Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, Craig Biggio Elected To Hall Of Fame By Mark Polishuk and Jeff Todd [January 6, 2015 at 1:01pm CST] Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz and Craig Biggio have been elected to the Baseball Hall Of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association Of America. All were inducted in their first year of eligibility except for Biggio, who was on the ballot for the third year. Perhaps the best left-handed pitcher of all time, Johnson recorded 4875 career strikeouts over his career (second only to Nolan Ryan) and his 10.61 K/9 rate is the highest in baseball history. “The Big Unit” was a fearsome figure on the mound, standing at 6’10” and throwing a 100-mph fastball that helped him win 303 games and five Cy Young Awards over his 22-year career. Johnson played for six teams in his career but is mostly remembered as a Mariner (10 seasons) and as a Diamondback (eight seasons). His time in Arizona was punctuated by a perfect game in 2004 and sharing World Series MVP honors with Curt Schilling when the D’Backs won it all in 2001. Johnson accumulated 111.7 fWAR (fifth all-time amongst pitchers) and 104.3 rWAR (ninth) over his career. Martinez won three Cy Young Awards over his 18 MLB seasons and is a revered figure in Boston for helping the Red Sox break their World Series jinx in 2004. Martinez collected 219 wins, 3154 strikeouts over his career and he posted the best ERA+ (154) of any starter in history. Martinez’s 1999 and 2000 seasons are arguably the two greatest pitching seasons in baseball history — despite home games in hitter-friendly Fenway Park in the midst of the steroid era, Martinez posted a 1.90 ERA, 12.5 K/9 and 8.65 K/BB rate over 430 1/3 IP over those two seasons, plus an uncanny 215 ERA+. While he threw “only” 2827 1/3 innings over his career, much less than many other all-time greats, Martinez still finished with 87.1 fWAR (16th all-time) and 86 rWAR (17th). Smoltz spent 20 of his 21 seasons with the Braves, teaming with fellow HOFers Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine as the cornerstones of the Atlanta rotation throughout the 1990’s. Smoltz’s career resume includes the 1996 NL Cy Young Award, 3084 strikeouts, 213 wins and a World Series ring in 1995. After missing the entire 2000 season due to Tommy John surgery, Smoltz pitched primarily as a reliever from 2001-04 and dominated to the tune of 154 saves in 167 chances. Smoltz amassed 78.7 fWAR (22nd all-time) and 66.5 rWAR (39th). After falling just two votes shy of induction to the Hall last winter, Biggio is finally on his way to Cooperstown. Biggio spent all 20 of his seasons with the Astros, forming “the Killer B’s” with Jeff Bagwell and other notable B-named teammates like Derek Bell and Lance Berkman in the Houston lineup. Biggio’s 3060 career hits rank him 21st all-time in baseball history and he posted a career slash line of .283/.363/.433 with 291 homers, 1844 runs and 414 steals. He finished with 65.1 WAR for his career according to both Fangraphs (which places him 84th among position players) and Baseball-Reference (92nd). Stepping into Biggio’s shoes this year was catcher Mike Piazza, who just missed election but could be set up for a successful run next time around. He played in 16 big league seasons, racking up a lifetime .308/.377/.545 slash and 427 home runs while spending the vast majority of his time behind the dish. He tallied 59.4 rWAR and 63.5 fWAR when his defense and baserunning were accounted for, easily placing him within the ten most productive backstops of all time. Piazza certainly has a claim as the best-hitting catcher in MLB history, as his lifetime 140 wRC+ trails only the still-active (and still in-prime) Buster Posey.
