absolutely pitched the best season of any starting pitcher in my lifetime during his 2000 season. ridiculous numbers particualrly given the context of the steroid era and that half his games were at Fenway.
Well there's nothing for us to debate on his credentials in a pure sense. I think he has the credentials to be a hall of famer and so do you. The only thing that exists for debate is whether or not in the HOF voting process that has existed for many many years whether or not him not getting in yet is a snub. As someone who argued vehemently for Blyleven to finally get in and wrote an article (you can find it here I believe) that I routinely emailed to writers I knew had a vote, I can tell you that I do not believe this system is perfect. In the end though, I think it works out in favor of a better HOF and a more prestigious honor that the writers take things so seriously and are so righteous about how and for whom they vote. I wish they would accept more advanced statistics and would give up the steroid issue, but I think us baseball fans got it good when it comes to the HOF. I mean being a baseball HOF means A LOT. I don't really feel like being a basketball hall of famer means much, nor does football. I like to watch the football inductions because they are cool, but once they are over I don't ever think about them again. They just don't carry the cache that baseball does in terms of the Hall.
I hate the Red Sox (probably didn't need to be said to those who know where I am on the baseball fandom issue) so this used to hurt me to type: Pedro is the greatest player I've ever seen. At his best, Pedro:Baseball :: Jordan:Basketball. He was so far above his peers it was ridiculous. He also didn't benefit from the silly strikezone that Maddux got in the NL which adds to the amazement for me.
BTW... Here is a(n incomplete) list of known national Bagwell supporters from this years HoF vote: Jim Caple (ESPN) Jerry Crasnick (ESPN) Peter Gammons (MLB.com) Bob Klapisch (Fox) Tim Kurkijan (ESPN) Joe Posnanski (SI) Buster Olney (ESPN) Tracy Ringolsby (Baseball America and Fox) Ken Rosenthal (Fox) Jayson Stark (ESPN) TR Sullivan (MLB.com) Tom Verducci (SI) (Aside: Two notable no’s: Jon Heyman (SI) & Bob Nightingale (USA Today). Heyman voted for Mattingly and should have his credentials stripped; Nightingale voted for McGriff, which isn’t independently egregious – but McGriff and no Bagwell makes zero sense and paints him as a definitive “guilty until proven innocent” guy.) I would suggest this, more than the vote total itself, is the most encouraging news. There are a lot of prominent, well-respected writers on that list and you shouldn’t discount their role in this debate as it rages on. The collective journalistic drumbeat for Bert Blyleven was absolutely an integral part of his eventual election. The NFL HoF process consists of writers getting together in a room and making cases for each worthy candidate. Baseball is different – everyone is left to their own devices. So having guys on national platforms campaigning for Bagwell will be of tremendous help. I think the fact he made such a sizable jump in just a year was absolutely attributable to a lot of these guys passionately arguing his case after last year’s vote. There’s reason to be very hopeful.
It's a snub. Willie Stargell, who, while comparable, is definitively inferior to Jeff Bagwell, went in on his first ballot with 82% of the votes, double Bagwell’s first-year total. You simply cannot argue Stargell was twice the player Bagwell was; it’s egregious. But… Stargell won two World Series…. And I think that's where the (lack of) exposure (not bias - but exposure) becomes a factor. Those of us who watched him every night know how smart a baseball player he was; and we know how he forever elevated the standard for baseball in Houston. He showed up every day, played his heart out, and led the greatest era of Astro baseball ever. Those who didn't witness it first-hand can only stare at a stat sheet and compare him against arbitrary milestones while playing amateur scientist and detective.
Stargell was like, 16th or 17th all time on the home run list when he was inducted. He played in an offensively depressed era and his career OPS+ (147) is comparable to Bagwell's (149). Plus, as mentioned, he played on some great teams. That said, if people (fairly or unfairly) believed that Stargell might have been a cheater, he wouldn't have cruised in on the first ballot. Different situation, imo.
I think Smoltz will get in, just not on the first time. I agree that Pedro absolutely get in on the 1st try, but that doesn't mean he will. His run in Boston is the best I've seen in my lifetime. HOF voters just do odd things sometimes. Most recently not taking Roberto Alomar on the first ballot.
