The Hall Voters

U.S.S. Mariner opines on Edgar Martinez falling short of Hall of Fame election. In doing so, the article makes a good point about the voters:

In short, Edgar’s a case that highlights a fundamental disagreement among voters regarding what a HOF player is, and thus what the Hall’s supposed to be. You’ve got those for whom overall career value is key, and then you’ve got those who vote for something more like impact; on how memorable a player was. You’ve got voters who’ll never vote for a designated hitter, two generations after the AL brought the position in. And you’ve got voters who’ll reliably vote for elite closers, a similarly recent development. You’ve got small-hall people who voted against Jeff Bagwell or Larry Walker, and you’ve got people who vote for Omar, Andruw Jones (or Kirby Puckett or Jim Rice) whose overall value would seem to fall short of the voters’ own standards. At the end of the day, the group favoring Edgar and Edgar-like players is winning, and Edgar will be enshrined next year. If you can get past your anger at how Edgar’s been overlooked, it’s actually a really interesting dynamic to watch play out.

3: That dynamic doesn’t map perfectly to the age of the voters, but the Venn diagram is pretty close. The Hall’s recognized that this sort of thing might happen, hence the various Veteran’s Committees that go through and elect some other worthies that the writers may have overlooked. In general – and this is something that’s been discussed in more detail and better style by other writers – the Vets have fundamentally different standards, and thus have elected far more “marginal” cases.

My belief is that the age problem was always there, and part of it was knowing the player versus knowing his stats. The 15 year eligibility rule used to deal with this. Jim Rice is a prime example. The writers who knew Jim Rice did not like him. The writers who didn’t know Jim Rice as a player looked at his stats and voted yes. It took the full twenty years (five year waiting period + 15 ballots) to reach that mass. With only ten years on the ballot now, it will be tougher to elect players who didn’t get along with the writers.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2Dz9ISB