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2015 HOF class; The line forms behind Pedro
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Post by Sammy on Jan 8, 2015 10:34:47 GMT -5
I agree, and MLB has compunded the issue by punishing the clean players via MLB's cowardly approach to the HOF ballot. It disgusts me that MLB has self-servingly shortened the eligibility to get Bonds and Clemens out of the public consciousness faster, but has taken no corresponding action (letting the writers have more votes) to lift up the clean players who are also going to be punished by the decreased length of eligibility. The clean guys are already punished enough by, like what happened to your cousin, having their accomplishments diminished next to PED-aided accomplishments. I don't really care whether Bonds and Clemens get in, the HOF will be an awesome place to visit either way. I just think it sucks that deserving guys will be denied because of the rampant cheating and MLB's pathetic response to it. This is more of a pedantic thing, but MLB doesn't have anything to do with this. The HOF is an independent organization and it makes the rules with regards to voting, eligibility, etc. Thanks, I didn't know that, though it makes me wonder how independent they actually are. Funny how their actions seem to benefit MLB at the expense of players. That info doesn't change my thinking about the denseness of the approach, but at least if the changes are not prompted by MLB it makes me a little less cynical. I'd rather think the HOF is simply dumb, as opposed to deviously selfish and hypocritical. Oregon Norm, if you are asking me what I mean by clean, I'm talking about PEDs and focusing on the steroid era that is currently gumming up the HOF ballot. If you mean re: Raines's cocaine use, he had a problem as do many people from all walks of life, it likely did not help his baseball performance, and he overcame it. I would not punish him for that in terms of HOF votes. If you mean how do we know who is clean and who isn't, so be it, only the players know 100%. I don't have a problem with withholding votes from known PED users, 762 HR or 354 wins be damned, although I think it is kind of dumb to withhold based only on suspicion or rumor. I don't have much of a problem with it if some PED users, whether known or unknown, sneak in. I'm not losing any sleep over however many greenie users or emery board practitioners might be in the hall. This is because the HOF is bigger than any one plaque/player. So Phil Rizzuto (using his example because consensus seems to say his performance doesn't warrant his being in the HOF, not because of any sort of suspicion of cheating) is in. That's not detracting from Yaz or Ted Williams. There's no mandatory stop and quiz in front of Scooter's plaque for 30 minutes before being allowed to proceed to the rest of the hall. If Barry Bonds gets a plaque consisting of a giant bronze needle, it won't make me appreciate Pedro any less. And as much as I think Tim Raines should get in, I'm sure the absence of his plaque won't bring the hall crumbling down. If Pete Rose's exclusion didn't cause that, no one's will. My problem is with the principles and the process. I think it is BS that players who deserve a better shot at the HOF are being made to pay for the sins, or ignorance, or whatever you want to call it, of an entire era.
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Post by jrffam05 on Jan 8, 2015 10:43:56 GMT -5
I really can't understand why Schilling has 40% of the vote on his 3rd ballot and Smoltz had 83% his first time, but I can tell you it is not because of his political beliefs. Without getting too much into politics today and how much it depresses me, this is another example of a person with strong beliefs one way or another relating everything in their life back to that strong political belief, no matter how implausible the link is.
So 35% or 192 writers thought you were hall of fame worthy, but wouldn't vote for you because you didn't endorse "the right candidate" in the 2004 presidential election.
Edit: as dumb as his statement is, I think Curt Schilling is equally (more, by a very slight margin) worthy of the hall of fame as Smoltz is, and he does have a legit gripe about not being in.
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Post by James Dunne on Jan 8, 2015 11:24:09 GMT -5
It's really sad that someone who has lived such an amazing and often-charmed life as Schilling feels so aggrieved by those he disagrees with politically that he struggles to separate that from everything else in his life. He's like the internet commenter you see on Boston.com who feels the need to write a 900 word screed about how Obama is causing societies decline in response to a story about Eliza Dushku's new movie.
EDIT: I don't mean "sad" as in pathetic or anything like that, either. I mean it actually is sad. I like it when baseball players can enjoy their retirement happily and relatively comfortably.