These are the locations of those who voted "nay" to Bagwell, courtesy of Astros County. Pics spoilered for size. http://www.astroscounty.com/2012/01/geographic-breakdown-of-no-bagwell.html Spoiler
And look how many are on the east coast. Please, please, please don't tell me it isn't a factor in this: they didn't watch him play; they're voting off of a spreadsheet; and he'd absolutely be a first-ballot selection had they been able to watch him with regularity.
I had never heard of the guy from Dallas, so I googled him. Apparently he is the guy that took a huge amount of flak from voting Michael Young for MVP last season. He also left Pedroia off the ballot.
http://blog.chron.com/ultimateastro...kage-deal-heres-one-vote-against-that/#2459-1 Jeff Bagwell is getting in the Hall of Fame. Probably. If precedent counts for anything. Which is no guarantee. Which would make about as much sense as Ron Santo getting voted in the year after he died. Really, the landscape of the Hall of Fame is liable to undergo changes – good or bad – that nobody truly can claim to foresee. Bagwell had an upswing of support in his second time on the ballot, improving from 42 to 56 percent. While that leaves Bagwell well short of the 75 percent necessary for induction, it puts him on solid footing moving forward. Probably. Maybe. Since the Baseball Writers Association started casting HOF ballots in 1936, only one player has received 50 percent of the vote and not been enshrined in Cooperstown, N.Y. The exception to the rule is former Dodgers first baseman and Mets manager Gil Hodges, who got as high as 63.4 percent in his final year on the ballot (1983). It’s worth noting that Nellie Fox got to 74.7 percent – two votes short of what he needed – in his final year on the ballot in 1985 and got in by way of the Veterans Committee 12 years later. Fox – a former Astros coach who was instrumental in shaping the Hall of Fame career of Joe Morgan – died way too young of skin cancer at age 47, so the HOF process was by no means the worst thing that ever happened to him. So Bagwell should be in good shape to get in sooner than later, right? Well, it isn’t that simple. For one thing, Bagwell isn’t in yet. That fact alone shows that there is something seriously awry with the voting. No, Bagwell, didn’t bat .300 in his career, or hit 500 home runs, or accumulate 3,000 hits or accumulate a litany of postseason accomplishments. A lack of magical statistical milestones notwithstanding, his body of work screams out slam-dunk Hall of Famer. Yet here he is, welcome in the Hall only as a visitor. Maybe Houston saw Bagwell up close for so long, it lost sight of the magnitude of his career. Set aside, for a moment, the .408 on-base percentage (40th in history), the .540 slugging percentage (36th), the .948 on-base-plus slugging (22nd), the adjusted OPS of 149 (34th), the 449 home runs (tied for 35), the 1,529 RBIs (46th). Discount his numbers, if you wish, as a byproduct of having playing in an offense-friendly era fueled by a proliferation of cozy ballparks and yes, by performance-enhancing drugs. When you’re doing that, though, also keep in mind that he played the first 1,317 games and hit his first 263 home runs with the Astrodome – the place long fly balls went to die – as his home park. Of all the players who began their careers after World War II, Bagwell has the 19th-highest Wins Above Replacement 79.9. Among the iconic players with lower WAR values than Bagwell are Reggie Jackson, Ken Griffey Jr., Pete Rose, Rod Carew, Robin Yount, Johnny Bench and Tony Gwynn. No, WAR is by no means a perfect metric, but it’s a pretty good barometer of how players stack up against their counterparts from different eras. As David Schoenfeld of ESPN.com notes, six of the post-WW II players who rank from 11th to 30th in WAR aren’t eligible for the Hall of Fame (Albert Pujols, Chipper Jones, Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Thomas, Pete Rose and Jim Thome). Twelve of the players in that got in on the first ballot, with Eddie Mathews inexplicably falling short four times before getting his due. That leaves Bagwell, who’s WAR in 2,150 career games exceeds the 68.9 in 2,181 games by 2012 inductee-in-waiting Barry Larkin. Basically, there are two camps of people voting against Bagwell: 1. Those who don’t think his on-field accomplishments are Cooperstown-worthy; 2. Those who deem Bagwell guilty by association with baseball’s steroid era. Those in the first camp really need to develop a better understanding of what constitutes a great player. Those in the second camp need to get off their high horses about trying to protect the so-called sanctity of the Hall by trying to exclude players they deem to have any possibility of having used PEDs. The fact that Bagwell played from 1991-2005 does not constitute evidence of such. The fact that Bagwell hit home runs and had big muscles does not constitute evidence of such. The fact that Bagwell’s good friend Ken Caminiti was an admitted steroid user does not constitute evidence of such. One of the star witnesses in the 409-page Mitchell Report was former Astros employee Kirk Radomski, yet Bagwell wasn’t one of the 89 players implicated. To further muddy the waters, a wave of high profile players – several of whom have been linked to PED use – will start hitting the Hall ballot the next several years. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Curt Schilling and yes, former Astro Craig Biggio, will be on the ballot for the first time come December. There will be Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Mike Mussina, Frank Thomas and Jim Edmonds as potential members of the 2014 Cooperstown class, with Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz the year after that. The mind boggles at how the voters will sift through the PED clouds around the likes of Bonds, Clemens and Sosa, and how that will dovetail with the future of the PED-tarnished Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro. In other words, Bagwell picking up the additional 19 percent support he needs is no certainty. Maybe some of the Bagwell holdouts will quit holding his inability to prove the unprovable, that he didn’t do something nobody can possibly test for at this point, against him. Maybe some of the Bagwell holdouts will get caught up in the narrative of a possible Killer-Bs induction ceremony with Biggio, whose 3,060 career hits make him a slam-dunk inductee by Cooperstown precedent. The sincere hope is that it doesn’t come to that, that Bagwell-Biggio doesn’t turn into some sort of give-the-Astros-a-pat-on-the-head, package deal. It might seem like a nice warm, fuzzy story, but Bagwell and Biggio both deserve better. Bagwell’s accomplishments are his and stand up on their own merit. Biggio’s accomplishments are his and stand up on their own merit. Bagwell deserves his own spotlight as one of the best first baseman ever to play. Biggio deserves his own spotlight as a singular player – a converted catcher who became one of the dominant second baseman of the 1990s. They aren’t – and weren’t – joined at the hip, unable to stand on their own feet. They were singular, transcendent players, and should be treated as such. steve.campbell@chron.com
I listed their individual numbers side-by-side, everything I could think of including postseason award considerations, and Stargell leads Bagwell in exactly 3 of 13 total categories: HRs, RBIs, and top 10 MVP finishes (7 to 6). And the HR/RBI differentials are a mere 26 and 11 - and that's with Stargell logging 130 more career ABs. Some of the categories - like WAR - aren't even close (79.9 to 57.5). Bagwell is a fairly monumentally superior player to Willie Stargell. And Pops garnered 82%of the votes on his first ballot. Bagwel: 42. Its an indefensible snub.... ....made worse by this garbage. If Bagwell, statistically, was a borderline HoFer, I could possibly better wrap my head around the absolute made-up suspicisions about PEDs. But he's a total no-brainer pick (I've long said more worthy than even Biggio, IMO - who i think is nonetheless worthy) that, without a shred of credible evidence, you simply can't let it affect your voting. You can't. I'm sorry - but I have no patience for it. It's an egregious snub soaked in self-rightgeous stupidity.
excellent article. [rquoter]Bagwell’s accomplishments are his and stand up on their own merit. Biggio’s accomplishments are his and stand up on their own merit. Bagwell deserves his own spotlight as one of the best first baseman ever to play. Biggio deserves his own spotlight as a singular player – a converted catcher who became one of the dominant second baseman of the 1990s. They aren’t – and weren’t – joined at the hip, unable to stand on their own feet. They were singular, transcendent players, and should be treated as such.[/rquoter] great point.
I appreciate the sentiment, and would agree it's far and away the best of the professional HoFs - but you're romanticizing a bunch of power-hungry goofballs. I've never fully respected the BBWAA because of their arbitrary and nonsensical standards when it comes to HoF voting (don’t get me started on the whole “first ballot” talk). But this steroid witch hunt they’re conducting against Bagwell has permanently wiped out whatever remaining respect I had for them. It's preposterous and stupid and indefensible.
Here's a funny story regarding Carrie Muskat, the southernmost "no" vote in Chicago. http://www.astroscounty.com/2012/01/its-never-too-early-to-start-getting.html
Within that link in the above post is an early outlook for the 2013 ballot. http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120110&content_id=26300278&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb
