If they can show me how it's any worse than voting for Jack Morris and no one else in a ballot with Maddux on it, or voting at all for the likes of JT Snow when it meant leaving more worthy candidates (by literally any measure) off the ballot... then fine. But they can't. Way more people should be called guilty of "abuse of that privilege" Turds
The guy who specifically sent in that empty ballot just to troll those other two writers (name is escaping me right now) should absolutely have his voting rights pulled. He literally wrote that his ballot was entered out of spite....spite not against the players on the ballot but of other writers.
We haven't forgot, we just understand why he's not in. It's like arguing religion, it's pointless. His discussion isn't on the field. A certain portion of the voters have decided he was a cheater, regardless of proof. We may disagree, vehemently even, but it will make no difference, they've made up their mind. Biggio seems to have been rejected as a player, that we can complain about.
It' s the old bait and switch, Biggio will get in I have no doubt... but Bagwell deserves it too and they are squashing one issue by keeping the other alive, I wouldn't doubt if there was a conspiracy to string along Biggio until people forget or give up demanding Baggie is inducted.
Blow the whole damn thing up. It's a bigger joke than the BCS ever was. Send all these writers packing; never print another ballot. Then assemble a group of 10-15 knowledgeable, level-headed people, including baseball historians, former execs and players, and whatever makes sense, and have them collaboratively research the appropriate way to govern who merits induction into the Hall of Fame. Failing that, burn the damn thing down as it's becoming irrelevant thanks to the morons currently running it.
His final six years, in which he was an average to below-average player, cost him: 10 BA points; 18 OB% points; 21 OPS points; 9 OPS+ points. He accumulated 1.5 WAR – a counting stat – in five full seasons, which is beyond atrocious. The 3,000 hits is helping with lazy, old school writers who wished it was still 1978. Frankly, I don’t think he’d have a case with them at all without the milestone. But among younger-skewing voters who are more apt to study and consider advanced statistics, there’s no question he hurt his candidacy by sticking around well past his expiration date. Again, regardless, I think he has a Hall of Fame case (though the 3,000 hits wouldn’t be among my headlines; I think it’s pretty hollow). There will never be a definitive 1:1 stat to declare one player better than another... but other than WAR (which is a significantly important statistic, to be sure), Piazza, more or less, bludgeons Biggio in every single conceivably important metric. Even in a category you’d expect Biggio to possibly own, like OB%... Piazza bests him (.377 to .363). In terms of Hall of Fame worthiness, Mike Piazza is, arguably, the greatest catcher of all-time. I know – he wasn’t very good defensively. But he’s so far ahead of any other catcher offensively that even when you factor in his defense... His place is pretty secure. Biggio, on the other hand, would struggle to claim greatest second baseman of his own era (he and Alomar are neck and neck), and – I’m going off the top of my head here, but I think he’d struggle to crack the top five, possibly even top 10. (Again, I’m hedging on that because I’m not taking any time to verify it, though I feel pretty certain he’d be no higher than 5-6.) None of which is to suggest he isn’t Hall of Fame worthy; he is. But if I only had one vote between the two of them, and I was being as objective as humanly possible… I don’t think there’s any way I’d cast a vote for Biggio ahead of Piazza. It’s certainly not BS, by any means. Piazza was great. I get it (potentially) being personal - I had the same hang-up with Jeter. But once you sit down and look at the numbers... Jeter's freaking awesome. Still can't stand him...
Biggio won 4 gold gloves. Piazza was horrible (well, definitely sub-par) defensively, and one of the most important positions where it pays to not suck on that side of the ball. Piazza consistently was at or near the double in terms of double plays grounded into, whereas Biggio rarely did so despite the insane amount of plate appearances he got. And for a consistent period at their peak, Biggio seems to have Piazza beat, where Biggio had a solid 5 year run there that Piazza can't match over a similar period... and frankly, neither can Jeter. I'm not saying Biggio is undeniably better than Piazza. I just think they are both clearly 1st ballet HOF guys, absent the HOF process being as messed up as it is. Does anybody do ballpark adjusted numbers, btw? That'd be interesting to see, given how Biggio and Bagwell both played much of their careers, and peaks of their careers, in a notorious non-hitter friendly park.
Yeah, but it is in response to those who don't believe he had a great prime and was mearly a compiler. And really only the last season was terrible (and the 2nd to last not very good either), but at that point he was too close not to come back and get it. The rest just weren't close to wear he was. I'd take 39 year old Biggio stats at 2B any day. Edit: If not for the strike and the knee injury, he'd have never came back for that last season.
I enjoy healthy baseball debates; I detest having to denigrate a player I genuinely thought was awesome... IOW, stop responding!! Me? Why don't I just stop? Because I can't help myself... Biggio was a better defender (though atrocious in his final 5-ish years) – but so much better as to make up Piazza’s incredible offensive dominance? It’s close. Biggio has a career lead in WAR, partly due to his longer career but helped significantly by his better defense. Gold Gloves, FWIW, are vastly overrated. I think it looks nice on his resume - but I would never break GGs out when discussing which player is better. Didn’t Palmiero win one in a year in which he was the DH? I'm not sure your methodology. First of all, five years is an incredibly small sample size - no player would get elected based on five years. And is it five random years, or five consecutive years? Lastly, and more importantly: it simply isn't true. I picked a five-year sample size that incorporated each of their best individual seasons; it happened to be 1994-98 for both. And Piazza is pretty overwhelmingly better than Biggio in every category but WAR, in which Biggio barely outpaces him, 32.2 v. 30.2 Offensively Biggio: .308/.404/.477/.881 136 OPS+ Piazza: .339/.405/.585/.990 164 OPS+ Even Piazza’s *second* best five-year period (1999-2003) is pretty remarkably close to Biggio’s (although by then, Piazza was a truly terrible defender): .300/.375/.567/.942 142 OPS+; 18.7 WAR OPS+ And keep in mind, Piazza played a good chunk of his career in a ballpark every bit a pitcher’s park that the Dome was.
