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Kirk Buchner, "The Committee Chairman", is the owner and operator of the site. Kirk can be contacted at [email protected] .
The Tim Raines Debate: 2015
Dec 28, 2014
Published in
Hall of Fame Debates
This is the seventeenth of our series where we here at Notinhalloffame.com, do what else? Debate the merit of twenty-four men on the most loaded Baseball Hall of Fame ballot in our lifetime.
Joining me, the site's Committee Chairman, in this debate are D.K. of the site's Phillies Archivist blog and Darryl Tahirali of the site's DDT's Pop Flies blog. This looks to be a very important part of our site, and we hope you will enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed writing it.
Chairman: For the record I have always loved Tim Raines and wanted to throttle anyone who ever called him a poor man’s Rickey Henderson. Although I grant that Henderson had the more impressive career, Raines had one hell of a run, and was overshadowed by a better base stealer. “The Rock” enters his eighth nomination and with the reduction from fifteen years to ten years on the ballot has potential to be the biggest victim from the change.
Raines had 46.1% last year, which is down from finally hitting the 50% mark last year. Gentlemen, if Raines was on for fifteen years, I would bet my house that he would get inducted but in ten years? I am keeping my deed to the property.
Darryl: You'll have to throttle me, then, because I've been calling Tim Raines the poor man's Rickey Henderson for some time now. On the other hand, I've been calling Kenny Loftonthe poor man's Tim Raines, and he was criminally a one-and-done two years ago.
But here's my Raines story: Years ago, I was in a technical writing certification program, and one report-writing course I took included feasibility reports. I did mine on a fictitious Hall of Fame "Underdog Committee" that looked at bubble candidates who would be retiring soon. I picked Raines, Edgar Martinez, Fred McGriff, and—don't laugh—Andres Galarraga (hey, he looked pretty good back then), and had to evaluate them and pick one to recommend. I went in figuring I'd pick Martinez, but after evaluating them, I picked Raines as the best (most feasible) candidate. Funny how that worked out on the real ballots years later, yes? But you're right—I was pretty sure after last year that Raines would struggle on the ballot, and that'll be even more so now. Some Expansion Era Committee is going to have to fight to get him in the Hall.
D.K.: If you think of the Hall Of Fame as the greatest team of players ever assembled then you’re going to need every component of a great team, including you’re speed guys and table setters. With 808 stolen bases and a career .294 hitter hardly any player has filled the bill for that role better than Raines since the late 1970’s except Rickey Henderson. Lou Brock, Henderson and Raines posted career totals not seen since the dead ball era days when running was a most critical and necessary part of the game.
His seasons of .320, .334 where he led the National League in ‘86 and .330 is a pretty nice career peak that he reached between 1985 and 1987. He finished his career with 2,605 hits and better than a hit per game average and he reached 70 stolen bases six consecutive years (1981-1986), taking four NL stolen base titles, and reaching a career high of 90 SB in 1983.
A veteran of 2502 games in 23 years he had tremendous longevity also. With his vote totals of about 50% the last two elections, he’s been a bit underappreciated so far by the writers. I’ll be very interested to see if Raines vote total makes some progress towards election, come January 6th.
Chairman: So let’s call him a rich man’s Maury Wills then? If Maury can get solid Veteran’s support, maybe there is a hope for Raines that way, as I have a strong suspicion he will see a percentage decrease again this year, and he is not going to get in by “traditional means”.
“The Rock” (and is that because of what he liked smoking the best?) has to consider it a win just to get back to where he was two years ago. I wonder if the Expos deal hinders him a bit. I know that his teammates Gary Carter and Andre Dawson got in, but Carter had a couple good years with the Mets and was just one of those guys that people loved. Dawson had the MVP season with the Cubs, and many people associate “the Hawk” with Chicago more than Montreal. Raines never had a signature season outside of Montreal. Am I reaching or am I bordering on another conspiracy theory here?
D.K.: Although the writers have asked the HOF if they may increase the maximum number of players they can vote for in any election to 12. As far as I know, if 12 votes is approved per writer it won’t go into effect for the election at hand. Even with only 10 votes I’ll fit “The Rich Man’s Maury Wills (Tim Raines) in there somewhere.
Darryl: Gary Carter and Andre Dawson may be good examples, and not just because they were also Expos. It took Carter six tries to be elected, and it took Dawson nine tries--and both did it in years that did not have the embarrassment of riches that Raines is facing now. Shhh! Everyone is trying to forget that Raines was one of several MLB players implicated in the Pittsburgh drug trials of the mid-1980s. Supposedly, Raines slid head-first into bases so he would not break the cocaine vial in his back pocket. But given the obvious punishment being meted out to the PEDs guys, you have to wonder whether some writers have not forgotten about Raines's involvement in this quiet, although significant, drug scandal in baseball.
Chairman: This breaks my heart because I think he is a Hall of Famer. He is my 11A candidate, but sadly my vote is no.
Darryl: This is my last speech. Probably. I've been calling Tim Raines a Hall of Famer since 2002. Yes, that was in his last year before retirement. I've been calling him that ever since. But based on his voting history, I don't think that he has a chance on the writers' ballot. My primary approach in this (hypothetical) vote is, with a few exceptions, to clear the ballot by voting for as many candidates who have a good chance of actually being elected and thus enable voters to more seriously consider candidates such as Raines, who is a SABR darling who does not have that Hall of Fame glow about him. (Spoiler alert: I'll be saying the same thing about Alan Trammell.)
Thus, it pains me to say it, but my vote is no. Not this year.
D.K.: Maybe it’s because I was small in stature in elementary school but I always appreciated baseball’s smaller, pesky, feisty little guys that batted lead off or #2 to set the table...the Richie Ashburns, Curt Floods, Lou Brocks , Luis Aparicios, Maury Wills, Ron Hunts, Pete Roses, Nellie Foxs and Ricky Hendersons of this world ....and Tim Raines. I see that I think much more highly of Tim than my colleagues. I ranked Raines as my #3 candidate and that results in an emphatic YES vote!
The Mike Piazza Debate: 2015
Dec 27, 2014
Published in
Hall of Fame Debates
This is the sixteenth of our series where we here at Notinhalloffame.com, do what else? Debate the merit of twenty-four men on the most loaded Baseball Hall of Fame ballot in our lifetime.
Joining me, the site's Committee Chairman, in this debate are D.K. of the site's Phillies Archivist blog and Darryl Tahirali of the site's DDT's Pop Flies blog. This looks to be a very important part of our site, and we hope you will enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed writing it.
Chairman: We talked about suspicion keeping Jeff Bagwell out so far, and the same has to be stated for Mike Piazza, who can make a statistical claim as the best offensive Catcher in the history of Baseball. There has been a bigger cloud over Piazza than Bagwell, though no positive tests or anything of that nature. With his credentials is there any reason to explain why Mike Piazza has not entered the Baseball Hall of Fame; however all is not lost. Piazza is on his third year of the ballot, and unlike others, his percentage has gone from 57.8% to 62.2%. He may not get in this year, but his chances look healthy.
Darryl: Considering that Mike Piazza did admit to using androstenedione
("andro," most notably associated with Mark McGwire) early in his career, his 2013 debut percentage of 57.8 is impressive, as is the fact that only Piazza and Craig Biggio saw their vote totals increase in 2014. Jeff Bagwell may not be a great comparison because Bagwell is competing against a number of other high-profile first basemen, but who has Piazza's competition at catcher been on his two ballots so far? Sandy Alomar, Jr.? Paul Lo Duca? And there is really no competition for him this year. Moreover, you are right: Piazza is the best-hitting catcher in history. What makes me optimistic is that he debuted at a high percentage and added more votes even with Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Frank Thomas added to last year's ballot.
D.K.: Piazza’s future is looking up and his vote totals should increase as well. The only question is how far up will they go this year. Enough to get elected? We’ll see.
He hit 396 of his 429 career home runs as a catcher, which is better than any other catcher in history by a large margin. He could have hit over 400 home runs as a catcher, but he foolishly left the San Diego Padres and went to the Oakland Athletics for his final year where he was used exclusively as a designated hitter (when he wasn’t hurt - in an injury plagued final season.)
