Four for the Hall

The Base Ball Writers Association of America -- the BBWAA, whose name is probably the final vestige of the obsolete style of splitting baseball into two words -- elected four stars of the 1990s and 2000s to the Hall of Fame. Four thoughts for four inductees:

* Much is being made of Mariano Rivera's unanimous election, the first in Hall history. The unaminity is unimportant, but I'm glad it finally happened because the BBWAA electorate, or at least part of it, couldn't seem to shut up about how it had never happened.

* The purging of the voting roster a few years back clearly got the desired result. This year's election continues the recent trend of multiple inductees -- and unlike most, it actually cleared out some of the backlog of deserving candidates. Rivera and Roy Halladay were first-time candidates, but Mike Mussina and Edgar Martinez have been on the ballot for a few years.

* Halladay's first-ballot election is intriguing because his career was relatively brief -- "only" 16 years and 203 career wins, which are pretty low for Cooperstown. I don't think he was even close to being the best pitcher, or even the best starting pitcher, on the ballot -- I'd take Mussina over Doc, and probably Curt Schilling as well -- but he had a good run in which the consensus had him as one of the best starters in baseball. High quality and enough duration to get in. Johan Santana -- off the ballot -- had the former but not the latter.

* The selection last month by the "Today's Game" committee of two lesser specialists in Lee Smith and Harold Baines probably cleared the way for Martinez's election and Rivera's unaminity. Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times, a beat writer I follow, had resisted voting for Martinez for years because he was limited to DH; he switched this year in part because of Baines and in part because he recognized that he was very likely to vote for David Ortiz in a few years. Here again, the purging of the "inactive" voters -- member of the BBWAA no longer involved in covering the game -- resulted in a younger electorate more accepting of specialists.

Notes, quotes and comment

Thad Levine, the No. 2 in the Twins baseball operations hierarchy, strongly implied during an MLB Radio interview Monday that the Twins were now set at second and first bases with Jonathan Schoop and C.J. Cron.

Maybe he was sincere, maybe he was posturing. I continue to hope that the Twins recognize the significant drop in on-base ability in this lineup as currently projected. It will be difficult for them the address that problem and still have both Schoop and Cron in the lineup.

---

I closed the Monday post by suggesting that the outcry over the election of Harold Baines might prompt the Hall to again revise the "Veterans Committee" process. Having considered the question for another day, I doubt it.

The Mazeroski selection, which prompted the drastic revision of 2001, came from an open slate of candidates; the committee could consider literally anybody officially eligible for the Hall but not under the perview of the writers.

Baines was selected out of a list of 10 candidates chosen by some mysterious process by the Hall. It does not figure that the Hall, having specifically presented the committee with the opportunity to chose Baines, would now recoil in horror because the committee did just that.

Smith, Baines and the Hall of Fame

The news Sunday night that Lee Smith and Harold Baines had been selected for the Hall of Fame was a puzzler.

Smith is hardly a huge surprise. His candidacy always had some legs with the writers, although not nearly enough to get him over the 75 percent of the vote hump. Smith's qualifications hinge heavily on the save statistic; for a good while he was the career leader in saves, and while the stat savvy among us know the fallacy of the save, the panel that put Smith in includes a number of ... the non stat savvy. (Hello there, Bert Blyleven.) I won't defend Smith's selection, but I understand the case for it.

The shocker was Baines. A long career, to be certain; a great deal of respect around the game, just as certain. Nothing in his statistical resume, distinguished as it is, suggests he should be in Cooperstown. Baines led the league in just one category, one time -- slugging percentage in 1984. He never finished higher than ninth in an MVP vote. And he spent most of his career as a designated hitter, so you know he wasn't helping his team afield.

If Baines is in, why not, say, Vada Pinson? Everything Baines has, Pinson has -- and more, when you figure in the pitching-dominated era of Pinson's career.

The immediate suspicion is that "Today's Game" panel was rigged in Baines' favor, with a former manager (Tony LaRussa), a former GM (Pat Gillick) and a former owner who so loved Baines that he retired Baines' number before his career ended (Jerry Reinsdorf). Of course, the other 13 members didn't have go along with their nonsense.

Ah, well. Baines won't be the worst player with a plaque in that hallowed hall. But he's a good candidate for that status. The last time the "veterans committee" process mucked up a selection this badly -- Bill Mazeroski in 2001 -- it resulted in a good bit disgruntlement among the already-enshrined and led to a heavy revamping of the selection process. Maybe that will happen again.

The "Today's Game Era" field

The Hall of Fame chronically tinkers with its selection process, specifically with what is commonly referred to as the Veterans Committee. Whatever its offical name and activity, the purpose is to have a backstop to the BBWAA voters, and a way to induct nonplayers -- executives, managers, umpires -- who don't fall into the BBWAA's bucket.

