Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, and Iván Rodríguez are in the Hall of Fame!

Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, and Iván ("Pudge") Rodríguez are heading to Cooperstown!!!!

Rodríguez made it (with 4 votes more than the minimum) on the first ballot, becoming the second catcher (the other was Johnny Bench) to do so. It's about damn time that Bagwell and, especially, Raines made it into Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame. They both should have been inducted years ago. Trevor Hoffmann (5 votes short) and Vladimir Guerrero (15 votes short) both cracked 70% of the vote (at least 75% is needed) and should make it next year. Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds made good progress and finally seem on their way. (If not for their extracurricular issues, they would have of course been inner-circle Hall of Famers and made it with exceptionally large vote percentages on the first ballot.) Mike Mussina gained enough votes to crack 50% of the vote and should gain more next year and hopefully make it soon. Edgar Martínez gained a very large number of votes, and he (along with Mike Mussina) are who we now need to get behind so that they get their richly deserved enshrinements into the Hall. Curt Schilling's vote total went in the wrong direction, seemingly because of his controversial tweets, but he richly deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, so hopefully he'll eventually make it as well.

Larry Walker, in his 7th year on the ballot, surpassed 20% of the vote and made some progress, but it looks like he's going to have to wait until some version of the Veterans Committee selects him for the Hall. In my mind, Walker is a Hall of Famer, and a lot of people don't realize just how good he is. Manny Ramírez, who comes with a particularly enormous performance-enhancing-drug (PED) cloud (with two suspensions to his name), cracked 20% of the vote. Voters are clearly softening on this front, as was expected and as I believe is correct, but a rather large difference between Ramírez and players like Bonds and Clemens is that the cloud is much darker for Ramírez, so it will probably take him a long time to get elected. (I suspect he will make it eventually, perhaps from a Veterans Committee.) His statistics on their own obviously merit induction, but Ramírez's relationship with PEDs is very far beyond the border. Jeff Kent, who also belongs in the Hall, continues to get much less support than he deserves. (Fellow middle infielders Bobby Grich, Lou Whitaker, and Alan Trammell can commiserate. Whitaker even fell off the ballot, which is ridiculous.)

Former commissioner Bud Selig and executive John Schuerholz were elected to the Hall of Fame earlier this offseason by a Veterans Committee.

You can find more information on the Hall of Fame tracker.

Baseball-reference.com has a page detailing who will (and others will likely) appear on the 2018 Hall of Fame ballot. Hoffman and Guerrero will surely make it next year. I don't think any of the other holdovers will make it next year, but watch for Martínez, Mussina, Clemens, and Bonds to make further progress. Among the newcomers, Chipper Jones will make it easily, Jim Thome will get a lot of votes (but is unlikely to make it in his first year), Scott Rolen will probably get a lot less support than he deserves (though he may be inducted into the Hall of Fame eventually), Omar Vizquel will get a bunch of votes, and perhaps Johnny Damon and Andruw Jones will get enough votes not to get kicked off the ballot. I suspect Thome will make it in his second or third try, and Vizquel will likely make the Hall eventually as well.

Update (1/19/17): I completely forgot to bring up The Crime Dog, Fred McGriff, whose consistent excellence gets overlooked because of the ridiculous numbers from the PED era. It makes it harder to see how great he was, and I think that he should eventually be enshrined as well. He is getting enough votes to stay on the ballot, but his candidacy isn't really going anyway, so he'll probably eventually be selected by a Veterans Committee. Gary Sheffield is another player with enough support to remain on the ballot but who won't make the Hall any time soon. I am not sure whether he should make it.

New Baseball Hall of Famers

Baseball's new Hall of Famers were announced last night: first-time candidate Ken Griffey Jr. was voted in with the highest percentage ever (99.3%, with 437 of 440 possible votes), and Mike Pizza was elected in his 4th year of eligibility.

Naturally, Piazza should have already been voted in 3 years ago, but such is life. (Other luminaries --- such as Carlton Fisk, Yogi Berra, and many others, also had to wait --- so it's not like that is new, though the back-acne McCarthyist steroid allegations are a different reason than in the past.) Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, Mike Mussina, and Curt Schilling made significant gains. Bagwell got over 70% of the vote and Raines got 69.8%, so I expect that they will both finally be elected next year. It's long past time. Trevor Hoffman also debuted on the ballot this year, and his 67.3% of the vote makes it very likely that he'll get elected in the next couple of years. (There is a good chance for next year, but I am not so sure.) Edgar Martinez made especially large gains, reaching a voting percentage of 43.4%, but he's running out of time. Then we have Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds...

