues has more than doubled over the last 50 years, or almost doubled in the last 50 years. And that's part of the issue that voters are clinging to. Some voters are clinging to even more stringent standards in the face of that,

which, you know, is just ridiculous. And the 10 player limit, it seems to me like it's sort of the low hanging fruit here, because as you mentioned, the lifetime vote is tricky. Stripping individual votes is tricky. Having some sort of standards for PD guys is very tricky. But removing the 10-player ballot seems like a pretty simple step. And I remember having similar internal debates last year on those message boards about that, and nothing was changed then. But it seems like maybe there's more momentum toward that now. There is some sort of committee studying the issue. There is a committee, and in the interest of full disclosure, I can say that I'm actually on that committee.

I don't want to say anything more than that. I've been encouraged to keep very quiet on this, so I will be on that. But except to say that it's pretty cool that I got onto that as somebody as somebody who doesn't have a vote um you know it's on the strength of the work that i've done uh so i'm not going to complain about that um the 10 but the 10 the 10 player rule is is i think a a fairly benign one to address relative to the history of the hall of fame there there is no good reason for it being there. We've had a lot of prominent voices step forward during ballot season to speak up. I mean, you know, some of the biggest names in the industry have come out in favor of expanding it.

I think based on that momentum, more than any number crunching that I do, or anybody else on this committee does, I think that that is what's going to be turning the tide. And, you know, if 50 percent of the electorate is saying, you know, that that, boy, there's there's definitely 10 here and we can definitely see next year is going to be, you know, we're going to need all 10 slots too. I think that there's maybe a good chance that, that, that we do have some movement on that. Can I, I want to go back just to something that you mentioned, because I have been trying to figure out whether I think this or not. You mentioned that, you know, this, this generation is underrepresented by population, that a smaller percentage of the population is, is making the hall of fame. There's a smaller percentage of the population is is making the hall of fame a smaller percentage of the playing population is making the hall of

fame and partly that's because nobody gets elected anymore and that's a weird thing and that needs to be you know addressed but partly it's also because um you know a lot more people are playing there's twice as many teams as there was at some point and i've do you do you think that it's appropriate that if there are twice as many teams there should should be twice as many Hall of Famers? I've been going back and forth on that in my head. I don't know that necessarily needs to be twice as many because, yeah, we probably got some. slip through the cracks and who are for very worthy uh bc admissions like johnny myers and archie vaughn um to say nothing of the 19th century guys who never had a bbwa path into the hall of fame um it doesn't necessarily need to be need to be um you know twice as many going in but it

shouldn't be uh you know it shouldn't be one-tenth of the previous generation, which is what it is right now, even after you account for the extra number of middle relievers that have come into the game that are kind of the 26th, 27th, and 28th guys on the ball club who are sort of cycled through the roster willy-nilly. Even once you adjust for that, again, going back to Dave Cameron's work, some very good stuff there showing that the 1961 and 1970 demographic was represented at one-tenth of the frequency of the previous decade. Let me ask you, I always wonder whether the sort of the mudslinging that goes on on both sides of the debate leads to anything productive. It's an antagonistic relationship.

It's also sort of a symbiotic relationship. And then it leads to lots and lots of traffic for both sides because people go and read the takedowns of someone's terrible ballot. And then they go read that terrible ballot. And everyone benefits in a way from that. But do you think that, you know, calling out certain voters makes it less likely for that voting behavior to be repeated in the future or does it encourage it or does it have no effect? Because, you know, that's a good question. It probably entrenches positions more as much as it deters behavior. I mean, I think greater transparency, I think, is a deterrent from, let's just call it these aberrations. Um, uh, what you see with the way that, that the voting percentages for certain guys drop precipitously, uh, from, uh, what's reported, uh, in the ballot gizmo, the publicly published

ballots, um, versus what, and what the final results are. Uh, you've got a lot of people, you know, you've got, you know, a vast majority of the electorate that doesn't, its ballot, that doesn't have to write a thousand words in defense or three thousand words per candidate in defense, as I am prone to do, you know, who who aren't willing to vote for, you know, guys with PED, you know, PED connections or but also sabermetric guys. I saw that there's a piece on the BP site today, Louis... Policy. Policy, yeah.

