Filling out the Hall of Fame ballots

Shortly after my return from Cooperstown I commented on the backlog of highly qualified Hall of Fame candidates overflowing the writers' ballots — and the predictions that the writers would continue to struggle to elect anyone.

There are signs that that gloomy (at least for those who want to see players elected to the Hall) outlook was/is too pessimistic.

Over on Hardball Times today, Chris Jaffe's annual prediction has four players elected: Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas and Craig Biggio. Four's a lot — the writers haven't elected more than three in my lifetime — and I'll be surprised if it is truly that high.

A big part of why Jaffe thinks a big block of inductees are coming is that there is evidence — both anecdotal and statistical — that the writers are going much deeper on their ballots than usual. The voters can vote for up to 10 players; they typically vote for around five names apiece (some more, some less).

This year, according to the ballot collecting "gizmo" at Baseball Think Factory, the known ballots are averaging better than nine names apiece.

Which matches something Tyler Kepner of the New York Times tweeted a while back:

Seems like every writer releasing a HOF ballot is filling all 10 spots, and would fill more if not for pointless limit. Time for change.
— Tyler Kepner (@TylerKepner) December 31, 2013

And it's my recollection, although I can't find it, that Patrick Ruesse said he voted for nine (and felt a little soiled going that high.)

I hope Jaffe's right, that the electorate is going deeper into the ballot, and that multiple players will be elected. If an old-school small-ballot guy like Ruesse is voting for nine, it just may be so.

But I'm going to have to see it to believe it. I still think there's a hardcore group in the BBWAA that wants to lock the door to this entire generation of candidates.

Eddie Rosario's suspension

Eddie Rosario's
2014 season will
start later than
anybody would
have preferred.

Back in November, word leaked that Eddie Rosario was facing a 50-game suspension for failing a drug test. On Saturday, that suspension became official -- but it was for a "drug of abuse," not for a performance-enhancer, as originally reported.

Does the difference make a difference? In this sense: It takes two positive tests to get suspended for recreational drug use. So Rosario had been caught once before -- exactly when is unknown -- and didn't mend his ways. One time, you can call it a mistake; a second time, it's something more than that.

Terry Ryan's quote in the Star Tribune was rather pointed: "That's a sizable part of the season, but that's the price you pay for not being responsible enough to tell right from wrong."

Certainly Rosario, one of the Twins' top prospects, has done himself no favors with this. He'll miss more than a third of the minor league season. He might well have opened 2014 at Triple A Rochester (having finished 2013 at Double A New Britain); now he's more likely to return to New Britain when his suspension is finished in late May.

But he'll still be in spring training, and I have a sense that he could stand some time off. Rosario played winter ball last year; he played for Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic; he played the full minor league season, split between two levels; he played in the Arizona Fall League; he played winter ball again. That's a long grind.

The Sunday Funnies

Frankie Frisch was holding one of his lengthy pregame meetings, going over the opposition roster in excruciating detail.

Finally he brought up one of the opposition's little-used pitchers.

"Says this guy's a switch-hitter," the Flash said with a glance at the roster. "How are we gonna pitch him?"

A bored voice arose: "He ain't no switch hitter. He hits three ways -- left, right and never."

The frozen pitching market

The new year is several days old, and to a large degree the Hot Stove League has frozen up.

Part of it, of course, is that many teams have made their moves. Part of it has been the holidays — it's always a bit slow between Christmas and New Years. And, this year, part of it is the belated posting of Japanese star pitcher Mazahiro Tanaka.

Three prominent established free-agent starters remain on the market — Matt Garza, Ervin Santana and Ubaldo Jimenez — but not much is happening with them, partly because their flaws are well known and Tanaka's are not. Among those flaws: Garza missed extensive time in 2013 with arm issues; Santana's and Jimenez' strong 2013 seasons were not in line with their previous seasons; and signing Santana and Jimenez will cost not only money but a draft pick.

My expectation is that once Tanaka signs, things will unlock, at least for Garza. He will "only" cost money, not a draft pick.

(There was a report this week that the Twins had checked in with Garza, who, of course, started his career with Minnesota. The issue for the Twins, according to the report, isn't salary, it's years; they want a shorter-term deal than the pitcher wants. This may well be linked to his arm issues of the past season.)

Santana and Jimenez? With the draft pick attached, they each have the possibility of being this year's Kyle Lohse, who was unsigned until well into spring training last year.

Lohse wound up with Milwaukee, and had a pretty good season for a weak Brewers team: 11-10, 3.35 in just under 200 innings. But I don't think St. Louis regretted letting him walk — they won the pennant without him and pocketed a draft pick in the process.

The current free agent compensation system is in its second year, and none of the 22 free agents who got a qualifying offer has accepted it. I suspect that until somebody does, teams will be increasingly willing to extend the offer (expecting it to be rejected), and free agents will be increasingly frustrated by the way the draft pick penalty degrades their market.

