2016 MLB thread. THE CUBS HAVE BROKEN THE CURSE! Chicago Cubs are your 2016 World Series champions
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Larkin
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Larkin
Bend_The_Knee
formerly gotholesinmysocks
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mets finally gave up on fernando martinez and waive him
watch him blow up elsewhere
i wonder the deals the mets could have made involving him
watch him blow up elsewhere
i wonder the deals the mets could have made involving him
Bend_The_Knee
formerly gotholesinmysocks
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mets finally gave up on fernando martinez and waive him
watch him blow up elsewhere
i wonder the deals the mets could have made involving him
watch him blow up elsewhere
i wonder the deals the mets could have made involving him
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BL #11.
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BL #11.
darthska
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Major props to Barry Larkin.
darthska
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Major props to Barry Larkin.
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did Barry make our old NT baseball HOF that CP started?
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did Barry make our old NT baseball HOF that CP started?
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One Barry this year. One Barry next year.
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One Barry this year. One Barry next year.
wildKYcat wrote:
did Barry make our old NT baseball HOF that CP started?
I was literally just lookin thru my old notes on that yesterday.I have a notepad that I use here at work and I was keepin tallies in it when I was workin. I just happened to stumble on the page yesterday after I heard the news. I couldn't decipher my chicken scratch at the time. But I wanna say he did have enough votes from what I could tell, but it was close.
Either way, props to him.
wildKYcat wrote:
did Barry make our old NT baseball HOF that CP started?
I was literally just lookin thru my old notes on that yesterday.I have a notepad that I use here at work and I was keepin tallies in it when I was workin. I just happened to stumble on the page yesterday after I heard the news. I couldn't decipher my chicken scratch at the time. But I wanna say he did have enough votes from what I could tell, but it was close.
Either way, props to him.
2013 HOF ballot will be all about PED's.
The battle over Jeff Bagwell.
Spoiler [+]
The voting process for the Hall of Fame became far more difficult and more complicated five years ago when Mark McGwire first appeared on the ballot. It got harder last year when Rafael Palmeiro appeared on the ballot. Their names and their connections to performance-enhancing drugs changed the philosophy of voting, perhaps forever. Yet the issues of the past two years will appear simple compared to what lies ahead in 2013.
[+] Enlarge
Phil Carter/US PresswireBarry Bonds is the all-time home run leader (762), but in the eyes of many people he's considered to be a tarnished player.
The next Hall of Fame ballot will include Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio and Curt Schilling. They all have Hall of Fame numbers, some stronger than others, but Bonds, Clemens, Sosa and Piazza certainly are not going to be elected on the first ballot -- and in the case of Bonds, Clemens and Sosa, they might not make it to Cooperstown for many, many years to come.
Next year, the Hall of Fame voting process will become more cumbersome, more awkward and more impossible than ever. And it likely will remain that way for another 25 years, until someone finds a better way to deal with this era and the hundreds of players who used performance-enhancing drugs during it.
For now, the voters have spoken. McGwire has been on the ballot for six years, he has never received as much as 30 percent of the vote, and his vote total has decreased in each of the past three years. Keep in mind that McGwire has the 10th-most home runs of all time, he made 11 All-Star teams, his slugging percentage is 98 points higher than that of Reggie Jackson and his on-base percentage is six points higher than that of Tony Gwynn. Palmeiro is one of four players with 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, joining Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray -- and Palmeiro got 11 percent of the vote his first year on the ballot, and slightly more in this his second (12.6 percent).
Some voters maintain that McGwire doesn't have Hall of Fame numbers with his .263 batting average, his 1,626 hits and his average defense. Some voters say that Palmeiro wasn't the best player on his team or at his position, let alone in his league, in most of his years. But those arguments cannot be made for some of the new players to the ballot in 2013.
Bonds won seven MVPs, four more than anyone else. I recently asked a revered baseball historian to name his all-time Mount Rushmore of hitters, and without hesitation, he said, "Barry Bonds is first," then followed with Ted Williams, Babe Ruth and Albert Pujols.
"I played one year in San Francisco [2002]. I watched Barry Bonds take 500 at-bats, and every single at-bat, he either hit a home run, or hit the ball harder than anyone on earth, or walked," White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski said. "He's the best hitter I've ever seen, and there isn't a close second, not just on this planet, but this galaxy. Righties, lefties, it didn't matter with Barry. Here's how good he was that year. The first game of the season, he hit a homer off Roy Oswalt in Houston to win the game. That gave him 659. He told us, 'I'm not going to hit any more home runs here, I want to tie Willie [Mays, at 66![0]](/styles/default/xenforo/NTemojis/alien.gif "Alien 0]")
at home.' The rest of that series, he got his hits, he hit singles and doubles, but no homers. When we got home, he said, 'OK, I'm going to tie Willie today.' And the first at-bat, boom, he went deep. The next day, he came to the park and said, 'Today, I'm going pass Willie.' First at-bat, he hit another homer. I've never seen anything like it."
Yet Bonds, fairly or unfairly, is seen as the face of the steroid era. He is a convicted felon. He has no chance of getting in the Hall of Fame the first year, and likely won't for many years to come. Some will vote for him using the logic that he was already a Hall of Famer before he started using performance-enhancing drugs. He already had three MVPs, 400 homers, 400 steals and seven Gold Gloves. But that logic is challenged by some people, such as Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, who contends that in golf if you shoot 31 on the front nine and you cheat on the back nine, you are disqualified for the round.
Clemens won seven Cy Young Awards, two more than anyone else. He is, by any statistical measure, the best pitcher of the past 50 years, if not the best since Walter Johnson. I asked the same revered historian for his Mount Rushmore of pitchers, and without hesitation he said, "Roger Clemens is first." But Clemens is, after Bonds, the next face of the steroid era. He has been charged with lying before Congress about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. He has no chance to make it to Cooperstown next year, or for many, many years to come.
Sosa hit the seventh-most home runs (609) of all time. There have been eight 60-homer seasons in baseball history, and he has three of them. He hit more homers (479) than anyone for any 10-year period. He is the only player in National League history to have six consecutive years of 40 home runs. In 2001, he had 94 more RBIs than anyone on his team, a record for such things. Yet due to his connection to PEDs, he likely has no chance to make it to Cooperstown in the first year he'll be eligible, and perhaps for many, many years to come.
[+] Enlarge
Stan Honda/AFP/Getty ImagesRoger Clemens is a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, but he's also widely believed to have used performance-enhancing drugs.
Piazza is the greatest hitting catcher of all time. Period. His lifetime average is .308, he has 427 home runs and his .922 OPS is 125 points higher than Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk, and 149 points higher than Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter. For a five-year period with the Dodgers, Piazza hit .318, .319, .346, .336 and .362. But he won't make it to Cooperstown in his first year of eligibility because of suspicion of PED use. He acknowledged using androstenedione early in his career, and only briefly, but he never tested positive for PEDs, and wasn't named in the Mitchell report. But suspicion might be enough these days to keep a player out of the Hall of Fame.
As for Jeff Bagwell, one of the top-10 first basemen of all time and one of the three best in NL history, he increased his vote total by nearly 15 percent as he went from 41.7 percent last year to 56 percent this year.
Biggio's case is strong. He finished his career with 3,060 hits. He also has more doubles than Hank Aaron, and more extra-base hits than Al Kaline, Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell and Mickey Mantle. Biggio is one of five players with more than 250 home runs and more than 400 steals, joining Barry and Bobby Bonds, Rickey Henderson and Joe Morgan. He scored more runs than Ted Williams, and played in more winning games than Frank Robinson. And yet one must go even deeper to comprehend his value. He has been hit by a pitch more times than anyone in history. In 1997, he did not ground into a double play. He is one of only two players in history to play a full season behind the plate, and a full season at second base, and is the only player to also play a full season in center field. He won four consecutive Gold Gloves at second base. He did all this while playing for only one team.
Schilling won 216 games and had a .597 winning percentage. He also had three 20-win seasons, three 300-strikeout seasons and won World Series rings with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Boston Red Sox. His numbers are borderline for Cooperstown, but his staggering numbers in the postseason -- his WHIP is under 1.00 -- might be enough to get him in, although maybe not on the first ballot.
Those are six new candidates for the 2012 ballot. Included is the best hitter most of us have ever seen, the best pitcher most of us have ever seen, the greatest hitting catcher of all time and a 600-home run man -- and none of those four may get in on the first ballot, or perhaps for many years to come. Then, for the first time, we will have to wonder about the relevance of the Hall of Fame.
Will the 2013 ballot bring official changes to the voting process, and if so, what would those changes be? There are no easy answers, only difficult questions. And, as we look another 25 years down the road and wonder what we're going to do with Alex Rodriguez, we realize the questions are only going to get harder.
[+] Enlarge
Phil Carter/US PresswireBarry Bonds is the all-time home run leader (762), but in the eyes of many people he's considered to be a tarnished player.
The next Hall of Fame ballot will include Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio and Curt Schilling. They all have Hall of Fame numbers, some stronger than others, but Bonds, Clemens, Sosa and Piazza certainly are not going to be elected on the first ballot -- and in the case of Bonds, Clemens and Sosa, they might not make it to Cooperstown for many, many years to come.
Next year, the Hall of Fame voting process will become more cumbersome, more awkward and more impossible than ever. And it likely will remain that way for another 25 years, until someone finds a better way to deal with this era and the hundreds of players who used performance-enhancing drugs during it.
