Buster Olney will no longer vote for the HOF until the voting process is fixed
- Thread starter soxhop411
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Someone like Buster coming out and saying he's not going to vote until the arbitrary "Rule of 10" is done away with is huge. He's one of the five or ten highest profile HOF voters, and if anyone is going to bring about change by taking a stand, it's him.
The rule serves no purpose, and can be kiboshed quite easily. Shining an ESPN spotlight on it could make it disappear inside a year. Good on him.
The rule serves no purpose, and can be kiboshed quite easily. Shining an ESPN spotlight on it could make it disappear inside a year. Good on him.
caminante11 said:
Well, if a bunch of writers do not vote, the votes of remaining writers are worth "more" - is that what Olney is getting at?
I don't get it. He, Bob Ryan, and Joe Poz have railed about the process. Aren't these guys members of the BBWAA? Can't they do something internally? Or is this how they make changes?
I don't understand the logic. Why make a stand like this instead of calling out other writers or the leadership of the BBWAA? Why not chase down the idiot who isn't voting for Tim Raines? Or call eliminating the ballot limits immediately asking the BBWAA membership to take action?
I can see the basic logic behind the Rule of 10--you don't want writers voting for everybody and putting in players who don't belong. History shows that was a problem with the Veterans Committee, though, not the general voting.
The real problem with the Rule of 10 is that it creates a math problem. Say you have 15 candidates who everyone generally agrees are Hall-worthy (it would have been a good couple of decades), but none who really stand out as the best. Every year one or two guys come up who are no-brainer. So you have 8 or 9 spots on your ballot. Unless you have some coordination or politicking among the voters, none of those guys are getting in, because they all come out to around 55-60% of the vote. Drop the Rule of 10 and, assuming the writers don't retain some grudge against change (HA!), everyone gets in.
I'm not sure that's a great thing for Cooperstown, though, since there's a limit to how many people can attend because of its remoteness, the lack of facilities, etc. Once you reach a certain size of class, there are going to be diminishing returns. My bet is that the good burghers of the Cooperstown CoC would love a class of 4 or 5 every year, but beyond that don't see much addition revenue.
The real problem with the Rule of 10 is that it creates a math problem. Say you have 15 candidates who everyone generally agrees are Hall-worthy (it would have been a good couple of decades), but none who really stand out as the best. Every year one or two guys come up who are no-brainer. So you have 8 or 9 spots on your ballot. Unless you have some coordination or politicking among the voters, none of those guys are getting in, because they all come out to around 55-60% of the vote. Drop the Rule of 10 and, assuming the writers don't retain some grudge against change (HA!), everyone gets in.
I'm not sure that's a great thing for Cooperstown, though, since there's a limit to how many people can attend because of its remoteness, the lack of facilities, etc. Once you reach a certain size of class, there are going to be diminishing returns. My bet is that the good burghers of the Cooperstown CoC would love a class of 4 or 5 every year, but beyond that don't see much addition revenue.
The real problem is the log-jam created by the PED blockage, and the recent HoF decision to cut the time candidates can be on the ballot. Some writers (~35%) will vote for Clemens and Bonds etal, they'll stay on ballots, so things get a little crowded, and the voters may have to be more selective than they want.
How many years can you make the case that 10, 15 or like Olney (I only read the summary) that there are 17 qualified candidates? Usually in a heavy year we get 3 or 4 qualified guys. My guess is that left alone this will work itself out as over the next few years and we'll have slightly larger HoF classes.
But it seems the real issue for the HoF to deal with and the real agenda is not the 10-man limit, but rather those sticky PED years, and the PED guys and what to do with them? Whether to let the split/controversy continue and maybe they get in, change the "integrity" issue, admit baseball was drugged from 1989-2009 (whatever) and have the BBWAA focus solely on performance and stats, or let some future "HoF Committee" decide whether they want the PED guys to join the club.
As for Olney's protest, rather than abstain from voting, (and it looks to me like Buster is a pouty child not getting what he wants) perhaps he can use his influence and skills as a writer to make reasoned arguments to change people's opinions. And perhaps realize that the change he seeks may not happen as quickly as he likes.
How many years can you make the case that 10, 15 or like Olney (I only read the summary) that there are 17 qualified candidates? Usually in a heavy year we get 3 or 4 qualified guys. My guess is that left alone this will work itself out as over the next few years and we'll have slightly larger HoF classes.
But it seems the real issue for the HoF to deal with and the real agenda is not the 10-man limit, but rather those sticky PED years, and the PED guys and what to do with them? Whether to let the split/controversy continue and maybe they get in, change the "integrity" issue, admit baseball was drugged from 1989-2009 (whatever) and have the BBWAA focus solely on performance and stats, or let some future "HoF Committee" decide whether they want the PED guys to join the club.
As for Olney's protest, rather than abstain from voting, (and it looks to me like Buster is a pouty child not getting what he wants) perhaps he can use his influence and skills as a writer to make reasoned arguments to change people's opinions. And perhaps realize that the change he seeks may not happen as quickly as he likes.
This _is_ Olney using his influence. He's been railing against the rule of 10 for a while now, as well as calling out the old farts who submit single-name ballots (not by name admittedly), and nothing's gotten the attention that this announcement has.
My look at who should go into the Hall of Fame are the crème de la crème of the players but I think we are seeing mostly le crème filling out the ten ballot spaces. Admittedly, there have been players elected who really don't belong but what can be done about that now?
Let us take a purely hypothetical look at a new league in which players can only play one year and at the end of each year the best pitcher and the best hitter are added to its Hall of Fame. The next season, the two best are only 95% as good and then in year 3, only 90% as good. But in year 4, there are new greatest players, which means that all the previous electees are pushed down a notch. In other words, the line the separates the non-HOF'er from the HOF'er keeps getting lower, but there is no standard of demarcation...if Player X is in, then Player Y should also be in.
Does the Baseball Hall of Fame say they made an error nearly 80 years ago when they began electing players and not having performance standards? Kick players out and start again?
How is the voting handled? Give it to the fans? Then you get, "He's on my team and he has to go in" and ballot box stuffing. Give it to the players as log as they don't vote for a teammate? What if they were teammates earlier, in the minors, at college, in school, came from the same state? Stay with the writers who have a wildly varying set of standards and who may have personal axes to grind?
I don't know but I think there are some legitimate questions. And by the way, not all of the new statistical measures are applicable to players of yore because the needed numbers to calculate them simply are not available.
Let us take a purely hypothetical look at a new league in which players can only play one year and at the end of each year the best pitcher and the best hitter are added to its Hall of Fame. The next season, the two best are only 95% as good and then in year 3, only 90% as good. But in year 4, there are new greatest players, which means that all the previous electees are pushed down a notch. In other words, the line the separates the non-HOF'er from the HOF'er keeps getting lower, but there is no standard of demarcation...if Player X is in, then Player Y should also be in.
Does the Baseball Hall of Fame say they made an error nearly 80 years ago when they began electing players and not having performance standards? Kick players out and start again?
How is the voting handled? Give it to the fans? Then you get, "He's on my team and he has to go in" and ballot box stuffing. Give it to the players as log as they don't vote for a teammate? What if they were teammates earlier, in the minors, at college, in school, came from the same state? Stay with the writers who have a wildly varying set of standards and who may have personal axes to grind?
I don't know but I think there are some legitimate questions. And by the way, not all of the new statistical measures are applicable to players of yore because the needed numbers to calculate them simply are not available.