Baseball Hall of Fame Voting Results Hall of Fame candidates needed 412 votes, or 75 percent of the 549 ballots cast by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Players also must receive 5 percent of the ballots in order to remain on next year's list. Player__________Votes___Pct Randy Johnson____534___97.3 Pedro Martinez___500___91.1 John Smoltz______455___82.9 Craig Biggio_____454___82.7 Mike Piazza______384___69.9 Jeff Bagwell_____306___55.7 Tim Raines_______302___55.0 Curt Schilling___215___39.2 Roger Clemens____206___37.5 Barry Bonds______202___36.8
An All-Star lineup of players not in the Hall By Christina Kahrl | ESPN.com -- January, 5, 2015 The results of the Hall of Fame vote are as eagerly anticipated as ever, and with the news around the corner, there are two things we should anticipate for certain: Several players should get elected to the Hall of Fame, and we'll get to celebrate the occasion to honor their unquestioned greatness. Unfortunately, several Hall of Fame-caliber players are not going to get voted in, not because they're unworthy but because the process isn't going to serve them well. Indeed, I can come up with a tremendous lineup of players on this year's ballot who should be headed to Cooperstown, but before we get into them, what's getting in their way? As David Schoenfield touched on last week, there are problems, big problems, with the Hall of Fame voting system as it stands. I would argue there is a trio of simple, inescapable factors that will, again, keep a bunch of worthy Hall of Fame-caliber players out of Cooperstown this year: First, expansion gives us a wider sample of potential Hall of Famers to choose from. If you want the Hall of Fame to represent the same level of relative stardom as, say, it does from before integration when we had just two eight-team leagues, as Bill James brought up in his essay “Hall of Famers Among Us” in the 2008 “Bill James Gold Mine,” you have a problem: When you have twice as many teams ... you have twice as many players meeting Hall of Fame standards, or what have been traditionally been Hall of Fame standards. ... The real standard of the Hall of Fame was more like Johnny Damon or Bernie Williams. Richie Ashburn is in the Hall of Fame, as are Larry Doby, Earle Combs, Earl Averill, Kiki Cuyler, Edd Roush and Lloyd Waner. Those guys are much closer to Johnny Damon, Bernie Williams and Steve Finley than they are to Willie, Mickey and the Clipper. In order to carry the past standards forward, the Hall of Fame would have to start inducting twice as many people, or it's not going to get around to Damon or Bernie. Sure enough, the electorate blew it with Bernie in 2013, dropping him below the 5 percent threshold and from all future Baseball Writers' Association of America ballots. But you can't blame their overlooking his numbers alone, because of the second big factor clogging the ballot: the lack of consensus over what to do with PED-implicated star players. The BBWAA hasn't resolved the issue, and the Hall isn't taking a stand (perhaps wise, considering that already-in stars like Mantle and Mays were hopped up on amphetamines). Without the shadow of PEDs hanging over him, let's face it, Barry Bonds would already be in. So would Roger Clemens. Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza, both smeared by nothing more credible than Jeff Pearlman's opinion, would already be in. Heck, Mark McGwire would probably be in. As a result, they wouldn't be on this year's ballot, taking votes away from other, equally worthy players. That's because of the third factor in this year's overstacked ballot: the 10-man limit. This year, we have 15 guys with a career WAR value of 60 or more. While WAR is just a broad suggestion of value to start these kinds of conversations, that assemblage suggests a lot of Hall-worthy guys. Andre Dawson wasn't a slam dunk Hall of Famer statistically; he had 64.5 career WAR. The controversy surrounding Jim Rice's election is reflected in his career tally (47.4 WAR), but since he was elected by most of the same people voting now, his selection suggests that, with a whole lot of special pleading, a liberal standard for inclusion can be brought into play. (Just not for Bernie Williams. Or Lou Whitaker.) How bad is it? Because of the roadblock these factors combine to create, you can come up with an amazing lineup of guys on this ballot who will probably not get voted into the Hall of Fame -- and I firmly believe every single one of them should be in Cooperstown, because all of them are stars without whom you can't really talk about the era they played in. Catcher: Mike Piazza Data: .308/.377/.545, 59.4 WAR, all-time leader in HRs by a catcher (396) Using career WAR -- which includes estimates of defensive value -- Piazza ranks behind just four catchers, guys you'd expect: Johnny Bench, Gary Carter, Ivan Rodriguez and Carlton Fisk. Or better than Yogi Berra and Bill Dickey. Splice by offensive value alone using something like OPS+ and Piazza is the all-time leader among backstops at 143. (Buster Posey also comes in at 143, but he's a long way off from a BBWAA HOF