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Post by Oregon Norm on Jan 8, 2015 12:43:56 GMT -5
... Oregon Norm, if you are asking me what I mean by clean, I'm talking about PEDs and focusing on the steroid era that is currently gumming up the HOF ballot. ... I mean how would you know clean, and how would you reach back in time to identify it? Without that magic filter, players should be judged on their accomplishments, nothing more, nothing less. I know it doesn't work that way, but the current trajectory is so far from equity that it will take it years to get back onto the rails. Much of the righteousness by the BBWA is unbearable. The writers of that era are entirely complicit. Everyone knew exactly what was going on and it was ignored. It was a lot easier to make fun of Canseco than to listen to what he was saying. Useless journalistic moralizing, and now they get to act as judge and jury? Mike Piazza has a trajectory that could have been taken from the 1930s, with spectacular production from age 24-33 and a fairly sharp drop off after that. As the best hitting catcher who ever played the game, he deserved better than the trash he's gotten from the HoF voters. The entire drill is pathetic.
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Post by James Dunne on Jan 8, 2015 14:59:18 GMT -5
It's really sad that someone who has lived such an amazing and often-charmed life as Schilling feels so aggrieved by those he disagrees with politically that he struggles to separate that from everything else in his life. He's like the internet commenter you see on Boston.com who feels the need to write a 900 word screed about how Obama is causing societies decline in response to a story about Eliza Dushku's new movie. EDIT: I don't mean "sad" as in pathetic or anything like that, either. I mean it actually is sad. I like it when baseball players can enjoy their retirement happily and relatively comfortably.
It's hard for me to feel sad for the man when he takes no personal responsibility for anything. According to Curt, everything is someone else's fault.
But that's sad, isn't it? He's a 48-year-old man who can't compartmentalize correctly. He seemingly can't disagree with people respectfully. He bullies. He actually said "what Government run/funded program in this country’s history has ever been run with an ounce of financial responsibility, prudence, or with the peoples best interest at the forefront? None, that’s which one" in 2010, after having received a $75 million dollar loan and didn't notice the hypocrisy. And in the follow-up to his company going under, he blamed the collapse on the new governor not giving him even more money, and, in the exact same interview, " welfare babies." If he wasn't a rich famous guy who had once been good at firing the orb toward home plate, they'd be the rantings of a crazy man that no one would listen to - and increasingly, nobody is. It must kind of suck going through living daily life in the paranoid delusions of Curt Schilling.
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Post by FenwayFanatic on Jan 8, 2015 15:58:24 GMT -5
You know Schilling was joking right? Smoltz is a staunch republican and Schilling knows that.
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Post by jrffam05 on Jan 8, 2015 16:16:23 GMT -5
So I read a couple comments on Schilling's twitter and he said those comments were in jest. Admittedly I didn't listen to the interview, and I really don't care enough to go back to listen to it. If he was joking around and was misquoted I don't have a problem with what he said, even if he thought he lost a couple of votes because of it I'm fine with him saying that (although I still think it's stupid).
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Post by raftsox on Jan 8, 2015 17:04:50 GMT -5
Who cares?! Bonds was an amazing player to watch. A player who dominated his Era. I don't care that he may have cheated. I don't care that many people throughout the history of baseball played without integration or have played on acid, coke or drunk. What matters is the entertainment they have provided to us fans. I care, and so do roughly 2/3 of the voters. Their cheating led to stat padding, took awards from more deserving players and gained an unfair advantage over legitimate players. They should be made an example of. Im very glad they won't be in the Hall when I visit. I honestly don't care about the voters. They're all a bunch of jack***es in my opinion. I'm sorry that you care what the players did. Baseball is entertainment and that is all. I've never harbored any illusions that I could play any sports professionally, so the thought of players taking peds doesn't bother me.
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Post by jerrygarciaparra on Jan 8, 2015 17:06:08 GMT -5
It's really sad that someone who has lived such an amazing and often-charmed life as Schilling feels so aggrieved by those he disagrees with politically that he struggles to separate that from everything else in his life. He's like the internet commenter you see on Boston.com who feels the need to write a 900 word screed about how Obama is causing societies decline in response to a story about Eliza Dushku's new movie. EDIT: I don't mean "sad" as in pathetic or anything like that, either. I mean it actually is sad. I like it when baseball players can enjoy their retirement happily and relatively comfortably. I think you can, at least partially, attribute some of his arrogance to lovin' being in the spotlight. "I wanted everyone in Yankee stadium to boo me" type stuff. It's wonderful when it involves a silly baseball game...but it's another thing when people carry it over outside that theater. All of us have been guilty of that behavior, particularly in youth, but most people grow out of it. He seems to still like being villainous and it really isn't pretty.
