Ten Elligible For Veteran's Hall Vote In December (expansion, star, game)

[Grandstander]

• Gil Hodges
• Ron Santo
• Jim Kaat
• Luis Tiant
• Ken Boyer
• Minnie Minoso
• Tony Olivo
• Allie Reynolds
• Buzzie Bavasi
• Charlie Finley


The above are the ten candidates who will be considered for enshrinement in the Hall of Fame by the Veteran's Committee who will be voting next month. It reads like an index of the most popular Hall arguments of the past several decades....Tiant...Santo...Hodges...Kaat, all classic borderline cases with enthusiastic supporters and detractors.

Here are the people who will be doing the voting:

Hall of Famers
Johnny Bench
Whitey Herzog
Eddie Murray
Jim Palmer
Tony Pérez
Frank Robinson
Ryne Sandberg
Ozzie Smith

Executives
Bill Giles
David Glass
Andy MacPhail
Jerry Reinsdorf

Media
Bob Elliott
Tim Kurkjian
Ross Newhan
Tom Verducci

They have changed the structure of the committee, and the eligibility rules around a million times in the last ten years, the way it works now is that candidates are considered in blocs which become elligible every five years. The blocs are:
Pre-Integration (1871–1946)
Golden (1947–1972)
Expansion (1973 and later)

Obviously this year it is the "Golden Era" turn.

I am against the idea of continuing to have a Veteran's Committe at all. My reasoning is that it has been in operation for more than half century now and since they are only reviewing people who have already been rejected by the writers, and rejected by the Vet Committee in the past, the candidate field can only be worse each time. If there were 100 people who merited a second look after writer rejection, and 60 of them have been enshrined already, that would mean the remaining 40 are the lesser candidates.

Since these folks never improve on their careers, and they have already been vetted and denied numerous times, letting them in now can only drag down the Hall's standards.

[Lancet71]

Originally Posted by Grandstander

• Gil Hodges
• Ron Santo
• Jim Kaat
• Luis Tiant
• Ken Boyer
• Minnie Minoso
• Tony Olivo
• Allie Reynolds
• Buzzie Bavasi
• Charlie Finley


The above are the ten candidates who will be considered for enshrinement in the Hall of Fame by the Veteran's Committee who will be voting next month. It reads like an index of the most popular Hall arguments of the past several decades....Tiant...Santo...Hodges...Kaat, all classic borderline cases with enthusiastic supporters and detractors.

Here are the people who will be doing the voting:

Hall of Famers
Johnny Bench
Whitey Herzog
Eddie Murray
Jim Palmer
Tony Pérez
Frank Robinson
Ryne Sandberg
Ozzie Smith

Executives
Bill Giles
David Glass
Andy MacPhail
Jerry Reinsdorf

Media
Bob Elliott
Tim Kurkjian
Ross Newhan
Tom Verducci

They have changed the structure of the committee, and the eligibility rules around a million times in the last ten years, the way it works now is that candidates are considered in blocs which become elligible every five years. The blocs are:
Pre-Integration (1871–1946)
Golden (1947–1972)
Expansion (1973 and later)

Obviously this year it is the "Golden Era" turn.

I am against the idea of continuing to have a Veteran's Committe at all. My reasoning is that it has been in operation for more than half century now and since they are only reviewing people who have already been rejected by the writers, and rejected by the Vet Committee in the past, the candidate field can only be worse each time. If there were 100 people who merited a second look after writer rejection, and 60 of them have been enshrined already, that would mean the remaining 40 are the lesser candidates.

Since these folks never improve on their careers, and they have already been vetted and denied numerous times, letting them in now can only drag down the Hall's standards.

What if the writers who originally voted down a guy did so because he wasn't willing to be interviewed and the fact that he was a borderline guy they shot him down? Maybe he was a drunk after the game and the players understood him better? Maybe personal or family issues. There are lots of factors that could come into play and just like other sports, sometimes a players stats are only half of what they accomplished. Maybe a guy was a great motivator for his teammates. I think the players committee makes sense and giving a guy another chance might be warranted.

[filihok]

Originally Posted by Grandstander

I am against the idea of continuing to have a Veteran's Committe at all. My reasoning is that it has been in operation for more than half century now and since they are only reviewing people who have already been rejected by the writers, and rejected by the Vet Committee in the past, the candidate field can only be worse each time. If there were 100 people who merited a second look after writer rejection, and 60 of them have been enshrined already, that would mean the remaining 40 are the lesser candidates.

