Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 792: What We Learned from This Year’s Hall of Fame Voting

Episode Date: January 7, 2016

Ben and Sam review the greatness of Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza and talk about their other takeaways from the Hall of Fame voting results.

I'm stepping away from the mic, the ECP is in the house Turning it over to Gryph, go ahead and run your mouth Cause two for the bass and one for the trouble Gryph is gonna take the party to another level When I swing, I bring bass like an earthquake I even make the home run and make the house shake Rang that kind of rhymes that you just can't get with My homie get making the beats as funky as an armpit

Take the beat and get dope, but not crack I mean it kind of dope, that's far from whack Hello and welcome to episode 792 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by the Play Index at baseballreference.com. Dot com. I am... Try again. Dude, this one wasn't any better.

Dot com. I am Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hey, how are you? Okay. I was watching Childhood's End last night, the miniseries from the Sci-Fi Channel adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke novel, and there's one scene where the main character flashes back to three days he spent in a honeymoon suite with his deceased wife who was not deceased at the time

in the Four Seasons Hotel New York and he's reminiscing and he's talking to the alien about this time and the alien points out that he had tickets to see the Yankees play the Twins this was 2003 so he missed the Yankees beating the Twins 3-1 in the ALDS, and that was it. That was the only baseball reference in the show, but little did I know, baseball show. Opposite, Ben. The opposite. Really? Well, the defining feature in that scene was the lack of baseball. That's true, but there were baseball tickets they showed the tickets and yeah i think that this is a a void this is a baseball void i think this is a this is very aggressively an anti-baseball movie huh okay maybe i don't know i think if you see a pennant on the wall and that's

a baseball movie then seeing a ticket to a baseball game even even if it goes unused, it's baseball. I hope it came across at least to you that the pennant example, that was tongue-in-cheek. Okay. We got a lot of tweets. About various pennants showing up. All right. By the way, I completely misremembered the Saturday Night Live sketch. I watched it last night.

What I took from it, or what I remembered taking from it 20 years later, was way off from what the sketch actually was. I took from it that Chris Kattan still isn't very funny. That's true. Still isn't. I mean, wasn't at the time. Still wasn't. Maybe he's funnier now. Maybe.

Okay. Anything you want to talk about? No, sir. Okay. I thought we could go over some Hall of Fame results. Great. All right. We do our two Hall of Fame shows generally per year, which is okay, I think. We do one maybe talking to someone like Jay Jaffe or Ryan Thibodeau and talking about what's going to happen.

And we talk about what happened. And that's it. It's very clean and efficient. It doesn't bleed over into other shows generally. So obviously everyone knows the results, but I thought we could go over a few things that stood out in the numbers. So Ken Griffey Jr. elected in his first year of eligibility with 99.3% of the vote. Three people didn't vote for him. I think their identities are still unknown. There was a tweet or two about one guy who might have done it, but then there was some confusion and obviously everyone is ready to bring the twitter pitchfork mob when one of those

people is discovered so you can understand why they haven't come forward yet and mike piazza was elected with 83 of the vote so both very deserving players glad they got in congratulations to them it's funny that we get the question a lot of the time about what you have to do to get into the Hall of Fame. I think we got a question yesterday from someone who said, what would you do if a rookie had the best year ever and then retired after that one year? Would you put him in the Hall of Fame? And no, probably not, because he doesn't satisfy the rules, the minimum conditions that you have to meet to be in the Hall of Fame. But we do get— Wait, wait, wait.

Real quickly, though. Don't be a stickler. I mean, the premise is obviously that for some reason he is eligible. Yeah, right. So we do get a lot of those questions. Sometimes it's like Mike Trout. What if Mike Trout retired right now? Or what if Mike Trout retired after 10 years or something like that?

And you kind of have to balance the peak versus the career, And that's what Che's system, JAWS, does very explicitly. It's just, you know, it's a very useful system, but also a very simple system. It's like the average of career war and peak war. And so those things are given equal weight in the system. those things are given equal weight in the system. But the Griffey results suggest to me that peak is given more emphasis by voters because the fact that Griffey would be the all-time leading percentage vote getter is entirely due to his peak, right? He had a fantastic first 10, 12 years or so. Up through age 30, he was one of the, I don't know, three, four or five best players ever through that point in a career. And then didn't do a whole lot after that. Most of his Hall of Fame case was done at that point. And if anything, he may have heard it after that point. He dragged down his career rate stats. His career OPS plus or

his career WRC plus or whatever you want to use is not only lower than Mike Piazza's by a lot, but it's lower than Jim Edmunds actually by a point. So he really kind of eroded his rate stats and was hurt, of course. And then he kind of had the depressing, like Willie Mays-esque very end to his career where he kind of got a little chubby and then he had the clubhouse nap in Seattle and all that stuff. And yet he sailed in with a higher percentage than anyone ever. And that is pretty purely due to his peak right unless it's steroids unless it's like a this guy is the one shining example of a player who didn't use steroids during the steroid era just because he's never been connected to it and maybe that had something

