2020 HOF Votes

[Beans]

Outside of the players immersed in the steroid scandal, the biggest controversies have been Walker, Raines and Blyleven, all of them correctly voted in at the last moment according to the consensus of the "smart" stat nerds. Morris who was correctly left off. Schilling and Vizquel where based on vote totals now it's looking pretty good for the former and not too good for the latter...

 

But as a strict yes/no narrative, I think it's been fine. My biggest complaint was Lofton falling off immediately but he probably doesn't get in anyways if he is considered just a shade lower than Raines.

Those have not been the biggest controversies, at least not to my mind. There have been plenty of other HOF-worthy/HOF-esque players the BBWAA didn’t vote in (some of them done after their first time on the ballot!) and it’s been going on so long that something needs to change there.

 

I’m not a small-Hall guy, so I would have liked to see Trammell, Whitaker, McGriff, Bobby Grich, Lofton, and Keith Hernandez, and that’s just off the top of my head. They’re five years into voting on Billy Wagner and he sits at just 31.7%. And borderline cases (HOF-esque) like Kevin Brown they gave 2.1% of the vote, making him and his 60+ WAR a one-and-done.

 

The writers were idiots then and they’re idiots now.

Edited January 23, 2020 by Beans

[AdamGreenwood]

Lol. Who's the one guy that didn't vote for Jeter?

 

I don't know, but I'd like to shake his hand. All the Yankees fans are going ballistic.

Apparently, Jeter is the greatest baseball player of all time - better than Ruth, Mantle, Maris, JR, etc.

Phil Hughes even suggested they change the way people vote for HOF because Jeter wasn't unanimous.

[AdamGreenwood]

The most disappointing thing is that Bonds only got an extra 1% increase this year. There are just too many voters that will never tick that box for him to get in.

 

Walker went nowhere until has last two years. I think we'll see Bonds, Schilling and Clemens all make it in, in their last year of eligibility.

[Beans]

As if the SpongeBob outfit wasn’t loveable enough, check out Walker’s quotables from yesterday’s presser:

 

NEW YORK — A day after being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Derek Jeter and Larry Walker held a joint press conference at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan where they reminisced about their careers and slipped on their new threads.

 

Jeter: "My parents used to always tell me, look, you have to sit back and enjoy the moment. I was just never able to do it. I don't know if that's a character flaw or if it's part of the reason why I'm here. It was always just, what's next?"

 

Walker: "Pinch me."