A Look At The HoF Voting Results

Good morning Fackers. Yesterday we took a cursory look at the Hall of Fame voting results, noting Andre Dawson's election and the tantalizing near misses of Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar. The entire ballot spanned twenty six players who met the eligibility criteria. Here are some thoughts on those who weren't as lucky as The Hawk.

Byleven (74.2%) - He's a vitrual lock for next year after coming so close this year and seeing an 11.5% jump over last year. He has two more years of eligibility left and the next two classes aren't particularly strong.

Alomar (73.7%) - I'm not a big believer in drawing distinctions between a Hall of Famer and First Ballot Hall of Famer. Even so, I think Alomar's standing relative to the other men who have played his position make him worthy of first ballot induction. Obviously it will have to wait until next year. If waiting a year is Alomar's penance for the Hirschbeck spitting incident then so be it. I realize there are players in the Hall who have done worse, but waiting a year is a small price to pay for what's one of baseball's more despicable moments.

Jack Morris (52.3%) - Morris vs. Blyleven seems to be the next frontier of the old school vs. new school debate. Morris saw an 8.3% jump over last year, the second biggest gainer outside of Blyleven. He still ranks behind where Blyleven was in his 11th year of eligibility. It'll be interesting to see where this one goes in the year's to come. Does anyone remember when Morris nearly joined the '96 Yankees?

Barry Larkin (51.6%) - Larkin deserves enshrinement, but he clearly has a ways to go in the eyes of the voters. Still, it's encouraging to see him start out at 51.6%. For comparisons sake, Alan Trammell, a similar if inferior comparison, garnered just 15.7% of the vote in his first year of eligibility.

Lee Smith (47.3%) - Smith is the highest ranking former Yankee on the ballot. His continued languishing in the sub fifty percent range makes me wonder if the BBWAA is smarter than we give them credit for being. At the time of his retirement, Smith was the all-time leader in saves. He hasn't thrown a pitch in a dozen years, yet he's been passed only by Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera. Normally, that's the sort of thing the writers would eat up: "This guy's the all-time saves leader, he's got to be a Hall of Famer!". Instead, Smith remains far from enshrinement, as he should. I'm just not sure it's because the writers realize the save is a relatively meaningless statistic. More likely, I think Smith serves as an example that the writer's aren't quite sure how to evaluate "closers". The relievers in the Hall - Wilhelm, Fingers, Sutter, Gossage - were "firemen", routinely accumulating 100+ IP per season. Smith accumulated 100 relief IP just twice, in his first two full seasons as a reliever. Smith was at the leading edge of the game-wide transition from firemen to closers. Dennis Eckersley is the only closer in the Hall, and Smith lacks both Eckersley's utter dominance as a closer as well as his years as a successful starter. Smith has seven more ballots for the writers to figure it out.

Edgar Martinez (36.2%) - If the voters don't know what to make of closers, then they have absolutely no idea what to do with designated hitters. The DH has been in existence for 37 seasons now, and it has evolved significantly in that time. What started as place to play the best bench player evolved as a spot to hide defensive liabilities, or to prolong the career of aging veterans, or to protect the health of those too fragile to handle the wear and tear of daily defense. While HoFers like Eddie Murray, George Brett, Rickey Henderson, Paul Molitor, Wade Boggs, Jim Rice, Dave Winfield, Carl Yastrzemski, and Dawson all spent significant time at DH, Martinez is an interesting case in that he's the first worthy candidate to have spent nearly his entire career as a DH. Offensively he has HoF numbers, and I think he's worthy of induction. I'll be interested to see how his candidacy is evaluated over the next several years.

Tim Raines (30.4%) - Far and away the gravest injustice in my opinion. Raines is worthy of his own post, and I hope to have that before the week is out.

Mark McGwire (23.7%) - After taking a slight dip in his percentage last year, McGwire's number returns to where it was in both of his first two years of eligibility - a long, long, long way from induction. Like Smith and Martinez, McGwire is an interesting test case. McGwire is probably the best pure power hitter in baseball history not named Babe Ruth (1st all time in AB/HR, 2nd all time in IsoP), but the problem is that he wasn't all that pure after all. I'm not sure yet how PED users should be judged, but McGwire's four years on the ballot don't bode well for Rafael Palmeiro next year or for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens in 2013.

