Committee Chairman
Kirk Buchner, "The Committee Chairman", is the owner and operator of the site. Kirk can be contacted at [email protected] .
The Larry Walker Debate: 2015
Dec 31, 2014
Published in
Hall of Fame Debates
This is the twenty-fourth and final 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: Every single time the Baseball Hall of Fame and Larry Walker are in the same sentence together, most bloggers, writers, pundits and fans counter with two words: Coors Field. While I think there is some legitimacy to that argument, this is a guy who still put up good numbers in Montreal, had good numbers on he road while with Colorado, and by the way these are the same guys (the writers) who talked about the Coors effect and voted him the MVP of the National League in 1997. Walker is on the 5th ballot, and last year he had his lowest total yet with 10.2%. On the surface, this is not a path to Cooperstown.
D.K.: Walker was a .320 career hitter until late in his career. If he had played one more season instead of retiring at age 37 he would have reached the 400 HR plateau. (Like Mussina, he apparently wasn’t interested in establishing a statistical legacy). Walker had some years where his batting average, on base percentage and slugging percentage, plus those two last categories combined were absolutely Crazy Good! However, the voting writers choose to look on this as just an aberration of having Coors Field as his home park.
I think the writers should re-examine Walker’s career rather than just dismissing his numbers as being, the product of having a great park to hit in.
Walker’s inability to attract votes also looms like an ominous dark cloud over the future candidacy of the greatest Colorado Rockie of them all, Todd Helton!
Darryl: I've been writing about Larry Walker since my first article for this site, and in my 2013 ballot evaluation I went into detail about Walker and the "Coors Effect." First, Walker played less than 30 percent of all his games at Coors, and his last two seasons of his nine total were after the Colorado Rockies began storing baseballs in a humidor to neutralize the park's altitude effects. Prior to coming to Colorado, Walker played five full seasons in Montreal's Olympic Stadium, and in three of those seasons the stadium was considered to be a pitchers' park. When Walker won the NL MVP in 1997, he posted a .346/.443/.733 slash line on the road, and he actually slugged better on the road—his home slugging percentage was .709 while he slugged .733 on the road—and he hit 29 of his 49 home runs that year in ballparks other than Coors Field. In short, Larry Walker could hit anywhere, he was a five-tool player, and he ranks 10th all-time among all right fielders according to Jay Jaffe's JAWS system. The nine ahead of him are all Hall of Famers while Walker is ahead of Hall of Famers Paul Waner, Sam Crawford, Tony Gwynn, Dave Winfield . . . Every year I repeat myself on this. Not that it will help Walker. The writers won't elect him.
Chairman: We are all on the same page, beating that dead horse. Walker could conceivably fall off the ballot this year and hardly anyone would care. The numbers bear everything out, the Coors advantage was proven statistically not to be as big an impact on his overall career as people think, but again the writer’s just don’t care, and the ones that do don’t seem to have any impact. He is going to stay on the ballot just so that we have this same discussion every year.
D.K: Walker was indeed a 5-tool player as Darryl attests. He could field and had an excellent throwing arm to cut down runners or to make them not even think about trying to stretch those singles into doubles.
The advanced statistics systems that have come into vogue recently bear out what I had always felt in my gut - that Walker could hit no matter where he played or how challenging a park’s dimensions might be.
Here’s hoping he gets a larger share of votes this year. Up to this point he has been about the most underrated and underappreciated candidates in recent writers’ ballots history.
Darryl: I think Larry Walker is a bellwether for players whose home park was Coors Field, and his fate will have an impact on Todd Helton when he becomes eligible, although Helton played his entire career in Colorado and Walker did not. The larger issue is with the Hall having to come to terms with this condition, as it has had to do so with the designated hitter and relief pitching, but, really, park effects should not be an issue for the Hall. Hall of Famer Chuck Klein raked like a monster in his home park, Philadelphia's Baker Bowl, but was an average hitter elsewhere. Walker was excellent anywhere. And while this closing remark comes from the emotional side, as a Canadian, albeit one long-transplanted to the States, I want to see a guy from British Columbia in the Hall of Fame!
Chairman: It breaks my heart on a fictional vote to say no (he is my 11B) so I can only imagine how awful I would feel if I had a real ballot; and yes it hurts me more as a Canadian!