The current approach is to divide the game's history into "eras" and pick 10 candidates from a given period of time each year for the panel to decide upon. More recent periods are up more often than the older ones, which makes sense; nobody alive ever saw Bill Dahlen play shortstop.

This year's field comes from what the Hall has dubbed the "Today's Game Era," and features six players -- Harold Baines, Albert Belle, Joe Carter, Will Clark, Orel Hershiser and Lee Smith -- three managers -- Davey Johnson, Charlie Manuel and Lou Piniella -- and one owner -- George Steinbrenner.

I can listen on Johnson, but my instincts say none of this bunch clearly deserves to be in Cooperstown. For those who say Steinbrenner is too important a figure in baseball history to leave out, I say: He's not as important as Marvin Miller. Steinbrenner was the owner of a great team, but the best Yankees teams of his tenure got to be great because he was suspended during their construction.

The thing is, there are more deserving candidates from this time frame than the six players listed. The Hall's fundamental screwup here is that it's using the writers' vote as a guideline for selecting the candidates. Smith once topped 50 percent of the vote, which is pretty darn good -- almost everybody to gets more than 50 percent even once eventually gets in -- but he got 15 chances with the BBWAA and was passed over.

Lou Whitaker, Kenny Lofton, Jim Edmonds -- they were all one-and-done. They deserve a second look more than Lee Smith deserves a 16th.

A big Hall of Fame class

The writers voted in four this year: first-ballot candidates Chipper Jones and Jim Thome, plus holdovers Vladimir Guerrero and Trevor Hoffman. Edgar Martinez missed making it five by 20 votes and will almost certainly get in next year.

Add in the two selected by whatever they called this cycle's veterans committee (Alan Trammell and Jack Morris) and it's going to be a long induction ceremony this summer.

It's a big class, and the writers finally made some progress on their backlog of candidates. They've had a number of multi-inductee classes of late -- this was the second time in four years that they've chosen four -- but the first time they didn't get there with a majority of first-time candidates.

Two of them were short-term Twins (Morris and Thome), and obviously neither will have a TC cap on their plaque. Morris' cap is obvious (Detroit), and I would think Thome will go in as a Clevelander over the Phillies or White Sox. I would vote Montreal Expos for Guerrero, but I can see a case for the Angels. He won his MVP award in Anaheim.

I'm not big on the Hoffman selection. It might look better a generation from now if the one-inning closer is still the standard, but I see that approach to bullpen management fading now, and it might become obsolete in my lifetime. Of course, the three-out closer has been a thing for 20 years now, and we already have Dennis Eckersley and arguably John Smoltz in as a result. Now Hoffman, and next year Mariano Rivera ... If it is a fading strategy, four is probably too many, but there are worse HoF selections than Hoffman.

One is Morris, but I've beaten that horse enough over the years.

From the Handbook: Mauer and the Hall of Fame

The annual Bill James Handbook arrived last week in my mailbox -- year 29 and counting of its publication. I have 'em all, which is probably indicative of something wrong with me, but so be it.

The bulk of the book -- identified in the table of contents as the Career Register -- is, frankly, obsolete. When the Handbook begin, it served as an annual update to the Baseball Encyclopedia, the best place to find accurate answers to such questions as "how many career homers has Kent Hrbek hit?" Today Baseball Reference has all those stats and more online. And if the Career Register were still all the Handbook offered, I probably wouldn't still be buying it.

But this isn't 1989, and there's a lot more in it. This year -- if only to give me an organizing principle to guide my persual of this reference work -- I'm going to go through the non-Regster portions, front to back, and examine something Twins-related in it. Some days there'll be news that supercedes this project. It may take to spring training to finish.

We start, as the book does, with Bill James' reworking of his Hall of Fame Monitor system. This, as James takes pains to point out, isn't about who should be selected for Cooperstown, but about identifiing the players who are compiling the things that typically get players selected for Cooperstown. It's a prediction system based on previous selections, a tracking system. James devised the Monitor almost 40 years ago, there's been dozens of additional honorees, and he has updated the system.

Players get points as they reach accomplishments "typical" of Hall of Fame players. The point scale is set up to balance at 100 -- a player scores 100 on the Monitor, he's probably done enough to get into the Hall. If he's under 100, he probably hasn't. The"gray area" -- in which players may get in and may not -- is roughly 80 to 130. Again, it's not about who should be in, but about who's doing things that the ever-changing selection process has valued in the past.

So ... Joe Mauer. Mauer is listed, for what should be obvious reasons, as a catcher for this purpose, even though he hasn't caught since 2013. His bounceback 2017 gave him his first real boost in the Monitor since his move to first base.