For now, the voters have spoken. McGwire has been on the ballot for six years, he has never received as much as 30 percent of the vote, and his vote total has decreased in each of the past three years. Keep in mind that McGwire has the 10th-most home runs of all time, he made 11 All-Star teams, his slugging percentage is 98 points higher than that of Reggie Jackson and his on-base percentage is six points higher than that of Tony Gwynn. Palmeiro is one of four players with 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, joining Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray -- and Palmeiro got 11 percent of the vote his first year on the ballot, and slightly more in this his second (12.6 percent).
Some voters maintain that McGwire doesn't have Hall of Fame numbers with his .263 batting average, his 1,626 hits and his average defense. Some voters say that Palmeiro wasn't the best player on his team or at his position, let alone in his league, in most of his years. But those arguments cannot be made for some of the new players to the ballot in 2013.
Bonds won seven MVPs, four more than anyone else. I recently asked a revered baseball historian to name his all-time Mount Rushmore of hitters, and without hesitation, he said, "Barry Bonds is first," then followed with Ted Williams, Babe Ruth and Albert Pujols.
"I played one year in San Francisco [2002]. I watched Barry Bonds take 500 at-bats, and every single at-bat, he either hit a home run, or hit the ball harder than anyone on earth, or walked," White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski said. "He's the best hitter I've ever seen, and there isn't a close second, not just on this planet, but this galaxy. Righties, lefties, it didn't matter with Barry. Here's how good he was that year. The first game of the season, he hit a homer off Roy Oswalt in Houston to win the game. That gave him 659. He told us, 'I'm not going to hit any more home runs here, I want to tie Willie [Mays, at 66
at home.' The rest of that series, he got his hits, he hit singles and doubles, but no homers. When we got home, he said, 'OK, I'm going to tie Willie today.' And the first at-bat, boom, he went deep. The next day, he came to the park and said, 'Today, I'm going pass Willie.' First at-bat, he hit another homer. I've never seen anything like it."Yet Bonds, fairly or unfairly, is seen as the face of the steroid era. He is a convicted felon. He has no chance of getting in the Hall of Fame the first year, and likely won't for many years to come. Some will vote for him using the logic that he was already a Hall of Famer before he started using performance-enhancing drugs. He already had three MVPs, 400 homers, 400 steals and seven Gold Gloves. But that logic is challenged by some people, such as Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, who contends that in golf if you shoot 31 on the front nine and you cheat on the back nine, you are disqualified for the round.
Clemens won seven Cy Young Awards, two more than anyone else. He is, by any statistical measure, the best pitcher of the past 50 years, if not the best since Walter Johnson. I asked the same revered historian for his Mount Rushmore of pitchers, and without hesitation he said, "Roger Clemens is first." But Clemens is, after Bonds, the next face of the steroid era. He has been charged with lying before Congress about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. He has no chance to make it to Cooperstown next year, or for many, many years to come.
Sosa hit the seventh-most home runs (609) of all time. There have been eight 60-homer seasons in baseball history, and he has three of them. He hit more homers (479) than anyone for any 10-year period. He is the only player in National League history to have six consecutive years of 40 home runs. In 2001, he had 94 more RBIs than anyone on his team, a record for such things. Yet due to his connection to PEDs, he likely has no chance to make it to Cooperstown in the first year he'll be eligible, and perhaps for many, many years to come.
[+] Enlarge
Stan Honda/AFP/Getty ImagesRoger Clemens is a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, but he's also widely believed to have used performance-enhancing drugs.
Piazza is the greatest hitting catcher of all time. Period. His lifetime average is .308, he has 427 home runs and his .922 OPS is 125 points higher than Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk, and 149 points higher than Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter. For a five-year period with the Dodgers, Piazza hit .318, .319, .346, .336 and .362. But he won't make it to Cooperstown in his first year of eligibility because of suspicion of PED use. He acknowledged using androstenedione early in his career, and only briefly, but he never tested positive for PEDs, and wasn't named in the Mitchell report. But suspicion might be enough these days to keep a player out of the Hall of Fame.
As for Jeff Bagwell, one of the top-10 first basemen of all time and one of the three best in NL history, he increased his vote total by nearly 15 percent as he went from 41.7 percent last year to 56 percent this year.
Biggio's case is strong. He finished his career with 3,060 hits. He also has more doubles than Hank Aaron, and more extra-base hits than Al Kaline, Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell and Mickey Mantle. Biggio is one of five players with more than 250 home runs and more than 400 steals, joining Barry and Bobby Bonds, Rickey Henderson and Joe Morgan. He scored more runs than Ted Williams, and played in more winning games than Frank Robinson. And yet one must go even deeper to comprehend his value. He has been hit by a pitch more times than anyone in history. In 1997, he did not ground into a double play. He is one of only two players in history to play a full season behind the plate, and a full season at second base, and is the only player to also play a full season in center field. He won four consecutive Gold Gloves at second base. He did all this while playing for only one team.
Schilling won 216 games and had a .597 winning percentage. He also had three 20-win seasons, three 300-strikeout seasons and won World Series rings with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Boston Red Sox. His numbers are borderline for Cooperstown, but his staggering numbers in the postseason -- his WHIP is under 1.00 -- might be enough to get him in, although maybe not on the first ballot.
Those are six new candidates for the 2012 ballot. Included is the best hitter most of us have ever seen, the best pitcher most of us have ever seen, the greatest hitting catcher of all time and a 600-home run man -- and none of those four may get in on the first ballot, or perhaps for many years to come. Then, for the first time, we will have to wonder about the relevance of the Hall of Fame.
Will the 2013 ballot bring official changes to the voting process, and if so, what would those changes be? There are no easy answers, only difficult questions. And, as we look another 25 years down the road and wonder what we're going to do with Alex Rodriguez, we realize the questions are only going to get harder.
The battle over Jeff Bagwell.
Spoiler [+]
Jeff Bagwell is one of 12 players in baseball history with 400 or more homers and a career on-base percentage of .400 or better. He slugged 449 homers, finished first in the MVP voting in one season, second in another, and in the top 10 six times.
He was a strong defensive player, once winning a Gold Glove Award, and he was an exceptional baserunner, stealing 202 bases despite relatively modest speed. He was a great teammate, didn't live on police blogs, and treated others with tremendous respect. There is nothing about Bagwell's performance that isn't worthy of the Hall of Fame.
But he got votes from just 56 percent of the writers in this year's Hall of Fame voting, and in many respects, his candidacy has become the perfect barometer to gauge the size and scope of the writers' bloc that has devoted itself to doing something that the institution of baseball still doesn't do -- protect the Hall of Fame from performance-enhancing drugs.
To date, there is no evidence that Bagwell ever tested positive for a PED. No documentation, through a report or a lawsuit or investigation, has ever linked Bagwell to the use of a PED.
But some writers have explained in columns that they haven't voted for Bagwell because of suspicion of PED-use, an extraordinary standard. Bagwell's voting percentage climbed from 41.7 to 56 this year, a significant jump, but there appears to be a wall of dissent before him. All it takes to keep a player out of the Hall of Fame is 25 percent plus one of the writers voting 'no.' Bagwell is seemingly close, and yet he is so far away if the steroid vigilantes among the writers don't change their stance.
Bagwell played his first game on April 8, 1991, and his final game on Oct. 2, 2005. In a career of almost 10,000 plate appearances, Bagwell's last 14 plate appearances came after the first notable suspension of any major-leaguer for performance-enhancing drugs -- Rafael Palmeiro.
For almost the entirety of Bagwell's career, there was no attempt to curb the use of steroids in Major League Baseball. The union leadership, the most powerful entity in the sport, didn't address it. The owners didn't address it, nor did the players, clean or dirty. It was in that climate of indifference that a lot of players -- some estimate more than 50 percent -- chose to use PEDs to help their careers, to compete against other users, to make money.
The sport cashed in; owners cashed in. The Houston Astros cashed in; they built a new ballpark, and Drayton McLane recently sold the franchise -- which he purchased in 1992 for $117 million, right after Bagwell began his career -- for $680 million.
Despite the broad suspicion that many, many players used performance-enhancing drugs, no outcome has been altered. No won-loss record has been altered. No championships have been taken away, in the way that Olympics have stripped medals.
None of the results of the Astros' games or seasons have been vacated; the team hasn't given back any of the money it made. Major League Baseball hasn't added asterisks to the record book because suspected steroid use, and in many respects, the sport has moved on, beyond an era it would like to forget. Mark McGwire has been the St. Louis Cardinals' hitting coach, and since his retirement, Bagwell been hired by the Astros. Manny Ramirez was signed by the Tampa Bay Rays after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs while with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he probably will be signed again.
At no point has Major League Baseball or the Hall of Fame moved to make PED users -- suspected or proven -- ineligible for induction, maybe because they realize you can't fully determine who did what, and when they did it, and what the impact of that use was, in its time.
But there are writers who want to pretend that what happened in the steroid era didn't happen, that those achievements that McGwire and Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and Bagwell and others accomplished -- all bought, all paid for, all under the auspices of baseball's powers that be -- didn't happen.
You'd like to think that the work of writers is to reflect history. Not whitewash it.
[h3]Hall of Fame[/h3]
• Barry Larkin was voted in, and I described him to my 7-year-old this way: He was a lot like Derek Jeter, a combination of speed and power, someone who could really hit in any spot of the lineup, while excelling at a premium defensive position. Larkin didn't play as long as Jeter has, nor did he play on the October stage as Jeter, but the reasons why Larkin was special are the same as why we laud Jeter now.
