1) The Baseball HOF has had wildly varying standards for admittance throughout its history, either through the BBWAA voting or the Veteran’s Committee. At times, they have allowed in merely good players, especially those that played on “championship teams” or were fellow teammates of current HOFers, while at other times, they have held players to impossible standards (“Well, he’s not Willie Mays, so he’s not a HOFer.”). This vacillation has established precedent for current voters to apply either set of guidelines (or anything in between) to their own personal ballots. This can also be more pronounced when voters overvalue (positively or negatively) a player’s “ability” or their raw career counting stats.

2) Joe’s point in the article isn’t that “such-and-such player compares favorably to an actual or near HOFer, so he should be in, too”, but instead that two players by who are clearly comparable, by virtually any measure, are instead being viewed practically on opposite ends of the spectrum through the prism of the HOF vote, and that is at least peculiar, if not blatantly unfair.

3) I appreciate the strength of conviction many people have regarding their personal perceptions of players, when used to determine the greatness of their year-to-year and career performances. I just don’t think that virtually any person, operating entirely off of their personal opinions (professional or amateur) and the opinions of those they hold in regard, can accurately assess the relative merits of such a large number of players, both those currently on the ballot and all those who have been on the ballot before, whether inducted or not. Statistics are incredibly helpful to that understanding, but the raw numbers themselves are useless without understanding the context under which they were produced and collected. This is why mathematical computations, carried out primarily on computers, are essential to the level of analysis necessary to make the best informed decisions as to a given player’s candidacy worth. This is not to say that the perception-based opinion has no place in voting methodology, or that only the most computer-intensive statistical analyses are worthwhile for this purpose. But robust methods exist to distill the accomplishments of the player into mathematical forms that provide very effective means of putting them in proper historical perspective, and helping truly understand their Hall of Fame worth.

4) The Pro Footbal HOF does some things very well in their voting process, namely in assembling their voting members and reaching a consensus as to those players who should receive HOF induction. However, their HOF voting has some serious flaws, often not unlike Baseball’s: set number of player inductees, utter discounting (or over-valuing) of the value of certain positions or skill-sets, poor contextual understanding of performance statistics. I’d like to see more consensus building to determine HOF worthiness as soon as players are eligible, rather than waiting 15 years to finally figure it out; this might also make it easier for worthy players to have their cases be championed in front of the assembled body, and gain the proper shot at enshrinement that so many have been denied.

It’s an obvious Expos snub…”

And you just snubbed the best of the lot, Tim Raines. For shame.

It’s an obvious Expos snub. Not only does the team move to D.C. and proceed to totally suck. Not only did a strike eradicate their world series hopes and lead to that inevitable move out of town. Their players can’t even get into Cooperstown.

I think this nonsense would end if guys were on the ballot for one year, and one year only.

Should it really take 15 years to get a guy in? Will there be discoveries about a career, like “Jim Rice played his whole career on two prosthetic limbs?” Wow! That DOES make me really appreciate his career 21 years after he retired!

Think anyone would leave THE GREATS off the ballot if they were only there for one year?

I think character, personality, and proximity count in voting more than writers are willing to admit, since they always fall back on some kind of statistics (of course, arbitrarily, none of the ones they don’t use are to be trusted in this player’s case) to back up their gut feeling. They’d have to sometimes work to see past the first impression, and the initial assumptions seem to need to be overwhelmed by a new argument if the first thought is that the guy isn’t a hall of famer. It’s easier to find reasons to vote for someone you already want in there. You can use the stats to tell you who’s best in whatever category in their era with conditional adjustments, but there ARE other considerations besides these that a voter is allowed to use, and really, even if those leadership, character, etc things weren’t part of it, you can bet people would still consider them as part of someone’s worthiness anyway. I could easily see Belle getting the Dick Allen treatment even if he played three more solid years for the Orioles before going down. There doesn’t have to be consistency so there isn’t. It turns out that Rice’s big fat aura and power was more important in the end than Evans’ glove, temperment, patience, and longevity to voters. Doesn’t mean he was BETTER.

So had Cone won 22 games in 1994 and 20 in 1995, he would’ve had an even 200 for his career, plus four 20-win seasons, which is a lot for his era. He also would likely have gone above 3000 innings, for whatever that’s worth, with around 2750 strikeouts, not to mention the five World Series rings and the perfect game.

I’m not saying this would’ve gotten Cone in, or that wins should necessarily be held in such high esteem, but his case would certainly be better with two more 20-win seasons and the minor milestone of 200 for his career.

Now, had there not been a strike *and* Cone not had that aneurysm in 1996, he’d be a much stronger candidate, but unfortunately that’s the way it goes for many of the members of the “Hall of Very Good.”

Eventually, Yuniesky Betancourt will be in because morons like Dayton Moore kept him employed for enough years.

I recognize that this is controversial. Like I said, I’m a hardass on it. That’s just me.

As for Dwight Evans, I must say that even as a Royals fan, I LOVED watching Evans play. I don’t think he’s a HOF (I’m a hardass, remember) but he was so fun to watch. But then, I have something of a man-crush on cannon-armed RFs. Al Cowens FTW! And Sixto Lezcano, anyone?