Mauer stands at 89 on the revised Monitor, which, as it happens, is the same score as Carlton Fisk (enshrined). He's six points ahead of Ted Simmons, eight up on Thurmon Munson, 13 ahead of the still-active Yadier Molina, none of whom are in.

Mauer added four points to his total in 2017, which equals his total from the previous three seasons put together. Let's imagine that:

• he has another such season in 2018 and
• decides to retire at age 35.

That would leave him with 93 Monitor points. That might suffice to get him into Cooperstown; it might not.

Yadier Molina, Joe Mauer and the Hall of Fame

Yadier Molina last week got a contract extension through 2020 from the St. Louis Cardinals. He turns 35 in July, and he's been worked pretty hard behind the plate, so this doesn't strike me as a particularly wise investment. On the other hand, he has for a dozen years been at the center of a team that has won two World Series, lost two others and been in the postseason nine times. He's a franchise icon. Pay the man.

Yadi's new deal spurred an internet debate over his merits as a Hall of Fame candidate. I'm a "Big Hall" guy, so I haven't any problem with seeing him get a plaque at Cooperstown, but there are other catchers I'd rather see inducted first.

A guy named Scott Lindholm tweeted out the above graphic as evidence that Molina is a bit shy with the bat for the Hall.

@jay_jaffe C since around 1950, measured by B-R batting and fielding runs (min 5000 PA, red=HOF)--Molina ain't quite there pic.twitter.com/WZPn9YvkSs

— Scott Lindholm (@ScottLindholm) April 10, 2017

(I will note that I don't see Ted Simmons, one of the catchers I'd rather see inducted than Molina, on this graph. I assume he would be in the upper left quadrant, with the likes of Joe Torre, Mike Piazza and Jorge Posada -- good hitting catchers who weren't all that good at catching.) (Late addendum: Simba is apparently obscured in the pile with Posada and Victor Martinez.)

Molina is down in the lower right -- excellent receivers whose hitting was below average. The further to the right, the better the defense; the further up, the better the hitting.

I'm not competent to defend the Baseball Reference fielding runs metric, but I will say that these graph points make intuitive sense, by and large.

You'll notice that that Hall of Fame catchers, with the exception of Mike Piazza, are all in the upper right quadrant -- good hitters, good defense. The only eligible guys in that quadrant who aren't in are all in the corner next to the intersection of average: Bill Freehan, Thuman Munson, Sherm Lollar.

And notice that X up there between Yogi Berra and Johnny Bench. That X signifies an active player, and it's Joe Mauer.

Mauer, in my view, did the heavy lifting for the Hall in his 20s. His 30s have been a letdown, and, of course, he will never catch again. And he's not likely to compile the big bulk numbers the voters seem to demand of hitters. A lot of people believe Mauer will fall short of the Hall, and they might be right.

But the generation of voters who would be likely to turn thumbs down on Mauer for lacking the home runs and RBIs of the HOF catchers represented in this graphic is dwindling. The percentage of the electorate that embrace B-R's metrics is only going to rise.

Jorge Posada and the 10-player limit

Jorge Posada didn't draw the magical 5 percent of the vote from the writers, so he's off the Hall of Fame ballot for future elections.

This is unfortunate. Posada is, in truth, a highly qualified candidate. But he's hardly the only such to be one-and-done with the writers. So too were Kenny Lofton and Jim Edmonds; Bernie Williams got only two turns on the writer's ballot. And that's just three center fielders.

There are a couple of issues involved here:

• The oversupply of highly qualified candidates on the ballot and
• The 10-player limit for the writers.

Not every voter fills out the 10 slots, but far more do now than were even five years ago, in part because five years ago the writers weren't electing anybody, and there was beginning to be a sense that some other means of selecting inductees would be needed. More writers voting for 10, or even eight, candidates instead of two or three means more opportunity for players to get elected -- or even to stay on the ballot.

Ten slots for a ballot with 34 names (as was the case this year) sounds ample, but a goodly number of writers said they saw 17, or 18, players worthy of strong consideration for those slots. Posada may have been No. 15 on somebody's list, and thus left off, but that doesn't mean they thought him unworthy of a vote -- just less worthy than 10 others.

Abolishing, or at least raising, the limit has been proposed repeatedly and gone nowhere. I suppose the downside to easing the restriction is encouraging frivolous votes, like the one vote Tim Wakefield got this year. But I would be willing to bet the frivolous votes (and there are a handful every year) come from voters who (a) don't fill all 10 slots anyway and (b) will stop casting them when the votes are made public, as will be the case beginning next year.

And the benefit of making it easier for the likes of Posada and Edmonds to stick on the ballot a few more years seems to outweigh the drawback.