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Post by jrffam05 on Jan 8, 2015 17:16:04 GMT -5
If the only thing stopping me from being an MLB player was steroids you can be sure as hell I would be on them. If the only thing stopping me from putting up HOF numbers is the quantity of steroids I took, well you'd be reading some 4th dimensional stats on my fangraphs page right now.
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Post by raftsox on Jan 8, 2015 17:20:51 GMT -5
If the only thing stopping me from being an MLB player was steroids you can be sure as hell I would be on them. If the only thing stopping me from putting up HOF numbers is the quantity of steroids I took, well you'd be reading some 4th dimensional stats on my fangraphs page right now. So why do you care?! I'm honestly curious.
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 8, 2015 17:26:54 GMT -5
If the only thing stopping me from being an MLB player was steroids you can be sure as hell I would be on them. If the only thing stopping me from putting up HOF numbers is the quantity of steroids I took, well you'd be reading some 4th dimensional stats on my fangraphs page right now. This is a really ridiculous argument among the "steroids don't help anyone" crowd. No one says that steroids does that. What they do is take a really good player and make them better for far longer. They don't make a player see better or improve hand-eye coordination. Now that PEDs for the most part are out of the game, you don't see players getting better at age 35. Free agent contracts are a lot more risky now because the declines are for the most part much more severe at a much younger age.
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Post by jrffam05 on Jan 8, 2015 17:36:31 GMT -5
If the only thing stopping me from being an MLB player was steroids you can be sure as hell I would be on them. If the only thing stopping me from putting up HOF numbers is the quantity of steroids I took, well you'd be reading some 4th dimensional stats on my fangraphs page right now. So why do you care?! I'm honestly curious. Not sure what you mean, I was just being satirical to prove a point. I think it is funny how people say Bonds put up such monster numbers because he was a "big" juicer, when in reality most people using PEDs probably used them in similar fashions, cycles, quantities, types, etc. I also think it is funny when people attribute all of one players success to that PED. Were they advantageous to that player in some way? In a majority of cases I would say yes. Were they definitive to that players success? Absolutely not. I'm making a joke, as to say hey if I took steroids I could be in the MLB, if I took a real lot of them I could be just like Barry Bonds, which is in no way true. I said before in this thread I think Bonds and Clemens should be in. I not saying their PED use was just, it is a knock on them. I just think you have to look at what they did with respect to the time they played.
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Post by jmei on Jan 8, 2015 17:38:42 GMT -5
If the only thing stopping me from being an MLB player was steroids you can be sure as hell I would be on them. If the only thing stopping me from putting up HOF numbers is the quantity of steroids I took, well you'd be reading some 4th dimensional stats on my fangraphs page right now. This is a really ridiculous argument among the "steroids don't help anyone" crowd. No one says that steroids does that. What they do is take a really good player and make them better for far longer. They don't make a player see better or improve hand-eye coordination. Now that PEDs for the most part are out of the game, you don't see players getting better at age 35. Free agent contracts are a lot more risky now because the declines are for the most part much more severe at a much younger age. Victor Martinez (career-high 166 wRC+ at age 36), Jason Werth (career-high 159 wRC+ at age 34), Michael Cuddyer (career-high 151 wRC+ at age 35), Adrian Beltre (five straight 5+ fWAR years from ages 31-35; did not have a single 5+ fWAR season in his age 26-30 seasons), etc. say hi.
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Post by James Dunne on Jan 8, 2015 18:41:20 GMT -5
WAR is park-adjusted. You could argue that Safeco was particularly ill-suited to Beltre, but he's unquestionably been a better player in his 30s than his 20s. He's put himself in position that he has a very interesting Hall of Fame case, something that would've been insane to suggest when the Red Sox got him on a one-year pillow contract five years ago.