to do with it but mostly it seems to be the peak peak matters so yeah i'm glad that you're talking about this was what i would have talked about if this had been my show when but i want to go back real quick when you said that through age 30 he was one of the three to five best players ever yeah well dave cameron did a post on him and his through age 30 and he he was worth 63.6 wins that's through his first decade 89 to 98 and he showed a chart of him versus bonds and maze and aaron and griffey's pretty much right there with them so maybe it's the first 10 seasons but he was definitely an inner circle hall of fame type player through that point.

Hang on. I'm looking. Because on reference, you wouldn't put him in that. You'd say like 15th or so on reference. Anyway, yeah, it is actually, I was driving around yesterday wondering what it is that elevated him in so many voters' minds above so many other great players. And of course, to be kind of clear, what we're talking about is a strange distinction. Say 97% of people voted for Ricky Henderson. I think even more did. But let's say 97% of people voted for Ricky Henderson. And 99.2% voted for Kenny Griffey Jr.

We're talking about how Griffey did a thing that nobody else has done, got the highest vote total ever. But what we're really talking about is like seven people had a different opinion for whatever reason yeah than they did for ricky and for various other great great players randy johnson and greg maddox and and others 99 you know 98 of people felt exactly the same way as about about randy johnson and about r Johnson and about Ricky Henderson and Greg Maddox and quite possibly thought he was better. And so it isn't as though we're saying, wow, the baseball world has spoken. Ken Griffey Jr. is the greatest player of all time. We're saying that in the way that they voted, Ken Griffey Jr. was able to break through a barrier that is really reflective of only maybe a couple of dozen people who are semi-foreign to us. But nonetheless, he did do it.

And it is worth wondering why him, why Griffey was so popular among this very small subset of people who are prone to vote no on greg maddox and greg maddox wasn't and so one you mentioned the steroids thing yeah which is an interesting thing because like um like uh like like ted williams didn't do steroids and when he came up for his vote nobody went that guy did it clean. Like there was no, there was no like extra points for doing it clean. It was always assumed that everybody was clean, quote unquote clean. And so it's not that Griffey is perceived to have not a lone voice or a lone example of great integrity, greatness mixed with integrity during an era where a lot of people lost faith in that combination existing or where I think people felt like that all the good stuff was tainted, all the fun stuff was ripped out from under you, you know, that you couldn't

really rely on anything. And Griffey is in contrast to those things. So it is sort of odd that for that reason, he would get more votes than like, say, Mike Schmidt did when Mike Schmidt was just as quote unquote clean. And it's also, but i could i i guess if uh you know like everybody has different reasons for voting and and for remembering players and uh i can understand why if you're convinced that most of the sport was rotten for 10 years or longer and that this one guy is going to go down as the neo of the sport, that you would be especially fond of him. It's odd, though, then, that Maddox wouldn't have the same.

Yep. And particularly because Maddox was a pitcher, and I think there is still a perception that pitchers were the, even though just many pitchers cheated and so on, that there's a feeling that the pitchers were the victims here, other than the fans were the victims. The writers were the victims. But after the writers and the fans, the pitchers were the victims. So it's sort of odd that Greg Maddux wasn't granted the same boost. But so that's one thing.

I tend to think because of the Greg Maddux example, that that is not the answer. A second possibility is that this is just, this is the purge. The people who were voting no on Ricky Henderson are gone. And that if Ricky Henderson came up today, he might also, he might get 100%. I mean, it does seem, do you think that there is any player who, if they came up today for a vote, given the voting pool as demonstrated this week, would get 100%. Would Babe Ruth get 100%? Would Jackie Robinson get 100% right now if he were up for the vote? It's hard to say because what am I even asking?

The fact that they've been dead for 60 years makes them a lot more popular. And that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking whether it is conceivable that Griffey is merely, merely, like legitimately thought he wasn't a Hall of Famer just based on his performance. Like it wasn't a, wasn't a no one gets in on the first ballot thing. It was just someone could, but not Griffey. Maybe. I don't know. Or I don't know.

Like Jeter. Will Jeter. Yeah. Who are the next no doubters? Jeter and Mario Rivera? Chipper Jones is 2018, I think, and then Rivera's 2019, Jeter's 2020. So will Jeter get 100% or is 100%... Let me rephrase that. Will Jeter match Griffey? I would say yes. Okay. And so if we're saying that Griffey broke this barrier and now in three years Jeter will match it, maybe Jeter is just extra, extra special.

