Winter Meetings, Day One: Hall of Fame, Colabello

The Veterans Committee didn't come up with enough votes to put any of the 10 finalists from the "Golden Era" in the Hall of Fame. Tony Oliva (and Dick Allen) came one vote shy, Jim Kaat two,

I'm OK with this. I can make an argument for any of the 10, and I can make an argument against any of the 10. Well, maybe not against Minnie Minoso. He was at least twice the player Jim Rice was, and definitely the superior to at least a half-dozen other corner outfielders already enshrined.

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Joe Posnanski explains here why the Veterans Committee, at least in its current form, is doomed to failure.

The good news, I suppose (at least for "big Hall" supporters, those who want more inductees) is that the Hall keeps tinkering with the process. The bad news is, they've never really come up with a good process.

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Tony O. misses by one vote. Needed 12 of 16. God is dead.
— Patrick Reusse (@1500ESPN_Reusse) December 8, 2014

That is a popular opinion around the Twins, but it's based on emotion and proximity, not logic and analysis.

Worse sins are committed in Hall of Fame voting every winter by the writers -- Mr. Reusse among 'em. Oliva had a peak worthy of the Hall; he had done the heavy lifting. But there isn't enough there to make him more than a borderline selection. There are better choices for Cooperstown being bypassed every year by Reusse and his BBWAA colleagues.

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The Toronto Blue Jays claimed Chris Colabello on waivers Monday. This opens a spot on the Twins 40-man roster for either a free-agent signing or a Rule 5 pick later in the week.

Colabello is easy to root for, and I hope things go well for him. But there wasn't much of a role visible for him with Minnesota, with Joe Mauer and Kennys Vargas ahead of him at first base/DH and Josmil Pinto available to plug the DH job should somebody get hurt.

Tony-O, Kitty and El Tiante

Three players with Twins connections (albeit very loosely for one) are among the 10 Hall of Fame nominees announced last week for the Veterans Committee: Tony Oliva, Jim Kaat and Luis Tiant.

Oliva, if elected, would certainly go in wearing a Twins cap; he didn't play for anybody else.

Kaat probably would; he got 190 of his 283 lifetime wins as a Twin/Senator, and his stats for his other teams (White Sox, Phillies, Cardinals) don't suggest that he should be identified with any of them.

Tiant certainly wouldn't; he spent just one season with Minnesota (1970); he suffered an injury in May, which opened a rotation spot for a 19-year-old named Bert Blyleven.

The other nominees, alphabetically: Dick Allen, Ken Boyer, Gil Hodges, Bob Howsam, Minnie Minoso, Billy Pierce and Maury Wills. Howsam is the executive who built the 1970s Big Red Machine in Cincinnati. The rest were all players.

None of them are terrible nominees. Worse players at their respective positions than each have enshrined.

To be specific:

• Kaat and Pierce, left-handed pitchers, have better records than Rube Marquard and Lefty Gomez.
• Tiant, right-handed pitcher, was better than contemporary Catfish Hunter, and far better than Jesse Haines and Vic Willis.
• Oliva and Minoso, corner outfielders, were both superior to the likes of Ross Youngs, Harry Hooper and Sam Rice.
• Boyer, third baseman, was better than George Kell and Freddie Lindstrom.
• Allen and Hodges, first basemen, were superior to George "Highpockets" Kelly and Jake Beckley.
• Wills, shortstop, was better than Joe Sewell or Travis Jackson.

But that's basically taking some of the weakest Hall of Fame honorees and using them as a standard, and that's not a real good argument, The truth is, there are better players than any of these nine -- Craig Biggo, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Mussina, Mike Piazza -- on the outside looking in because the BBWAA is doing a lousy job at the front end of the selection system.

Still, I expect at least one of these 10 finalists to be elected.

The committee meets Dec 8 at the Winter Meetings. The early speculation has Oliva and Hodges as the most likely choices. Rod Carew, Oliva's road roommate for years with the Twins, is on the committee, which is one reason to think Tony-O has a good shot.

Is he the best of this bunch? For my money, Minoso is. But none of them will demean the standards of the Hall as much as the selections of Andre Dawson, Jim Rice or Bruce Sutter did.

Tony-O, Kitty Kaat and the Hall of Fame

One of the myriad happenings next week at the Winter Meeting will be the balloting by the current version of the Veterans Committee.