Congrats to a classy colleague ...
Larkin wants to celebrate with Cincinnati Reds fans. His former teammates are really happy for him. The writers got it right this time, writes Hal McCoy.
Larkin was always about grace, writes Paul Daugherty. Larkin would be a charter member in the hall of class guys, writes Bob Ryan.
Some Atlanta Braves offered raves about Larkin, as Carroll Rogers writes.
• Next year, a whole bunch of big names become eligible -- Bonds, Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio and Curt Schilling.
Some arguments supporting Schilling's candidacy, from Mark Simon of ESPN Research:
Argument No. 1: Schilling was the ___ of his time
"Let's do a simple comparison here. Let's compare Curt Schilling to the first-ballot Hall of Famer whose career he most res
embles. Though the two played in different eras, we can use a cross-era Next Level stat to compare them.
[h4]Schilling's Cooperstown case[/h4]
How Curt Schilling's career compares to a Hall of Fame pitcher
[table][tr][th=""]
Career
[/th][th=""]
Schilling
[/th][th=""]
Pitcher X
[/th][/tr][tr][td]
Win Pct
[/td][td]
.597
[/td][td]
.591
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Games over .500
[/td][td]
70
[/td][td]
77
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
ERA+
[/td][td]
128
[/td][td]
128
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Strikeouts
[/td][td]
3,116
[/td][td]
3,117
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
K per 9
[/td][td]
8.6
[/td][td]
7.2
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
K-BB Ratio
[/td][td]
4.4
[/td][td]
2.3
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Starts
[/td][td]
436
[/td][td]
482
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
World Series W-L
[/td][td]
4-1
[/td][td]
7-2
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Postseason ERA
[/td][td]
2.06
[/td][td]
1.89
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
WS Titles
[/td][td]
3
[/td][td]
2
[/td][/tr][/table]
"We use ERA+, which compares a pitcher's ERA to that of his peers in his era, making a slight adjustment for ballparks pitched in. The higher the number, the better the pitcher was than his peers. The numbers are available on Baseball-Reference.com."
Pitcher X is Hall of Famer Bob Gibson.
For reference, Schilling's ERA+ is a match both for Gibson and fellow Hall of Famer Tom Seaver. And it's better than Hall of Famer Jim Palmer's 126.
Argument #2: Postseason performance
"Curt Schilling was 11-2 with a 2.23 career ERA in postseason. Schilling pitched in the postseason between 1993 and 2007. The major-league postseason ERA in that span was 3.98. Of the 93 pitchers to make at least five postseason starts in the last 25 seasons, Schilling's ERA ranks second-best to Doug Drabek (2.05).
"Schilling was 4-1 with a 2.06 ERA in seven career World Series starts. Since the first season after the end of World War II (1946), 38 pitchers have started at least five World Series games."
"The only pitchers with a better World Series ERA than Schilling in that span are Sandy Koufax (0.95) and Bob Gibson (1.89)."
• Jack Morris took a big jump in the voting. I agree with what Lynn Henning writes here: Morris' candidacy could be caught in the vortex of next year's ballot. So far, Morris is 0-for-13.
Fred McGriff's polling numbers grew a little.
Bernie Williams' Hall of Fame candidacy did not start strongly, as Bernie Williams writes.
Edgar Martinez's climb to the Hall of Fame will require patience, writes Larry Stone.
[h3]Notables[/h3]
• It's the middle of January and the start of spring training is five weeks away, and if you're the agent for a free player, said one general manager, "you have to get a job for your guy." This would go a long way toward explaining the renewed aggression being shown by some agents in recent days, general managers say, and why a flurry of signings have kicked off -- from Aaron Cook signing with the Boston Red Sox, who has a good relationship with Boston pitching coach Bob McClure, to Paul Maholm, who landed with the Chicago Cubs.
"There are some good value buys out there," said one executive. "If you've got some extra cash, there are some good pitchers left."
Time will tell whether the prices on the highest-profile pitchers will drop, as well. Hiroki Kuroda, who seems to be waiting for someone to pull the trigger on his asking price of $13-14 million. Edwin Jackson, who had hoped for a John Lackey-type contract when the offseason began. And Ryan Madson, who seemingly was on the verge of re-signing with the Philadelphia Phillies back in November and is, instead, left standing with the closers' game of musical chairs all but over.
It's now Jan. 10 and Prince Fielder is still not signed, and Adam Kilgore wonders why.
• The Oakland Athletics were mostly irrelevant in the AL West race last year, so if you didn't notice how good Brandon McCarthy was, you're forgiven. After the All-Star break, McCarthy had a 3.15 ERA, allowing just 13 walks in 94.1 innings, holding opponents to a .241 batting average. McCarthy is on target to be eligible for free agency next fall, so it figures that one of two things will happen:
1) The 28-year-old McCarthy could be traded by the Athletics, becoming the latest starting pitcher to be dealt by an organization that is loading up for 2015 and beyond.
2) Oakland could sign McCarthy to a multi-year deal, as the two sides go through the arbitration process this month. Signing McCarthy, of course, wouldn't preclude the Athletics from trading the right-hander sometime down the road.
[h3]Moves, deals and decisions[/h3]
1. The New York Yankees will determine in the next couple of weeks whether they will expand their current budget, and this, of course, will determine exactly who they might add for their pitching staff.
2. The Washington Nationals continue to look for another relief pitcher, whether it be Todd Coffey or someone who could do for them what Coffey did last year.
3. The Phillies are among the teams considering Kerry Wood.
4. The Toronto Blue Jays completed their signing of Darren Oliver.
5. The Baltimore Orioles signed a lefty from Taiwan.
6. The Orioles formally hired a front-office official, as Eduardo Encina writes.
7. The Cleveland Indians signed a lefty.
8. Jeff Moorad's ownership acquisition of the San Diego Padres will be completed Thursday. John Moores deserves credit for saving baseball in San Diego.
9. The Milwaukee Brewers watched an outfielder.
He was a strong defensive player, once winning a Gold Glove Award, and he was an exceptional baserunner, stealing 202 bases despite relatively modest speed. He was a great teammate, didn't live on police blogs, and treated others with tremendous respect. There is nothing about Bagwell's performance that isn't worthy of the Hall of Fame.
But he got votes from just 56 percent of the writers in this year's Hall of Fame voting, and in many respects, his candidacy has become the perfect barometer to gauge the size and scope of the writers' bloc that has devoted itself to doing something that the institution of baseball still doesn't do -- protect the Hall of Fame from performance-enhancing drugs.
To date, there is no evidence that Bagwell ever tested positive for a PED. No documentation, through a report or a lawsuit or investigation, has ever linked Bagwell to the use of a PED.
But some writers have explained in columns that they haven't voted for Bagwell because of suspicion of PED-use, an extraordinary standard. Bagwell's voting percentage climbed from 41.7 to 56 this year, a significant jump, but there appears to be a wall of dissent before him. All it takes to keep a player out of the Hall of Fame is 25 percent plus one of the writers voting 'no.' Bagwell is seemingly close, and yet he is so far away if the steroid vigilantes among the writers don't change their stance.
Bagwell played his first game on April 8, 1991, and his final game on Oct. 2, 2005. In a career of almost 10,000 plate appearances, Bagwell's last 14 plate appearances came after the first notable suspension of any major-leaguer for performance-enhancing drugs -- Rafael Palmeiro.
For almost the entirety of Bagwell's career, there was no attempt to curb the use of steroids in Major League Baseball. The union leadership, the most powerful entity in the sport, didn't address it. The owners didn't address it, nor did the players, clean or dirty. It was in that climate of indifference that a lot of players -- some estimate more than 50 percent -- chose to use PEDs to help their careers, to compete against other users, to make money.
The sport cashed in; owners cashed in. The Houston Astros cashed in; they built a new ballpark, and Drayton McLane recently sold the franchise -- which he purchased in 1992 for $117 million, right after Bagwell began his career -- for $680 million.
Despite the broad suspicion that many, many players used performance-enhancing drugs, no outcome has been altered. No won-loss record has been altered. No championships have been taken away, in the way that Olympics have stripped medals.
None of the results of the Astros' games or seasons have been vacated; the team hasn't given back any of the money it made. Major League Baseball hasn't added asterisks to the record book because suspected steroid use, and in many respects, the sport has moved on, beyond an era it would like to forget. Mark McGwire has been the St. Louis Cardinals' hitting coach, and since his retirement, Bagwell been hired by the Astros. Manny Ramirez was signed by the Tampa Bay Rays after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs while with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he probably will be signed again.
At no point has Major League Baseball or the Hall of Fame moved to make PED users -- suspected or proven -- ineligible for induction, maybe because they realize you can't fully determine who did what, and when they did it, and what the impact of that use was, in its time.
But there are writers who want to pretend that what happened in the steroid era didn't happen, that those achievements that McGwire and Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and Bagwell and others accomplished -- all bought, all paid for, all under the auspices of baseball's powers that be -- didn't happen.
You'd like to think that the work of writers is to reflect history. Not whitewash it.
[h3]Hall of Fame[/h3]
• Barry Larkin was voted in, and I described him to my 7-year-old this way: He was a lot like Derek Jeter, a combination of speed and power, someone who could really hit in any spot of the lineup, while excelling at a premium defensive position. Larkin didn't play as long as Jeter has, nor did he play on the October stage as Jeter, but the reasons why Larkin was special are the same as why we laud Jeter now.
