2015 HOF class; The line forms behind Pedro

Mike  Berardino, Twins beat writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, just tweeted that he left Pedro and the Big Unit off his HOF ballot because he thinks others need his vote more. There goes Pedro's 100 percent on the Thibs list.

Nah, I think HOF voters should vote for the best players and not get cute about it. If too many voters took the Berardino approach, a top-tier guy could fall short. Ask Al Gore whether every vote counts.

The only positive about this is that now we know Pedro won't get 100 percent. That means we'll get to hear him complain that he gets no respect. I always got a kick out of him for that! 

That's not good reasoning to me. It's like penalizing them for being most deserving.

Also if more people vote like him then we start going down slippery slope. If they deserve to be in, and they most certainly do, then vote for them.

Now I know the hall of fame process is kinda stupid but this is Pedro we are talking about here, this matters to me.

How is it penalizing them? There's nothing less important to Pedro's legacy than if he goes into the HOF with 98% of the vote or 92% of the vote. This kind of thing shouldn't be necessary but given the mess that the ballot has become, I don't have a problem with it.

Who really knows? The last thing I saw about Boggs was that he and his agent reached out to the Sox to work public relations and that's the last I've read or heard about it. Maybe the Sox said no or offered little to no compensation. Who knows? According to Boggs, Jean Yawkey told him that she wanted to make him a Red Sox for life and asked him if $35 million over the next 5 years would work for him. Boggs said he was happy with that, but then said she slipped in the tub, and passed away soon afterwards, and that changed his course with the Sox.

You could say that Fisk got thrown out. That's certainly not inaccurate, but the fact of the matter is that the Sox (Haywood Sullivan at the time) didn't want him that much just like they didn't want Luis Tiant, just like John Harrington didn't particularly want Wade Boggs either. You can argue the Sox wanted Jon Lester, but not for his true market value. If a team REALLY wants you they'll go all out. They certainly did the opposite for Fisk and they really didn't want Boggs either. They reasoned that Cooper or Naehring would be better than a downside Wade Boggs.

I guess that's all I have to say about Boggs. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about it. Nothing wrong with that.

Yeah, I don't like this personally. Will it matter in the end? No, but this reasoning means that if Stephen Drew never played baseball again and his final year was in 2014, a voter in 2020 could reason that omitting Jeter from the ballot because they wanted to protect Stephen Drew could be a scenario, which is ridiculous.

I know this isn't quite as extreme, but what everything is pointing to is that the 10 man limit needs to be changed. Between the backlog of candidates resulting from the steroids controversy to the change in which a player only has 10 years to be on the ballot instead of 15, we're seeing what's driving this ridiculous thinking.

I mean if the idea is that only the most elite of the most elite get in, then I guess you have a HOF for the Babe Ruths, Hank Aarons, Lefty Groves, and the guys like Curt Schilling who are a step below but still arguably HOF worthy won't, but it will make for a very small HOF and I think there should be a place in the Hall for elite talent but guys who aren't necessarily slam dunk should be 100% type of HOFers. Those guys are getting squeezed by the current process.

Is anyone else planning on being at the Induction Ceremony on July 26th?

I would have a hard time leaving either of those guys off the ballot regardless of strategy. But I don't have a problem with it. If you could be reasonably confident of the way other votes will fall, an alternate strategy would be to vote for the top players who have a shot at being elected this year, or are anywhere close, plus the ones who are Hall-worthy but in danger of falling off the ballot, and leave off two Hall-worthy players with medium vote totals.

At least he's not voting Bonds & Clemens -- Hall-worthy, yes, but best judged years from now by the Veterans Committee. Get 'em off the ballot.

The real problem is that a lot of baseball writers are boneheads.

I don't know how you can say Clemens was easily the best pitcher the Sox had and say Pedro was only the best peak guy. You say 86-92 for Clemens but Pedro had a run from 98-03 which is better than the Clemens period and only one less year. Feels like some 80s Clemens bias to me.

Pedro was better without much question and the number of years is close enough that it doesn't make much of a difference.

It was poorly worded but what I was trying to say is that Clemens' peak was 1986 - 1992, but he pitched a lot longer than Pedro did. He really pitched 1984 - 1996 and I was giving him credit for being a good pitcher outside of those peak seasons of his. He had one poor season and that was in 1993 when he was injured. He came back in 1994 and actually pitched quite well (ERA under 3), but everybody griped about his lack of wins and loved to say 40-39 over the past four seasons, ignoring that he was hurt in '93, and got absolutely no bullpen or run support in 1994 or 1996 (check Jamie Moyer's, Aaron Sele's, and particularlyTom Gordon's stats and you can see where all the run support went in 1996. Clemens was hurt in early 95 and struggled, but re-established himself as the ace as Wafefield's career best run came to a thud.

In 1984, Clemens ERA was 4.32, but there was an outing where he whiffed 15 KC Royals and walked none - all the other stats pointed to him being close to becoming "The Rocket", but then he got hurt despite pitching well in 1985 and his future was in doubt. Then he had the 20K game in 1986 and he was on his way.

I was counting all of that and coming to the conclusion that he was the best total career pitcher the Sox ever had. For a seven year stretch though, it's Pedro Martinez hands down. So I guess for total stats it's Roger, but for rate stats, it's Pedro by a mile.

Right, but connect the dots. The system is broken in that it caps the limit at 10 (and also has a ton of unqualified voters). There are locks to get in, like Pedro and Johnson, who won't miss getting inducted because of the limit. There are fringe candidates like Walker who very well may not be inducted in large part due to the limit. Then there are the guys in between, who aren't Pedro-status, but who are more deserving than the fringe candidates. And if you truly believe that Larry Walker deserves your HOF vote, the safest thing to do is to drop the most obvious Hall of Famer.

Now, if tons of voters started doing this, it'd be a problem. But they won't -- it's just an attempt by a small fraction of the voting pool to give those candidates who are affected most by the limit their vote.