Alan Trammell (22.4%) - This was Trammell's ninth year on the ballot and his best showing yet. He's still so far off that it's unlikely he'll ever be elected. As a shortstop, Trammell is Hall of Famer. He's comparable, if slightly inferior, to contemporaries and Hall of Famers Cal Ripken Jr, Robin Yount, and Ozzie Smith. I think the problem for Trammell is that he was overshadowed by those three for most of his career, and in the years since the likes of Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra, Miguel Tejada, and Hanley Ramirez have completely changed the concept of what a shortstop could do. Had Trammell begun his career 20 or 30 years earlier he'd likely already be in Cooperstown. At this point the Veterans' Committee looks like his best bet.

Fred McGriff (21.5%) - One of the worst trades the Yankees ever made. McGriff was a great player for a long time. But as a first baseman, his numbers don't really separate him from his contemporaries. It doesn't appear that another 7 HR to get to 500 would have made the difference for him either.

Don Mattingly (16.1%) - This is the best showing for our beloved Donnie Baseball since his second year on the ballot back in 2002. But it's still well off from his career best of 28.2%. As much as we'd all like to see it, Mattingly's not going to the Hall nor should he - his career nose dived way too soon. But I hope he continues to get the requisite 5% to stay on the ballot until his 15 years run out.

Dave Parker (15.2%) - The induction of borderline guys Jim Rice and Andre Dawson in back-to-back years lends itself to slippery-slope style arguments. I don't think The Cobra was as good as either one of those guys, but he wasn't off by too much.

Dale Murphy (11.7%) - Much like Mattingly, Murphy went from amongst the best in baseball to done seemingly overnight. Murphy was a contemporary of Dawson, and like Dawson is considered and all-around class act and good guy. The two make for an interesting comparison. Dawson had a longer and better career, and voters seem to favor players who decline gradually, like Dawson, to players who fall off a cliff, like Murphy. But if you look at their primes, Murphy was arguably the better player. And if you look at their peaks, Murphy was clearly the better player.

Harold Baines (6.1%) - The last player that will still be on next year's ballot. With the arrival of Edgar Martinez, Baines is no longer the best DH eligible for enshrinement.

Andres Galarraga (4.1%) - I'm surprised he didn't get the 5% necessary to stay on the ballot. Certainly not a HoFer, but a pretty good player during a rather lengthy career. I wonder if Galarraga dropping off after one year gives any insight as to how the voters will view the Coors Field effect. It'll be interesting to keep in mind as Larry Walker becomes eligibile next year and Todd Helton no fewer than six years from now. At 43 years old and stuck on 398 career HRs, Galarraga signed a minor league deal with the Angels in 2004. He spent a month in AAA and was given a token September call up. In the 160th game of the season, Galarraga pinch hit in the ninth inning of a game the Angels led 9-0. He homered to get to 399, and celebrated waaaaay too much for a player of his stature, particularly considering he was just hanging on to pad his numbers and had just hit a meaningless home run in garbage time of a late season game. I remember seeing the highlight and thinking it was a little below him. The again, Galarraga lost a season to lymphoma during the most productive stretch of his career and had suffered a relapse earlier that same year that may have cost him additional service time, so maybe I'm just a jerk for begrudging him a little celebration.

Robin Ventura (1.3%) - The second lowest ranking former Yankee on the ballot (Todd Zeile didn't get a single vote). In 1999, Nolan Ryan received 98.79% of the vote, the second highest percentage of all time. He was six votes short of being the only unanimous selection in history. Perhaps he'll beat Ventura up again, steal his seven votes, and add them to his own total to give him 100.2% of the vote.

Michael "Mike" Jackson (0.0%) - Listed only to give me an excuse to link to this. It probably wasn't particularly funny then; now it's neither funny nor timely.

1996 World Series: Game 2

[With the Yankees squaring off against the Braves this week, we thought it would be appropriate to take a look back at the two World Series during which they faced off in the late 90's]

The most amazing part about the Braves of the early-to-mid 90's was of course their starting pitching staff. In 1996, Smoltz, Maddux and Glavine all posted sub 3.00 ERAs and combined to pitch 734 innings. Smoltz won 24 games and struck out 276 and allowed only 199 hits in 253 2/3 IP. Glavine's ERA was comparable to and Maddux's was actually .22 lower than Smoltz's, but the lack of gaudy strikeout, and more significantly, win totals kept them from accumulating many Cy Young votes. Already 30 years old, Maddux was coming off of four consecutive seasons where he won the Cy Young, Gold Glove, placed no lower than 13th in the MVP voting and walked fewer than two batters per nine innings, so he probably didn't lose a lot of sleep over the lack of acknowledgment.

