2005 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot (1 Viewer)

[Phil L]

Mattingly was great for a while but I don't think he's even close to HOF caliber.

My thought for players in the HOF is when in doubt, leave 'em out. The HOF should be for GREAT players, not just very good ones.

 

[Patrick_S]

Well here are the guys that made it:

Wade Boggs
Ryne Sandberg

 

[Joseph S]

Rice, Shoeless Joe, and Rose

 

[Marvin]

Did Rice ever bet on games? Or are you saying he threw them?

 

[Joseph S]

I'm saying they're the top 3 that should go in.

 

[ZacharyTait]

Agreed here too. If I could vote, I would vote for Bonds. Even though I don't like him as a person, what he has done is nothing like I've ever seen. He's been the best player in baseball the last 5 years.

As for today's announcement, congrats to Ryno and Bog Man for making it. I just hope one day Lou and Alan can make it in. Is there going to be anyone besides Sparky that's going to make it from the 1984 World Champion Detroit Tigers? I think Alan, Lou, Jack, and Kirk deserve to be in.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Wasn't Boggs the womanizer on the road? *chuckle*

 

[Patrick_S]

Not so much a womanizer in the sense that he had a woman in every town but rather one in the sense that he had a girl friend that followed him around from town to town.

I won't write the whole story but when I work at a TV station in town we happened to stumble across the affair long before it became public knowledge. To our credit we didn't break the story because we just felt it wasn't a story in the first place.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Jack Morris has the best career of any of them and (at least for me) probably deserves more consideration than he is getting. He was the very best big game pitcher of that era. It won’t help him that he was not very helpful to the sportswriters when he was a player. Alan Trammel probably had the best year of anyone on that team—but he probably won’t make the cut. Sweet Lou does not have good enough stats overall to be considered—and Kirk’s career (at his peak) was way too short.

BTW, I probably watched or listened to 90% of the Tigers games that season.

 

[Brian Perry]

I don't think Whitaker can get in (unless by write-in, which is virtually impossible). Last year he failed to get enough votes to stay on the ballot, which is kind of odd considering his stats aren't that much different than Sandberg's (or Trammel's for that matter).

 

[Jan H]

At least the Hall is more selective than other HOFs. 2 a year sounds about right. But the question of 'years of eligibility' is a valid one. If a guy gets in in the 12th year of his eligibility, doesn't that somehow diminish his accomplishments? If he wasn't deserving in his 1st year, why does he belong however many years later?

 

[Patrick_S]

It doesn’t diminish the player’s accomplishment but what it does diminish is the credibility of the writers who are doing the voting.

For some reason the writers have created a special significance to being a First ballot inductee. It’s kind of humorous when you consider that once a player is in the Hall no mention on the plaques is made of how many ballots it took them to get in.

Also the First ballot inductees aren’t in a special wing. They’re grouped with all the rest. It’s a childish game that the writers play and in the end it defies logic.

 

[Joseph S]

Hint: "Road"

Think about it for a minute in honor of the Chicken Man.

 

[Brian Perry]

Let's see...

Sandberg Whitaker
Hits 2386 2369
Avg. .285 .276
HR 282 244
OBP .344 .363
SLG .452 .426

OBP + SLG (considered by many to be the most important offensive stat) is .796 for Sandberg and .789 for Whitaker.

Defensively Sandberg has the better fielding % but the difference between Ryno and Lou is only about 3 errors per year. Locally (and perhaps nationally), the knock on Sandberg was that he never dived for a ball. However, his range factor is equal to or superior than Whitaker's and he had 9 gold gloves compared to Lou's 3.

I agree that the end result is correct (Sandberg in, Whitaker out), but it's interesting how the writers have basically demarcated a line between the two of them.

 

[Jan H]

Wow, good points, Brian. Maybe it's because Sandberg was on the WGN Superstation, and we got to watch Harry Carey get drunk and get paid for it. Sandberg won the MVP, too. But, you're right, all things being equal, there's little to choose between them.

 

[Patrick_S]

I read the same article by that moron Sox fan (whose usual column has to do with Hunting and Fishing reports) and it was laughable. His whole justification for keeping Sandberg out of the Hall was he didn't dirty his uniform enough. Good grief, but what do you expect from a Sox fan?

 

[Brian Perry]

I'd hardly call OBP + SLG cherry picking.

Sandberg does have the edge in stolen bases (plus he had 19 triples one year, an astounding total for someone playing at Wrigley) but also had many more strikeouts than Lou.

I have no idea how many pitches per at-bat each player had (the latest fashionable stat).

I will readily concede the defensive argument, but offensively I think they're very close. And that's not a knock on Sandberg...in fact, you could argue he had comparable numbers to Joe Morgan.

 

[Bryan Ri]

I'm in the boat that thinks Mattingly should be in the Hall of Fame.

When you look at other players that have made it in (i.e. Pukett) Mattingly definately deserves his place in the Hall.

9 Gold Gloves, an MVP, a Batting Title, lifetime average above .300, over 2,000 hits, and home run records that still stand today.

Maybe just as important, the guy is a class act.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I think the difference between these two players is that Puckett was still playing good and was essentially forced to retire while Mattingly simply faded away. Many of the voters probably projected Puckett's stats out or simply voted on him almost as though he had died while playing. They were similar players while at their peak, but most think that Puckett had a longer peak.

I think another problem with Mattingly as well as many of the other players who are in limbo right now is that they ended their careers with dramatic downturns in production. In the end, people tend to remember how they looked at the end of their career and not at their peak. I think this is the primary reason that it took Sandberg 3 trys to get in.

 

[Phil L]

Okay then lets let him and Mike Sweeny in, kick out Cobb, Ruth, Puckett, and others while banning Varitek, Wells, Pedro, and others from the ballot.