Three for Cooperstown

Finally.

The writers made a small dent in the growing backlog of obviously qualified Hall of Fame candidates, electing Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and Ivan Rodriguez.

It was quickly noted that the writers have now chosen 12 players in four years, matching the Hall's first four years for the most selections. But it's also the first time in those four years that the majority of selectees were not first-time ballotteers.

Still, one probably should not be churlish about this year's outcome. Bagwell and Raines are in, as they should be, and the plaques will not note the delays.

And Rodriguez becomes only the second catcher ever elected on the first ballot. His election was closer than it should have been, but (again) the plaque won't mention that.

There is another wave of qualfied -- even over-qualified -- candidates slated to hit the ballot next winter, with Chipper Jones, Jim Thome, Andruw Jones and -- his continuing comeback ambitions not withstanding -- Johan Santana, among others. Even with Raines and Bagwell off the backlist, it's still going to be a crowded ballot.

Joe Mauer and catching comps

When I visit player pages on Baseball Reference, I frequently check the similarity scores down near the bottom of the page. Similarity scores are a Bill James invention, a formula that starts at 1,000 and subtracts for statistical differences and includes a positional adjustment.

Because of the positional adjustment, the closest comps are generally players of similar position. Example: Greg Gagne, the shortstop of the 1987 and 1991 World Series winners. His 10 best comps are eight shortstops and two second basemen, including two of his predecessors as Minnesota's shortstops (Leo Cardenas and Zoilo Versalles). His closest comp is Mike Bordick, whose career overlapped with Gagne's. Bordick's closest comp is Gagne, and his top 10 includes five of Gagne's top 10.

Anyway: When I was doing last week's series of posts about catchers on the Hall of Fame ballot, I glanced at the similarity scores for those guys.

Jorge Posada's list is topped by five catchers, starting with Lance Parrish and including a pair of Hall of Famers (Gabby Hartnett and Gary Carter). Then come four middle infielders (one in the Hall), followed by another HoF backstop (Bill Dickey). None of them, by the way, is a particularly close match for Posada (860 is the top score); James has said that that is often the case for a Hall of Fame caliber player.

Ivan Rodriguez's list is headed by Pudge 1.0, Carlton Fisk, and includes three other catchers (Ted Simmons, Carter and Yogi Berra). Fisk's score is 818, which isn't very comparable at all. Pudge 2.0 was a unique player.

Jason Varitek's best comps are all catchers, and the first nine are more comparable to him than anybody is to Posada. None of Varitek's comps are in Cooperstown.

A.J. Pierzynski has six catchers and four middle infielders in his comps. Two Hall of Famers, as I mentioned in an earlier post.

And Joe Mauer has ZERO catchers in his comp list. No. 1 is Dustin Pedroia. The next two are Hall of Fame shortstops, Lou Bordreau and Travis Jackson. Then come a bunch of infielders whose scores are rather distant.

(Pedroia's best comp is Mauer, followed by a bunch of second basemen.)

It's really odd to see a catcher with no catchers in his comp list. But as I've said often, Mauer is a historically unique figure. The catcher I've long thought of as the Mauer prototype is Mickey Cochrane, Hall of Fame catcher of the 1920s-30s. Mauer is No. 5 on Cocharne's list, which contains nine catchers and Boudreau (four Hall of Famers in all, plus Mauer and Yadier Molina). But nobody scores particularly close to Black Mike either.

Hall of Fame thoughts: Selig and the steroid players

The deadline has passed for the writers to turn in their Hall of Fame ballots, but I'll keep writing about the Hall because

• the Twins haven't given me a reason to change topics
• I have more to say and
• it's my blog and you can't stop me.

Don't understand Hall voters changing opinion on Bonds/Clemens because of Selig's election. He was elected by Veterans committee, not BBWAA

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 30, 2016

Yes, but ... a fairly vocal contingent of writers have for years been calling for the Hall to provide explicit guidance on steroid users and steroid suspects. Ignore the topic or bar the door? The Hall has declined to do so. The long time sentence in the voting rules remains:

Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.

For many of the electorate, the words "integity" and "character" justify passing over the likes of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and other suspected or acknowledged steroid users. Others don't, particularly of those who were (or may have) used in the no-test era. The people who run the Hall of Fame have left that decision up to the voters.

But those same people have a heavy thumb on the Veterans Committee scale. The ever-changing rules and composition of the panels make that entry to enshrinement much easier to manipulate. Marvin Miller, for example, isn't in because the various panels given the task of judging him over the years have always been loaded with enough management figures to ensure that the union boss wasn't going to slip in. (The commissioner's office doesn't directly run the Hall, but the Hall likes to be liked by the commissioner's office.)