As a Phillies fan it bothers me that he grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and with better scouting he could have been a career Phillie. Instead he was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he made a name for himself with them and the Phillies’ divisional archrival, the New York Mets. Instead of having Piazza as their power-hitting backstop for a decade and a half from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s the Phillies had to settle for Mike Lieberthal.
Chairman: These are all outstanding points, and I forgot about that andro admission. For the record, I do think he was on PEDs, but like I have said multiple times before, those people get a pass before the official announcement from MLB, and I do have again state; he never flunked a test, so none of my matters anyway.
I went so glass if half empty with Piazza looking at what I thought was a low debut for him without comparing him to the Bonds of the world. He is heading in the right direction, which he should be. I think a small victory for him is to squeak in to that 65 to 67 range, which in my mind is the best he could hope for this year.
D.K.: Between 1994 and 1997 Piazza scorched the ball to the tune of a .342 four-year average. He hit no lower than .328 and had a career high of .362. To his predecessor, an all-star catcher, Mike Scoscia, Piazza was crooning, “Move Over Little dog, ’Cause the Big Dog’s movin’ in”. Piazza’s impact early in his career was considerable. He managed to hit .308 lifetime despite tailing of in his later years and he’s the all-time leader in home runs as a catcher. - Pretty indisputable qualifications. I’d vote for Piazza each and every year until he’s giving his induction speech.
Darryl: Agreed. As long as Piazza keeps adding to his vote, he will be elected in a couple of years. Of course, my wildly optimistic scenario is to see a 13 percent jump that pushes him across the threshold this year. Hey, a fan can dream, can't he?
Chairman: I will keep it simple. Yes.
Darryl: Equally simple. Yes.
D.K.: Even if he didn’t have the greatest throwing arm to nab base stealer
Piazza more than made up for it with his bat and is in fact arguably the best hitting Catcher in MLB history. I ranked him #4 this year. YES.
The Mike Mussina Debate: 2015
Dec 27, 2014
Published in
Hall of Fame Debates
This is the fifteenth of our series where we here at Notinhalloffame.com, do what else? Debate the merit of twenty-four men on the most loaded Baseball Hall of Fame ballot in our lifetime.
Joining me, the site's Committee Chairman, in this debate are D.K. of the site's Phillies Archivist blog and Darryl Tahirali of the site's DDT's Pop Flies blog. This looks to be a very important part of our site, and we hope you will enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed writing it.
Chairman: I went on record last year saying that the biggest shock to me was the paltry 20.3% he got on his first year of eligibility. I know he was “only” an All Star five times, but every stat points to this man as a Baseball Hall of Fame inductee. Personally, I think the biggest disaster that could happen is if Mike Mussina somehow fails in the ten years on the ballot to get into Cooperstown. It’s funny to me how someone who spent his entire career in the ballyhooed American League East, doesn’t have that cache name. We talked about the “Hall of Very Good”, and I think a lot of people want to automatically put Mussina there. He is better than that.
Darryl: I agree completely. In fact, three years ago, I wrote an article for the site in which I identified five "tough sell" Hall of Fame-caliber players, meaning that because of the ballot logjam they may get overlooked. Of course, one was Frank Thomas, and we saw how "overlooked" he was last year. On the other hand, the other four were Jeff Kent, Mike Piazza, Curt Schilling—and Mike Mussina. Moose may be a Bert Blyleven-type case in which the advanced stats will need to demonstrate how effective he was in tandem with his traditional stats. His 3.68 ERA may hurt a bit, but in that AL East he spent a lot of time with the Baltimore Orioles, which was a division doormat—and his FIP (fielding-independent ERA) is 3.57, meaning that he did a fair bit of heavy lifting and not his fielders. Mussina is better than a lot of pitchers already in the Hall—he won't cheapen the roster by any measure.
