Bagwell will be the star next year. Good enough day for Astro Fans. Bagwell gets in and we win the world series. It will be crazy!
100% Bagwell in next season…its a no doubter. None of the new guys on the ballot will do much with votes next year. It's pretty much Bagwell and maybe Raines.
Great number for Baggy, better than I expected. I'm past the point of being mad about him not getting in, I just wanted to see momentum, and we saw that in a big way. Jr. also had a record high number. Those 2 facts suggest to me that they did an awesome job purging some of the idiot voters.
Good laugh. Lance Zerkein said, eye-test told him neither Bagwell nor Griffey were HOFs. Mostly true, but there are other worthy candidates. Yeah, that is necessary. What standards did they use to determine credentials?
Basically, a person has to be a BBWAA member for ten years and have actively written about baseball in last ten years to my knowledge. A lot of old guys don't think the new guys are as good as the legends.
That is the new standard. The old standard was the same, except your ballot was for life, even if you had quit covering baseball more than 10 years earlier. Makes a lot of sense to get rid of those guys, as they weren't covering baseball throughout the careers of most of these players (and generally they were completely out of touch with modern statistics).
I think Lance is a mostly knowledgeable sports guy; his takes on Bagwell, however, are mind-boggling.
I don't get that with Griffey. He was a HOFer by the time he turned 30. He legitimately had a chance to be the greatest of all-time. He was the 2nd coming of Willie Mays, until injuries kept him off the field and ruined his speed. I'd agree with him that Griffey is overrated, because he wasn't very productive outside of HRs the 2nd half of his career, but that didn't take away from him being a HOFer, it just kept him from being in the same category as Mays/Ruth/Bonds/Aaron.
With Bagwell you get the feeling like there's something there, some under the table story that isn't being leaked that is priming Zierlein against him. Like a white Stevie Franchise tale. And I think with Griffey, implicit in the high vote total is the credit baseball writers are giving him IN HIS FAVOR for his early decline. Unlike Bonds or Clemens, when the roid era came to prominence he didn't let his ego force him to join in the needle orgy. Instead he faded away gracefully, and the writers are thankful for that.
Are there Steve Francis whispers?... I've detected the same tone with Lance (that he knows something) and it sounds - from here - like he's a little jilted; he feels duped. If you don't think Bagwell deserves to be in the Hall of Fame because you suspect he juiced: fine. But to argue his numbers aren't worthy is really, and truly... well, it's just wrong.
Or maybe Lance has had recent run-ins with Bagwell over the last few years.... pretty universal that those around him have been very concerned about his substance abuse/personal life issues that is extending to the public eye. While that shouldn't hurt his case on a national level, his image is getting pushed further and further down the Houston sports pantheon of all-time greats.
Ryan Thibodaux's ballot tracker currently lists 3 people who voted for Bagwell last year but did not this year: Dan McCarthy Guy Curtright Jim Alexander
Curtright still voted for 10, subtracted Bagwell & Piazza to add Trammel/Mcgriff/Edgar. The other 2 had space, and simply didn't vote for him. Frank Clines, Carter Gaddis, Mark Kreidler are set to be purged after this year. Only Gaddis voted for Bags of the 3.