Congrats to a classy colleague ...
Larkin wants to celebrate with Cincinnati Reds fans. His former teammates are really happy for him. The writers got it right this time, writes Hal McCoy.
Larkin was always about grace, writes Paul Daugherty. Larkin would be a charter member in the hall of class guys, writes Bob Ryan.
Some Atlanta Braves offered raves about Larkin, as Carroll Rogers writes.
• Next year, a whole bunch of big names become eligible -- Bonds, Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio and Curt Schilling.
Some arguments supporting Schilling's candidacy, from Mark Simon of ESPN Research:
Argument No. 1: Schilling was the ___ of his time
"Let's do a simple comparison here. Let's compare Curt Schilling to the first-ballot Hall of Famer whose career he most res
embles. Though the two played in different eras, we can use a cross-era Next Level stat to compare them.
[h4]Schilling's Cooperstown case[/h4]
How Curt Schilling's career compares to a Hall of Fame pitcher
[table][tr][th=""]
Career
[/th][th=""]
Schilling
[/th][th=""]
Pitcher X
[/th][/tr][tr][td]
Win Pct
[/td][td]
.597
[/td][td]
.591
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Games over .500
[/td][td]
70
[/td][td]
77
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
ERA+
[/td][td]
128
[/td][td]
128
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Strikeouts
[/td][td]
3,116
[/td][td]
3,117
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
K per 9
[/td][td]
8.6
[/td][td]
7.2
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
K-BB Ratio
[/td][td]
4.4
[/td][td]
2.3
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Starts
[/td][td]
436
[/td][td]
482
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
World Series W-L
[/td][td]
4-1
[/td][td]
7-2
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Postseason ERA
[/td][td]
2.06
[/td][td]
1.89
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
WS Titles
[/td][td]
3
[/td][td]
2
[/td][/tr][/table]
"We use ERA+, which compares a pitcher's ERA to that of his peers in his era, making a slight adjustment for ballparks pitched in. The higher the number, the better the pitcher was than his peers. The numbers are available on Baseball-Reference.com."
Pitcher X is Hall of Famer Bob Gibson.
For reference, Schilling's ERA+ is a match both for Gibson and fellow Hall of Famer Tom Seaver. And it's better than Hall of Famer Jim Palmer's 126.
Argument #2: Postseason performance
"Curt Schilling was 11-2 with a 2.23 career ERA in postseason. Schilling pitched in the postseason between 1993 and 2007. The major-league postseason ERA in that span was 3.98. Of the 93 pitchers to make at least five postseason starts in the last 25 seasons, Schilling's ERA ranks second-best to Doug Drabek (2.05).
"Schilling was 4-1 with a 2.06 ERA in seven career World Series starts. Since the first season after the end of World War II (1946), 38 pitchers have started at least five World Series games."
"The only pitchers with a better World Series ERA than Schilling in that span are Sandy Koufax (0.95) and Bob Gibson (1.89)."
• Jack Morris took a big jump in the voting. I agree with what Lynn Henning writes here: Morris' candidacy could be caught in the vortex of next year's ballot. So far, Morris is 0-for-13.
Fred McGriff's polling numbers grew a little.
Bernie Williams' Hall of Fame candidacy did not start strongly, as Bernie Williams writes.
Edgar Martinez's climb to the Hall of Fame will require patience, writes Larry Stone.
[h3]Notables[/h3]
• It's the middle of January and the start of spring training is five weeks away, and if you're the agent for a free player, said one general manager, "you have to get a job for your guy." This would go a long way toward explaining the renewed aggression being shown by some agents in recent days, general managers say, and why a flurry of signings have kicked off -- from Aaron Cook signing with the Boston Red Sox, who has a good relationship with Boston pitching coach Bob McClure, to Paul Maholm, who landed with the Chicago Cubs.
"There are some good value buys out there," said one executive. "If you've got some extra cash, there are some good pitchers left."
Time will tell whether the prices on the highest-profile pitchers will drop, as well. Hiroki Kuroda, who seems to be waiting for someone to pull the trigger on his asking price of $13-14 million. Edwin Jackson, who had hoped for a John Lackey-type contract when the offseason began. And Ryan Madson, who seemingly was on the verge of re-signing with the Philadelphia Phillies back in November and is, instead, left standing with the closers' game of musical chairs all but over.
It's now Jan. 10 and Prince Fielder is still not signed, and Adam Kilgore wonders why.
• The Oakland Athletics were mostly irrelevant in the AL West race last year, so if you didn't notice how good Brandon McCarthy was, you're forgiven. After the All-Star break, McCarthy had a 3.15 ERA, allowing just 13 walks in 94.1 innings, holding opponents to a .241 batting average. McCarthy is on target to be eligible for free agency next fall, so it figures that one of two things will happen:
1) The 28-year-old McCarthy could be traded by the Athletics, becoming the latest starting pitcher to be dealt by an organization that is loading up for 2015 and beyond.
2) Oakland could sign McCarthy to a multi-year deal, as the two sides go through the arbitration process this month. Signing McCarthy, of course, wouldn't preclude the Athletics from trading the right-hander sometime down the road.
[h3]Moves, deals and decisions[/h3]
1. The New York Yankees will determine in the next couple of weeks whether they will expand their current budget, and this, of course, will determine exactly who they might add for their pitching staff.
2. The Washington Nationals continue to look for another relief pitcher, whether it be Todd Coffey or someone who could do for them what Coffey did last year.
3. The Phillies are among the teams considering Kerry Wood.
4. The Toronto Blue Jays completed their signing of Darren Oliver.
5. The Baltimore Orioles signed a lefty from Taiwan.
6. The Orioles formally hired a front-office official, as Eduardo Encina writes.
7. The Cleveland Indians signed a lefty.
8. Jeff Moorad's ownership acquisition of the San Diego Padres will be completed Thursday. John Moores deserves credit for saving baseball in San Diego.
9. The Milwaukee Brewers watched an outfielder.
2013 HOF ballot will be all about PED's.
The battle over Jeff Bagwell.
Spoiler [+]
The voting process for the Hall of Fame became far more difficult and more complicated five years ago when Mark McGwire first appeared on the ballot. It got harder last year when Rafael Palmeiro appeared on the ballot. Their names and their connections to performance-enhancing drugs changed the philosophy of voting, perhaps forever. Yet the issues of the past two years will appear simple compared to what lies ahead in 2013.
[+] Enlarge
Phil Carter/US PresswireBarry Bonds is the all-time home run leader (762), but in the eyes of many people he's considered to be a tarnished player.
The next Hall of Fame ballot will include Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio and Curt Schilling. They all have Hall of Fame numbers, some stronger than others, but Bonds, Clemens, Sosa and Piazza certainly are not going to be elected on the first ballot -- and in the case of Bonds, Clemens and Sosa, they might not make it to Cooperstown for many, many years to come.
Next year, the Hall of Fame voting process will become more cumbersome, more awkward and more impossible than ever. And it likely will remain that way for another 25 years, until someone finds a better way to deal with this era and the hundreds of players who used performance-enhancing drugs during it.
For now, the voters have spoken. McGwire has been on the ballot for six years, he has never received as much as 30 percent of the vote, and his vote total has decreased in each of the past three years. Keep in mind that McGwire has the 10th-most home runs of all time, he made 11 All-Star teams, his slugging percentage is 98 points higher than that of Reggie Jackson and his on-base percentage is six points higher than that of Tony Gwynn. Palmeiro is one of four players with 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, joining Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray -- and Palmeiro got 11 percent of the vote his first year on the ballot, and slightly more in this his second (12.6 percent).
Some voters maintain that McGwire doesn't have Hall of Fame numbers with his .263 batting average, his 1,626 hits and his average defense. Some voters say that Palmeiro wasn't the best player on his team or at his position, let alone in his league, in most of his years. But those arguments cannot be made for some of the new players to the ballot in 2013.
Bonds won seven MVPs, four more than anyone else. I recently asked a revered baseball historian to name his all-time Mount Rushmore of hitters, and without hesitation, he said, "Barry Bonds is first," then followed with Ted Williams, Babe Ruth and Albert Pujols.
"I played one year in San Francisco [2002]. I watched Barry Bonds take 500 at-bats, and every single at-bat, he either hit a home run, or hit the ball harder than anyone on earth, or walked," White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski said. "He's the best hitter I've ever seen, and there isn't a close second, not just on this planet, but this galaxy. Righties, lefties, it didn't matter with Barry. Here's how good he was that year. The first game of the season, he hit a homer off Roy Oswalt in Houston to win the game. That gave him 659. He told us, 'I'm not going to hit any more home runs here, I want to tie Willie [Mays, at 66 at home.' The rest of that series, he got his hits, he hit singles and doubles, but no homers. When we got home, he said, 'OK, I'm going to tie Willie today.' And the first at-bat, boom, he went deep. The next day, he came to the park and said, 'Today, I'm going pass Willie.' First at-bat, he hit another homer. I've never seen anything like it."
Yet Bonds, fairly or unfairly, is seen as the face of the steroid era. He is a convicted felon. He has no chance of getting in the Hall of Fame the first year, and likely won't for many years to come. Some will vote for him using the logic that he was already a Hall of Famer before he started using performance-enhancing drugs. He already had three MVPs, 400 homers, 400 steals and seven Gold Gloves. But that logic is challenged by some people, such as Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, who contends that in golf if you shoot 31 on the front nine and you cheat on the back nine, you are disqualified for the round.