DK: Mussina’s not quite in the Pedro Martinez/Whitey Ford category in winning percentage, Whitey Ford, but who is? With his .638 winning% he’s closer to another current nominee, Randy Johnson and that’s plenty good enough company. Like Ford, who had just two 20-win seasons, which may surprise a lot of people, Mussina also is short in the 20 wins season category, winning 20 only once. He had a lot of Ford-like high win percentage seasons, however, going 18-5, 16-5, 19-9, 19-11, 18-7 17-8, 18-10 various years and other stellar seasons without reaching the 20 win mark.
I thought he might make a run for 300 wins, when he won 20 in 2008, but he was about 39 years and 10 months old when he go his 20th, for the only time in his career, in the Yankees 2008 season finale. Does that mean he didn’t have “the heart of a lion” to pursue 300, or that at nearly 40 he just considered himself done. Was he a good family man who just wanted to stay home after about 20 years on the road with his major and minor league teams or was he just a guy who wasn’t that driven by statistical goals. After all Al Kaline didn’t come back for one more season just because he was one home run below the 400 HR mark at the end of the 1974 season and Billy Pierce didn't cancel his retirement plans because he finished the 1964 season one strikeout below 2,000K - and no one holds that against them and doesn’t think they weren’t spectacular ballplayers.
Mussina’s 20% vote total last year was surprisingly low, but there have been others like Gary Carter who started small, but whose vote totals snowballed in the next few years afterwards towards eventual election by the BBWAA.
Chairman: So we all agree that Mussina is a Hall of Fame Pitcher, at least in our eyes. It is almost that he is in the wrong place at the wrong time with this vote; almost like his career in Baseball, as he was never on a championship Yankees team, which certainly would have helped; especially if he would have at least a signature post season performance, which he didn’t have.
I don’t know if you both saw the article that Buster Olney recently did where he stated he was abstaining from his vote to help a guy like Mike Mussina, a man he would vote for…if he had more than ten slots. Basically, he thinks by abstaining, he helps Mussina’s percentage, should others vote for him.
Now, I hate the idea of abstaining from a Hall of Fame vote, especially if this what some of the voters thinks it has come too but if anything illustrates the current logjam to get into Cooperstown better than this, I haven’t seen it.
D.K.: When I look at his career numbers I don’t find many numbers that are eye-popping, however, you see the picture of a very steady, consistent performer.
You might not think of him as a great strikeout pitcher, but Mussina didn’t fall too far short of being a 3,000 strikeout man, with 2813 Ks for his career. He never led the league in strikeouts but he topped 200Ks four seasons and he topped 170 Ks nine seasons. He was really consistent, but didn’t have the WOW FACTOR going for him of being the best pitcher in the majors at any time in his career.
With the absence of the WOW FACTOR, I think that Mussina fits the profile o someone who gets elected in their final one or two chances with the writers or fails short there and gets elected by the Veterans Committee.
Darryl: Chairman, I have not seen Buster Olney's article. Do you have a link or reference to it? I respect Olney's work and generally agree with his views. I admit that I am not a mathematician and would have to read his rationale, but I do not understand how abstaining from voting, and it sounds from your description that he is abstaining altogether because Mussina is not among his ten, would help Mussina. Again, I'm no math whiz, but it seems to me that the more votes cast for any player increases the chances for some candidates to be elected, and that removes them from the ballot and thus increases the chances for the remaining candidates in future years. Silly hypothetical: Say Olney planned to vote for Curt Schilling this year but abstains, and Schilling misses election by one vote. Olney's vote would have removed Schilling from the ballot by dint of election to the Hall--but now Schilling comes back on a future ballot, still siphoning support for Mussina. I don't get it.
