ORAggieFan said:

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Mr.Ackar07 said:

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100% for Rivera

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Great for him, but why him and not Junior....

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The old sportswriters who believed that nobody should be unanimous are dead and gone. The new age voters are in.

Glad to see Mussina in.

Closest I ever came to seeing a perfect game in person was a Mussina one-hitter in Camden Yards. Sandy Alomar with the Indians ruined it with a late single. Great tourist game my dad and I still talk about. The Rockets lost a playoff game that weekend which Dad didn't take well, but we still talk about Orioles-Indians game.

*Writeup of the game if anyone cares: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1997-05-31-1997151003-story.html

spadilly said:

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ORAggieFan said:

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Mr.Ackar07 said:

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100% for Rivera

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Great for him, but why him and not Junior....

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The old sportswriters who believed that nobody should be unanimous are dead and gone. The new age voters are in.

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Randy Johnson, Cal Ripken, and Nolan Ryan also come to mind.

Or Stan Musial or Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle or...

Yeah. You look at individual games and think he must've been a great.

Bonds and Clemens were so good that there has to be a spot for best cheaters in the HOF. It makes a mockery of the pedesterian (in comparison) players allowed in every year now.

birdman said:

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Mike Mussina is the definition of Hall of Very Good to me.

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But you can't induct Stan Musial every year.

I just mean that you have to pick guys from your own time.

Regarding Bonds and Clemens, I'm thinking there may be a group punishing them by making them wait until year 10, but in that last year, they'll flip and it will be enough to get them in

Mr. Nobody said:

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Bonds and Clemens were so good that there has to be a spot for best cheaters in the HOF. It makes a mockery of the pedesterian (in comparison) players allowed in every year now.

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The frustrating thing is that they were both HOF locks before they are suspected to have used PEDs. Fine, don't consider their PED years, then evaluate.

It's ridiculous that Harold Baines is going to be in the greatest sports museum in the world, but Rose, Bonds and Clemens can only get in after buying a ticket.

mathguy86 said:

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Said it before and I will say it again. The last year Bonds and Clemens are eligible is the first year David Ortiz is. He failed a test. And the writers will want to induct him in a bad way. They can't do it and not vote for Bonds and Clemens.

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Agreed. They've inducted guys that most suspect but weren't in the Mitchell Report or tested positive. You can't justify Ortiz while keeping Bonds and Clemens out. If that happens, then it's clear that it's solely a matter of not liking their personality. That Selig is in, who gladly enabled that entire era, but the true greats are left out is absurd.

I'm the same. I get the argument for some, but the more I think about it, the more "Small Hall" I become. This year, if I had to cast a ballot, it would have been Rivera, Bonds, Clemens. I may consider Halladay, but nobody else.

Next year, it would only be Jeter, Bonds, Clemens.

PacifistAg said:

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mathguy86 said:

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Said it before and I will say it again. The last year Bonds and Clemens are eligible is the first year David Ortiz is. He failed a test. And the writers will want to induct him in a bad way. They can't do it and not vote for Bonds and Clemens.

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Agreed. They've inducted guys that most suspect but weren't in the Mitchell Report or tested positive. You can't justify Ortiz while keeping Bonds and Clemens out. If that happens, then it's clear that it's solely a matter of not liking their personality. That Selig is in, who gladly enabled that entire era, but the true greats are left out is absurd.

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I have absolutely no problem keeping a two tool, possible PED using, temper tantrum throwing player out of the HoF.

Harold Baines in the HOF devalues it to the point that what does it really mean? I agree with the post about voters picking the 3 best. Doesn't mean nearly what it did.

PacifistAg said:

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Mr. Nobody said:

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Bonds and Clemens were so good that there has to be a spot for best cheaters in the HOF. It makes a mockery of the pedesterian (in comparison) players allowed in every year now.

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The frustrating thing is that they were both HOF locks before they are suspected to have used PEDs. Fine, don't consider their PED years, then evaluate.

It's ridiculous that Harold Baines is going to be in the greatest sports museum in the world, but Rose, Bonds and Clemens can only get in after buying a ticket.

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My initial thought was you are dead on. Then I thought to myself who I'd want my kids to admire while visiting the HoF. What message does it send that people who cheated and took shortcuts are in with the best of the best. Yes, I agree Bonds and Clemens were HoF caliber without PEDs. But, they chose to cheat and I'm not OK rewarding cheaters.

Ortiz will be interesting and show us if it is about PEDs or about relationships with the media. I couldn't vote him and not Bonds or Clemens.

If compare pitchers from different eras, I like the comparison between Halladay and Whitey Ford.

As for Mussina, 2 things stick out for me. The 83 WAR and the 7 gold gloves. I don't think you can rule somebody out just because they were very good for a long time. Don Sutton's 3500 K's seems HOF worthy to me, but he was rarely a dominant pitcher. The modern comparison to Mussina might be Jack Morris. You might have some idyllic view of Morris, but he had a 3.9 ERA and only 44 WAR. No way was he a better pitcher than Moose.