And the Veterans Committee in recent years has seen fit to slide two notable steroid enablers and beneficiaries, Selig and Tony LaRussa, in.

That's not an explicit endorsement of steroid users, but it's an implicit one. Had the Hall wanted to demonstrate a hard line on PEDs. it could have set up those panels accordingly. It didn't.

My mythical Hall of Fame ballot

You know this already, but I'll repeat it anyway: I don't have a vote for the Hall of Fame. Vin Scully and Bill James don't either, so I'm in pretty good company.

But that doesn't preclude me from looking at the writers ballot and asking myself: Who would I vote for? And it certainly doesn't preclude me from telling you who I would vote for.

The writers are limited to voting for a maximum of 10, and there are a lot more than 10 deserving names on the ballot. My 10 would be, in alphabetical order:

• Jeff Bagwell
• Barry Bonds
• Roger Clemens
• Vladimir Guerrero
• Jeff Kent
• Mike Mussina
• Jorge Posada
• Tim Raines
• Ivan Rodriguez
• Larry Walker

Four candidates I  supported last year aren't on the ballot this time -- two who were elected (Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza), one who ran out of time (Alan Trammell) and a fourth who didn't get enough support to stick (Jim Edmonds). And I created a fifth slot by dropping Curt Schilling in a futile protest of his "joking" support of lynchings.

I've added newcomers Ivan Rodriguez, Jorge Posada and Vladimir Guerrero, plus holdovers Larry Walker and Jeff Kent.

Walker and Kent are the marginal guys on this ballot; they get my nod over Edgar Martinez, but not by a lot, and I could if I tried (and I might try if it mattered) talk myself back into Schilling over any of the three.

I can't talk myself into supporting Trevor Hoffman, even though he appears to have an excellent chance of getting in this year. Hoffman's candidacy -- like that of Lee Smith -- is based largely on his imposing pile of saves, a stat of dubious value. It's difficult to rationalize voting for one of those two and not the other -- and even more difficult to support either over Billy Wagner, yet another one-inning closer. I say leave 'em all out.

Hall of Fame thoughts: Catchers (Jason Varitek)

Two posts on catchers on the Hall of Fame ballot; one on former Twins on the ballot. And now, one on a third catcher on the ballot who could -- should -- have been a Twin: Jason Varitek.

The Twins had back-to-back picks in the first round of the 1993 draft, picks number 20 and 21. With the first of the two picks -- which came from Cincinnati, which had signed free agent John Smiley -- the Twins selected Torii Hunter. We know how well that turned out.

With the second pick, the Twins chose Varitek, then a junior at Georgia Tech. Varitek was "advised" by Scott Boras, and he wound up returning to school for his senior year. The next year, Varitek was drafted by Seattle, which traded him to Boston three years later in one of those "what-were-they-thinking" trades that echo down the years: Varitek and Derek Lowe for Heathcliff Slocumb. Either Varitek or Lowe for Slocumb would have been a steal; both was simply ridiculous.

Varitek made his major league debut later in 1997 (one at-bat); he shared the catching chores in 1998 with Scott Hatteberg and became Boston's No. 1 catcher the following season. He never played a major league game for any team other than the Red Sox, and it's not easy today to imagine him in any other uniform. But it could have been otherwise.

Another catcher broke in in 1998: A.J. Pierzynski. He didn't really emerge as the Twins No. 1 catcher until 2001, however. Imagine an alternative universe in which Varitek/Boras and the Twins agreed to a deal back in 1993 and that Varitek's timeline to the majors was unaltered. What, then, happens to Pierzynski's career? There's a story that at the end of the 2001 season Tom Kelly told Pierzynski that he had never believed that Pierzynski would be a major league catcher but that A.J. had proven him wrong. It's possible that, had Varitek signed with the Twins, Pierzynski would have been blocked from the career he wound up having.

And if that happens, the Twins and Giants never get to make their "what-were-they-thinking" trade of Pierzynski for Joe Nathan, Francisco Liriano and Boof Bonser. (Or maybe it gets made with Varitek instead of Pierzynski. The Twins were bound to make room for Joe Mauer at that point.)

Baseball Reference credits Pierzynski and Varitek with pretty close to the same career WAR: 23.3 for Pierzynski, 24.3 for Varitek, with Pierzynski's totals being dragged down in recent season. Neither is to be found in the other's similiarity score list, however, and Pierzynski's comps are in fact more impressive than Varitek's, with two Hall of Fame catchers prominent (Ernie Lombardi and Gabby Hartnett). It's an interesting question in retrospect: Which catcher would you rather have, Varitek or Pierzynski?

Failing to sign a first-round pick is not a recommended strategy for team building. But failing to sign Varitek worked out OK for the Twins -- and, obviously, for Varitek. Varitek will be one-and-done on this ballot. But he had a fine career.