Clemens won seven Cy Young Awards, two more than anyone else. He is, by any statistical measure, the best pitcher of the past 50 years, if not the best since Walter Johnson. I asked the same revered historian for his Mount Rushmore of pitchers, and without hesitation he said, "Roger Clemens is first." But Clemens is, after Bonds, the next face of the steroid era. He has been charged with lying before Congress about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. He has no chance to make it to Cooperstown next year, or for many, many years to come.
Sosa hit the seventh-most home runs (609) of all time. There have been eight 60-homer seasons in baseball history, and he has three of them. He hit more homers (479) than anyone for any 10-year period. He is the only player in National League history to have six consecutive years of 40 home runs. In 2001, he had 94 more RBIs than anyone on his team, a record for such things. Yet due to his connection to PEDs, he likely has no chance to make it to Cooperstown in the first year he'll be eligible, and perhaps for many, many years to come.
[+] Enlarge
Stan Honda/AFP/Getty ImagesRoger Clemens is a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, but he's also widely believed to have used performance-enhancing drugs.
Piazza is the greatest hitting catcher of all time. Period. His lifetime average is .308, he has 427 home runs and his .922 OPS is 125 points higher than Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk, and 149 points higher than Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter. For a five-year period with the Dodgers, Piazza hit .318, .319, .346, .336 and .362. But he won't make it to Cooperstown in his first year of eligibility because of suspicion of PED use. He acknowledged using androstenedione early in his career, and only briefly, but he never tested positive for PEDs, and wasn't named in the Mitchell report. But suspicion might be enough these days to keep a player out of the Hall of Fame.
As for Jeff Bagwell, one of the top-10 first basemen of all time and one of the three best in NL history, he increased his vote total by nearly 15 percent as he went from 41.7 percent last year to 56 percent this year.
Biggio's case is strong. He finished his career with 3,060 hits. He also has more doubles than Hank Aaron, and more extra-base hits than Al Kaline, Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell and Mickey Mantle. Biggio is one of five players with more than 250 home runs and more than 400 steals, joining Barry and Bobby Bonds, Rickey Henderson and Joe Morgan. He scored more runs than Ted Williams, and played in more winning games than Frank Robinson. And yet one must go even deeper to comprehend his value. He has been hit by a pitch more times than anyone in history. In 1997, he did not ground into a double play. He is one of only two players in history to play a full season behind the plate, and a full season at second base, and is the only player to also play a full season in center field. He won four consecutive Gold Gloves at second base. He did all this while playing for only one team.
Schilling won 216 games and had a .597 winning percentage. He also had three 20-win seasons, three 300-strikeout seasons and won World Series rings with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Boston Red Sox. His numbers are borderline for Cooperstown, but his staggering numbers in the postseason -- his WHIP is under 1.00 -- might be enough to get him in, although maybe not on the first ballot.
Those are six new candidates for the 2012 ballot. Included is the best hitter most of us have ever seen, the best pitcher most of us have ever seen, the greatest hitting catcher of all time and a 600-home run man -- and none of those four may get in on the first ballot, or perhaps for many years to come. Then, for the first time, we will have to wonder about the relevance of the Hall of Fame.
Will the 2013 ballot bring official changes to the voting process, and if so, what would those changes be? There are no easy answers, only difficult questions. And, as we look another 25 years down the road and wonder what we're going to do with Alex Rodriguez, we realize the questions are only going to get harder.
[+] Enlarge
Phil Carter/US PresswireBarry Bonds is the all-time home run leader (762), but in the eyes of many people he's considered to be a tarnished player.
The next Hall of Fame ballot will include Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio and Curt Schilling. They all have Hall of Fame numbers, some stronger than others, but Bonds, Clemens, Sosa and Piazza certainly are not going to be elected on the first ballot -- and in the case of Bonds, Clemens and Sosa, they might not make it to Cooperstown for many, many years to come.
Next year, the Hall of Fame voting process will become more cumbersome, more awkward and more impossible than ever. And it likely will remain that way for another 25 years, until someone finds a better way to deal with this era and the hundreds of players who used performance-enhancing drugs during it.
For now, the voters have spoken. McGwire has been on the ballot for six years, he has never received as much as 30 percent of the vote, and his vote total has decreased in each of the past three years. Keep in mind that McGwire has the 10th-most home runs of all time, he made 11 All-Star teams, his slugging percentage is 98 points higher than that of Reggie Jackson and his on-base percentage is six points higher than that of Tony Gwynn. Palmeiro is one of four players with 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, joining Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray -- and Palmeiro got 11 percent of the vote his first year on the ballot, and slightly more in this his second (12.6 percent).
Some voters maintain that McGwire doesn't have Hall of Fame numbers with his .263 batting average, his 1,626 hits and his average defense. Some voters say that Palmeiro wasn't the best player on his team or at his position, let alone in his league, in most of his years. But those arguments cannot be made for some of the new players to the ballot in 2013.
Bonds won seven MVPs, four more than anyone else. I recently asked a revered baseball historian to name his all-time Mount Rushmore of hitters, and without hesitation, he said, "Barry Bonds is first," then followed with Ted Williams, Babe Ruth and Albert Pujols.
"I played one year in San Francisco [2002]. I watched Barry Bonds take 500 at-bats, and every single at-bat, he either hit a home run, or hit the ball harder than anyone on earth, or walked," White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski said. "He's the best hitter I've ever seen, and there isn't a close second, not just on this planet, but this galaxy. Righties, lefties, it didn't matter with Barry. Here's how good he was that year. The first game of the season, he hit a homer off Roy Oswalt in Houston to win the game. That gave him 659. He told us, 'I'm not going to hit any more home runs here, I want to tie Willie [Mays, at 66
at home.' The rest of that series, he got his hits, he hit singles and doubles, but no homers. When we got home, he said, 'OK, I'm going to tie Willie today.' And the first at-bat, boom, he went deep. The next day, he came to the park and said, 'Today, I'm going pass Willie.' First at-bat, he hit another homer. I've never seen anything like it."Yet Bonds, fairly or unfairly, is seen as the face of the steroid era. He is a convicted felon. He has no chance of getting in the Hall of Fame the first year, and likely won't for many years to come. Some will vote for him using the logic that he was already a Hall of Famer before he started using performance-enhancing drugs. He already had three MVPs, 400 homers, 400 steals and seven Gold Gloves. But that logic is challenged by some people, such as Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, who contends that in golf if you shoot 31 on the front nine and you cheat on the back nine, you are disqualified for the round.
Clemens won seven Cy Young Awards, two more than anyone else. He is, by any statistical measure, the best pitcher of the past 50 years, if not the best since Walter Johnson. I asked the same revered historian for his Mount Rushmore of pitchers, and without hesitation he said, "Roger Clemens is first." But Clemens is, after Bonds, the next face of the steroid era. He has been charged with lying before Congress about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. He has no chance to make it to Cooperstown next year, or for many, many years to come.
Sosa hit the seventh-most home runs (609) of all time. There have been eight 60-homer seasons in baseball history, and he has three of them. He hit more homers (479) than anyone for any 10-year period. He is the only player in National League history to have six consecutive years of 40 home runs. In 2001, he had 94 more RBIs than anyone on his team, a record for such things. Yet due to his connection to PEDs, he likely has no chance to make it to Cooperstown in the first year he'll be eligible, and perhaps for many, many years to come.
[+] Enlarge
Stan Honda/AFP/Getty ImagesRoger Clemens is a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, but he's also widely believed to have used performance-enhancing drugs.
Piazza is the greatest hitting catcher of all time. Period. His lifetime average is .308, he has 427 home runs and his .922 OPS is 125 points higher than Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk, and 149 points higher than Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter. For a five-year period with the Dodgers, Piazza hit .318, .319, .346, .336 and .362. But he won't make it to Cooperstown in his first year of eligibility because of suspicion of PED use. He acknowledged using androstenedione early in his career, and only briefly, but he never tested positive for PEDs, and wasn't named in the Mitchell report. But suspicion might be enough these days to keep a player out of the Hall of Fame.
As for Jeff Bagwell, one of the top-10 first basemen of all time and one of the three best in NL history, he increased his vote total by nearly 15 percent as he went from 41.7 percent last year to 56 percent this year.
Biggio's case is strong. He finished his career with 3,060 hits. He also has more doubles than Hank Aaron, and more extra-base hits than Al Kaline, Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell and Mickey Mantle. Biggio is one of five players with more than 250 home runs and more than 400 steals, joining Barry and Bobby Bonds, Rickey Henderson and Joe Morgan. He scored more runs than Ted Williams, and played in more winning games than Frank Robinson. And yet one must go even deeper to comprehend his value. He has been hit by a pitch more times than anyone in history. In 1997, he did not ground into a double play. He is one of only two players in history to play a full season behind the plate, and a full season at second base, and is the only player to also play a full season in center field. He won four consecutive Gold Gloves at second base. He did all this while playing for only one team.
Schilling won 216 games and had a .597 winning percentage. He also had three 20-win seasons, three 300-strikeout seasons and won World Series rings with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Boston Red Sox. His numbers are borderline for Cooperstown, but his staggering numbers in the postseason -- his WHIP is under 1.00 -- might be enough to get him in, although maybe not on the first ballot.
Those are six new candidates for the 2012 ballot. Included is the best hitter most of us have ever seen, the best pitcher most of us have ever seen, the greatest hitting catcher of all time and a 600-home run man -- and none of those four may get in on the first ballot, or perhaps for many years to come. Then, for the first time, we will have to wonder about the relevance of the Hall of Fame.