Since these folks never improve on their careers, and they have already been vetted and denied numerous times, letting them in now can only drag down the Hall's standards.

I agree, and disagree.

I should first off say that I'm not a big Hall of Fame guy. It's interesting to discuss and argue about, but I really don't care who gets in and who doesn't. That said, I'm more of a Small Hall guy. I'd much rather leave out 10 borderline guys than let 1 in. Leave the hall for the Ruths, Gehrigs, Aarons, Musials, DiMaggios, Cobbs, Mays's, Spahns, Gibsons, and Koufaxs...The world doesn't care if Jim Kaat is in there or not.

But, it's hard to say that inducting guys like Boyer and Santo would drag down the Hall's standards.



WAR's not everything, but Santo and Boyer were certainly better players than many who are already in the hall.

The voters...ahem...aren't perfect, so I don't have a problem with taking a fresh look at a player. But when the guys taking the fresh look are just as flawed as the original guys, it seems pretty pointless.

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by filihok

WAR's not everything, but Santo and Boyer were certainly better players than many who are already in the hall.

.

If we erred in admitting Kelly, Lombardi et al, are we now obligated to duplicate those errors by enshrining others who meet the standards we used in making the orginal misjudgments?

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by Lancet71

What if the writers who originally voted down a guy did so because he wasn't willing to be interviewed and the fact that he was a borderline guy they shot him down? Maybe he was a drunk after the game and the players understood him better? Maybe personal or family issues. There are lots of factors that could come into play and just like other sports, sometimes a players stats are only half of what they accomplished. Maybe a guy was a great motivator for his teammates. I think the players committee makes sense and giving a guy another chance might be warranted.

If they didn't vote for him because he was a drunk, is he now retroactively sober? If he was a great motivator, but the people who saw him play didn't seem to think so at the time, perhaps they had good reasons for that conclusion.

[jtur88]

All of them are good enough to meet the current criteria, and are comparable to other HoFers. But it is too watered down, there are too many HoFers,

If an average of two HoFers are inducted each year, and their average career is 15 years, that would mean there are 30 HoFers playing right now. I'd sure like to know why they're not in the All Star Game, because half the players in the ASG are sure as hell not HoFers.

[Grandstander]

Whether anyone from the current list makes it or not, the structure which they are employing is poorly thought out and should be junked.

The division of retired players into three groups created two groups which are finite, the pre-integration and golden groups contain closed sets of ballplayers from which no new candidates will emerge.

For the 2011 vote, golden age candidate, the committee has identified ten candidates for consideration. The structure places a great deal of pressure upon the voters to admit at least one of them in this year's vote. If they do not induct anyone, five years from now it will be the same candidate field..and why would those rejected candidates in 2011 be any better qualified in 2016? If they induct no one in 2011, it is pronouncing themselves devoid of future utility.

So, let us say that in 2011 the committee decides to tap Ron Santo and Luis Tiant. That subtracts two from their list of the ten which they felt were most qualified, and in 2016 they will be replacing those two with a pair of nominees who were not considered good enough to be among the 2011 ten...say Boog Powell and Maury Wills. In 2016 they take two more, say Ken Boyer and Jim Kaat. Now that list of the top ten in 2011 will have another two new names in 2021, players who in theory were not as good as Powell and Wills.

See where I'm going with this? if the Vets Committee meets often enough, eventually all ten of the folks on the 2011 list will make it, and after that it will be the inductions of folks not deemed good enough to be considered this year.

In short, they have designed a structure which is guaranteed to degrade the standards of the Hall. There has to be an end point and it should be now before the watering down is allowed to continue.

[PDD]

Perhaps when they first came up with the idea of a Hall to recognize great players it should have been call The Hall of Excellence.

Famous is not indicative of excellence so if they are going to keep voting in famous players then it does degrade those who were elected because of excellence.

Yes-No?

[Ghengis]

Tony Oliva's injuries likely prevented him from compiling a body of work large enough for HOF worthy consideration, but for 8 years beginning in 1964 only Brooks Robinson and Carl Yastrzemski had a higher cumulative WAR in the AL. If only Calvin would have padded that right field fence that Tony O played in front of so well...

[square peg]

I don't think the Hall would be diminished at all if Tony was to be elected.