Hall of Fame thoughts: Catchers (Ivan Rodriguez)

Jorge Posada, subject of Tuesday's post, isn't the only catcher debuting on the writers ballot this year. He isn't even the best catcher debuting on the writers ballot.

That distinction belongs to Ivan (Pudge) Rodriguez, a genuine challenger to Johnny Bench and Yogi Berra as the greatest backstop in major league history.

By the numbers, by his career accomplishments, Rodriguez deserves first-ballot entry, even by the reluctant-to-honor-catchers standards of the BBWAA. He has a rare set of credentials for a catcher: a brilliant peak and longevity, both an outstanding hitter and a gifted defensive catcher.

But ... steroids.

Rodriguez never tested positive, never was suspended. He was named by Jose Canseco as a fellow 'roider, and he did drop a lot of weight when testing began, the kind of circumstantial evidence that delayed Mike Piazza's election and has held back Jeff Bagwell.

My basic stance on this: I draw a line at the beginning of testing. Before that, performance-enhancing drugs were officially illegal, but nobody bothered trying to enforce that ban. If anything, the culture of the sport -- nurtured, no matter what they say now, by the likes of Bud Selig and Tony LaRussa --  encouraged players to do whatever they could to improve.

If Pudge was using in, say, 2003 and quit when the game got serious about changing the culture, that's fine by me.

Hall of Fame thoughts: catchers (Jorge Posada)

The great Joe Posnanski recently pointed out, in writing about the presence of Jorge Posada for the first time on the writers' ballot, something I was vaguely aware of but had not really put together in my brain:

Six catchers -- only six -- whose careers began after World War II have been elected to the Hall of Fame by the writers. They are, more or less chronologically, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, Gary Carter and Mike Piazza. Only one of those six (Bench) went in on the first ballot.

The writers have been stricter on catchers, Pos postulates, than on other players of other positions. I think he's right. I think the writers have, for generations, applied the offensive standards they use for outfielders in weighing the candidacies of catchers, while still demanding the higher level of defense from catchers that they do for middle infielders.

Heck, Ted Simmons was a better hitter in his prime years than Jim Rice or Tony Perez. But Simba caught, while Rice pretended to be a left fielder and Perez butchered third base before moving to first, and the position beat the brilliance out of Simmons. He was essentially done -- as is the case with almost all outstanding hitting catchers -- by age 30.

Catchers don't rack up the numbers that outfielders and first basemen do. They can't. It's not physically possible.

Posada played 17 years with the Yankees, but two of them at the start were cuppa coffee and another seven were two-thirds time at best. That cuts him down to nine seasons as the clear primary catcher. He was the best hitting catcher in the league for a few years, until Joe Mauer arrived, and then he was the second best hitting catcher in the league for a few years. He was never a stellar defensive backstop, but his teams sure as hell won a lot anyway. His highest finish in the MVP voting was 2003 (third behind Alex Rodriguez and Carlos Delgado); I remember thinking at the time that I would have voted for Posada. 

Had I a Hall of Fame vote, Posada would get one. Simmons would have too, easily, and Bill Freehan. Posnanski says Posada falls outside the established parameters for Cooperstown catchers, that he's closer to Simmons than to Piazza, and I agree on that. If Simmons doesn't belong, Posada doesn't either. But I think those standards are overly strict.

Winter Meetings: Hall of Fame vote

The annual baseball swap meet, jobs fair and self-promotion festival known as the winter meetings opened Sunday with the usual ceremonial throwing in of the Hall of Fame inductees.

There are two ways to be chosen for induction: the writers vote, which is on players and is pretty stable, and the "veterans committee," no longer called such, which is constantly tweeked by the powers that be in an unceasing and doomed effort to finally get it right. It's the latter that occurs at the start of the meetings.

At this point that process is a lot better at choosing non-players to get plaques than players, and that was the case again Sunday, when retired commissioner Bud Selig and not-fully-retired executive John Schuerholz were chosen for the honor.

An air of doddering ineptitude has crept into my beloved Hall of Fame. A used car salesman is here.

— Old Hoss Radbourn (@OldHossRadbourn) December 5, 2016

I too regard Bud Selig as more worthy of derision than honor, but ...  Bowie Kuhn's in the Hall of Fame. The standard for commissioners isn't imposing. Major League Baseball does not run the Hall of Fame, but, as Bill James wrote decades ago about the relationship, the people who do run the Hall of Fame want very much to have the people who run MLB like their institution. So Kuhn -- and Selig -- are in, and Marvin Miller is not.