But that would suggest that we think that the no votes were coming from people who don't get, who get no votes anymore, right? Yeah. And I mean, it was like 14% of the voter pool, something like that from last year, didn't get to vote this year. I think Jay Jaffe said it was 90 votes or somewhere in that region. So, and if you figure that those 90 were the oldest writers who were not active anymore, not covering baseball anymore, and maybe they still have that older mindset about no one getting in on the first try. So yeah, I mean, if you are just talking about a handful of votes to go from 97% to 99%, then maybe that's all it is. So, but then there's the other, okay. So those are two possibilities. A third is that Griffey is just that cool. And when people use the Hall of Fame, when people rely on the word fame in Hall of Fame

to elevate some guys and bring down others, it does seem like, I think a lot of, I agree certainly with the idea that it is not irrelevant that you also were a historically significant figure for whatever reason. And that's not enough for maybe to add 40 wars to your total. And it's not enough to knock you down just because you're Edgar or anything like that. But, you know, historically significant seems interesting and relevant. And like, that's why I would have voted for Mark McGuire over Craig Biggio, for instance. So Griffey is this perfect encapsulation, not just of great baseball, but of a entire

generation. I mean, he like he was that card, you you know like he was the he was the michael jordan of the sport like you you really cannot sort of overestimate or overstate how famous he was as a baseball player he might be the last super famous baseball player who you know isn't famous for a scandal right yeah or well right i guess he's sort't famous for a scandal, right? Yeah, or, well, right. I guess he's sort of famous for wearing his cap backwards, which was a scandal not through his own doing, but through other people's reactions to it.

And all the while, he is also the best player in the American League. He is, he was, in a lot of ways, he was the first prospect. I think a generation really knew, like we knew prospects definitely, but he was kind of the first guy in my generation where you knew him before he'd played a game and you were trading his cards before he'd ever played a game. And I think in a lot of ways he might, I don't know if he did or not, but it may have just been coincidental, but he kind of brought in the era of, you know, the prospect baseball card hound, you know, where you wanted to get the rookies and you wanted to get the guys who were debuting that year. And, uh, he was, you know, he had the,

he had the swing and he had the style that everyone wanted to play and he was cool and he was young and he was everything. And he had the thing with his dad. And so there was just there. Like, does anybody it's not. I guess what I'm saying, Ben, is it's not just that that peak was a historically great peak that maybe people are weighing more than the value of his entire career. And it's not just that the entire career on its own is clearly Hall of Fame worthy. And that, you know, even if it like no matter how you distributed it, he is a no doubt Hall of Famer. But it is that during that peak, during those 10 amazing years, there is not one bad memory. There is not one bad moment.

Like there is nothing about Griffey that wasn't enjoyable for those 10 years. So, you know, I like how, how you really would have to contort yourself to make an argument against voting for him. Yeah. I think you can, I think, I think you, you don't have to contort yourself too much to say, huh, it's weird that it's kind of weird that he got more Hall of Fame votes than Ricky Henderson. Or, hey, Chipper Jones was really good. I wonder if he'll, you know, to sort of use Griffey's performance to show next year

when Chipper Jones only gets 83% that it is making Chipper Jones underrated. But as far as actually voting no on him, I just can't imagine how much work you would have to do to convince yourself that that's the vote. Yeah, right. Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. And it is kind of amazing that he is the first number one draft pick to make

the Hall of Fame. Because every number one draft pick has Hall of Fame expectations, basically, just by being a number one draft pick. And we've talked about how much more successful number one picks are than even number two picks. There's a big drop off relative to, say, the drop off between two and three or three and four or any other pick to any other pick. to say the drop off between two and three or three and four or any other pick to any other pick.

So when you take someone number one, you're saying, I think this guy is the best amateur player available right now. He's better than thousands of other players. And yet none of them ever made the hall of fame. And he's, well, you know, it's, it's not just that Ben, but I one time looked at what the median first overall pick does or who he is. And so I basically ranked all 35 first overall picks. And I think David Price was the last one I did or something like that. And it was really interesting because before Griffey, the first overall pick was very rarely a star. The best first overall pick before Griffey was probably Daryl Strawberry, who, you know, obviously not a Hall of Famer because you just said that.

But then after that, even after that, I mean, he at least was a superstar for like six years. But then after that, you go down and, I mean, you're basically looking at an expectation that your first overall pick would be you know would have a major league career and not not a whole lot more and then after griffey which again like it's not that he brought this in or anything like that but after griffey you started having a lot of elite players there's a lot of hall of Famers who have been drafted first overall since Griffey, I think, or at least guys who are close or would be if not for steroids or are clearly better than Darryl Strawberry. So that's kind of another reason why I think 88 works as a good modern era. Griffey is kind of one of the guys who heralded in, who brought in that era.