Will the 2013 ballot bring official changes to the voting process, and if so, what would those changes be? There are no easy answers, only difficult questions. And, as we look another 25 years down the road and wonder what we're going to do with Alex Rodriguez, we realize the questions are only going to get harder.
The battle over Jeff Bagwell.
Spoiler [+]
Jeff Bagwell is one of 12 players in baseball history with 400 or more homers and a career on-base percentage of .400 or better. He slugged 449 homers, finished first in the MVP voting in one season, second in another, and in the top 10 six times.
He was a strong defensive player, once winning a Gold Glove Award, and he was an exceptional baserunner, stealing 202 bases despite relatively modest speed. He was a great teammate, didn't live on police blogs, and treated others with tremendous respect. There is nothing about Bagwell's performance that isn't worthy of the Hall of Fame.
But he got votes from just 56 percent of the writers in this year's Hall of Fame voting, and in many respects, his candidacy has become the perfect barometer to gauge the size and scope of the writers' bloc that has devoted itself to doing something that the institution of baseball still doesn't do -- protect the Hall of Fame from performance-enhancing drugs.
To date, there is no evidence that Bagwell ever tested positive for a PED. No documentation, through a report or a lawsuit or investigation, has ever linked Bagwell to the use of a PED.
But some writers have explained in columns that they haven't voted for Bagwell because of suspicion of PED-use, an extraordinary standard. Bagwell's voting percentage climbed from 41.7 to 56 this year, a significant jump, but there appears to be a wall of dissent before him. All it takes to keep a player out of the Hall of Fame is 25 percent plus one of the writers voting 'no.' Bagwell is seemingly close, and yet he is so far away if the steroid vigilantes among the writers don't change their stance.
Bagwell played his first game on April 8, 1991, and his final game on Oct. 2, 2005. In a career of almost 10,000 plate appearances, Bagwell's last 14 plate appearances came after the first notable suspension of any major-leaguer for performance-enhancing drugs -- Rafael Palmeiro.
For almost the entirety of Bagwell's career, there was no attempt to curb the use of steroids in Major League Baseball. The union leadership, the most powerful entity in the sport, didn't address it. The owners didn't address it, nor did the players, clean or dirty. It was in that climate of indifference that a lot of players -- some estimate more than 50 percent -- chose to use PEDs to help their careers, to compete against other users, to make money.
The sport cashed in; owners cashed in. The Houston Astros cashed in; they built a new ballpark, and Drayton McLane recently sold the franchise -- which he purchased in 1992 for $117 million, right after Bagwell began his career -- for $680 million.
Despite the broad suspicion that many, many players used performance-enhancing drugs, no outcome has been altered. No won-loss record has been altered. No championships have been taken away, in the way that Olympics have stripped medals.
None of the results of the Astros' games or seasons have been vacated; the team hasn't given back any of the money it made. Major League Baseball hasn't added asterisks to the record book because suspected steroid use, and in many respects, the sport has moved on, beyond an era it would like to forget. Mark McGwire has been the St. Louis Cardinals' hitting coach, and since his retirement, Bagwell been hired by the Astros. Manny Ramirez was signed by the Tampa Bay Rays after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs while with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he probably will be signed again.
At no point has Major League Baseball or the Hall of Fame moved to make PED users -- suspected or proven -- ineligible for induction, maybe because they realize you can't fully determine who did what, and when they did it, and what the impact of that use was, in its time.
But there are writers who want to pretend that what happened in the steroid era didn't happen, that those achievements that McGwire and Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and Bagwell and others accomplished -- all bought, all paid for, all under the auspices of baseball's powers that be -- didn't happen.
You'd like to think that the work of writers is to reflect history. Not whitewash it.
[h3]Hall of Fame[/h3]
• Barry Larkin was voted in, and I described him to my 7-year-old this way: He was a lot like Derek Jeter, a combination of speed and power, someone who could really hit in any spot of the lineup, while excelling at a premium defensive position. Larkin didn't play as long as Jeter has, nor did he play on the October stage as Jeter, but the reasons why Larkin was special are the same as why we laud Jeter now.
Congrats to a classy colleague ...
Larkin wants to celebrate with Cincinnati Reds fans. His former teammates are really happy for him. The writers got it right this time, writes Hal McCoy.
Larkin was always about grace, writes Paul Daugherty. Larkin would be a charter member in the hall of class guys, writes Bob Ryan.
Some Atlanta Braves offered raves about Larkin, as Carroll Rogers writes.
• Next year, a whole bunch of big names become eligible -- Bonds, Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio and Curt Schilling.
Some arguments supporting Schilling's candidacy, from Mark Simon of ESPN Research:
Argument No. 1: Schilling was the ___ of his time
"Let's do a simple comparison here. Let's compare Curt Schilling to the first-ballot Hall of Famer whose career he most res
embles. Though the two played in different eras, we can use a cross-era Next Level stat to compare them.
[h4]Schilling's Cooperstown case[/h4]
How Curt Schilling's career compares to a Hall of Fame pitcher
[table][tr][th=""]
Career
[/th][th=""]
Schilling
[/th][th=""]
Pitcher X
[/th][/tr][tr][td]
Win Pct
[/td][td]
.597
[/td][td]
.591
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Games over .500
[/td][td]
70
[/td][td]
77
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
ERA+
[/td][td]
128
[/td][td]
128
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Strikeouts
[/td][td]
3,116
[/td][td]
3,117
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
K per 9
[/td][td]
8.6
[/td][td]
7.2
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
K-BB Ratio
[/td][td]
4.4
[/td][td]
2.3
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Starts
[/td][td]
436
[/td][td]
482
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
World Series W-L
[/td][td]
4-1
[/td][td]
7-2
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Postseason ERA
[/td][td]
2.06
[/td][td]
1.89
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
WS Titles
[/td][td]
3
[/td][td]
2
[/td][/tr][/table]
"We use ERA+, which compares a pitcher's ERA to that of his peers in his era, making a slight adjustment for ballparks pitched in. The higher the number, the better the pitcher was than his peers. The numbers are available on Baseball-Reference.com."
Pitcher X is Hall of Famer Bob Gibson.
For reference, Schilling's ERA+ is a match both for Gibson and fellow Hall of Famer Tom Seaver. And it's better than Hall of Famer Jim Palmer's 126.
Argument #2: Postseason performance
"Curt Schilling was 11-2 with a 2.23 career ERA in postseason. Schilling pitched in the postseason between 1993 and 2007. The major-league postseason ERA in that span was 3.98. Of the 93 pitchers to make at least five postseason starts in the last 25 seasons, Schilling's ERA ranks second-best to Doug Drabek (2.05).
"Schilling was 4-1 with a 2.06 ERA in seven career World Series starts. Since the first season after the end of World War II (1946), 38 pitchers have started at least five World Series games."
"The only pitchers with a better World Series ERA than Schilling in that span are Sandy Koufax (0.95) and Bob Gibson (1.89)."
• Jack Morris took a big jump in the voting. I agree with what Lynn Henning writes here: Morris' candidacy could be caught in the vortex of next year's ballot. So far, Morris is 0-for-13.
Fred McGriff's polling numbers grew a little.
Bernie Williams' Hall of Fame candidacy did not start strongly, as Bernie Williams writes.
Edgar Martinez's climb to the Hall of Fame will require patience, writes Larry Stone.
[h3]Notables[/h3]
• It's the middle of January and the start of spring training is five weeks away, and if you're the agent for a free player, said one general manager, "you have to get a job for your guy." This would go a long way toward explaining the renewed aggression being shown by some agents in recent days, general managers say, and why a flurry of signings have kicked off -- from Aaron Cook signing with the Boston Red Sox, who has a good relationship with Boston pitching coach Bob McClure, to Paul Maholm, who landed with the Chicago Cubs.
"There are some good value buys out there," said one executive. "If you've got some extra cash, there are some good pitchers left."
Time will tell whether the prices on the highest-profile pitchers will drop, as well. Hiroki Kuroda, who seems to be waiting for someone to pull the trigger on his asking price of $13-14 million. Edwin Jackson, who had hoped for a John Lackey-type contract when the offseason began. And Ryan Madson, who seemingly was on the verge of re-signing with the Philadelphia Phillies back in November and is, instead, left standing with the closers' game of musical chairs all but over.
It's now Jan. 10 and Prince Fielder is still not signed, and Adam Kilgore wonders why.
• The Oakland Athletics were mostly irrelevant in the AL West race last year, so if you didn't notice how good Brandon McCarthy was, you're forgiven. After the All-Star break, McCarthy had a 3.15 ERA, allowing just 13 walks in 94.1 innings, holding opponents to a .241 batting average. McCarthy is on target to be eligible for free agency next fall, so it figures that one of two things will happen:
1) The 28-year-old McCarthy could be traded by the Athletics, becoming the latest starting pitcher to be dealt by an organization that is loading up for 2015 and beyond.
2) Oakland could sign McCarthy to a multi-year deal, as the two sides go through the arbitration process this month. Signing McCarthy, of course, wouldn't preclude the Athletics from trading the right-hander sometime down the road.
[h3]Moves, deals and decisions[/h3]
1. The New York Yankees will determine in the next couple of weeks whether they will expand their current budget, and this, of course, will determine exactly who they might add for their pitching staff.