DK, to your point about round numbers, we like them because they are convenient plateaus. To me, Mussina is a Hall of Famer without the 300 wins, and in any case, in his era of interventionist bullpens, 268 wins is 300 wins. Mussina had 43 "tough losses," losses in which he pitched a quality start (six or more innings pitched while allowing three or fewer earned runs), with 24 of those with Baltimore, and he had 40 wins lost (22 with Baltimore), games in which he had the lead when he left the game but his bullpen lost the lead and thus Mussina got a no-decision instead. (He had 113 of those altogether.) Somewhere in there are the 32 wins he needed for 300 games. Contrast that with Gus Wynn, who grimly hung on until his age-43 season to get to 300 wins in 1963, and his 1962 season, in which he fell one short of 300 wins, was really grim: 7-15 (.318), 4.46 ERA, 88 ERA+ (i.e., Wynn was a below-league-average pitcher). He returned in 1963, got his 300th win in his fourth start--on July 13, after not having pitched in his first game of the season until three weeks earlier--and pitched the minimum five innings necessary to be credited with a win. He started just one more game subsequently, getting a no-decision, while his 15 other appearances were as mop-up relief (he did earn one save). It was a desperate effort to reach a milestone, and watching Tim Wakefield labor to get to 200 wins a few years ago is probably a similar experience.
And now we get to the asinine premise of the Bernie Mac baseball movie
"Mr. 3000," in which Mac's character has three hits taken away from him by revisionist bookkeeping, and although he may have been a Hall of Famer at 3000 hits, he may not be at 2997 hits, and thus he suits up at age 47 to get back those three hits. Ugh! No! That's why I love Al Kaline's numbers. As you note, he did finish one home run shy of 400, and he was two doubles shy of 500 while his .297 batting average is three percentage points below .300. Now, had Kaline not played the 1974 season and thus passed the 3000-hit plateau with his 146 hits that season, would he have been a Hall of Famer with 2861 hits, 470 doubles, and 386 homers? Maybe not first-ballot, as he was in 1980 with more than 88 percent of the vote, but really?
Chairman: Darryl, here is the link to Olney’s reasoning. Anyway, for me Mussina gets on my ballot, but admittedly on the ten hole. I vote yes.
Darryl: Yes. Despite his paltry vote total last year, Mike Mussina is clean and is a no-doubt Hall of Famer. Get him off the ballot--and into Cooperstown.
D.K.: I can see why the writers asked that they be allowed to cast 12 votes instead of 10 this year. There’s simply too many good candidates right now. Even with an expanded ballot, however, Mussina still misses the cut. I ranked him #13. That’s a NO vote from me - not NO forever, but NO for this year with it’s crowded field.
The Mark McGwire Debate: 2015
Dec 26, 2014
Published in
Hall of Fame Debates
This is the fourteenth of our series where we here at Notinhalloffame.com, do what else? Debate the merit of twenty-four men on the most loaded Baseball Hall of Fame ballot in our lifetime.
Joining me, the site's Committee Chairman, in this debate are D.K. of the site's Phillies Archivist blog and Darryl Tahirali of the site's DDT's Pop Flies blog. This looks to be a very important part of our site, and we hope you will enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed writing it.
Chairman: What, the PED discussion again? Actually, I am going to open with something a little different, as I have been a little surprised at just how much as his support has plummeted. This was the first “Steroids Guy” on the Ballot and here we are on year nine and the new ten year rule will kick him off in two years; and don’t think this isn’t by accident. Mark McGwire plummeted to eleven percent last year, but his fall shows me that contrition doesn’t mean anything to the writers. Nobody else apologized, and Big Mac has done pretty well for himself as a hitting coach in the Majors. So much for forgiveness.
Darryl: You and I differ on the intent of reducing the eligibility period. I think it is to reduce the logjam regardless of the perception of the player—Edgar Martinez, Tim Raines, and Alan Trammell are just as likely to fall off as the PEDs-suspected players. Mark McGwire was indeed the lightning rod, though, the first star with that PEDs association to hit the ballot. Regardless of what doping did to his performance, that performance is on the bubble—more peak dominance than longevity.
He was largely one-dimensional, a Three True Outcomes hitter—walk, strikeout, home run—but it was an awesome dimension. One thing that impresses me is that his on-base percentage of .394 is 131 points higher than his .263 batting average. He collected 1626 hits but walked 1317 times, and only 150 of those were intentional—but that's still 46th all-time. That's a feared hitter—and a selective one. Borderline, but he's like a Ralph Kiner: Essentially one tool, but it was a sledgehammer. Just barely a Hall of Famer—but I think at this point, a future Expansion Era Committee will have to debate that. And that is the ramification of the shortened eligibility period: Baseball is dumping responsibility for gatekeeping into the Hall on future committees.