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Post by James Dunne on Jan 8, 2015 19:17:12 GMT -5
I was definitely confident he could bounce back in Fenway. I was definitely NOT confident that he would be someone I'd be arguing for as a Hall of Famer.
In away games from 2005-2009, he hit .277/.326/.472 - one of the reasons we thought a bounceback at a more fitting park was likely. Since then, he's hit .291/.341/.492 on the road. So definitely not a normal aging curve - and worth keeping in mind that he has swapped away games in Arlington for away games in Safeco in about 10-12% of his away games - so a park adjusted calibration of his away splits would likely show an even bigger gap.
Anyway, the evidence that Bonds did steroids is... the actual evidence. All of the speculation stuff, why he got better when he did, why he broke down when he did, everything else, is all pure bunk. Players age uniformly as a group but weirdly as individuals. Dwight Evans and Raul Ibanez and Jamie Moyer are all wonderful examples of that.
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TX
Veteran
Posts: 265
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Post by TX on Jan 8, 2015 19:47:41 GMT -5
It's really sad that someone who has lived such an amazing and often-charmed life as Schilling feels so aggrieved by those he disagrees with politically that he struggles to separate that from everything else in his life. He's like the internet commenter you see on Boston.com who feels the need to write a 900 word screed about how Obama is causing societies decline in response to a story about Eliza Dushku's new movie. EDIT: I don't mean "sad" as in pathetic or anything like that, either. I mean it actually is sad. I like it when baseball players can enjoy their retirement happily and relatively comfortably.
It's hard for me to feel sad for the man when he takes no personal responsibility for anything. According to Curt, everything is someone else's fault.
Jeez, man, you gots standards! let me count: You dislike Bonds and Clemens because they took peds. You dislike Bags and Piazza because they may have. Although you're ok with Raines doing coke.... and every other advantage every player in the history of the game sought, legal, ethical, or not. You obviously hate Schilling because he expresses his opinion and, damn it, you don't like them! I'd also like to point out that each of those issues you have, have nothing to do with the game.
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TX
Veteran
Posts: 265
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Post by TX on Jan 8, 2015 19:50:39 GMT -5
I was definitely confident he could bounce back in Fenway. I was definitely NOT confident that he would be someone I'd be arguing for as a Hall of Famer.
In general, I think you and I are in agreement with regard to Beltre. I just take offense to seeing Beltre used as a justification for what happened with Bonds.
With regard to Beltre's HOF chances, when he is considered I think voters will be understanding of what happened in Seattle. Beltre's got a fairly good shot at finishing his career with 3,000 hits and finishing in the Top 3 all time in HRs and RBI by a third baseman. Yes, these aren't the percentage statistical categories that sabermetricians crave. But, it will be a raw number argument that's worked numerous times, including this year with Biggio.
if there existed a definitive list of all players having ped'd up, I'd put a grand on Beltre being on it. Not that I care one iota.
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Post by jmei on Jan 8, 2015 20:04:56 GMT -5
I was definitely confident he could bounce back in Fenway. I was definitely NOT confident that he would be someone I'd be arguing for as a Hall of Famer. In general, I think you and I are in agreement with regard to Beltre. I just take offense to seeing Beltre used as a justification for what happened with Bonds. The point, as James points out above, is that you can't use any individual player's aging curve as evidence for or against the likelihood that he used PEDs.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jan 8, 2015 21:22:17 GMT -5
This is a really ridiculous argument among the "steroids don't help anyone" crowd. No one says that steroids does that. What they do is take a really good player and make them better for far longer. They don't make a player see better or improve hand-eye coordination. Now that PEDs for the most part are out of the game, you don't see players getting better at age 35. Free agent contracts are a lot more risky now because the declines are for the most part much more severe at a much younger age. Victor Martinez (career-high 166 wRC+ at age 36), Jason Werth (career-high 159 wRC+ at age 34), Michael Cuddyer (career-high 151 wRC+ at age 35), Adrian Beltre (five straight 5+ fWAR years from ages 31-35; did not have a single 5+ fWAR season in his age 26-30 seasons), etc. say hi. But look at how well notorious juicer Alex Rodriguez has aged.