D.K.: Walker ranked tied with Jeff Kent for 11th - meaning those two are near-misses under the current system. - NO. These two get my vote if the writers had been successful in getting the rules changed to allow a maximum of 12 votes per writer instead of 10.
Darryl: This is one of my protest votes, along with those for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, although in Larry Walker's case it was one of his home parks that was on steroids for a while, not he himself. I've been saying this for years: He is an effing Hall of Famer. My tenth and final Yes vote.
The Alan Trammell Debate: 2015
Dec 30, 2014
Published in
Hall of Fame Debates
This is the twenty-third 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: Alan Trammellis here on his fourteenth ballot, and based on the voting we have seen thus far, he will be on the ballot next year, fail, and have to look for a Veteran’s Committee induction. Trammell’s high water mark for voting was 36.8% two years ago and dropped back to 20.8% last year. I think we can all we agree that he is not getting in this year. What I want to ask both of you is should he.
D.K.: Alan Trammell is someone who has never really captured my imagination as being a potential Hall Of Famer. When he came up to the Tigers in 1977 (cup of coffee) & 1978 (first full season). I think his fielding skills were a little raw, but he worked on that aspect of the game and by the early or mid-1980s he was as smooth at that position as any active MLB shortstop. He would wind up winning four Gold Gloves.
While he’s not a favorite of mine I’d have to say that he has better stats than a lot of HOF middle infielders. With over 2,300 hits, a career batting average of .285 that includes seven .300 seasons, 1003 RBI, and 185 home runs, he probably ranks somewhere in the middle of the pack among shortstops who are currently in the Hall of Fame.
Darryl: Actually, DK, according to Jay Jaffe's WAR Score system (JAWS), Alan Trammell ranks 11th all-time among all shortstops and 8th all-time among the 21 shortstops already in the Hall of Fame; he is even ranked just ahead of Derek Jeter by JAWS although Jeter's total WAR value is about one and half wins better than Trammell's. None of which matters because the writers are not going to elect Trammell this year or next year, which will be his final year, and his fate is in the hands of a future Expansion Era Committee. So, Chairman, to answer your question: Yes, Alan Trammell is a Hall of Fame shortstop. He is better than shortstops Joe Tinker, Dave Bancroft, Hughie Jennings, Travis Jackson, Phil Rizzuto, and Rabbit Maranville, all of whom are already in the Hall of Fame.
Chairman: My thinking is more with Darryl on this one. I always thought he was one of the better Shortstops of all time, and maybe there is a bit of bias because when I first really to understand baseball, I was twelve years old and that was that dominant team Tigers team that won the World Series in 1984. Take Cal Ripken out of the picture (or let’s say he played third), Trammell adds a few All Star Games, and he might already be in as the consensus top Shortstop in the AL over that time period. Hell, we might be arguing Tony Fernandez instead!
I’ll say this, which is completely irrelevant. Somewhere around that time Trammell and Lou Whitaker also appeared on Magnum P.I., which also adds to the pop culture love for me…and yes that stuff matters far more to me than it should be.
Randomness aside, it looks like the Veteran Committee will have Trammell (and perhaps Lou Whitaker) on future ballot, and maybe he will get a shot then, because it won’t happen here.
D.K.: Alan Trammel’s candidacy evokes the question: Is there one Hall of Fame offensive standard for all players, or should voters follow separate standards for each position. Going by the former standard Trammel wouldn’t have much of a shot, but he becomes a valid, even a strong candidate if you judge him simply by how he’s performed compared to other shortstops. Defensively his reputation is solid and he’s bagged a quarry of Gold Glove Awards, but let’s examine his results as a hitter.
Trammel hit a solid .285 lifetime and enjoyed seven .300 seasons. He’d hit 12 to 15 home runs typically in his peak years, but reached 20 home runs twice, including a career high 28 one year. His final career total was 185 home runs. He’d drive in 60 to 75 runs just about every year in an eleven year peak period of 1980 to 1990. He finished with 1,003 ribbys.
He’d average better than a hit per game over his 20 year career that ended in 1996, with 2365 hits in 2293 games.
He had one off the charts season in 1987 where he and Darrell Evans led the Tigers to an A.L. East championship. Trammel’s numbers that year were 28 home runs, 105 RBI this only 100 RBI season) and a .343 batting average - all career bests! He wasn’t able to maintain that pace, but he did add three more .300 seasons after ‘87.