2. The Washington Nationals continue to look for another relief pitcher, whether it be Todd Coffey or someone who could do for them what Coffey did last year.
3. The Phillies are among the teams considering Kerry Wood.
4. The Toronto Blue Jays completed their signing of Darren Oliver.
5. The Baltimore Orioles signed a lefty from Taiwan.
6. The Orioles formally hired a front-office official, as Eduardo Encina writes.
7. The Cleveland Indians signed a lefty.
8. Jeff Moorad's ownership acquisition of the San Diego Padres will be completed Thursday. John Moores deserves credit for saving baseball in San Diego.
9. The Milwaukee Brewers watched an outfielder.
He was a strong defensive player, once winning a Gold Glove Award, and he was an exceptional baserunner, stealing 202 bases despite relatively modest speed. He was a great teammate, didn't live on police blogs, and treated others with tremendous respect. There is nothing about Bagwell's performance that isn't worthy of the Hall of Fame.
But he got votes from just 56 percent of the writers in this year's Hall of Fame voting, and in many respects, his candidacy has become the perfect barometer to gauge the size and scope of the writers' bloc that has devoted itself to doing something that the institution of baseball still doesn't do -- protect the Hall of Fame from performance-enhancing drugs.
To date, there is no evidence that Bagwell ever tested positive for a PED. No documentation, through a report or a lawsuit or investigation, has ever linked Bagwell to the use of a PED.
But some writers have explained in columns that they haven't voted for Bagwell because of suspicion of PED-use, an extraordinary standard. Bagwell's voting percentage climbed from 41.7 to 56 this year, a significant jump, but there appears to be a wall of dissent before him. All it takes to keep a player out of the Hall of Fame is 25 percent plus one of the writers voting 'no.' Bagwell is seemingly close, and yet he is so far away if the steroid vigilantes among the writers don't change their stance.
Bagwell played his first game on April 8, 1991, and his final game on Oct. 2, 2005. In a career of almost 10,000 plate appearances, Bagwell's last 14 plate appearances came after the first notable suspension of any major-leaguer for performance-enhancing drugs -- Rafael Palmeiro.
For almost the entirety of Bagwell's career, there was no attempt to curb the use of steroids in Major League Baseball. The union leadership, the most powerful entity in the sport, didn't address it. The owners didn't address it, nor did the players, clean or dirty. It was in that climate of indifference that a lot of players -- some estimate more than 50 percent -- chose to use PEDs to help their careers, to compete against other users, to make money.
The sport cashed in; owners cashed in. The Houston Astros cashed in; they built a new ballpark, and Drayton McLane recently sold the franchise -- which he purchased in 1992 for $117 million, right after Bagwell began his career -- for $680 million.
Despite the broad suspicion that many, many players used performance-enhancing drugs, no outcome has been altered. No won-loss record has been altered. No championships have been taken away, in the way that Olympics have stripped medals.
None of the results of the Astros' games or seasons have been vacated; the team hasn't given back any of the money it made. Major League Baseball hasn't added asterisks to the record book because suspected steroid use, and in many respects, the sport has moved on, beyond an era it would like to forget. Mark McGwire has been the St. Louis Cardinals' hitting coach, and since his retirement, Bagwell been hired by the Astros. Manny Ramirez was signed by the Tampa Bay Rays after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs while with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he probably will be signed again.
At no point has Major League Baseball or the Hall of Fame moved to make PED users -- suspected or proven -- ineligible for induction, maybe because they realize you can't fully determine who did what, and when they did it, and what the impact of that use was, in its time.
But there are writers who want to pretend that what happened in the steroid era didn't happen, that those achievements that McGwire and Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and Bagwell and others accomplished -- all bought, all paid for, all under the auspices of baseball's powers that be -- didn't happen.
You'd like to think that the work of writers is to reflect history. Not whitewash it.
[h3]Hall of Fame[/h3]
• Barry Larkin was voted in, and I described him to my 7-year-old this way: He was a lot like Derek Jeter, a combination of speed and power, someone who could really hit in any spot of the lineup, while excelling at a premium defensive position. Larkin didn't play as long as Jeter has, nor did he play on the October stage as Jeter, but the reasons why Larkin was special are the same as why we laud Jeter now.
Congrats to a classy colleague ...
Larkin wants to celebrate with Cincinnati Reds fans. His former teammates are really happy for him. The writers got it right this time, writes Hal McCoy.
Larkin was always about grace, writes Paul Daugherty. Larkin would be a charter member in the hall of class guys, writes Bob Ryan.
Some Atlanta Braves offered raves about Larkin, as Carroll Rogers writes.
• Next year, a whole bunch of big names become eligible -- Bonds, Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio and Curt Schilling.
Some arguments supporting Schilling's candidacy, from Mark Simon of ESPN Research:
Argument No. 1: Schilling was the ___ of his time
"Let's do a simple comparison here. Let's compare Curt Schilling to the first-ballot Hall of Famer whose career he most res
embles. Though the two played in different eras, we can use a cross-era Next Level stat to compare them.
[h4]Schilling's Cooperstown case[/h4]
How Curt Schilling's career compares to a Hall of Fame pitcher
[table][tr][th=""]
Career
[/th][th=""]
Schilling
[/th][th=""]
Pitcher X
[/th][/tr][tr][td]
Win Pct
[/td][td]
.597
[/td][td]
.591
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Games over .500
[/td][td]
70
[/td][td]
77
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
ERA+
[/td][td]
128
[/td][td]
128
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Strikeouts
[/td][td]
3,116
[/td][td]
3,117
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
K per 9
[/td][td]
8.6
[/td][td]
7.2
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
K-BB Ratio
[/td][td]
4.4
[/td][td]
2.3
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Starts
[/td][td]
436
[/td][td]
482
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
World Series W-L
[/td][td]
4-1
[/td][td]
7-2
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Postseason ERA
[/td][td]
2.06
[/td][td]
1.89
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
WS Titles
[/td][td]
3
[/td][td]
2
[/td][/tr][/table]
"We use ERA+, which compares a pitcher's ERA to that of his peers in his era, making a slight adjustment for ballparks pitched in. The higher the number, the better the pitcher was than his peers. The numbers are available on Baseball-Reference.com."
Pitcher X is Hall of Famer Bob Gibson.
For reference, Schilling's ERA+ is a match both for Gibson and fellow Hall of Famer Tom Seaver. And it's better than Hall of Famer Jim Palmer's 126.
Argument #2: Postseason performance
"Curt Schilling was 11-2 with a 2.23 career ERA in postseason. Schilling pitched in the postseason between 1993 and 2007. The major-league postseason ERA in that span was 3.98. Of the 93 pitchers to make at least five postseason starts in the last 25 seasons, Schilling's ERA ranks second-best to Doug Drabek (2.05).
"Schilling was 4-1 with a 2.06 ERA in seven career World Series starts. Since the first season after the end of World War II (1946), 38 pitchers have started at least five World Series games."
"The only pitchers with a better World Series ERA than Schilling in that span are Sandy Koufax (0.95) and Bob Gibson (1.89)."
• Jack Morris took a big jump in the voting. I agree with what Lynn Henning writes here: Morris' candidacy could be caught in the vortex of next year's ballot. So far, Morris is 0-for-13.
Fred McGriff's polling numbers grew a little.
Bernie Williams' Hall of Fame candidacy did not start strongly, as Bernie Williams writes.
Edgar Martinez's climb to the Hall of Fame will require patience, writes Larry Stone.
[h3]Notables[/h3]
• It's the middle of January and the start of spring training is five weeks away, and if you're the agent for a free player, said one general manager, "you have to get a job for your guy." This would go a long way toward explaining the renewed aggression being shown by some agents in recent days, general managers say, and why a flurry of signings have kicked off -- from Aaron Cook signing with the Boston Red Sox, who has a good relationship with Boston pitching coach Bob McClure, to Paul Maholm, who landed with the Chicago Cubs.
"There are some good value buys out there," said one executive. "If you've got some extra cash, there are some good pitchers left."
Time will tell whether the prices on the highest-profile pitchers will drop, as well. Hiroki Kuroda, who seems to be waiting for someone to pull the trigger on his asking price of $13-14 million. Edwin Jackson, who had hoped for a John Lackey-type contract when the offseason began. And Ryan Madson, who seemingly was on the verge of re-signing with the Philadelphia Phillies back in November and is, instead, left standing with the closers' game of musical chairs all but over.
It's now Jan. 10 and Prince Fielder is still not signed, and Adam Kilgore wonders why.
• The Oakland Athletics were mostly irrelevant in the AL West race last year, so if you didn't notice how good Brandon McCarthy was, you're forgiven. After the All-Star break, McCarthy had a 3.15 ERA, allowing just 13 walks in 94.1 innings, holding opponents to a .241 batting average. McCarthy is on target to be eligible for free agency next fall, so it figures that one of two things will happen:
1) The 28-year-old McCarthy could be traded by the Athletics, becoming the latest starting pitcher to be dealt by an organization that is loading up for 2015 and beyond.
2) Oakland could sign McCarthy to a multi-year deal, as the two sides go through the arbitration process this month. Signing McCarthy, of course, wouldn't preclude the Athletics from trading the right-hander sometime down the road.
[h3]Moves, deals and decisions[/h3]
1. The New York Yankees will determine in the next couple of weeks whether they will expand their current budget, and this, of course, will determine exactly who they might add for their pitching staff.
2. The Washington Nationals continue to look for another relief pitcher, whether it be Todd Coffey or someone who could do for them what Coffey did last year.
