New HOF Rules

vadertime

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The National Baseball Hall of Fame kicked off its big weekend by officially announcing the first changes to the Hall of Fame voting process since 1991. It wasn't a complete overhaul of the system, but the changes are all noteworthy. The most notable of them being that eligible players who are named on at least five percent of BBWAA ballots in a given year will now remain on the ballot for a maximum of 10 years, which is down from 15 years.
 
 
Hall of Fame eligible voters will now be required to complete a registration form and sign a code of conduct.
The names of those BBWAA members casting Hall of Fame ballots will now be made public with the election results; an individual’s ballot, however, will not be revealed by the Hall of Fame.
 
 
Its being played off as minor changes, but as the article notes Bert Blyleven, Jim Rice, Bruce Sutter, Duke Snider, Bob Lemon, & Ralph Kiner all were elected in their 11-15th year of eligibility.  Trammel, Smith, and Mattingly are grandfathered in and will be eligible next year.
 
Should hopefully force voters to be more decisive and avoid the rush of support towards the on of a player's time on a ballot.
 
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/hall-of-fame-announces-first-changes-to-voting-process-since-1991-180308963.html
 
 

soxfan121

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vadertime said:
 
 
Its being played off as minor changes, but as the article notes Bert Blyleven, Jim Rice, Bruce Sutter, Duke Snider, Bob Lemon, & Ralph Kiner all were elected in their 11-15th year of eligibility.  Trammel, Smith, and Mattingly are grandfathered in and will be eligible next year.
 
Should hopefully force voters to be more decisive and avoid the rush of support towards the on of a player's time on a ballot.
 
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/hall-of-fame-announces-first-changes-to-voting-process-since-1991-180308963.html
 
 
The Bonds/McGwire/Clemens Rule. 
 
And while it is blasphemy to say here, none of the guys you listed would be egregious omissions from the Hall. All languished on the ballot for good reasons and only PR got some of them in at the death.
 

OttoC

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And LaRussa said today that he thought PEDs shouldn't be a bar to HOF election.
 

Toe Nash

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soxfan121 said:
 
The Bonds/McGwire/Clemens Rule. 
 
And while it is blasphemy to say here, none of the guys you listed would be egregious omissions from the Hall. All languished on the ballot for good reasons and only PR got some of them in at the death.
Blyleven languished because voters didn't understand how good he was and he was mostly on bad teams. He's the 16th-best starting pitcher by JAWS.
 
That said, I think we have made enough progress in understanding eras, park effects, and the uselessness of stats like wins and RBI that something like that wouldn't happen again.
 

JimD

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I don't get the need to keep the individual ballots secret.  Many of the best writers already make theirs public and do a good job of explaining their votes.  If somebody makes an unusual selection or omission, don't let them hide.
 

soxhop411

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How about the HOF either raise or take away the max # of votes. The ballots are going to be very packed and the stupid limit is going to cause some well deserved players to not make the HOF.
 

vadertime

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soxhop411 said:
How about the HOF either raise or take away the max # of votes. The ballots are going to be very packed and the stupid limit is going to cause some well deserved players to not make the HOF.
 
True, but I have a feeling there would some clowns that would vote for every player on the ballot if they took away the limit.
 

soxhop411

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vadertime said:
 
True, but I have a feeling there would some clowns that would vote for every player on the ballot if they took away the limit.
Then if a voter decides to do that strip them of their voting privileges. Having a vote in the HOF is a privilege not a right.
 

Spacemans Bong

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Those people, if they exist, are emphatically not the problem. The problem are the retards who vote for four people, and waste one of their votes on Lee Smith.

excluding Roger and Barry, we probably need five or six people to go in next year, at a minimum, to clear out the backlog somewhat, and that's not going to happen.
 

axx

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If they were really concerned about the ballot getting too large, they could always raise the % needed to stay on the ballot.
 

soxfan121

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Rasputin said:
Seems to me these changes don't do a damn thing to fix the problems.
 
It solves one large PR problem five years sooner than it would have been under the old rules. 
 

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soxfan121 said:
It solves one large PR problem five years sooner than it would have been under the old rules. 
Maybe I'm still asleep, but which PR problem is that?
 

