deadspin.com/revealed-the-hall-of-fame-voter-who-turned-his-ballot-1496558341

Deadspin convinced a writer to let them cast his HOF vote. Heck of a lot better ballot than the jack wagon who only voted for Morris. Or the 2 morons voting for JT Snow.

Better job than most of the writers.

Too bad Dan LeBatard will lose his vote over this. He should have filled it out on his show during Si or No.

sports writers are eviscerating him. Screw em. Maybe it was seeking attention but I truly don't think that was his main point. I believe his words.

http://deadspin.com/the-angry-things-writers-are-saying-about-our-hall-of-f-1497810100

I don't like Lebatard.

But back him on this.

The fact that Le Betard even had a vote is a joke. He even admitted he doesn't cover baseball.

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LeBatardShow: Max penalty: BBWAA just lifetime banned me from Hall of Fame vote and won't allow me to attend a game as credentialed media for a year

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Wow. I hate this term but the butt hurt is strong with the bbwaa

[This message has been edited by Bunk Moreland (edited 1/9/2014 2:13p).]

If deadspin voters choose ridiculous players to vote for, I would agree that he would have made a mockery of the system. But, they turned in a reasonable ballot. I see no problem with what he did.

I see much more of a mockery being made by other voters, like Ken Gurnick for one.

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I see much more of a mockery being made by other voters, like Ken Gurnick for one.

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Maybe. He took the hardline PED stance, which, you know, there are a lot of people that pop up with similar views here and there.

Gurnick left fewer guys off that I'd have voted for than Deadspin voted for that I would not have voted for, and I'm not even counting Bonds and Clemens.

Jack Morris was an interesting one, and I think its partially been forgotten he's been teetering on the edge of induction for several years.

And of course, Gurnick gave up his vote.

They did it for a very good reason and it was very effective. Unfortunately, it seems like the BBWAA is too out of touch or proud to change the voting process.

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They did it for a very good reason and it was very effective. Unfortunately, it seems like the BBWAA is too out of touch or proud to change the voting process.

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I disagree with Deadspin on the 75% threshold.

I'd also tell Deadspin "no ****" we've seen a lot of debate about drugs. If baseball has ever seen a controversy, its about drugs.

It allows a minority to keep a guy out, but I think that that is outweighed by keeping the Hall of Fame a difficult plateau for players. Exclusivity is a good thing for a Hall of Fame, if you ask me.

Same theory our Forefathers had in trying to make it hard for Congress to get a lot of things passed, although I don't mean to get political.

[This message has been edited by TXAggie2011 (edited 1/9/2014 3:02p).]

The problem isn't the 75%, it is who is voting.

Deadspin had a pretty solid ballot. I get the debate on the roid side and if it was me would have left a few of those guys off, but can't argue the rest of the guys.

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The first was to draw attention to how ridiculous the Hall of Fame elections have become. With an electorate comprising a subset of a subset of a subset of the baseball press and a 75 percent threshold for entry into the Hall, the process has been hijacked by cranks, attention-seeking trolls, and the merely perplexed—people who exercise power out of proportion to their numbers due to the perverse structure of the voting.

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I'm referring to that part of Deadspin's complaints.

We can disagree on the level of exclusivity that the HOF should have. If they voted in on average 3 players every year, I think that would be fine. But I can understand someone wanting it to be more exclusive.

I can see how you can make an argument that deadspin should have made the fan vote cut off at 75% instead of 50%. I don't have a problem with that argument, but I feel there are plenty of worthy names on the ballot this year and I am okay with what they did. We can disagree.

But ultimately, it was a reasonable ballot. A number of other voters voted similar ballots in number of players voted and the players they picked.


On the other hand, arbitrarily defining a steroid era to vote for one player and not another makes no logical sense. There were steroids in the game when Morris played.

There was a good article on Fangraphs a few weeks ago about how silly exclusive the HoF is now, letting in the same number of players as they used to when you have double the number of players playing.

I just realized what I said makes 0 sense. Nevermind.

[This message has been edited by Freedom aint free (edited 1/9/2014 4:09p).]

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I just realized what I said makes 0 sense. Nevermind.

[This message has been edited by Freedom aint free (edited 1/9/2014 4:09p).]

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That just about qualifies you to be in the BBWAA. Congrats, vote for Mussina next year.

I really like how they keep using "sanctimonious" when referring to him. Odds are, some of the players they hold as the most worthy in the hall of fame used performance enhancing drugs at some point. La Batard doesn't seem to think he's morally superior. He thinks the system is broken, like others have admitted, and gave his vote to the people. And from what I've seen, most of the angry people are sportswriters, who think that sports knowledge is only obtainable by covering sports for a career. And the best point, his ballot ended up being better than most sportswriter's ballots anyways.

John Lopez voted for Jim DeShaies just so he could write column about him. He still has a vote.

The BBWAA continues to show what a joke it is.

Le Batard is banned for a reasonable ballot. This guy keeps a vote:

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Morris Nomo Raines Trammell

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Part of the angst is that he gave his vote to Deadspin, of all websites. I think a lot of sportswriters (if they were honest) would admit they don't hate the gesture as much as they hate Deadspin.

Imagine their angst if the guys from FJM had filled it out.

Ken Tremendous, HOF voter. I would pay good money to have that happen and read about it afterwards.

He didn't really "give" it to anyone as long as he reviewed and approved of the selections, which he did. From my view, this isn't much different than a guy consulting others as he develops his opinion about who to vote for. It was just a more bold process of doing so, but it still produced a very reasonable ballot - and far more reasonable than many other ballots.

I do this all the time at work. My team may do the work, but I'm the one that reviews and approves it - so in the end, I still own it and take full responsibility for it. It's not "given" or "passed off" to anyone.

[This message has been edited by DannyDuberstein (edited 1/11/2014 9:14a).]

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There was a good article on Fangraphs a few weeks ago about how silly exclusive the HoF is now, letting in the same number of players as they used to when you have double the number of players playing.

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This just depends on what you want to consider as the proper criteria. Should the top 5% of the players get in or should just the top 5 players get in? (note: I just pulled these numbers out of my ace to illustrate my point)

If you believe it should just be the top 5 players, then the number of teams doesn't matter. The top 5 players would be the top 5 players no matter if there were 600 players or 1200 other players on rosters.

By making the number of people that get in a percentage game, then you actually have to lower the standard every time there is an expansion in order to reach the "right" percentage. In this scenario, you're also allowing the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th best players to get in - people that wouldn't have been "good enough" to get in if they happened to play 30 years ago instead of today but are now suddenly HOF worthy just because they are surrounded by more "less talented" players.

IMO, the top 5 players should only get in to keep the level of excellence without lowering the standards. Assuming the players in the MLB are always the best baseball players in the world, then it wouldn't have mattered if they added 3000 players during those times since they had already had the top 600 players and every person they added would be (theoretically) less talented than the ones already on rosters (i.e. the 601st most talented person, 602nd most talented person, etc, etc). Therefore, the top 5 would remain the same top 5 regardless of league size and the level of excellence needed to be enshrined would not be getting watered down just bc the league insists on continually watering down the rosters by more and more expansion.