ballot.) Against that, you have some tittering over a back-acne sighting but no evidence he used anything. Definitely a Hall of Famer. First base: Jeff Bagwell Data: .297/.408/.540, 79.6 WAR (most in Astros franchise history) Ranks fourth all-time among career first basemen by WAR, behind pre-integration stars Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx and a still-active Albert Pujols. To put it another way, before Pujols showed up, you had a case that Bagwell might be the best first baseman in the history of the game once it contained all of the best players, not just most of the best white guys. Against that, there isn't even a credible implication over his PED usage beyond the fact that he was alive and breathing during a time when some people used PEDs. Second base: Jeff Kent Data: .290/.356/.500, 55.2 WAR, all-time leader in homers hit by a 2B (351) I'm assuming Craig Biggio gets his due this year; if not, after last year's near miss, expect even more howling from all quarters. Kent's case isn't as strong as those of Whitaker and Bobby Grich, two top-10 second basemen all-time whom the voters overlooked, but because Kent drove in 90 or more runs in nine straight seasons and holds the all-time record for homers hit by a second baseman, he merits easy "baseball card stats" consideration. He also reached the postseason seven times (not so easy for a non-Yankee, even in the divisional era) and cranked in October with an .840 OPS in 189 PAs. Third base: Gary Sheffield Data: .292/.393/.514, 60.2 WAR I'm fudging a bit, because there's no obvious career third baseman on the ballot. But Sheffield played almost 500 games at the hot corner (after starting out at shortstop), so he'll fit for this sort of exercise. He was the star slugger on the world champion 1997 Marlins, and much like them, he might be someone the voters would try to forget. Playing for eight teams doesn't help him get a base of support. He's an excellent reflection of the problem referred to by Bill James earlier, but if the voters were going to vote in Rice for something as superficial as "fearsomeness," how can you not credit Sheff for that same quality? Probably because he was named in the Mitchell Report, was implicated in BALCO, admitted to using steroids and inconveniently noted that they didn't do him much good. Shortstop: Alan Trammell Data: .285/.352/.415, 70.4 WAR Trammell was to the American League in the '80s what Barry Larkin was to the National League in the late '80s and '90s -- the best all-around player at his position, winding up with an almost identical WAR tally to place among the 10 best shortstops ever. (Larkin finished with 70.2.) But where Larkin earned MVP recognition from the voters in 1995, Trammell doesn't get credit for an easily identifiable signature year because the voters blew it in 1987, when he should have won the AL MVP. Punishing Trammell today for the electorate's lack of vision then strikes me as doubling down on an injustice. Left field: Barry Bonds Data: 162.4 WAR, all-time leader in HRs (762), walks (2,558) and intentional walks (688), 514 steals When Bonds came off the DL in 2005, I wrote for Baseball Prospectus what I still think applies: Bonds is caught in a bind: he'll never overcome reasonable doubt, so instead of being presumed innocent, he will always be condemned by a large number of people, for reasons as varied as reasonable doubt to conditioned dislike to overt racism, to name a few of what might be an unlimited range of possible responses to Bonds setting the home run record. ... If Bonds is guilty then he joins a long list of tainted men in the game's pantheon. If he's guilty, he's a great player and a reflection of his time. To make it clear, Bonds was never suspended by baseball during his career for anything related to PEDs, which reflects where baseball was as an industry on the subject of PED use. I would vote for Bonds. Center field: Tim Raines Data: .294/.385/.425, 69.1 WAR, 808 steals Another modest cheat, in that Rock spent most of his career in left field and there's no good CF candidate, but he did play 165 games in center. The Rickey Henderson of the NL in the '80s, Raines is arguably the best leadoff man in NL history. But because Henderson was even better and from the same era, Raines already has a problem getting out of the shade. Add that to his spending most of his career in Montreal before a forgettable stint in Chicago. Not even playing a big part in helping the Yankees' last dynasty win its first two titles in 1996 and '98 seems to have helped voters remember what an impact player he was at his peak. Right field: Larry Walker Data: .313/.400/.565, 72.6 WAR, three batting titles as a Colorado Rockie Even if the world somehow made up its mind over what to do about PED-associated players, there's still another kind of performance enhancement voters haven't come to terms with: environmental enhancement. Walker is the BBWAA's first significant Denver altitude-enhanced candidate, having put up his biggest years as a Rockie. Maybe it's just me, but I can't help but think back on my great-grandfather's favorite player, Mel Ott, he