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wcp3
Veteran
Posts: 3,833
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Post by wcp3 on Jan 8, 2015 21:29:11 GMT -5
Victor Martinez (career-high 166 wRC+ at age 36), Jason Werth (career-high 159 wRC+ at age 34), Michael Cuddyer (career-high 151 wRC+ at age 35), Adrian Beltre (five straight 5+ fWAR years from ages 31-35; did not have a single 5+ fWAR season in his age 26-30 seasons), etc. say hi. But look at how well notorious juicer Alex Rodriguez has aged. Um, really? Everyone knows steroids stop working after the media finds out you tested positive.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jan 8, 2015 21:36:49 GMT -5
I was definitely confident he could bounce back in Fenway. I was definitely NOT confident that he would be someone I'd be arguing for as a Hall of Famer.
In general, I think you and I are in agreement with regard to Beltre. I just take offense to seeing Beltre used as a justification for what happened with Bonds.
With regard to Beltre's HOF chances, when he is considered I think voters will be understanding of what happened in Seattle. Beltre's got a fairly good shot at finishing his career with 3,000 hits and finishing in the Top 3 all time in HRs and RBI by a third baseman. Yes, these aren't the percentage statistical categories that sabermetricians crave. But, it will be a raw number argument that's worked numerous times, including this year with Biggio.
This is the Adrian Beltre who's already pushing 80 career bWAR, right? He's going to get a huge stathead push.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jan 8, 2015 21:38:54 GMT -5
But look at how well notorious juicer Alex Rodriguez has aged. Um, really? Everyone knows steroids stop working after the media finds out you tested positive. That must be what keeps David Ortiz out of these conversations (career high OPS+ at age 36).
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Post by Sammy on Jan 8, 2015 22:45:24 GMT -5
... Oregon Norm, if you are asking me what I mean by clean, I'm talking about PEDs and focusing on the steroid era that is currently gumming up the HOF ballot. ... I mean how would you know clean, and how would you reach back in time to identify it? Without that magic filter, players should be judged on their accomplishments, nothing more, nothing less. I know it doesn't work that way, but the current trajectory is so far from equity that it will take it years to get back onto the rails. Much of the righteousness by the BBWA is unbearable. The writers of that era are entirely complicit. Everyone knew exactly what was going on and it was ignored. It was a lot easier to make fun of Canseco than to listen to what he was saying. Useless journalistic moralizing, and now they get to act as judge and jury? Mike Piazza has a trajectory that could have been taken from the 1930s, with spectacular production from age 24-33 and a fairly sharp drop off after that. As the best hitting catcher who ever played the game, he deserved better than the trash he's gotten from the HoF voters. The entire drill is pathetic. Norm, like I said in the post you're quoting, we don't know, and I'm not going to lose sleep over whether unknown PED users slip under the radar. I'm sure some already have. Unless the player is a proven cheat, we don't know, and even when they are proven, we don't know the extent of their use or how much it actually helped them, because it's awfully hard to prove a negative. I'm also not going to lose sleep over players with stellar careers being denied for proven PED use, although I certainly see the point many have made about it being attributable to the era. I have 2 main problems with the process: 1, which you seem to agree with, is votes being withheld based on suspicion or rumor, and I agree with you re: voter hypocrisy too. The other point, which I think a lot of people are overlooking, is deserving players getting doubly screwed over, first by their statistics not measuring up to PED-enhanced contemporaries, and second by the shoddy way in which the Hall is handling the steroid era's presence on the ballot. I really don't understand the logic for failing to couple an increased number of votes with the reduced number of years. Do Jim Rice and Bert Blyleven get asterisks now because it took them more than 10 years?
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 9, 2015 8:00:47 GMT -5
Victor Martinez (career-high 166 wRC+ at age 36), Jason Werth (career-high 159 wRC+ at age 34), Michael Cuddyer (career-high 151 wRC+ at age 35), Adrian Beltre (five straight 5+ fWAR years from ages 31-35; did not have a single 5+ fWAR season in his age 26-30 seasons), etc. say hi. But look at how well notorious juicer Alex Rodriguez has aged. Look at how PEDs are no longer allowed.
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