And I was skimming it because I haven't had a chance to read too much today, but I saw that he had done a correlation between the margin and the Jaws score, and it's like a 0.6 correlation. That's pretty big. So it explains the older voters, the less sabermetrically savvy ones aren't voting for Tim Raines or Edgar Martinez or whatever, whereas the guys who are putting their ballots out there publicly and maybe reading my work and other people like me are more likely to do it. Getting back to the mudslinging stuff though, I certainly, as somebody who's been doing this now for 13 years and for 11 cycles since my first BP article, which was 10 years and two days ago, as of today, Election Day, 10 years, three days by the time you folks hear this. I've certainly had to curb my own mudslinging

as I've gained a more prominent pulpit in this. And then really, I think the only ballots that I commented on in specific were those really off the reservation ones, like the Chass and Bryant and Gurnick. There are so many acceptable answers when you've got 14 good guys in the ballot and only 10 spots. And how much do you really want to complain when Jack Morris is taking up one of those spots if the voter has Tim Raines and Edgar Martinez, two candidates that I've stumped for, you know, put a lot of energy into? So I think in the end, it's probably, you know, I would love to see the discourse raised, maybe a little bit less mudslinging. I think that both sides have a tendency to be strident. It's something I've tried to curb for myself, and it seems to have helped in terms of the level of acceptance that my work has received.

So take that as a lesson, folks. It does work. You will catch more flies uh honey than with whatever you know whatever else you're using um uh and and anyway speaking of of some of today's mudsling sam and i talked a bit about the the deadspin gambit when it was first proposed. Uh, do you have any thoughts on it now that we know how it worked? I am, I am, I was never totally comfortable with the idea that a, that a voter would sell, would sell their ballot. Um, having read, uh, Dan Levitard's stuff in the past, is that how you say his name? I'm not even sure. Um, and you know, having read his work in the past is that you say his name i'm not even sure i think um and you know having read his work in the past and familiar with it i've not always agreed with him i do remember something he wrote

about barry bonds and the death of barry bonds his father bobby bonds that really struck a nerve with me uh at a time when i was reading boys of summer this is like maybe 10 years ago that i just thought was a fantastic piece um so you know I've always had at least some respect for him. I thought his explanation for why he did what he did, I thought was about as spot on as anybody who was on his side could have hoped for. He still doesn't entirely sit well with me, what's going on there. But he seems to have done it for the right reasons. And I certainly hope that there's, you know, that there's, there's certainly room for change. And I certainly hope that, that what he has done, uh, is something that maybe helps a

little bit, uh, towards that change. So obviously to have, uh, this be an honor, we have to have high standards to have high standards. We have to keep some people out of it. And so it's totally justified to point out that Jack Morris was not deserving. But I think you'll agree that it's much more fun to be arguing vehemently in favor of a player than against one. Is that a fair way to describe it? Most definitely. I feel a certain amount of sadness today regarding Jack Morris that he didn't get in. It was pretty clear through most of the cycle that he wasn't going to get in. I really enjoyed watching Jack Morris pitch. I remember his no-hitter in 1984. I watched that on NBC Game of the Week. It was the second no-hitter I'd ever seen start to finish. game of the week. It was the second no-hitter I'd ever seen start to finish. I remember the 84 World Series. I remember the 91 World Series very vividly. That 10-inning shutout still stands

out in my mind. I can see myself watching it. To spend 13 years, as I've done, arguing against Morris' credentials and with an increasingly louder voice and more prominence, it doesn't give me I don't I'm not filled with joy that he didn't get in. I, you know, I feel like in a way there was a certain backlash there that his hopes were built up by that backlash to the specifically to the Burt Blylevin progression towards the hall. And, you know, that, I mean, Morris was kind of looked like a middle of the road candidate for a good long time and one who didn't look like he was going to make it. And for him to have gotten so close and not gotten in and to have fallen back from, you know, two years ago when he had 66.7%. Look, you know, under normal circumstances, that's a guy who's going to go over the top,

you know, probably in one year, possibly in two. To not get there, I can, I'm certain he feels, you know, pretty miserable about it. And I can sympathize. And, you know, for the part that I played in that, you know, miserable about it and and i can sympathize and and you know for the part that i played in that you know it certainly wasn't personal um i do expect that he will get in via the veterans committee um a process that uh none of us has any control over um it's basically tommy lasorda yelling at 15 other people in a room or that's how i imagined it um so you know i and whatever god bless. Or that's how I imagined it. So, you know, and whatever. God bless him if that's how

he gets in. You know, I don't wish him any ill. It doesn't feel like there's going to be any candidates for a while that you're going to have to really argue too strenuously against. Certainly the argument is going to be tilted in favor of pro arguments for a while, it seems like. Lee Smith is probably the closest thing, and he's not really all that close. So until maybe Omar Vizquel gets up, it doesn't seem like there's a real difficult no. I'm already internet famous for my opposition to Omar Vizquel. I get international death threats on that one. That's probably a bit of an exaggeration, but man, if I want to stir something up on Twitter,