Alan Trammell surpassed 40% of the vote in his last year on the ballot. It was also Mark McGwire's last year on the ballot. Unfortunately, Jim Edmonds didn't get the 5% of the vote needed to stay on the ballot next year; this is a shame, as he deserves a lot more consideration for the Hall than he got.

David Schoenfield discussed the winners and losers in this year's ballot.

Griffey is the first #1 overall draft pick to enter the Hall of Fame. By contrast, Piazza (1,390th pick, 62nd round, 1998) is the lowest ever draft pick to make the Hall. Griffey will presumably be enshrined as a Mariner, and Maybe Piazza will enter the Hall as a Marlin? ;) (I hope it will be the Dodgers, but I suspect it may well end up being the Mets.)

You can take a look at the Hall of Fame vote tracker to see many more details on the voting.

This page details newcomers who are eligible for the Hall of Fame ballot starting in 2017. Notable ballot debuts in 2017 include Vladimir Guerrero, Jorge Posada, Manny Ramirez, and Ivan Rodriguez. Of those, Rodriguez has the best chance of making it next year. No major new pitchers debut on the ballot until 2019, so that gives Mussina and Schilling a got chance to make additional major gains by then. Both of them are massively overqualified for the Hall of Fame.

New 2014 Hall of Famers

The Baseball Hall of Fame announcement has now occurred, and Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Frank Thomas have made it to the Hall! They are richly deserving, and they join the richly deserving trio of managers (Bobby Cox, Tony La Russa, and Joe Torre). Also note the distinctively Braves-themed set of inductees, and it is nice to see Cox, Maddux, and Glavine go in together.

It looks like Biggio didn't quite make it this year (despite estimates based on 'exit polls' that he would be just over the 75% bar). Lame. Incredibly lame. We'll see what the percentages look like once those are out. From the exit polls, I know that at least one person didn't vote for Maddux, which is also incredibly lame.

A couple of hours ago, I wrote the following comments on Buster Olney's most recent article that focuses on the Hall of Fame, performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), etc.

(1) The big increase for Bagwell (and others) from year 1 on the ballot to year 2 presumably includes a significant effect of many people distinguishing between a "first-ballot HOFer" and merely "an HOFer". People can argue about whether there should be such a distinction --- I think it's a reasonable one --- but many writers do seem to vote that way, so that is an important factor when considering subsequent increases in vote percentages. That effect can only occur once.

(2) I am fine with known PED users being in the Hall, but I would like a statement of it (if there is hard evidence) on their plaques. For example, McGwire's case (which would admittedly be more clear cut than most in this respect) could include a sentence "Admitted to using ... in [year he admitted it." That way, these people are in the Hall as part of history, and the uglier part of their history is _also_ being documented. Visitors to the Hall will read this and can judge the player for themselves. The Hall can --- and should --- be used to inform.


Update: As reported in this article, Biggio fell only 0.2% shy of being elected. Given the number of voters, this should imply that he missed by only 1 or 2 votes. I guess he'll get in next year, but (a) ouch and (b) he should already have been elected in his first year of eligibility. After Biggio, it looks like the next highest candidate was Mike Piazza with 62.2% of the vote (though he was projected to be in the high 60s based on an exit poll that had tabulated just over 1/3 of the estimated HOF ballots). Jack Morris was at 61.5% in his 15th and final year on the ballot. I'm glad he didn't make it, as he doesn't deserve to be in the HOF, and his tally presumably went down because the HOF ballot is exceptionally crowded this year. A crowded ballot is a continuing theme of HOF elections that won't go away any time soon.

Update 2: The website above now has the vote totals. It looks like there were 571 ballots in total. Based on that, Biggio missed by 2 votes. Jeff Bagwell, Tom Raines, and many others unfortunately saw their percentages go down (presumably due to the crowded ballot). Rafael Palmeiro failed to achieve the 5% mark to remain on the ballot next year. Sammy Sosa received enough votes to remain on the ballot in 2015. Next year will be Don Mattingly's 15th and final year on the ballot. I believe that his largest vote total was in his 1st year, and his support has been going down since then. He did have a few brilliant years, but injuries curtailed his performance and cut his career very short, and he doesn't deserve to be enshrined in the Hall.

And So the Axe Falls...