In a typical election year Trammel probably gets my vote, because his numbers are better than most HOF shortstops. This year however, is anything but typical and I can see four or five candidates being elected come January 6. It’s an awfully strong field and Trammel probably won’t make it into most writers’ top ten - the maximum number of candidates each writer can vote for. He falls short of my top ten as well. That doesn’t mean that I don’t support his HOF candidacy in the long run, however.
If the logjam of candidates is eased by the election of a number of players this year then Trammel will have my vote in the 2016 election, his final year on the writers ballot. My guess is that Trammel will make it to the Hall of Fame by way of the Veterans Committee in the not-too-distant future.
Darryl: D.K., I would hope that voters are considering positional scarcity in their selections, and I think that they have been, even historically. Ray Schalk, albeit a veterans committee selection in 1955, was voted in based overwhelmingly on his defensive play as a catcher. (Schalk has the dubious distinction of having an on-base percentage higher than his slugging percentage, .340 to .316, and although I'm too lazy to look it up, I suspect that Schalk's 11 home runs are the fewest hit by a position player in the Hall of Fame. But I digress. More relevant to our discussion here, shortstops Rabbit
Maranville and Ozzie Smith were both voted in by the writers, and both are much better known for their defensive abilities rather than their offensive ones; their respective elections may indicate the evolution of thinking: Maranville was elected on his final ballot in 1954 while Ozzie was a first-ballot inductee in 2002. I swear I've read somewhere recently that if Alan Trammell could have done backflips, he'd already be in the Hall. So, I'm saying it again.
As for Lou Whitaker, I noted his unfair one-and-done in my very first column for the site. He and Bobby Grich are two second basemen who deserve a strong second look. And if there is any justice in a future Expansion Era Committee, both Trammell and Whitaker will be elected in the same year.
Chairman: I want to vote for Alan, but in this ballot I have to say no. I hope he gets a real fair look from the Veterans Committee.
D.K.: Tied for 15th with Don Mattingly - and like Mattingly his HOF fate will soon be decided by the Veterans Committee. For Trammel and Mattingly to be elected in the future it will take a more enlightened group of voters than the vets committee that just rejected Minoso, Hodges, Oliva, Kaat, Wills and Allen last week.
Darryl: No. Alan Trammell is a SABR darling who does not have the Hall of Fame aura. I think he belongs in the Hall, but this is triage time--we need to clear the ballot by electing viable candidates. I hate to put so callously, but you don't water a dying flower. Trammell's viability on this ballot is as healthy as an orchid in the middle of the Sahara. May the Expansion Era Committee who gets to vote him in do so swiftly and mercifully, but the writers ain't gonna do it. Damn.
The Sammy Sosa Debate: 2015
Dec 29, 2014
Published in
Hall of Fame Debates
This is the twenty-second 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 think I want to coin a verb: Palmeiro. As in Sammy Sosa is in his third year of eligibility slumping to only 7.5% last year who is about to be “Palmeiroed” off of the ballot despite having great numbers though associated with a syringe. How about another verb: Sosa. As in my bilingual friend travelled to Mexico but was “Sosaing” so that he could pretend not understand Spanish. Seriously, I remember his complete lack of English recall on Congress more than any of the 600 plus Home Runs he hit.
D.K.: With his charging out to the field to start games at Wrigley field and his throwing cups of water in his face he was a more entertaining version of Mark McGwire and he probably share McGwire's fate of being ignored by writers.
His 609 career home runs is a HOF-like number, but at what point did he start using PEDs and how much did they help his career. Sammy pleads “No intende Ingles” on that one.
Darryl: Sammy Sosa is the only man in major-league history to hit 60 or more home runs in a season three times, and yet he never led his league in home runs in those seasons. That seems to sum up Sosa's career: Splashy highlights that ultimately appear less consequential than they seemed initially. Chairman and DK, you think of Sosa and think of "I no speaka da Ingles." When I think of Sosa, I think of him striking out with runners on base early in a Cubs game, trying to knock a three-run homer, and then hitting a solo homer later in the game, when it is inconsequential, with Sosa hopping out of the batter's box in his self-aggrandizing manner, having now hit a home run that makes his individual numbers look good but doesn't help his team. It is that as much as the PEDs allegations that makes Sosa's numbers look cheap.