D.K.: I think that a lot of the media that covered McGwire’s quest to surpass the single season total of Roger Maris back in 1998 felt like they’d been duped when it came out that McGwire wasn’t clean. These same writers are the ones who have withheld their vote for McGwire ever since he became eligible. Therefore I think McGwire’s chances for election are minimal.
Chairman: I stand by my conspiracy theories! We did not walk on the moon, there was another gunman and aliens built the pyramids in Egypt. Ok, bad jokes aside, we’ll agree to disagree on the motives, but you are right about equating McGwire to a one trick pony, though it was one equivalent in my eyes to Thornton Melon’s triple lindy (1% of future shares in the site to whoever gets that reference), but yes, taking away from PEDs it is a resume that puts you on the cusp of the Hall when looking at the bigger picture.
Saying that these future committees are going to be loaded with his generation’s “clean players”, so if McGwire and his friends are getting in, they have a better chance with the baseball writers, not with guys like Frank Thomas or Goose Gossage who have openly decried these guys shouldn’t be in, and could wind up on these future committees.
D.K.: The odd thing about Barry Bonds and McGwire is that they began using PEDs after they were already highly successful star players. Many have argued that if Bonds had left steroids alone he’d have made the Hall Of Fame anyway. McGwire wouldn’t have put up Hall Of Fame numbers, but he would probably have hit 400+ clean home runs and had a very good career. He reached the majors with a bang, smashing 49 home runs in his first full season of 1987 and topped 50 homers a few seasons later when he was still likely clean. He probably wouldn’t have made the HOF because he was only a .263 lifetime hitter and he struck out far too much.
Was it the Deadly Sin of pride that prompted Bonds and McGwire to chase records and increase their legacies that in the end became their downfalls.
Darryl: Chairman, you may be right that McGwire's best chance is with the writers and not a future veterans committee--that is an excellent point. The recent Hall of Famers will staff those future committees, and they are likely to keep their current perspectives. So, McGwire may in fact be his generation's Deacon White, not necessarily in terms of conduct, but that his great-grandkid may deliver the induction speech near the end of this century.
As for Thornton Melon, well . . . he just don't get no respect, does he?
Much like McGwire.
And as for a second shooter, don't get me started on the JFK assassination. The most plausible explanation to me would probably gobsmack a lot of people, but then I'd tell them to read David Lifton's "Best Evidence." (Hint: The "best evidence" is the body itself and what may have happened to it between Dallas and Bethesda, where the autopsy took place.)
Chairman: DDT, we have to sit down over beer one day and solve the problems of the world, and based on an earlier comment I owe you a small portion of the site. Personally, I do believe is a Hall of Famer, and I would have voted him in other years, but the glut of additional talent pushes him off if my ballot. I vote no.
Darryl: Chairman, I'll gladly take you up on that offer.
It's not so much the glut of additional talent--this year's ballot isn't any heavier than it has been in the past couple of years--but by now it is patently obvious even to me that anyone with tangible evidence or admission of PEDs usage is wearing a scarlet letter of "C" for Cheater and is not going to get 75 percent. So, this year my voting approach is primarily (although not exclusively) for those "clean" candidates who are with little dispute Hall of Famers. And with only 10 votes that means a mean triage.
So, no to Mark McGwire. Not this year.
D.K.: I’ve never been one to forgive and forget easily when I’ve been wronged.
(I still have a fist and a set of brass knuckles ready for an older bully who once sucker punched me when I was 13).
That said, when America watched the race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa to topple Roger Maris’ season’s home run record of 61 homers in 1998 collectively we thought we were watching the greatest thing since Maris and Mickey Mantle were racing to beat Babe Ruth’s record of 60 HR nearly four decades earlier. The country thought it was watching history in the making; as it turned out we were only watching two frauds making fools out of the nation’s sports fans. The answer is a NO vote to McGwire this year and it might always be so.