I can just start on Omar Vizquel. And I do feel, again, there's a guy who I think was very good, but the numbers do not support him being a Hall of Famer and we'll get to that in due time. I once made the mistake of reading a comment section on something that you wrote about Omar Vizquel. SI switched comment systems after that and so those are lost to the ether and i wish i i kind of wish somebody had saved those because that was kind of the all-time collection of email um and boy howdy i you know that yes that will that will that will kind of suck to be advocating to be you know arguing against a guy uh had a very nice career, but who a lot of people want to believe was the second coming of Ozzie Smith, but who couldn't carry Ozzie's jock when it came to hitting,

once you adjust for era. That's one of the big problems there. But yes, Sam's right. I don't think that we're going to see too many other guys for a while where you've got to really dig in your heels and argue against them unless you're talking about the PED issue, in which case I think the voters have spoken fairly definitively with regards to Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire and Rafael Palmeiro, who fell off the ballot today and is out of the discussion until 2026, by my calculations. You know, it's Bonds and Clemens that people are going to be arguing over. I'm pro putting them in. I think they should have gotten in last year. I can understand why voters didn't put them in last year. I think that they're just going to, it calls more attention to them that they'll leave them on the ballot

than it does to put them in the Hall of Fame, frankly. We're going to keep talking about them every year for the next 13 years. It's like Alex Rodriguez. We're going to be stuck with Alex Rodriguez for the next 25 years. Between the contract and the Hall of Fame vote or whatever, unless he gets unless he

goes the the palmero route pretty quickly um he's going to be talked about for a good long time you mentioned the veterans committee and jack morris i have to admit i can never keep straight where the veterans committee is most recently i was under the impression that they don't elect anybody uh any players for the most part. Yeah, it's almost like that. Basically, the Veterans Committee, as of 2010, split into three separate Veterans Committees, because who doesn't love more committees? They're now separated chronologically.

There's the pre-integration era, essentially prior to Jackie Robinson. There's the golden era, which is, for some reason, cut off from 1947 to 1973. And then there's the expansion era, which starts at 1973. And there was no expansion in 1973. We had the designated hitter rule come in. So it's like, were you talking about that? You know, and so, so far, we've had one cycle through of each. The Golden Era Committee went first. They elected Ron Santo. They did it one year after he died. Good job, good effort, guys. You totally fucking failed.

Then the pre-integration era, they elected Deacon White and two non-players. Fine. era, they elected Deacon White and two non-players. Fine, you know, that's these guys, but nobody who was at the Hall of Fame induction had been alive for like 75 years or something like that. This time around, the expansion era committee, the three people, they evaluated all managers. The three people, they evaluated all managers. None of the players got in. I thought that Ted Simmons in particular had a very good case. He's right around the line on Jaws. Certainly a travesty when it came to voting one and done on the BBWA ballot back when he was eligible in their, I think, 94.

So yeah, there's not a lot of guys going in on the Veterans Committee ballots by any stretch. And I don't expect that to change anytime soon. But I do think that Jack Morris is somebody who they'll take a long look at. I'd like to

believe that Lou Whitaker, when he comes eligible in 2017, and Alan Trammell, who will probably be in that system by 2017 as well, that those guys will get a much longer look than the average BC guy. And I would gladly trade Jack Morris in the Hall of Fame if the man Trammell and Whitaker can get in, because those guys do measure up. fame if the men travel, whatever can get in, because those guys do measure up. Okay. You're almost free of us. My second to last question would be, if you look at the election results from today, the voting results from today, where do you think the biggest disconnect is on an individual case between current percentage and where that percentage should be?

Hang on here. Let me make sure I've got the votes in front of me here before I say that. Biggest disconnect between – I don't – I thought I had it. I don't have it. BBWA website is actually working these days. Oh, good. Let's see. Yeah, you can find it there.