Chairman: Perfect synopsis Darryl. Sammy Sosa is the “Big Empty”. His hollow stats are matched by that hollow character. There were a few within the media who were saying for years that Sosa was a great guy when the lights were on, but an asshole once the lights were off. I know we talked about character not mattering, but I always remember what was reported by multiple sources upon Sosa’s demise in Chicago. He was always playing his stereo loud in the clubhouse to the point where it dominated the audio under Wrigley. On that final day as a Cub when he bailed early (later denying yet proven to do so by videotape) a Cubs player took a baseball bat to that stereo. As we know, Sammy was an Oriole the year after.
This is where I feel character does matter on a ledger. Sammy was not a team guy and was an individual statistical slut. I will never question his talent, but his ethics. Give me a Bonds or a Sheffield over this guy any day. You will never have to guess where you stand.
D.K.: It’s been almost a decade since the public watched that news clip of
Sammy Sosa feigning that he didn’t understand questions directed at him by
congressmen back in March 2005.
One thing it showed was that Sosa could be dishonest when it suited his purposes - and that almost certainly extended to PED use over a prolonged period of time to give him an unfair advantage over his contemporaries.
I still applauded his accomplishments when he was already under suspicion and in one instance I even forgave him temporarily and rejoiced when I saw him hit his 600th home run live - courtesy of ESPN. This was long after his congressional fiasco. He still had that winning personality that made you want to be in his corner.
Some journalists have speculated that one day there will be a relenting on the part of the writers who withhold votes from Sosa and the rest of the PED crowd. The key word in that sentence is “Speculated or its root Speculation”. This may occur decades from now, but it’s not going to help Sosa in 2015 and he might even fail to snare 5% of the vote causing him to slide right off the ballot. In that event, as long as Sosa is not disqualified and banned by MLB his career could be similar to another Chicago legend, Billy Pierce. The great little lefty only lasted a couple of years before the writers before not getting enough votes to stay on the ballot. This didn’t exclude him, however from future Veterans Committee consideration and he was a final ten candidate at the Golden Era election earlier this month. Decades from now, Sosa may be in the same situation with his candidacy brought back from the dead and a new generation of writers, historians and even players that make up a future Veterans Committee in a more forgiving mood than the voting writers of present-day America. That will be his only remaining chance at Cooperstown should he fail to get 5% of the votes a few weeks from now.
Darryl: I remember when Sosa "docked a day's pay" for skipping work, and the penalty amounted to something like $80,000. That is more than most of us make in year. Sammy Sosa has become the poster boy for something that the anti-PEDs crusaders are trying to get at, and that is this: Is it possible for a player to put up Hall of Fame numbers but not be a Hall of Famer? The PEDs issue makes that easy because you can say the numbers are artificially inflated through cheating (although near-comparable numbers were put up by players thought to be clean, so there is more it than that), and I realize that if you lean too heavily on the "sportsmanship" and "integrity" aspects of the eligibility statement that you start to veer into "Hall of Morality" territory, but the more I write about Sosa, the harder it is to claim that he is a Hall-worthy player.
Chairman: I am voting no. Can someone translate that to Sammy please?
D.K.: He was charismatic and entertaining, but for many of the same reasons I couldn’t vote for McGwire I can’t vote for Sosa. - NO.
Darryl: No.
The John Smoltz Debate: 2015
Dec 29, 2014
Published in
Hall of Fame Debates
This is the twenty-first 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 know that I keep equating last year’s Maddux/Glavine & Thomas to this year’s Randy/Pedro & Smoltz but it seems so much of a given that two of them are going in (Randy Johnson & Pedro Martinez) and John Smoltz, while great is arguably a level below, and not necessarily a first ballot. I think the biggest comparison has to be Dennis Eckersley who got in on the first ballot, and had successful stints both as a starter and a reliever and they have similar bWARs (Eckersley 62.5 – Smoltz 66.5) but for John to replicate Eck’s 83.2% in his first year is so much harder as the man with the feathered coif did not have this kind of competition.
For the record, I far prefer the career of Smoltz and do feel his a Hall of Fame inductee; I just don’t know whether he would get in right away like Eckersley.
D.K.: I’d have to think that Smoltz is so highly respected by his peers and team beat writers that at worst John Smoltz will be a near-miss for election this year with over 2/3 of the writers casting their ballots for him and he might even get elected in his first year of eligibility.