And a lot of things, I think, are just different about baseball after Griffey than before. And I'm not sure that he brought them with him or anything like that. But it feels like such a convincing line to draw between old baseball and new baseball. And that's why, to some degree, Griffey is just so satisfying for everybody who loved baseball in the nineties. And Piazza, I wrote about Piazza earlier this week at five 38. I think he's somewhat underappreciated,

although he's obviously very appreciated. He's in the hall of fame, but he was just an incredible hitter. For the 10 best years of his career, like 93 through 2002, obviously those were crazy offense, year's highest offense era ever. And you have to mentally move the stats down a bit when you look at them but he was clearly one of the top 10 best hitters in baseball from 93 to 02 he was like eighth in weighted runs created plus if you set some minimums and you know it was bonds and bagwell and then a couple guys ahead of him who maybe are still even more underappreciated or didn't get enough support on this ballot. Wait, wait, wait. Yeah.

Can I guess? You want to guess who's ahead of Piazza? The five people between Bagwell and Piazza? Yes. Okay. I will guess Frank Thomas, Gary Sheffield. Yes. So I've got three more.

Uh-huh. I don't want to guess anymore. Okay. Edgar is third in that period. And Manny Ramirez and Jim Tomey, actually. Oh, yeah. So the difference is that all of those guys were DHs or first basemen or corner outfielders. And Mike Piazza was a catcher.

And that kind of offense from a catcher is literally unprecedented he is clearly i think the best hitting catcher ever and i think he's an underappreciated defensive catcher one of the worst throwing catchers of all time but based on what we can tell good blocker and good receiver maybe good game caller too and if you factor in all those things, he was probably an above average defensive catcher and combining that with the best offense ever from the position and pretty decent longevity, especially for a catcher.

He's an incredible player and has now been recognized as such. And I think if you go purely on career value, which there's no real reason to do, but if you do compare purely on career value, I think Piazza and Griffey are right neck and neck, basically. Not if you compare wars, but I think Piazza is probably still underrated by wars

that don't take into account some of the things he did on defense. So I would say that they are very close in career accomplishments. And I'm glad that Mike Piazza is in the Hall of Fame now. And the steroid insinuations did not keep him out. And, you know, with the steroid, like, what do you think the baseline he used steroids estimate is for someone in this period? Because you hear all the time from former players and the numbers vary wildly, but you hear all the time, oh, half of guys were using or more than half of guys were using. just based on the baseline rate at that period, maybe your Bayesian expectation for someone who played then is that there was a decent chance that they used something, and maybe that goes up a little higher

if you were one of the best hitters and a big guy, or maybe it doesn't, I don't know, but there certainly were some excellent hitters and huge guys who we know did use. So for all these guys, like, you know, when, when you defend them because there's no proven link, it's not necessarily that you're saying there's no way they did anything. I don't think any of us is that naive. It's just that you don't really want to see someone being accused of definitely having

done something when there's no proof that he definitely did it. And you don't want to extend those accusations to other people who have no evidence against them. So it's just a, it's an unpleasant thing overall. And I'm glad that didn't keep him out. Can I, I want to ask you what you think if, if we pulled the, all the hall of fame voters on Piazza's defense, let's say we asked everybody to rate his defense as a catcher from 1 to 10, where 1 is Ryan Domet and 10 is Yachty. What do you think the average response would be? I'd say 5.

Oh, see, I think it'd be like 2.5. Yeah. I think the public perception of him, even the educated public perception of him, is really that bad. Like maybe two, maybe three. Like unplayable. Yeah. Yeah, maybe so.

And so now, so you mentioned that he's underrated defensively, that he actually did contribute a lot defensively. And you wrote about this. Put it in perspective. How good or not bad was he? He was really good i like i set some minimums and used bp's new catcher stats which are coming out next week and and give you throwing ratings back to 1950 and estimated framing and blocking ratings back to 1988 so it covers more than his whole career and of regular catchers he was like a fifth

percentile thrower so very very bad and a 74th percentile receiver framing he was you know in the like the top quartile basically and then he was an 89th percentile blocker So he was almost an elite blocker. So he was good. Yeah. And pitchers who pitched to him say that. I mean, I think Al Leiter was on MLB Network yesterday praising Piazza's defense and Tom Glavin, who of course is in the Hall of Fame, praised Piazza's defense when Glavin was elected. So I think players who played with him recognize that but i guess there aren't enough of those guys in the hall of fame to skew the numbers and maybe a lot of the old school hall of famers would look at his throwing and say he was terrible at that so he was terrible overall so yeah maybe you're right i wonder if uh say in five years from now let's say all this catching

stuff is not only incorporated into warp but but is incorporated into, uh, everybody's wars. And when you go to a baseball reference page, you see an adjusted Piazza, which I assume an adjusted Piazza war. I, I have, we have, have we updated at baseball prospectus yet? Uh, maybe. Uh, yeah. So at baseball prospectus, we have him at 74 warp references at 59 wins above replacement uh and that i assume i uh i'm pretty sure is just the difference in catching metrics yeah probably and warps tend to be a little bit lower overall than wars just because of the replacement level so it's even yeah it's an even bigger difference and of course the standard for a catcher to get in is much lower because catchers careers are shorter they don't play as much each season and so the standard for a catcher to get in is much lower because catchers' careers are shorter. They don't play as much each season.