Comparatively, David Cone was the only Yankee to post an ERA below 3, and he only started 11 games. Next to him, Pettitte's 3.87 was the Yankees' best, followed by Kenny Rogers and Jimmy Key, both at 4.68. Per usual, the Bombers' strength was in their offense, scoring nearly 100 runs more than the Braves in '96.

Atlanta's bullpen in 1996 was nothing special, but when you have three starters throwing that many innings (including 12 complete games), at that microscopic of an ERA, you don't really need a great 'pen. Their closer Mark Wohlers had an ERA higher than any of the top three starters, but that was good enough to net him 39 saves. Mike Bielecki was actually their most useful reliever. Averaging almost two innings per appearance (75.1 IP/40 games), and a sort of jack-of-all trades, Bielecki accrued a 2.63 ERA while starting 5 games and finishing 8, including two saves.

The Yankees had the clear advantage when it got late in the game, with John Wetteland and Mariano Rivera combining for 170 1/3 innings (107 2/3 belonging to Rivera) of 2.38 ERA. Despite the difference in workload and the fact that Wetteland had a respectable 2.83 ERA and saved 43 games, Rivera destroyed him in every meaningful statistical category. Most tellingly, Mo's WHIP was .2 lower and he allowed only 1 home run all year, compared to Wetteland's 9.

The pitching match-up in Game 2 slotted Maddux against Jimmy Key. After reaching his ostensible prime as a pitcher and placing fourth and second in the Cy Young voting in 1993 & 1994, respectively, Key was leading the league with 17 wins when the 1994 strike occurred. He missed almost all of the 1995 season when he went on the disabled list for what was thought to be tendinitis, but ended up needing rotator cuff surgery. 1996 was one of his worst full season as a professional but in the postseason he managed to win two games and have an ERA of 3.33 in, slightly under his eventual career ERA of 3.51.

The gametime temperature was a relatively mild 55 degrees, but the Braves picked up right where they left off with their hot hitting. Mark Lemke hit a ground rule double and was driven in by Fred McGriff with two outs. Javy Lopez singled as well, but Jermaine Dye flew out to deep left before any further trauma was inflicted.

Maddux needed only 11 pitches to get through the first inning, and he would only get more efficient as the game progressed. Key and Maddux matched scoreless halves in the second inning before Fred McGriff struck again in the top of the third. He drove in another run with another single, putting the Braves ahead 2-0. He added another RBI on a sac fly in the top of the 5th.

The Yankees were simply flummoxed by Maddux. Through five innings only three men reached base, and one was via a HBP and was erased by a caught stealing. He had thrown just 48 pitches, partially due to the fact that he had yet to register a strikeout. The two he got both came in the seventh inning.

Marqius Grissom drove in another run in the sixth, which would be Key's final frame. He didn't have great stuff, but he bent instead of breaking unlike Pettitte the night before. Key scattered 13 baserunners but never gave up more than one run in an inning.

The single biggest play in the game came in the bottom of the sixth inning with Wade Boggs at the plate. Jeter and Tim Raines left off the inning with back to back singles and for a moment it appeared that the Yankees might claw their way back into the game. However, Boggs was a victim of one of the 21 ground balls induced by Maddux that night, and it turned into a 4-6-3 double play. Bernie Williams hit yet another grounder to second which ended the inning.

Maddux expended only 82 pitches to work through eight shutout innings and hand the ball over the Mark Wohlers, who struck out the side in the bottom of the ninth. Atlanta's pitching staff had predictably dominated the Yanks once again, and now had only given up two runs in their last five games.

As legend has it, a furious George Steinbrenner summoned Joe Torre and his first base coach Jose Cardenal into his office following the game. Torre responded to the tirade by guaranteeing three victories in Atlanta, which, given The Boss's temperament was probably his only recourse. Steinbrenner jabbed "If you guys can't beat the Braves at home, you surely can't beat them down in Atlanta". He did have a point.