Just want to echo this point with an example from our very own. Biggio won 4 GG's. We all know how great a defender Bagwell was until the tail end of his career. He has just 1! Mark Grace and JT Snow hogged em.. point being, GG doesn't say good/bad very well
(You make excellent points RE: Piazza, and I'm just as disgusted with his exclusion as I am with Bagwell's.) Concerning Bidge's place among history's 2B, Ray Kerby wrote a pretty good piece back in 2005 (last updated in sometime in 2007 or 2008) that compares Bidge to the other HoF 2B, and he doesn't do too shabbily. Worth a read or two.
He was a terrible baseball player the final seven years of his career. He played 895 games and had an OB% of .324. His OPS+ (in which 100 is league average) was 92. He contributed 4.5 WAR; which means, over a six-year period, he added 4.5 more total wins than a triple A replacement would have. If it wasn't for MMP's short porch in LF (he hit 41 of his final 57 HRs in MMP; a whopping 72% his final three seasons), which helped his slugging % remain relatively viable, he would have been well below average. His 39 season was probably his last decent season - and a bit of an anomaly as his career wound down. His OB% was still awful (.325) and he was barely above-average (104 OPS+). I don't know what the context is for taking Biggio's stats at 39 - but your 2B situation would have to be fairly dire to consider Biggio's production that year as a viable alternative. Again, I love Biggio and I think he’s Hall of Fame worthy without a moment’s hesitation. But there is legitimate merit to the idea that he held on too long to chase a milestone that is growing more archaic by the day as a newer, more progressive era of baseball analysis emerges.
Thanks; yeah - I hate these types of discussions because I don't want to be portrayed as even remotely anti-Biggio. I wrote a whole wall dedicated to him at MMP, for heaven's sake - I think the guy is awesome. But this idea that it's crazy that Piazza was better?... I struggle with such declarative conclusions (though I’m sure I’m guilty of dropping a few of my own over the years – Hey, Matt Schaub!). Will definitely check out Ray’s piece tonight; always loved his work/insight back in the day.
I actually have Biggio above Piazza for compiled numbers. While I believe that is very much a secondary way to evaluate players it's not meaningless to me. Their careers followed a very similar path, great in the 90's, decent bat's awful gloves in 00's. Piazza is hurt by something that is entirely not his fault, he played 938 less games than Biggio. He was a catcher, catchers have to take days off, Biggio didn't, for most of his career anyhow. Now some people view this differently, to me a player playing games, even if not as effective, has done more than a player not playing. Extra games are never a negative if the players are at a similar level in they're primes. Piazza was a better player when he played in the 90's, but it was close, and that 938 games gives Biggio the slight advantage. I think they're both HOFer's so it's kind of a stupid debate
I guess the BBWAA is our country's own little slice of North Korea? <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Lebatard stripped of Hall vote for giving it to fans, who produced a credible result. Chass votes out of spite and faces no sanction. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23fail&src=hash">#fail</a></p>— keithlaw (@keithlaw) <a href="https://twitter.com/keithlaw/statuses/421376180684881920">January 9, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>We had a guy in Houston ask for fan help in filling out his HOF ballot. He still votes.</p>— Richard Justice (@richardjustice) <a href="https://twitter.com/richardjustice/statuses/421333997830930432">January 9, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Shameless plug... I did an interview this morning on 790 with Lance/Adam about Bagwell, Biggio and Jeff Pearlman. Background: I picked a fight with Pearlman on Twitter when I saw an especially dumb tweet from him right after Wednesday's announcement. My part starts at roughly the 12:10 mark on the link. http://www.sports790.com/media/podc...entlemen/friday-january-10th-2014-2-24170212/ Also, Pearlman offered me the opportunity to write a column on his site explaining why I think he's wrong. That's supposedly going up later today. I highly doubt it makes a difference for Pearlman (he's stubborn as all hell), but maybe some of the people who follow him will think otherwise after reading our side of it. Probably too optimistic of me, but worth a shot.
This is an aggregation of BBWAA members who chose to share their ballots here. No Biggio: Bruce Jenkins - San Francisco Chronicle David Ginsburg - AP Lawrence Rocca - Honorary Bill Ballou - Worcester Telegram & Gazette Alan Robinson - Honorary Angel M. Prada - La Voz Libre Mark Purdy - San Jose Mercury News Jim Hawkins - Honorary Danny Knobler - At-large Mike Shalin - Honorary Ann Killion - San Francisco Chronicle Peter Botte - New York Daily News Bill Christine - Honorary Rob Maaddi - AP Murray Chass - murraychass.com Bill Griffith - Honorary Dennis Maffezzoli - Tampa Bay Tony Massarotti - Honorary Chris Long - Honorary--Orange County Register Joe Christensen - Minneapolis Star Tribune Michael Silverman - Boston Herald Mike Dyer - Honorary Mike Vaccaro - New York Post Bob Smizik - Honorary Joseph E. Hoppel - Honorary Steve Simmons - Toronto Sun Gordon Edes - ESPN Boston Jon Becker - Honorary (Bay Area News Group) Steven Marcus - Newsday Ken Davidoff - NY Post Jeff Fletcher - Orange County Register