And so the standard for a catcher is already much lower. So, yeah, when you look at Piazza as a 74-warp catcher, that's like, you know, very, very, very inner circle. And I wonder if in five years or ten years, if all of this was on baseball reference, and when you searched Mike Piazza's name and the first player page you got was reference and you looked at the war and you saw it, I wonder if in five or 10 years he will or would be considered by the Hall of Fame electorate as inner circle, as obvious a first ballot kind of guy as Griffey was, which he obviously isn't right now. He got elected in his second year

and still a lot of people said no. And I don't think that it's entirely steroid suspicions that are to blame for that. Maybe it is. But just curious, one more just curious question about the electorate. Of the 440 ballots that were turned in, how many of those 440 ballots were preceded by at least one look at a player's war?

I would say 70%. Oh, yeah. That's a lot. That's good. I mean, because even if you just Google and you read one of Jay Jaffe's rundowns or something like that. Like no one on the internet who's writing about these guys doesn't mention that. So even if you didn't go to their player page, you probably saw it even accidentally.

Piazza was so good. Yeah. I mean, he was so, he was so good. I, I, I think it's really important what you said that he is,

he is not a great hitting catcher. I mean, there was a couple year period where he was the best hitter in the game and he was catching. And that's just an amazing thing to be able to say about somebody. Like from 95 to 97, he might have been the best hitter in baseball for three years. And he was catching. Like it's, I don't know, it feels different when you say, well, he's a good hitting catcher as to say he is an incredible hitter and he caught. Yep. Yeah, it's amazing.

And he, I mean. He also, by the way, he also averaged 151 games a year in that three year stretch and he caught Ben. Yeah. If you look at, I did this in my article, but if you look at just career batting runs by catchers, he is like 35% higher than the next guy. And the next guy, I guess is,

is King Kelly, which maybe doesn't even count. But after that, it's Joe Torrey and Mickey Cochran. And then, you know, Dickie and bench and all these guys and Piazza's like over a hundred runs higher than the next catcher. I mean, he's just kind of in his own area code at that position.

So Ben, if let's say you had to vote a ballot and, and you could only vote for one, that the ballot was one, one name, who on this ballot would you have voted for? Well, I probably would have voted for Piazza, I think Just more on a he needs it more Nah, don't do it that way Well, I mean, if you're saying who's the best player I think it probably is still Griffey Well, no, it's Bonds You get to choose, though

You get to choose the whole ballot okay yeah if i'm not giving any consideration to what my vote will look like to other people or what the vote will do for that player then i mean bonds i would vote for bonds and i think bonds is the best player on the ballot so if you only had one vote you you would still be fine giving it to Bonds. I mean, one of the nice things about voting, about being in favor of voting for Bonds and Clemens, is that you're not really, like you have enough room on your ballot to also vote for Griffey and Piazza.

And if you didn't have enough room, and you had to choose Bonds over Griffey With all the baggage That does at least complicate it somewhat, right? Yeah, I suppose a little bit I'd probably still vote for Bonds You could vote I think you could vote for Bonds Justifiably

I think you could vote for Griffey justifiably Piazza justifiably I think you could vote for Bagwell justifiably Over Piazza or Griffey Or I think you could vote for Bagwell justifiably over Piazza or Griffey or not. You could or you could not, but I think it's definitely plausible. I would not, I don't think. I think I'd vote for both of those guys over Bagwell. The one guy, I think that I would go Griffey over Piazza, but I'm not totally sure I wouldn't go Schilling over Griffey. Huh. On what basis?

Well, on the basis that they're comparable career players and that Schilling's peak as it was was shorter, but his peak, peak, peak, peak, peak was to me just about as good as Griffey's peak, peak, peak, peak, peak. And he had the bloody sock and he had the postseason and the bloody sock is pretty cool like it he get like that as far as kind of like historical value that puts him up there with you know griffey's historical value i think and the postseason performance as a whole i mean he basically pitched almost you know a full season

as an elite pitcher in the postseason he had 133 innings with a 22 elite pitcher in the postseason. He had 133 innings with a 2-2-3 ERA in the postseason. So that might be what... I mean, he is, other than Mariano Rivera, he is the great postseason performer. It's him, it's him, Ortiz, and Rivera. The great postseason performers of the wildcard era. And I mean, it's not like he was a bad pitcher otherwise no he was a great great great great great great pitcher and uh i don't know i i haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it i

might still go griffey over him i probably i probably still go griffey over him yeah i think i would go great so but it's close you mentioned bonds and clemens so it's always fun to look at their percentages compared and see how many people voted for one and not the other. So it was, as always, very close. Bonds, 44.3%. Clemens, 45.2%. So Clemens got four more votes than Bonds did. I mean, at this point, it seems pretty clear that these guys are not ever getting in, right? Does it? I think it does. I mean, they did gain, but they gained less than, I mean, the biggest gainers this year were in percentage wise were Messina at 18.4%. And then after him, Edgar, Bagwell, Trammell, who was in his last year of eligibility, Tim Raines, Piazza, and Schilling. than we had in the past, because all those guys,