Yeah, it took me until 2.56 p.m., 56 minutes after the vote was announced, to get onto that site, which was the only place that I could find actual totals. MLB didn't have them up. ESPN didn't have them up. SI didn't have them up. Sorry. Okay okay so let's see here the biggest disconnect between between what where they're polling I think actually I would say Curt Schilling and Mike Messina Curt Schilling is the big game pitcher that that voters thought they were getting with Jack Morris. I mean, 11-2 with an ERA in the low twos in the postseason.

You know, the bloody sock game, beating the Yankees in the World Series with the Diamondbacks, some great postseason moments there. Great regular season, best strikeout to walk ratio. He got 29% of the vote. You know, I don't think anybody thought he was going to be a first ballot Hall of Famer, but I think that he is definitely somebody who belongs in Cooperstown. I feel the same way about Mike Messina, who got 20% of the vote in his first year, which

was better than Bill Dean's initial projection for him, which was about 7%, and caused a lot of us to worry that he was going to, you know, in danger of falling off the ballot. He ranks two notches ahead of Tom Glavin, 28th all-time in Jaws, Schilling, I believe, is 27th, Glavin is 30th. All three of them are above the standard. You know, I think that, you know, that Glavin got in, uh, with 92% of the vote. Um, and those two guys don't even add up to 50% of the vote. I think that's, that's the big disconnect for me. Yeah. I'm with you on that. And, and last thing, uh, does the thought of forecasting anything for 2015 make you physically ill right now, or you uh it's part of the job i mean i think i i think that that randy johnson and pedro martinez are locks um i'm less sure about john smoltz um

just because his career has that is sort of the eckersley type hybrid he was a better starter than eckersley he wasn't as closer as long. He has the postseason excellence. But, you know, there are a lot of good starting pitches on that ballot. I, you know, I'm not sure whether he gets in. I do think Craig Biggio gets in. It would take a class of four to fit all those guys, which would be the largest since 1955. You know, I'd like to believe that's possible. you know I'd like to believe that's possible as somebody who is you know tries to remain optimistic in the face of

things in this department I will guess that that's what's going to happen I would be very surprised if Gary Sheffield doesn't wind up another first year candidate doesn't wind up with a you know something in the low 20s.

I think he's going to have a hard time, not only in the crowd, but also with the tangential, the PED connection to Barry Bonds' Circa Balco. And people are going to bring up the, oh, he made intentional errors on purpose, even though when I investigated that back when he was with the Yankees, I found those anecdotes did not necessarily jive with the box scores so I will have some fun

with that when that comes about because Gary Sheffield was one of my absolute favorite players to watch for as much a pain in the ass as he was and boy he was more so in the Dodger days than in his yankees days but man there there aren't i mean if you you know if there was an ebay site where you

could bid to watch players hit i mean i think i would probably mac be most likely to max out on edgar martinez and gary sheffield those are are two guys I could watch them swing the bat all freaking day long. Yeah. Messina would be up there for me as a pitcher also. I really enjoyed watching him pitch. Oh, Messina. The thing I never – one thing I never brought up with Messina was my favorite or my least favorite thing about him, which his stretch move,

which I called the goddamn drinking bird. Because it reminded me of one of those drinking bird toys with the liquid at the bottom. What's the purpose of that ridiculous bow? I just never understood it. It drove me nuts. Unfortunately, he was retired by the time I got

inside the Yankee clubhouse, so I never got to ask him. I would love to ask him someday, and I know, you know, whatever. If I'm ever on a Hall of Fame conference call with him, I will ask him that. I always enjoyed his responses to terrible questions from writers as well. He was one of those writers who would basically,

or one of those players who would just sort of say that a question was stupid and not and not, and not answer. Most definitely. All right. Uh, well, we thank you for, for fitting us in at the end of your,

your gauntlet here. Always for you guys. Always a pleasure. And thanks for all your work on this subject. And we, we hope that you can get some rest now and, and return to writing about other things for a while. I certainly hope so.

I look forward to it. Although you do have another Hall of Fame piece going up tomorrow or today if you're listening on Thursday looking at 2015 candidates. And you can find that and Jay's other baseball writing at mlb.si.com. You can see him regularly on Clubhouse Confidential on MLB Network and find him on Twitter at J underscore Jaffe. So thanks a lot, J. Thank you, guys. All right.

Feels like we're talking to an accountant on April 16th. Yeah, that's just about how I feel.