Yeah, Mussina was top 5-6 in Cy Young voting something like 9-10 times. That is pretty dang impressive. I don't have an issue with him being in.

birdman said:

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Social Media Influencer said:

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birdman said:

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Mike Mussina is the definition of Hall of Very Good to me.

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But you can't induct Stan Musial every year.

I just mean that you have to pick guys from your own time.

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I'm not comparing Mussina to Spahn, Mathewson, Palmer, etc. I don't think Mike Mussina is a Hall of Famer when measured against his contemporaries.

I think the Hall of Fame voters feel obligated to pick the best 3 guys on each year's ballot. If nobody is worthy, nobody gets in that year. The world wouldn't end.

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Totally agree.

When I visited Cooperstown as a child in the 1980's, the new guys would have been Schmidt, Morgan, Bench. The group before that would have been Aaron, Mays; and back a little further, Koufax, Mantle, Williams.

Even as a boy, I still knew every name there - Speaker, Cobb, Hornsby, Ruth, Gehrig. But a man my father's age - he literally saw most of them play, or at least read the box scores every day. A man my grandfather's age - still alive at the time - remembered everything that had ever happened in the modern era. To him, Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron were contemporaries. For us, we might as well be talking about Bible figures.

Anyway, my point is that baseball's history is so multi-generational today that there's nobody alive who can tell us what it was like at the beginning of the modern era, and our frame of reference has to accept that. Nobody can tell me what Walter Johnson or Bob Feller looked like after throwing 18 innings in 4 days, or how the ball jumped off Ruth's bat, or how hard it was to field a grounder using an "oven mitt" for a glove.

I'll shut up for now, but just think of this. If Clayton Kershaw retired today, he'd be a no doubt first ballot hall of famer, with 153 wins. How the game has changed...

PacifistAg said:

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mathguy86 said:

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Said it before and I will say it again. The last year Bonds and Clemens are eligible is the first year David Ortiz is. He failed a test. And the writers will want to induct him in a bad way. They can't do it and not vote for Bonds and Clemens.

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Agreed. They've inducted guys that most suspect but weren't in the Mitchell Report or tested positive. You can't justify Ortiz while keeping Bonds and Clemens out. If that happens, then it's clear that it's solely a matter of not liking their personality. That Selig is in, who gladly enabled that entire era, but the true greats are left out is absurd.

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But then the veteran's committee HAS to put Palmeiro in, right?

No chance in hell Rafa gets in. That finger wag in his Congressional testimony followed by the public revelation of the failed test is a 10 ton brick firmly chained to his neck.

ManRam is also a dead man walking. Two failed tests and "retiring" instead of serving his punishment for the second one. "Took Clomid" would not look good on his plaque.

birdman said:

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Mike Mussina is the definition of Hall of LONGEVITY to me.

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FIFY

Kudos to Mussina for being healthy enough to pitch for so long, and I don't really mind him being in, but Johan Santana had a 5 year run that dwarfs anything Mussina ever did, and Santana last exactly one year on the ballot.

I guess this rant is to say, I'll remember Johan Santana being a dominant pitcher and arguably the BEST left-handed pitcher of his era (even if only for a short time). Mussina...meh.

late to the party here...but which each passing induction class it seems like the Hall of Fame is breaking down into more and more "tiers."

the 1st tier is the all-time greats / the immortals like Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Sandy Koufax, et al.

then the 2nd tier are the players with long stretches of excellence -- 8 to 10-year stretches of greatness. Like Tom Seaver, Willie McCovey, Tony Gwynn,

the 3rd tier are guys that reached major milestones due to longevity and had a shorter stretch of excellence in the 5-year range. Craig Biggio, Don Sutton are good examples.

and the newer 4th tier...guys in the Hall with numerous flaws on their resume --- borderline candidates --- where there is also a strong argument for their exclusion

and to be fair...there are a bunch of Hall of Famers who would seem to fall in-between the 1st & 2nd tier or in-between the 2nd & 3rd tier

5th tier: Harold Baines

Corporal Punishment said:

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5th tier: Harold Baines

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His plaque will be in the Jerry Reinsdorff wing. All by itself.

I have nothing against the guy, but it still floors me that Harold Baines is in the HoF. There was nothing about him that suggested greatness...a solidly above average DH, but the HoF should be more exclusive than that.

I'll be interested to hear his speech, because I'm sure there was a large round of "da fuq?" when he was announced. I read it first here and thought someone was bs-ing.

I don't really agree on using Kershaw as an example here. His win total is irrelevant. Some of his numbers are the best of any pitcher of this generation.

I think there are some weak hall of famers, Kershaw won't be one of them. He's our pedro Martinez or sandy koufax except better than those guys.

Look at his 2013 and 2015 seasons, he only won 16 games in both of them, should have probably been 20-23 wins in each of them and this happens to Kershaw a lot. He'd be on pace for 300 if not for lack of run support and blown leads.

But I don't care about wins, it's an asinine stat. Kershaw can pitch 8 shutout innings and leave with a 3-0 lead, the closer can then come in and give up 3 runs on 5 hits to tie the game up, and then if the dodgers win in the bottom half of the inning the guy with a blown save and a 27.00 era gets the win.

Then he should finish the games. Koufax pitched 105 complete games his last 6 years.