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steinthal
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steinthal
Congratulations to Goose Gossage for his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the voting members Baseball Writers of America (BBWAA). It took over 75% of these voters (85.8%) to give Goose the well deserved nod. Jim Rice came just 16 votes shy this year for a 72.2% up from an 63.5% last year and 64.8% in 2006. The article on the Hall of Fame’s website states:
Jim Rice, the former star of 16 seasons, all with the Red Sox, barely missed by 16 votes as he fell 2.8 percent (72.2) below the necessary 75 percent to gain admission to the hallowed red-brick Hall on Main Street in Cooperstown. Voting trends suggest he could very well break through next year which will be his 15th and final year on the ballot.
So my question is this… What happened between last year and this year to justify Rice’s 8.7% increase and will he be 2.8% better next year? In the past 24 hours I’ve come across several articles (here and here for a couple) which are discussing whether he’ll get in next year, his 15th and final year on the ballot. In the last year, did he play any more games? Hit any more home runs? Drive in any more runs? Catch any more balls? Throw out any more runners? Rice retired almost 20 years ago (1989). His record was cemented then. It has not changed. Yet, every year he gets a different vote tally, and it appears to be trending up.
Clearly, some part of the voting members of the BBWAA are changing their votes each year. Are there any reasonable reasons to do so? Well, I can actually think of a few:
1. Each year a voter can only vote for 10 players. So, if in a certain year there are 10 better players eligible in their mind, they could not vote for Jim Rice in that year. That works for me, and I can see it happening once in a while when there is a very strong ballot. However, I can’t see how this is driving the growth in Rice’s vote percentage. If this were the driver of the change of voting, Rice’s vote tally would dip and spike.
2. The voting community does change each year. Some writers retire. Others are recognized as being a baseball writer for the 10 years necessary to be a voting member by the BBWAA. So, the group of voters year-to-year is different. However, this one also can’t explain the growth. Do you believe that the Rice detractors are retiring, and the Rice protractors are now becoming eligible? I think not…
3. There is new news regarding the player and their career. Baseball people are always figuring out new statistics on regarding the game we love. So, it could be that people realize some new statistic is a better measure of players careers, and when applying it to Jim Rice, they realize that he compares favorably to Babe Ruth. Okay, I’m clearly stretching to even suggest this… I can barely believe I wrote this!
Okay, so what is happening? We’ll if you are a voting member, post an answer, I’d love to know.
My guess? Some writers look at first year candidates and only vote for clearly obvious “first ballot Hall of Famers” like Roger Clemens, oh, I mean like Roger Clemens was last month, and like Cal Ripkin and Tony Gwynn were and Rickey Henderson likely is… These writers then vote for the not so obvious Hall of Famers when they spend more time and consider the player over subsequent years. I’m postulating that for these writers, the 5 years between the end of the player’s career and their name appearing on the ballot was not enough time. And as the years go by and someone is on the ballot and is getting more votes, these voters finally take a look and say, “alright, I’ll do it and I’ll vote for him…”.
Is that rational? I can’t see how it is. Help, please answer and let me know what you think!
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steinthal
I’ve started a personal blog. What am I going to do with it? Well, anything that has nothing to do with work that I think it is interesting and or fun.
So, it is January and my NY Mets are keeping me depressed for their late season collapse. They have done nothing this offseason to rekindle my faith. Then I come across this awesome video on MetsBlog.com….
Enjoy