Messina and Edgar and Raines, those are all sabermetric favorites. And yet Bonds and Clemens gained, but almost everyone gained, and they gained less than almost all of the real candidates. And there were some high-profile switches, like I think Ken Rosenthal switched to yes, and Jerry Krasnick switched to yes, I think 14 voters maybe switched to yes. But they're nowhere near getting in. And the progress really hasn't been there. I mean, there was no progress at all prior to this year. Bonds in his first year of eligibility was 36.2, and then he went 34.7, and then he went 36.8.

So basically he gained nothing in his second and third years. And then his fourth year, he gained, you know, 7.5% or so, but that was probably just a product of who was voting more than minds being changed. And it doesn't seem like there's a lot of momentum.

The first year when they were on the ballot, I sort of assumed, okay, it's a sign that these guys aren't deserving right away because they cheated and everyone knows it and you can't put them in right away and they'll have to be on in purgatory for a while but they'll gain pretty quickly maybe because you know they're the best best players ever and you kind of have to have them in the hall of fame one way or another but there really hasn't been that much movement and it's hard to imagine i mean are they really going to go up 30 percentage points in their remaining years on the ballot? That seems hard to imagine unless like on the last year, everyone's just like, OK, fine.

We we made it. We stretched it out long enough for appearances sake. But now we can really put in the best players ever. I'm sort of really starting to doubt that they're going to get in. Yeah, I you've convinced me. I think there are some people who are waiting until the last year, but you're right. I think you're probably right that it's not going to be close enough. I feel like if once one obvious, once one very famous cheater gets in,

then it will make it easier, but I just don't know who that first one is going to be yeah and it probably won't be in the night like it's not it probably won't be manny no manny's not manny's not going to be a first ballot guy so that won't be in time mcguire is done now no longer eligible done and a rod sosa barely cleared the bar to stay on a rod won't be on the ballot in time even if he does sail in and And we don't know if he will get in or not. It'll be interesting to see whether he does. So, yeah, I guess you're right.

Piazza and Bagwell are as close as you're going to get to someone who's connected to steroids, rightly or wrongly. Yeah. So if you're a voter who thinks that Piazza definitely did steroids and he's in, then does that make you go, okay, well, I guess we're doing this and vote for Bonds next year? I wonder. I don't know. I mean, it's just like a different order of magnitude with those guys. It's not just maybe they used or I think they used. It like they were they were the most using but at least yeah they were the most using but but you know somebody yeah I guess maybe you're right I think

the most like the I was listening to the podcast last night and Joe Posnanski and Mike Schur went over the Hall of Fame ballot for like two hours and Mike made the point that Sosa is like the guy that you can point to most obviously and say like this is the day that he started using steroids I don't you know I mean we don't know for sure exactly when or what but he was just reinvented as a player completely, just became a completely different guy. And Bonds, I guess, did too, but pre-steroids Bonds was obviously a no-doubt Hall of Famer already, whereas Sosa wasn't even going to be close to that. Maybe Bonds still has a chance in that he has the pre-steroids period,

and so does Clemens, of clear deserving hall of fameness. Maybe eventually that wins out, but. Let me give you two hypotheticals and tell me if you think either one would change. Okay. Let's say that tomorrow somebody, or let's say a year from now, after he's inducted, after we're all happy he's in,

somebody writes a huge bombshell report showing that mike piazza or since i don't want to tarnish mike piazza's name too much i'll barry larkin or um anybody who's in on tom glavin doesn't matter uh was just you know pumping themselves full of every chemical they get their hands on was, you know, dealing in the clubhouse was as much a steroid user as you could ever accuse bonds of being. And that guy's already in. And so now we've got a hall that has cheating Barry Larkin, right? Does that,

does that change people's hopes? I think so. I mean, Oh, what is it? Like Tom Boswell said, he knows there's a hall of famer who's a steroid user. And obviously there are known Hall of Famers who were amphetamine users and other things.