As for Schuerholz -- yeah, outstanding general manager who built a great organization in Atlanta, and the precedent for inducting the quasi-active executive was set already (Pat Gillick). I guess it's better than waiting until the guy is dead or at death's door for induction, as with Branch Rickey decades ago.

If there's a surprise in the results, it's that George Steinbrenner wasn't even remotely close in the balloting. Good.

Three tangents on A-Rod

I wrote either too much or not enough about Alex Rodriguez for the Monday print column. If you want more on the subject from me, you're in luck; if not, well, it's my blog and you can't stop me.

---

Few teams have boasted the top-level talent of the Seattle Mariners in the 1990s. Ken Griffey Jr. was a Gold Glove center fielder who hit more than 600 homers. Alex Rodriguez was a Gold Glove shortstop who hit more than 600 homers. Randy Johnson, left-handed pitcher, won more than 300 games and struck out almost 5,000 hitters. There's a decent argument to be made for each as the greatest player ever at their position. (I'll even accept it for Johnson).

And backing them up were some other pretty darn good players. Edgar Martinez has a legit Cooperstown case. Jamie Moyer won 270 games himself. Jay Buhner was a quality right fielder. Dan Wilson (former Gopher) was a solid receiver.

And what did the M's accomplish with this terrific talent? Not much.

They had the misfortune to be in the same league as the Derek Jeter dynasty Yankees, a team that was deeper than the M's and not much behind them in front-line talent. Griffey and Johnson forced trades as they neared free agency, and Rodriguez fled for bigger money as soon as he could. And after those three were gone, the Mariners had their best season, when the rookie Ichiro Suzuki arrived from Japan and the M's won 116 games -- and got beat by the Yanks in the playoffs.

Twins fans beef about Ron Gardenhire's inability to navigate his team past the Yanks in the postseason in the 2000s, and to be sure, Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau and Johan Santana were a pretty salty trio on which to base a roster. But Gardy's Twins were not more disappointing than Lou Piniella's Mariners.

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Somebody dubbed them "the Trinity" -- three glorious shortstops who hit the American League pretty much simultaneously in the mid 1990s. A-Rod. Jeter. Nomar Garciaparra. Miguel Tejada broke in about the same time too, but without the hype and expectations. Sprinkle in the veteran Omar Vizquel, and the American League had five Cooperstown-level shortstops jostling each other for All-Star berths for about a decade.

My guess is that at most three of those five will actually get into the Hall, and maybe only one. Jeter, obviously. Vizquel, the least of the five as a hitter, has a chance to be seen by the electorate as the equivalent of the enshrined Luis Aparicio. Rodriguez and Tejada have the steroid taint on their resumes, and they will need a more forgiving electorate (which may be coming) to get in. And Garciaparras body started to betray him in his late 20s; he was finished as a regular in his mid 30s.

We have a somewhat similar wave of shortstop talent hitting the majors today: Xander Bogearts, Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, Addison Russell, Corey Seager. Appreciate them. From my perch today, it seems so recent that A-Rod and Jeter had their futures ahead of them.

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World War II ended in 1945. From that time until 1974, when Robin Yount debuted, only two shortstops destined for Cooperstown broke in: Ernie Banks and Aparicio. That's almost 30 years.

Draw up a list of the all-time great shortstops, and you might be startled at the recentness of the list.

It starts, of course, with somebody whose peak was more than a century ago: Honus Wagner. But for my tastes -- and your opinion may differ -- most of the rest of the top 10 are guys I saw play: Jeter and A-Rod, Yount and Cal Ripken, Barry Larkin and Alan Trammell and Ozzie Smith. (Trammell's not in the Hall, but he ought to be.) You can line them up however you want and sprinkle in the likes of Joe Cronin, Banks, Arky Vaughn and Luke Appling as you prefer, but those seven are there.

I've listed 13 "shortstops" in this segment. But Yount spent almost half his career in the outfield, Banks actually played more games at first base than at short and Rodriguez, as noted in the print column, has almost as many games at third base as at shortstop. Ripken ended his career at third; Wagner, oddly, didn't become a regular shortstop until he was 29. The top-flight guys who actually spent their careers at shortstop are pretty darn rare.

The Hall of Fame results

Ken Griffey Jr and Mike Piazza (finally) are in. Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines, next time (probably). Alan Trammell, better luck with the Veterans Committee.

The writers put Griffey and Piazza in the Hall of Fame. Junior got the highest percentage of the vote in history, 99.3 -- only three voters didn't vote for him.

And how did three decide to pass on him? Well, none of the naysayers have outed him or herself as of this writing, but there are three possibilities, one of which I think is acceptable:

• The old "if Babe Ruth wasn't unanimous, nobody's gonna be unanimous" trope.
• A protest vote against everybody who played in the Steroid Era.
• A game theory vote that reasoned that Griffey was a shoo-in and I'll use that slot on my ballot for someone who needs the vote.

