2013 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot

2013 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot

Well, the 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballots have been announced, and the amount of talent on this year's ballot is staggering--so staggering that it is fair to say that no single ballot has been this impressive in many, many years.

Featured in this years ballot for the first time are Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza and Craig Biggio, all of whom are clear Hall of Famers.  

Curt Schilling won Game 5 of the 1993 World Series for the Phillies, hurling a 2-0 shutout v the Blue Jays.  He later won World Championships with the AZ Diamondbacks and the Boston Red Sox. He had a dominant fastball.

The famous "bloody sock" of Curt Schilling during the Red Sox postseason run to  "reverse the curse".

Barry Bonds holds the single seaon HR record with 73 HR, as well as the Career HR Record, having hit more HR than Henry Aaron or Babe Ruth.  He drew more than 200 walks in a season.  He is the greatest player every to play baseball.

Roger Clemens and his lovely wife Debbie

Left over from prior years ballots are Jack Morris, Larry Walker, Alan Trammell, Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez, and others who also deserve election to the Hall of Fame.

In short, there are more than ten clear choices on this years ballot, all of whom not only deserve election to the Hall of Fame, but who demonstrably and empirically deserve election based on the JAWs system worked out on Baseball-Reference.com, which compares peak and career WAR for a player with the average peak and career WAR for a comparably player at that position already in the Hall of Fame.

By this standard, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza and Curt Schilling are by far the clearest admits to the Hall of Fame.  Their peak and career WARs are far higher than the comparable peak and career WARs of current average HOFs already enshrined, and in the cases of Bonds & Clemens, nearly twice as high.  

With this in mind, this would be my Hall of Fame Ballot, in order of deservingness:

1)  Barry "Home Run King" Bonds

2)  Roger "Cy Young" Clemens

3)  Jeff "Killer B" Bagwell

4)  Mike "Norristown" Piazza

5)  Curt "Bloody Sock" Schilling

6)  Alan "Trammell & Whitaker" Trammell

7)  Larry "Colorado Kid" Walker

8)  Tim "Rock" Raines

9)  Craig "Killer B" Biggio

10 Jack "Mr. Tiger" Morris

A quick note on Jack Morris.  He does not deserve enshrinement under the JAWs system; however, he is in his last year on the active ballot, he is over 60% on last years ballot, and he has done 100% of the things you should do to get into the HOF, including winning a lot of games, winning the most games during the 1980s, leading his team to a championship, leading another team to a championship, being great in the postseason, being a dominant pitcher at his peak, and in the end, being a symbol of the dominant Tiger team of 1984.  

Much as my stathead mind wants to vote for Edgar Martinez, the fact is that Edgar Martinez was a DH, never won anything, and without the absurd DH rule, probably wouldn't have gotten enough bats to have a career.  Morever, his WAR numbers are biased upwards by his not having had to play defense;  his negative defensive WARs would have sagged him down at least minus one-two each and every year, so he's not the HOFer you think he is.  

Turning to the Veterans Ballot, regardless of who's listed on the ballot, there are four names I think should go into the HOF:

1) Marvin Miller

2) Pete Rose

3) Shoeless Joe Jackson

4) Eddie Cicotte

The time to lift the ban on betting, and give both Rose and the Black Sox a pass, has come.  And why is baseball blackballing the single most important figure in modern baseball?  

Of the actual veterans ballot figures, I suppose I'd vote for Big Bill Dahlen and Wes Ferrell.  Bucky Walters was really, really good, too.  Tony Mullane played in the 19th century, and he threw underhanded, so I'm not sure he belongs.  Marty Marion actually doesn't belong at all, even though he was a great shortstop, he didn't hit at all.  If we put him in, we may as well put Larry Bowa in--a key defensive player on a very good to dominant team.  

Finally, they still have not enshrined enough Negro Leagues players, even though they've shut the door on this.  Until as many players from the Negro Leagues from the 1920s, 30s and 40s are in the HOF as are in the HOF from white baseball, this will not be fully redressed.  

One final note:  The Hall of Fame voting should be revised a bit to allow Hall of Fame election based on 50% of the ballots, instead of the current 75%.  Not that many candidates receive 75%, but not that many attain even 50%, so this won't elect that many more.  Second, there are, due to expansion, almost twice as many qualified candidates as before, and this year shows this.  Biggio and Bagwell played for the Astros, Walker for the Rockies, and the effects of expansion on the quality and quantity of HOF players will cause a massive backup in the HOF unless the HOF changes its voting rules.  

Quite honestly, sportswriters have a tough time agreeing on anything with 75% unanimity.  

List of things sportswriters will agree upon with 75% of the vote:

1)  People still read newspapers and think they matter.

2)  Beer is a main food group.

3)  The right to free press box seating for all print sportwriters is enshrined in the United States Constitution in the first amendment.

4)  All ballplayers are overpaid.

5)  "If I just had five minutes on SportsCenter, I could show them I'm just as good as Peter Gammons".

6)  The New York Yankees Rule (if you're from New York).

7)  The New York Yankees Suck (if you're not from New York).

8)  Babe Ruth was the greatest player ever, even though he drank, womanized, gambled, was foulmouthed, ate too much, talked back to his managers, always showed up out of shape every spring, and gave the same kind of speeches about practice as Allen Iverson did.    

9)  Using Steroids is a far worse crime than throwing spitballs, using emory balls, loading up the ball, throwing mudballs, vaseline balls or any kind of cheating by pitchers, as was done by Hall of Famers Gaylord Perry, Don Drysdale, Jim Bunning, et al.  

10)  Newspapers are the only true source of sports information in the world.