So but you kind of have to go looking for that. And it's a long time ago in some cases. So I think, yeah, I think it would change things if a recent inductee were conclusively shown to have used this stuff. Like it would say, okay, well, we're putting them in. It's weird to have some in and not others. And Bonds is clearly better than cheating Barry Larkin. Sorry, Barry Larkin. Yeah, you'd still get some people saying, you know, one unfortunate thing or no point in compounding the mistake with further mistakes. But I think once you couldn't even pretend that it was a steroid-free Hall of Fame, then I think some of the people would fall away.

All right, second hypothetical, and this is a two-part hypothetical. Let's say, hypothetically, that this same report came out and it was about Derek Jeter a would that and Jeter of course is not inducted he's not in the hall of fame so a would that get Barry Bonds votes b what percentage would Jeter get in his first ballot maybe that would get some some Barry Bonds votes from just fatalistic people. By the way, we just had that. We had our David Ortiz Hall of Fame discussion the other day, as people are having. And it didn't even really come up that he might also not give.

Like, I don't feel like Ortiz is going to lose many votes, if any votes. Yeah. Yeah, doesn't seem like it. But he won't be there in time to help Bonds and Clemens with his precedent-setting induction. Right. Yeah. I mean, maybe the evidence is a little more tenuous in his case

than in those guys' cases, but you're right. Yeah. So if Jeter were shown to have used, then you can't pretend that anyone didn't use anymore you can't really make an example of anyone and say he's the guy who didn't he did it clean because cheater was the poster boy for that throughout his career so maybe yeah maybe that does persuade a few anti-bonds clemens people and just, you know, who would say everyone was taking, there's no avoiding it. It was the era. You'd still have some people who wouldn't vote for anyone from that era.

The occasional person has had that position, but I think, yeah, I think it would help a little. And what would Jeter get on his first year on the ballot? Oh man, I think he'd still get more than Bonds and Clemens did on their first. So, you know, mid thirties, even though he was clearly not the player that they were, maybe like just his good works would kind of like pay off some of his PED debt, his inspiring kids and setting an example, except that all of that is a fraud now. So I don't know, maybe he'd be punished even more for being such a hypocrite. I'd go like 58 to 64% somewhere in there. Okay. All right. All right. I had more. Oh, did you? A couple of things. Well, just, you know, one thing I think the crisis is kind of over, like for the last couple of years, we've been, you know, when are we going

to get this backlog worked out? There are all these guys dropping off the ballot because there aren't enough spaces and the writers were trying to raise the limit from 10 to 12 or whatever it was. And this year there were 7.95 names per ballot, which was down from 8.42 last year, I think, and 8.39 the year before that. And only like 41% of people used all 10 slots, which was down from 51% the previous year. So the backlog one way or another has kind of cleared a little bit. And with Griffey and Piazza getting off and McGuire being off the ballot and Trammell being off the ballot and really only a few, no doubt, people coming on the next few years, it seems like the crisis has kind of passed and we're almost at the point where 10 is enough. We knew that was going to be the case. There maybe is still no reason to have a limit, but it seems like maybe in the next couple of years, we'll get to the point where even if you are a pretty big hall

person, you could vote for everyone you want to vote for on this 10 person ballot. And it seems like next year Bagwell and Reins will get in. And one of the last things I wanted to ask about was Trevor Hoffman, who it seems like will also get in. Are you surprised about the overwhelming Trevor Hoffman support, which was what, 67.3%? And I think as Jay pointed out, the average weight for someone who starts off that high is like 1.75 years. So he's almost certainly going to be elected before Rivera is even on the ballot. You know, he wouldn't, he wouldn't be on, on mine, but I'm not that surprised. I guess I'm a little surprised. I don't, I don't know. I haven't seen what the argument is for him over Lee Smith. And so I guess I'm a little surprised that, you know, roughly 30% of the, the electorate is that much more excited about him than Lee Smith. And so I guess I'm a little surprised that, you know, roughly 30% of the, the electorate is that much more excited about him than Lee Smith. I mean, neither,

I wouldn't put either one in, but they both used to have a record, the same record and that's it. That's like, that's the whole thing. Yeah. And Billy Wagner got 10.5% of the vote. I mean, I'm not surprised about that. That I would, I for wagner over hoffman even with the you know even with hoffman's greater historical value but i'm not at all surprised about that but i mean like really like the hoffman and lee smith thing they they literally had their cases are like basically identical they both pitched for a long time in an important role in a famous role and they both held the exact same record and now neither does yeah and i'm not sure why hoffman breaks through when lee smith doesn't but i also know that when trevor hoffman was pitching we all really liked him we all the

whole baseball world liked him he was super popular uh and uh probably really popular with writers and really popular with everybody. So I guess for that reason, I'm not as surprised that there's more good vibes toward him. Like you said, when a guy gets that many votes, he basically always makes it in. And when he gets that many votes in his first ballot, he definitely always gets it in. I would say about Hoffman that if ever there was somebody who was going to debut at 67% and not get inducted, it would be him. Like I,

I sort of feel like Trevor Hoffman is sort of an example of like, uh, you know, like when like the Veronica Mars movie debuts in the theaters or whatever, like it's going to have a pretty big drop off the second weekend. And because everybody who wants to see it is going to go see it the first weekend. And I, it's not that I think Hoffman is going to have a pretty big drop off the second weekend. Because everybody who wants to see it is going to go see it the first weekend. And it's not that I think Hoffman is going to have it. I think Hoffman will get inducted next year.