That last I'll accept. The ballot, even after seven players were elected in the previous two years, is still stuffed with legitimate candidates, and the voters are limited to a maximum of 10 names. One can easily skip Griffey and still have more than 10 candidates who would be better choices than many already inducted.

There will doubtless be many voices in the electorate congratulating themselves on electing two players and now nine in three years. But really, it's been the lowest of hanging fruit. Of the nine, seven were on their first time on the ballot; the other two were a 3,000-hit second baseman (Craig Biggio) and the best hitting catcher ever (Piazza). This isn't as difficult as the electorate made it.

Meanwhile, Alan Trammell ran out of time. He drops off the ballot. Raines has just one more year on the writers ballot; there's now an expectation that he'll go in next year. Ditto Bagwell, who fell 15 votes shy this time around.

Next year's first timers figure to include Ivan Rodriguez, Vladimir Guerrero, Jorge Posada and Manny Ramirez. It will be another loaded ballot. The writers continue to run to stand still, unable to clear their backlog of overqualified candidates.

Second-tier Hall of Famers

My current Strat-O-Matic project is based heavily on what I consider "second-tier" -- or worse -- Hall of Famers. These are guys few modern fans know much about, guys like Elmer Flick, Ross Youngs and Billy Herman. Good players all, maybe even great, but their legends are a bit obscure.

At the root of most, if not all, Hall of Fame debates is an issue few actually grapple with: Big Hall or small Hall? There seem to be a significant number of HoF voters, and an even higher percentage of fans, who sincerely believe that a plaque in Cooperstown should be reserved for the very elite. If you're not Willie Mays or Christy Mathewson, you're out.

That has never really been the standard. If one draws the line under, let us say, Bill Dickey and Whitey Ford, then how to account for the plaques for Ernie Lombardi and Herb Pennock, much less Rick Farrell or Eppa Rixey?

There are, today. 310 plaques displayed in the gallery, 215 for former major league players. (The others were chosen as executives/pioneers, umpires, managers and/or Negro Leaguers.) They were all good players at the very least. But they sure weren't all Frank Robinson.

Here's a lineup of HoF players that I think might be the worst Cooperstown has to offer (leaving out the Negro Leaguers and the 19th century guys):

C: Ray Schalk

1B: George Kelly

2B: Bill Mazeroski

3B: Freddie Lindstrom

SS: Rabbit Maranville

LF: Jim Rice

CF: Lloyd Waner

RF: Ross Youngs

SP: Rube Marquard

Now: There's no shame in being the worst shortstop in the Hall of Fame. This is not an insult to any of them.

But compare that squad to this group of left-outs:

C: Mike Piazza

1B: Jeff Bagwell

2B: Lou Whitaker

3B: Graig Nettles

SS: Alan Trammell

LF: Tim Raines

CF: Jim Edmonds

RF: Larry Walker

SP: Mike Mussina

I guarantee you, that second squad would kick the first team's behind, with a markedly superior player at each position, The gap between those lineups is the root of my displeasure with the current selection system and the continuing backlog of worthy candidates. 

Anticipating the Hall of Fame announcment

The ballots have been cast, and the announcement is due on Wednesday.

Predicting the outcome of the Hall of Fame vote is a bit more difficult this year because of the culling of the BBWAA electorate. About 145 90 of last year's voters were stripped of their ballots by the Hall of Fame; they got the ax on the basis of no longer covering baseball. Many, if not most, of them are believed to have been casting "short" ballots, voting for one or two candidates at the most.

Dropping them effectively boosts the percentages going to the also-run candidates, and off the publicly announced ballots that appears to be a significant boost for Tim Raines in particular. Raines is nearing the end of his BBWAA eligibility (one year to go after this). My guess is that he won't make it this year but will come close enough that next year he can go over the top.

I hope he does. Raines should have been in long ago. This piece by Peter Keating of ESPN describes Raines' exclusion as a "perfect storm" of biases, from playing his glory years in Montreal to his cocaine use to the shadow of contemporary Rickey Henderson to a long time preference by Hall voters for sluggers over leadoff men. All are probably factors. I'm perfectly confident in declaring Raines to be a better player than, for example, Jim Rice, another left fielder who is in.

Raines isn't the only candidate on the ballot who has been unwisely excluded. Alan Trammell exhausts his BBWAA eligibility this year, and he has more ground to cover to get to 75 percent than Raines.

My prediction: Ken Griffey, Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell get in this time, with Raines just missing. Piazza might have gotten anyway without the revamped electorate; if Bagwell and or Raines do too, it will be because dozens of previous naysayers were silenced this time.