While his victory total of about 220 wins is not that staggering, Smoltz struck out more than 3,000 batters and helped anchor an Atlanta Braves pitching rotation that was vital towards the team’s drive to a record-setting 14 straight division championships. He also made an unselfish switch to the bullpen for a few seasons where he notched more than 150 Saves.
Outstanding qualifications! The only thing that may prevent his election next month is that some writers hold first year eligible candidates to a higher standard than others.
Darryl: John Smoltz and Dennis Eckersley are the only pitchers in major league history to combine 150 wins and 150 saves, while Smoltz is the only one to combine 200 wins and 150 saves, although Eckersley finished three wins shy of 200 and he was a full-time reliever for 12 seasons to Smoltz's three, and Smoltz's period as a closer coincided with higher save totals in the majors as managers brought in the closer in any save situation. In 2011, I labeled Smoltz a "no-brainer" Hall of Famer who will most likely go in on the first ballot.
Frankly, and even though I called him another "no-brainer," I wasn't sure that Tom Glavine was going to be elected last year on his first try. He was, and maybe it was the vestige of the 300-game winner, which Smoltz does not enjoy, and we'll see whether Smoltz's detour into relief pitching will help or hurt him. But I also suspect that part of Glavine's appeal was that he was a pitcher in the Steroids Era, a clean player, and a part of so many winning Braves' teams. Smoltz has that too, and something else besides—he may benefit from a "complete the set" mentality that wants to put him in with Glavine and Greg Maddux with no delays.
Chairman: So we all see Smoltz as a Hall of Fame entry, and we all think he will get into the Hall immediately. Yet, here I am putting that word in italics. Could he somehow slip to next year? For the longest time I thought that it was possible and I thought of all the reasons why it could happen, so much to the point where I convinced myself they would make him wait a year.
Today I was also thinking about how Smoltz has now become a broadcaster, basically crossing over to media. I am not saying that he is politicking for votes, but he is in a position where he crossed over somewhat to “part of us” mentality that the writers might like. What am I saying here? I am saying that the imaginary fence I had him on, or thought he might be on, I am convinced what side he will fall; and I am totally cool with that, and yes I mean that as a first ballot induction.
D.K: I think it’s going to be close, but Smoltz might come up a little short this year. He won 20 games only once and people tend to generalize that he “unselfishly went to the bullpen for a few years to help his team”. Actually he had an injury that caused him to miss the entire 2000 season. Then when he had recuperated enough he rejoined the team in 2001 and went to the bullpen to build up arm strength to help his team”. He worked out of the pen so well manager Bobby Cox kept him there, because he’s discovered a gem in Smoltz’s work as a Closer. The move became semi-permanent and he didn’t return to starting until 2005. That cost him a significant number of career wins, but it also made him an attractive candidate as a rare pitcher who could excel both out of the rotation and out of the bullpen.
213 wins, 154 Saves and 3,084 Saves mark Smoltz as one of the toughest pitchers to face of his era but he’ll be competing against 303 game winner and #2 all-time in strikeouts in Randy Johnson who also had a higher winning percentage than Smoltz, Pedro Martinez another 3,000 strikeouts pitcher with the second highest winning percentage of any 200 game winner, plus holdover Curt Schilling whose numbers are very similar to Smoltz’s in wins, win percentage and strikeouts. Smoltz will be a Hall of Famer soon, although perhaps not this year.
Darryl: I don't know that the move to broadcasting will be that big of a factor, although as I watch him on MLB Network that does cross my mind occasionally. I think the bigger factor is that he is the third of the Braves' starting-pitcher trio, and with both Maddux and Glavine being voted it last year, it may be a "complete the set" mentality to vote for him this year, as I mentioned previously. Given the ballot logjam, I would not mind seeing him not be voted in this year, but I would hate to see a poor showing. And although I've stated repeatedly that I don't go for the contingency approach that "Player A may be a Hall of Famer, but Player B needs to go in first," it would rankle me if Smoltz gets elected this year while Curt Schilling does not.
Chairman: Easy one for me here. A definite yes.
D.K.: I ranked him at #8. - YES.
Darryl: No. Not this year. I think he is a Hall of Famer, and I think that he will get a lot of support. However, I do not think he is "inner circle" enough to leapfrog over candidates just as deserving as he is who have been on the ballot previously. Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez, yes. John Smoltz, no. Not this year.