But I would guess that there's a lot less eagerness among non-Hoffman voters to vote for Hoffman next year than there is for comparable guys. Yeah. I mean, when Hoffman retired, I think I thought of him as a likely Hall of Famer, but I am sort of surprised that he got this much support now because at the time there was a lot of support for relievers getting into the Hall and Raleigh Fingers was getting in and Bruce Suter was getting in and Gossage was getting in. And so by that standard, and Gossage was getting in. And so by that standard, Hoffman should probably be in. But in the years since, it's gotten a lot harder for these guys to get in. And Lee Smith sort of missed

that boat, yet Trevor Hoffman still gets a ticket on that boat for some reason. So that is kind of confusing to me. The other thing that there is still a big private versus public differential, which maybe sort of surprises me. In some cases, there wasn't. The Piazza differential was only 4%, 4 percentage points, so not a lot. But in other cases, still, even though the electorate was culled, there's still a huge gap. Tim Raines had a 20 percentage point gap between his private and public. The public voters would have elected him. 77.8% of them had him on their ballot. And the private voters, only 58.1%. Messina was close to the same differential. So we've talked about what the reason for that gap is before. And it's not totally clear whether it's people who are afraid to vote a certain way or whether it's just different age groups in those two groups.

All of those votes are made public, which conceivably could happen before next year or in the next couple of years. Maybe that will still be a bump for some of those guys or maybe it won't be. And very last thing, we got a question from a listener named Frazier last night. This was something I was going to bring up, too. He says in the Edgar Martinez Hall of Fame debate, a lot is made of him only being a DH. While this seems unfair, it had got me wondering if you could make the opposite argument in favor of Gary Sheffield, i.e. not DH enough. Their batting credentials seem similar. Edgar favored slightly in slash line. Sheffield, longer career, more home runs.

But Sheffield is cumulatively the worst fielder of all time per Fangraph's leaderboard. Was cumulatively the worst fielder of all time per Fangraph's leaderboard. Should we hold it against him that he opted to play in the National League when considering his Hall of Fame case? And I guess you can make that case that if Sheffield had been, because people make that case about Edgar, that if there hadn't been a DH, he would have just been a bad fielder. He was such a good hitter that he still would have played in a corner somewhere or first base or wherever, and he just would have been bad at that. And it wouldn't necessarily have made him more valuable if he had

been a fielder because he would have been a bad fielder. And in Sheffield's case you can sort of put that in reverse like purely on offensive value he was a hall of fame caliber hitter i think but at baseball reference he has negative 28.6 defensive war so if you just took that away and you know maybe you'd have to adjust his his offense a little bit because he was at dh and maybe the offensive standards are a little higher there but still if you just his offensive war is like 80 so he's a guy who if he had been a dh might have been more valuable maybe he would have even had a better case i'm not sure but he is kind of what edgar would have looked like if edgar had been forced to field.

That's a really good point because a lot of times you are asking whether a guy should be held accountable for his manager's decision. You know, does A-Rod, not that A-Rod's going to come up short on war or anything like that, but when you look at A-Rod rod's war do you look at him as an eight win player during his prime or do you say well it's not his fault that cheater made him go to third and yeah uh really he could have been a nine win player that's sort of a thing but the idea that it was a choice by sheffield for most of his career to play in the nl does put a little twist on it yeah uh worse hitter more batting runs on baseball reference than Edgar. Quite a bit fewer than Manny.

And Manny is, I don't know, do you think of Manny as a DH or as an outfielder? I think of him as an outfielder. Goodness gracious, Ben. He only played 300 games at DH. Manny Ramirez. Huh, I guess guess that makes sense he he was playing with david ortiz and then he went to the dodgers and then he kept getting suspended so i guess uh all right let's play a game okay uh how many what percentage of jim tommy's starts came at the age? I'll say 53. Okay. It's actually 32%.

Okay. Wait, play again. What percentage did Edgar Martinez play at the age? 79. It is 68. So I think what we've discovered here between those three guys that i just said is that we everybody who ever played dh we think played a lot more dh than they actually played yeah like even even edgar we missed they all played the field more than we thought they did yeah that's true all right yeah no sheffield i think if sheffield was a hall of famer that's a good if was a dh it's a very good question. I think he probably doesn't get there. Uh-huh. Okay.

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