of the 323 of 511 career home runs hit at home toward the nearby right-field pole in the Polo Grounds. That was seen as a positive, an example of a guy with the talent to exploit his environment. Walker's sabermetric numbers like WAR adjust for the ballpark, and he still comes out looking good. (Yes, I haven't mentioned Sammy Sosa, no more than I have McGwire. The lineup of guys probably not getting voted in with numbers that should put them in goes two deep and more at some slots.) Designated hitter: Edgar Martinez Data: .312/.418/.515, 68.3 WAR, two batting titles, three OBP titles Because Frank Thomas (73.7 WAR) split his career pretty evenly between first base and DH, some might not consider him the first true DH in the Hall of Fame, meaning that David Ortiz may eventually get the rep as "first" come that day. But this title really belongs to Martinez after making more than 70 percent of his starts at DH. The designated hitter has been with us for more than 40 years, perhaps longer in terms of official consideration than the notion of relief ace. Martinez is the perfect example of what a DH can be, a bat-only force instead of a broken-down fading star or a shared responsibility among position players. It took far too long to honor the game's great closers; it's worse that it's taking even longer to honor its greatest DH. Starting pitcher: Mike Mussina Data: 270-153, 3.68 ERA, 123 ERA+ Clemens is slam-dunk obvious but won't get in, so indulge me a bit of special pleading for Mussina. Moose is sort of in the same position that guys like Don Sutton and Bert Blyleven were in as far as longevity, with the additional challenge of pitching at a time when starters were getting fewer decisions because of the increasing importance of the bullpen. Mussina finally beat the "he never won 20" whammy in his final season (2008), for people who fidget over that sort of thing, and he was reliably solid in the postseason, posting a 3.42 ERA in October. He's the fourth-best pitcher on this year's ballot behind Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson and Clemens, but Mussina probably won't get in until after John Smoltz and Curt Schilling. All of them belong, so somebody has to be elected last, but here's hoping Mussina gets his due. Closer: Lee Smith Data: 478 career saves, 29.4 WAR Smith gets only two more bites at this apple, and he will not get voted in. That's a shame, because he's always been handicapped by a variety of factors: a career that straddled the end of one era's job description for closers (90 or more innings, 30 saves) and the new (60 innings, 40-plus saves) without belonging more to one or the other and the notion that he racked up a lot of cheap saves. Why every other closer doesn't get that same rap beats me; how else do you think Bobby Thigpen and Francisco Rodriguez set single-season records? At any rate, Smith was the career saves leader for 13 years, before the change in how closers were used put Trevor Hoffman ahead before Mariano Rivera shattered the record. Give me enough room on the ballot and I would vote for Smith.
The best thing will be when Kent gets in and Barroids doesn't. That will be a great day!! Fucking priceless.
Roids All of these players were on them. All you blind men keep believing the lie. Barry deserves to be in...I hated him but they were all dirty and he was the best I've ever seen by far with a bat. And if Piazza is considered "clean"...we are the fools.
I mean, you can say that about a lot of players in the Hall. Baseball hasn't been "clean" for a long time, and it didn't start with steroids. An unfair competitive edge has been around for a long time.
Absolutely...in fact he admitted to taking Andro, straight out, to his credit. But not to making out with weatherman Sam Champion in a NYC bistro. As far as power, he made Johnny Bench look like a little leaguer. He is simply, the best hitiing catcher of all time. It makes no difference to me whether he gets in, but you can't use substance abuse as a keep out for one guy, and not another. He deserves to go in, IMO. I think Mussina and Johnson and Kent were the cleanest of all candidates....maybe McGriff, too. Pedro did have some rumors swirling around him, and Biggio absolutely. RJ just had freakish physical gifts. Mussina was an underated great pitcher who did it all in the juicing era , too. Jeff was, at his time, the best hitting 2b there was...he did change the game. His hard-nosed approach alone was worth the price of admission. Had balls, too. Fuck Bonds... This is the legacy that Selig's ongoing "look the other way" cowardice has left us...when he should/could have nipped it all in the bud. That was his fucking job. The Neville Chamberlin of modern day baseball. Look what's left in the wake of his appeasements.
Wasn't just Selig, though. Writers who claim will never vote for guys from the steroid era kept quiet as well, until the early 2000s and then made a big deal of it. Everyone fucked up. It just took a bigger media presence to bring it to light. It's one big shit show, from Selig trying to make this a god damn federal case to the writers being hypocrites.