Steroids and the Hall of Fame

A sign in the Hall of Fame museum regarding
steroids and other performance enhancers.

One reason for the heavy backlog of Hall of Fame candidates -- not the only reason, to be sure, but part of it -- is the issue of performance-enhancing drugs.

Baseball spent a decade or more with steroids an essentially open secret, tolerated if not encouraged by players, managers, owners. Then, suddenly, it wasn't OK. 

The Hall voters are now trying to judge the careers of players who thrived in the steroid era. Different people can have different views on the subject without being obviously wrong; my views have changed from time to time.

I do think this: The prevailing ethos in baseball in the 1990s -- and probably in the late 1980s as well -- said steroid use was OK. Indeed, I believe some organizations expected it, and that those players who declined to juice up were viewed as lacking in dedication.

Tony LaRussa -- who managed some of the most notorious juicers of the juicing era, who vociferously defended the likes of Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire -- he's going into the Hall of Fame this summer. So is Joe Torre, whose Yankee dynasty was riddled with users suspected and confirmed. It strains credibility to believe either was ignorant of the steroid use by their teams. They were among the enablers, if not among the encouragers.

But McGwire isn't likely to be elected when the results of the writers' balloting is announced next week. Nor, presumably, are Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds -- who, if we take their numbers seriously, may well be the greatest pitcher and hitter ever, but who bear a steroid taint. Nor, presumably, will Mike Piazza or Jeff Bagwell, who are the targets of steroid rumor.

A portion of the electorate appears to hold the position that, lacking certain knowledge of who used, everybody from the era should be considered guilty. I don't see it that way.

It seems to me that, if there's room in the Hall of Fame to honor LaRussa, there's room for Bonds and Clemens, and certainly for the likes of Piazza and Bagwell. 

On the plaque: Old Hoss Radbourn

Radbourn's Hall of Fame
plaque, which declares him
"the greatest of all 19th century
pitchers."

Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn.

Let's say it up front: There's a lot we don't know for sure about Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn, starting with the spelling of his last name. Is it Radbourn or Radbourne? The consensus spelling today omits the "e," but his gravestone, and his Hall of Fame plaque, include it.

Nor is there complete consensus on his statistical record, which is hardly unusual with 19th century players. It does seem pretty well settled, however, that he won 59 games in his remarkable 1884 season, not the 60 he is sometimes credited with.

Nor is it certain that the term "Charley horse" originated with Radbourn's aches and pains in that iron man season; there are other competing versions that have nothing to do with Radbourn. And he may or may not have been the first to be photographed flipping the bird.

But there is sufficient photographic evidence to support this assertion: Old Hoss didn't look anything like the image that adorns his Hall of Fame plaque. That face looks like a cartoon image from an illustrated "Casey at the Bat" kids book. One wonders where they got the grandiose moustache and the chiseled, jutting jaw.

History and the Hall of Fame backlog

In the days since I returned from my visit to Cooperstown, I've poked around a bit in the Bill James history of the Hall of Fame, first published in 1994 as "The Politics of Glory" and later republished as "Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?"

I really wish, in retrospect, that I had thought to re-read the book before the trip.

As we await the announcement this week of the results of this year's BBWAA election -- an election in which the writers are confronted with a massive backlog of highly qualified candidates, and an election in which it's entirely possible that only one player will be selected -- one of James' points seems particularly relevant.

When the voters face a backlog, it splinters the voting sufficiently that they have difficulty electing anybody. And when that happens, the Hall's powers-that-be respond by opening a backdoor that ultimately results in a watering down of the quality of the inductees.

This happened at the beginning of the Hall, when the electorate was confronted with some 65 years of players to pick from. When the process snarled, the "Permanent Committee" responded by unilaterally installing 21 people in two years (1945-46). Many were legitimate selections (Ed Walsh, Eddie Plank, Ed Delahanty -- and that's just the ones with my first name), some were debatable (the en masse induction of Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance), some were just plain bad picks (Tommy McCarthy, Jack Chesbro).

This at least cleared the decks and made it easier for the writers to focus on the remainders -- at least until somebody had the lousy idea in the mid '50s to cut the voting back to every other year. And bam, the writers failed to elect anybody between 1956 (Hank Greenberg and Joe Cronin) and 1962 (Bob Feller and Jackie Robinson). The result of that drought: a revamping of the Veterans Committee that generated a wave of selections, many of them mediocre picks apparently chosen in large part for being old teammates and cronies of the members of the committee.

The writers failed last year to elect anybody. Bill Deane, who has a very good record at predicting the Hall votes, predicted earlier in December that only Greg Maddux will get in this year -- that fellow 300-game winner Tom Glavine will be left out, that 3,000-hit man Craig Biggio will be left out, that Frank Thomas and Jeff Bagwell will be left out ...

There are at least 18 players on this year's ballot who are, by the statistical record and the existing standards of the Hall, worthy of votes. The backlog is only going to grow.

And if the writers don't figure out a way to whittle it down, the Hall will inevitably do it for them.