The Hall of Fame's grand poo-baas keep tinkering with the Veterans Committee, trying to achieve a system that

• actually elects somebody
• without succumbing to the cronyism that has periodically infected the VC.

It's probably a hopeless mission. The biggest problem here is that the most obvious candidates get swept in by the writers and never reach the Veterans Committee, which winds up trying to split the hairs between Jim Kaat and Tommy John. There are plenty of HoF inductees I consider mistakes; almost all of them came courtesy of the VC.

The panel next week will be picking from a specific, prescreened, list of players and executives from a specific era of the game. Chris Jaffe at the Hardball Times website predicts that Ron Santo will get in, and thinks it likely that at least one of Tony Oliva and Kaat will as well, although Jaffe is quick to concede that it's difficult to make a good prediction on the VC when the rules keep changing.

Santo, Oliva, Kaat, Gil Hodges --- these are the most likely choices. My sense of it is that there are several worse players at their positions already inducted, I wouldn't whine much if these four remain out, and I won't complain at all if any get in.

Well, Santo ... I'm about 95 percent sure he should be in. Third base is rather unrepresented in the Hall, and there are only about five or six third basemen in history with better credentials. (Mike Schmidt, George Brett, Wade Boggs, Eddie Mathews ... Bill James puts Santo ahead of Brooks Robinson, but it's clear that their contemporaries thought Brooks was much the better player.)

My only issue with putting Santo in the Hall is that the Cubs of his era have Billy Williams at the top of his game, they have Ferguson Jenkins at the top of his game, they have a fading but still useful Ernie Banks, they have solid regulars in Glenn Beckert, Don Kessinger, Randy Hundley, Jim Hickman, Johnny Callison, they have Ken Holtzman, Milt Pappas and Bill Hands backing Jenkins in the rotation, they have a HofF manager in Leo Durocher -- and what did they win? Nothing. Not even a divisional title. How many legit Hall of Famers can you assemble without winning anything?

The Twins of Oliva and Kaat's era are a bit of a disappointment too, but they have a pennant and a pair of divisional titles to show. They had the misfortune to be up against an historically great Baltimore Orioles assembly.

I wrote a column long ago about Oliva and Kaat and the Hall. They symbolize a dual approach to HoF voting on the part of the electorate. The writers like career length from hitters and really high peaks from pitchers. Oliva had an eight-year span in which he was about as good a hitter as you'd find. The writers felt that wasn't enough. Kaat had a great season and a lot of good ones and lasted a long time. The writers felt that wasn't enough.

Kaat's candidacy is hurt a bit by the fact that in his prime years there was only one Cy Young awarded for the two leagues, and when he won 25 games in 1966 Sandy Koufax got the award. They started giving out two Cy Youngs the very next season. Put a Cy Young on Kitty's resume, and I think the writers would have given his candidacy more play.

Notes, quotes and comments

For all the chatter about all the suitors for Milton Bradley — that the Cubs could get the likes of Pat Burrell or Mike Lowell for the temperamental outfielder — when the deal came down, it was for Carlos Silva.

The former Twins mainstay went 5-18 with a 6.81 ERA in his two seasons with Seattle. Good luck with that, Cubbies.

* One of my minor delights this offseason has been the increasingly frequent times that an agent overplays his hand and winds up hurting his client. A couple of examples this week:

• Cliff Lee says he "thought we were working out an extension with the Phillies. I thought I would spend the rest of my career there." The Phillies GM, Ruben Amaro Jr., says: "We made what we thought was a pretty substantial offer ... Like I said before, I just didn't feel comfortable that we were going to be able to get to the finish line. And so we ended up moving toward the Halladay situation." Translation: Lee's agent asked for so much the Phillies ran away.

• Johnny Damon has said all offseason he wants to remain with the Yankees. But his agent — Scott Boras — has insisted on a three-year, $39 million deal, which was too long and too rich in the Yankees opinion. Now the Yanks have signed Nick Johnson to be their primary DH. Johnson replaces Hideki Matsui, and Curtis Granderson fills the outfield slot formerly held by Damon. And the Yankees get younger and cheaper. Upshot: Damon won't be where he wants to be, and — assuming Boras was dragging out the Damon talks to make it look as if the Yankees were a possible suitor for another LF client, Matt Holliday — that mirage appears to have faded also.

* Falling apart around their ears: Tony Oliva got trapped in a bathroom in the Twins' Metrodome offices Wednesday when the door handle came off. Moving day is next week. I bet they can't wait.