Leskanic's Thread

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Toe Nash said:
Blyleven languished because voters didn't understand how good he was and he was mostly on bad teams. He's the 16th-best starting pitcher by JAWS.
 
That said, I think we have made enough progress in understanding eras, park effects, and the uselessness of stats like wins and RBI that something like that wouldn't happen again.
Somewhere, Tim Raines sighs.

I don't know if this will motivate voters to add more names to their ballots and get more people in. It might instead exacerbate the entrenched opinions, since there will be less time for alternate arguments to take hold. Such arguments were annoying for many here when they were for Jack Morris. But some worthy players (Blyleven being a key recent example) can benefit from them.
 

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Red(s)HawksFan said:
I imagine the PR problem has to do with the PED guys getting/not getting in...Clemens, Bonds, McGwire, etc.
You ever stop to think that the Hall of Fame could actually go without the best hitter ever, the best pitcher ever, and the guy with the most hits ever, and shitheads like Kennesaw Motherfucking Landis get in?

Sure, Clemens and Bonds might not actually be the best ever, but they're sure as shit pretty darn close and they're not going to get in because the biggest collection of sanctimonious douches outside the Vatican are in charge of voting and they feel the need to save the Hall for the right kind of cheaters.
 

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Rasputin said:
Sure, Clemens and Bonds might not actually be the best ever, but they're sure as shit pretty darn close and they're not going to get in because the biggest collection of sanctimonious douches outside the Vatican are in charge of voting and they feel the need to save the Hall for the right kind of cheaters.
 
Which group would actually elect Clemens and Bonds? The writers haven't. No poll of the fans I've ever seen has had either of the two anywhere near the top vote getters. Current Hall of Famers definitely wouldn't. Maybe if you polled the players who were active during the late 90s (and made sure to exclude any former Giants who hated Bonds) you'd get some support for them, but right now there aren't a ton of people anywhere backing their induction.
 

soxfan121

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Rasputin said:
You ever stop to think that the Hall of Fame could actually go without the best hitter ever, the best pitcher ever, and the guy with the most hits ever, and shitheads like Kennesaw Motherfucking Landis get in?

Sure, Clemens and Bonds might not actually be the best ever, but they're sure as shit pretty darn close and they're not going to get in because the biggest collection of sanctimonious douches outside the Vatican are in charge of voting and they feel the need to save the Hall for the right kind of cheaters.
 
Right. So instead of it being an embarrassing story every year for the next decade, the sanctimonious douches only get a half-decade to pontificate instead. 
 
At which point, the HOF people (who are separate from the BBWAA and MLB) can have a veteran's committee of their own choosing "elect" the PED guys and put them into a separate (but equal!) wing. 
 
What you are missing is that the HOF is not run by MLB and is beholden to the sanctimonious douches. Read the Posnanski article upthread and then think it through. This is the HOF (Idelson's) way of getting the deserving in eventually while placating the sanctimonoius douches and saving Bud Lite's "legacy". 
 

mauf

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The HOF would very much like to avoid a repeat of 2013, when no one was elected despite a glut of candidates. This change probably serves that purpose.

I also agree with Posnanski that the HOF wants to avoid known PED users being enshrined, for practical reasons -- maintaining strong ties with living HOFers is in the Hall's institutional interest, and it's very clear that most living HOFers don't want known PED users in their club.
 

mauf

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soxfan121 said:
 
Right. So instead of it being an embarrassing story every year for the next decade, the sanctimonious douches only get a half-decade to pontificate instead. 
 
At which point, the HOF people (who are separate from the BBWAA and MLB) can have a veteran's committee of their own choosing "elect" the PED guys and put them into a separate (but equal!) wing. 
The "sanctimonious douches" aren't just the writers; it's the living HOFers too.

Bonds and Clemens will almost certainly get in eventually; whether it happens within their lifetimes is much less certain.
 

Rasputin

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soxfan121 said:
What you are missing is that the HOF is not run by MLB and is beholden to the sanctimonious douches. Read the Posnanski article upthread and then think it through. This is the HOF (Idelson's) way of getting the deserving in eventually while placating the sanctimonoius douches and saving Bud Lite's "legacy". 
 
I'm not missing that the HOF is not run by MLB at all. How are they beholden to the writers? If the Hall decided to take their votes away tomorrow, and give them to some other group, what are the writers going to do, burn the place down?