The suspensions from the Biogenesis scandal have now been announced. A-Rod has been suspended for the rest of the 2013 season and all of the 2014 season (though he will appeal), and 12 other players received 50-game suspensions. I don't particularly like to blog about PEDs and I tend to avoid it, and I hope that this is finally the beginning of the end of this long-running era in Baseball's history. At the very minimum, it's good to know that consensus player opinion is now massively against such things, and that is a great improvement over what used to be the case.

Writers and Voting for Baseball's Hall of Fame

T. J. Quinn has written a very nice and intelligent article about why he has given up his annual vote for Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame. I approve!

Ryan Braun Wins Appeal of his 50-Game Suspension

Wow. I wasn't expecting Ryan Braun to actually win his appeal of his 50-game suspension for alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs. In practice, it seems all but impossible to challenge such things. Hopefully, his reputation won't be sullied even with this victory, but alas I think (cynically) that the accusation itself will already have a massively detrimental effect that he'll feel for many years. I don't expect that details behind arbitrator Shyam Das's decision will come out any time soon, but I'm certainly interested in finding out about them.

Alex Rodriguez hits 600th Career Homerun

Alex Rodriguez hit his 600th career homerun today.

You know, I actually considered not blogging about this---given the past several years, I just don't care as much about homerun records as I used to. In fact, I am hoping that no Major Leaguer will hit 40 homeruns this year. (Unfortunately, Jose Bautista probably will. But it would be really nice if nobody did it for the first time in a long time.)

On the other hand, if Cliff Lee breaks Bret Saberhagen's record for best single-season K/BB ratio, then I will very eagerly be blogging about that!

Gentlemen, I think we have a loose cannon.

I'm trying to minimize how much I discuss PEDs in this spot (because, frankly, I am sick of it and I would not be surprised to find out about possible use by anybody in professional baseball---there are just more interesting things to discuss), but on occasion I make an exception. It seems like Reds pitcher Bronson Arroyo is showing a mixture of refreshing honesty and some opinions that I find a bit perturbing. I respect the fact that he's speaking his mind---though I think he's going to ultimately get himself derailed if he keeps at it (he's being 'honest to a fault', which also happens to be one of my specialties)---but I really don't like the attitude he's showing. It seems to me that part of what he's saying is that he believes that using the stuff is ok as long as one doesn't get caught. OK, so he's far from the only person who believes that and is distinguishing himself mostly by openly admitting it (and also showing a rather familiar cynicism about what other people think), but to me it's patently obvious that issues about getting caught are not the only problem here.

Anyway, we'll see how this plays out.

Say it ain't so!

Um, apparently Manny has been getting some help to be Manny just a little bit better. Major League Baseball is expected to announce that he is being suspended for 50 games for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. I guess this means that the honeymoon in LA is over? We have him through 2010 based on his current contract (which I admittedly suddenly have an urge to wish didn't exist), so it's really good that we didn't give him the longer-term deal he wanted. You know what else really sucks about this: Juan Pierre is probably going to be playing every day again. Fuck. At least we have a very large cushion that should be able to hold up while he's out of the lineup. I can't say I'm surprised, though I wasn't predicting in advance that he was doing this stuff. Part of the reason that I am not surprised is that it's hard to be surprised by anybody getting caught, and part of the reason is that he was never exactly considered angelic in the first place.

(Tip of the hat to Scott Porter.)

Update: Officially, Manny was apparently caught because of the use of a female fertility drug. (There's more to the story than that, as you can see in the various articles that have appeared in the last couple of days.) I suppose he was just having trouble ovulating?

I was planning not to blog on another steroids scandal, but...

I told myself that I wouldn't blog about the whole A-Roid thing (sorry, but I can't help snickering about the new nickname), but former Major Leaguer Doug Glanville has made an excellent point in his New York Times opinion piece, and I think that is worth bringing up. Namely, the 2003 tests---i.e., the one that A-Rod failed---were agreed legally by the players as a litmus test to try to gauge just how rampant performance-enchancing-drug abuse was in the sport. It was the massive failure (over 100 players) on those tests that led to the testing system currently in place. One of the conditions for those tests was that all results were supposed to be anonymous and without that stipulation that testing would not have taken place. So, while A-Rod gets skewered for being caught (and don't think for a second that he's the last big name who will get similarly skewered---one shouldn't be surprised to see any name!), let's also remember that basic privacy rights associated with anonymous testing are also being breached here. Why is this issue getting lost?

(Tip of the Cap: I found out about Doug Glanville's article from Rob Neyer's blog.)