3. The Phillies are among the teams considering Kerry Wood.
4. The Toronto Blue Jays completed their signing of Darren Oliver.
5. The Baltimore Orioles signed a lefty from Taiwan.
6. The Orioles formally hired a front-office official, as Eduardo Encina writes.
7. The Cleveland Indians signed a lefty.
8. Jeff Moorad's ownership acquisition of the San Diego Padres will be completed Thursday. John Moores deserves credit for saving baseball in San Diego.
9. The Milwaukee Brewers watched an outfielder.
2013 HOF ballot will be all about PED's.
The battle over Jeff Bagwell.
Spoiler [+]
The voting process for the Hall of Fame became far more difficult and more complicated five years ago when Mark McGwire first appeared on the ballot. It got harder last year when Rafael Palmeiro appeared on the ballot. Their names and their connections to performance-enhancing drugs changed the philosophy of voting, perhaps forever. Yet the issues of the past two years will appear simple compared to what lies ahead in 2013.
[+] Enlarge
Phil Carter/US PresswireBarry Bonds is the all-time home run leader (762), but in the eyes of many people he's considered to be a tarnished player.
The next Hall of Fame ballot will include Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio and Curt Schilling. They all have Hall of Fame numbers, some stronger than others, but Bonds, Clemens, Sosa and Piazza certainly are not going to be elected on the first ballot -- and in the case of Bonds, Clemens and Sosa, they might not make it to Cooperstown for many, many years to come.
Next year, the Hall of Fame voting process will become more cumbersome, more awkward and more impossible than ever. And it likely will remain that way for another 25 years, until someone finds a better way to deal with this era and the hundreds of players who used performance-enhancing drugs during it.
For now, the voters have spoken. McGwire has been on the ballot for six years, he has never received as much as 30 percent of the vote, and his vote total has decreased in each of the past three years. Keep in mind that McGwire has the 10th-most home runs of all time, he made 11 All-Star teams, his slugging percentage is 98 points higher than that of Reggie Jackson and his on-base percentage is six points higher than that of Tony Gwynn. Palmeiro is one of four players with 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, joining Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray -- and Palmeiro got 11 percent of the vote his first year on the ballot, and slightly more in this his second (12.6 percent).
Some voters maintain that McGwire doesn't have Hall of Fame numbers with his .263 batting average, his 1,626 hits and his average defense. Some voters say that Palmeiro wasn't the best player on his team or at his position, let alone in his league, in most of his years. But those arguments cannot be made for some of the new players to the ballot in 2013.
Bonds won seven MVPs, four more than anyone else. I recently asked a revered baseball historian to name his all-time Mount Rushmore of hitters, and without hesitation, he said, "Barry Bonds is first," then followed with Ted Williams, Babe Ruth and Albert Pujols.
"I played one year in San Francisco [2002]. I watched Barry Bonds take 500 at-bats, and every single at-bat, he either hit a home run, or hit the ball harder than anyone on earth, or walked," White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski said. "He's the best hitter I've ever seen, and there isn't a close second, not just on this planet, but this galaxy. Righties, lefties, it didn't matter with Barry. Here's how good he was that year. The first game of the season, he hit a homer off Roy Oswalt in Houston to win the game. That gave him 659. He told us, 'I'm not going to hit any more home runs here, I want to tie Willie [Mays, at 66 at home.' The rest of that series, he got his hits, he hit singles and doubles, but no homers. When we got home, he said, 'OK, I'm going to tie Willie today.' And the first at-bat, boom, he went deep. The next day, he came to the park and said, 'Today, I'm going pass Willie.' First at-bat, he hit another homer. I've never seen anything like it."
Yet Bonds, fairly or unfairly, is seen as the face of the steroid era. He is a convicted felon. He has no chance of getting in the Hall of Fame the first year, and likely won't for many years to come. Some will vote for him using the logic that he was already a Hall of Famer before he started using performance-enhancing drugs. He already had three MVPs, 400 homers, 400 steals and seven Gold Gloves. But that logic is challenged by some people, such as Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, who contends that in golf if you shoot 31 on the front nine and you cheat on the back nine, you are disqualified for the round.
Clemens won seven Cy Young Awards, two more than anyone else. He is, by any statistical measure, the best pitcher of the past 50 years, if not the best since Walter Johnson. I asked the same revered historian for his Mount Rushmore of pitchers, and without hesitation he said, "Roger Clemens is first." But Clemens is, after Bonds, the next face of the steroid era. He has been charged with lying before Congress about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. He has no chance to make it to Cooperstown next year, or for many, many years to come.
Sosa hit the seventh-most home runs (609) of all time. There have been eight 60-homer seasons in baseball history, and he has three of them. He hit more homers (479) than anyone for any 10-year period. He is the only player in National League history to have six consecutive years of 40 home runs. In 2001, he had 94 more RBIs than anyone on his team, a record for such things. Yet due to his connection to PEDs, he likely has no chance to make it to Cooperstown in the first year he'll be eligible, and perhaps for many, many years to come.
[+] Enlarge
Stan Honda/AFP/Getty ImagesRoger Clemens is a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, but he's also widely believed to have used performance-enhancing drugs.
Piazza is the greatest hitting catcher of all time. Period. His lifetime average is .308, he has 427 home runs and his .922 OPS is 125 points higher than Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk, and 149 points higher than Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter. For a five-year period with the Dodgers, Piazza hit .318, .319, .346, .336 and .362. But he won't make it to Cooperstown in his first year of eligibility because of suspicion of PED use. He acknowledged using androstenedione early in his career, and only briefly, but he never tested positive for PEDs, and wasn't named in the Mitchell report. But suspicion might be enough these days to keep a player out of the Hall of Fame.
As for Jeff Bagwell, one of the top-10 first basemen of all time and one of the three best in NL history, he increased his vote total by nearly 15 percent as he went from 41.7 percent last year to 56 percent this year.
Biggio's case is strong. He finished his career with 3,060 hits. He also has more doubles than Hank Aaron, and more extra-base hits than Al Kaline, Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell and Mickey Mantle. Biggio is one of five players with more than 250 home runs and more than 400 steals, joining Barry and Bobby Bonds, Rickey Henderson and Joe Morgan. He scored more runs than Ted Williams, and played in more winning games than Frank Robinson. And yet one must go even deeper to comprehend his value. He has been hit by a pitch more times than anyone in history. In 1997, he did not ground into a double play. He is one of only two players in history to play a full season behind the plate, and a full season at second base, and is the only player to also play a full season in center field. He won four consecutive Gold Gloves at second base. He did all this while playing for only one team.
Schilling won 216 games and had a .597 winning percentage. He also had three 20-win seasons, three 300-strikeout seasons and won World Series rings with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Boston Red Sox. His numbers are borderline for Cooperstown, but his staggering numbers in the postseason -- his WHIP is under 1.00 -- might be enough to get him in, although maybe not on the first ballot.
Those are six new candidates for the 2012 ballot. Included is the best hitter most of us have ever seen, the best pitcher most of us have ever seen, the greatest hitting catcher of all time and a 600-home run man -- and none of those four may get in on the first ballot, or perhaps for many years to come. Then, for the first time, we will have to wonder about the relevance of the Hall of Fame.
Will the 2013 ballot bring official changes to the voting process, and if so, what would those changes be? There are no easy answers, only difficult questions. And, as we look another 25 years down the road and wonder what we're going to do with Alex Rodriguez, we realize the questions are only going to get harder.
[+] Enlarge
Phil Carter/US PresswireBarry Bonds is the all-time home run leader (762), but in the eyes of many people he's considered to be a tarnished player.
The next Hall of Fame ballot will include Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio and Curt Schilling. They all have Hall of Fame numbers, some stronger than others, but Bonds, Clemens, Sosa and Piazza certainly are not going to be elected on the first ballot -- and in the case of Bonds, Clemens and Sosa, they might not make it to Cooperstown for many, many years to come.
Next year, the Hall of Fame voting process will become more cumbersome, more awkward and more impossible than ever. And it likely will remain that way for another 25 years, until someone finds a better way to deal with this era and the hundreds of players who used performance-enhancing drugs during it.
For now, the voters have spoken. McGwire has been on the ballot for six years, he has never received as much as 30 percent of the vote, and his vote total has decreased in each of the past three years. Keep in mind that McGwire has the 10th-most home runs of all time, he made 11 All-Star teams, his slugging percentage is 98 points higher than that of Reggie Jackson and his on-base percentage is six points higher than that of Tony Gwynn. Palmeiro is one of four players with 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, joining Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray -- and Palmeiro got 11 percent of the vote his first year on the ballot, and slightly more in this his second (12.6 percent).
Some voters maintain that McGwire doesn't have Hall of Fame numbers with his .263 batting average, his 1,626 hits and his average defense. Some voters say that Palmeiro wasn't the best player on his team or at his position, let alone in his league, in most of his years. But those arguments cannot be made for some of the new players to the ballot in 2013.
Bonds won seven MVPs, four more than anyone else. I recently asked a revered baseball historian to name his all-time Mount Rushmore of hitters, and without hesitation, he said, "Barry Bonds is first," then followed with Ted Williams, Babe Ruth and Albert Pujols.
"I played one year in San Francisco [2002]. I watched Barry Bonds take 500 at-bats, and every single at-bat, he either hit a home run, or hit the ball harder than anyone on earth, or walked," White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski said. "He's the best hitter I've ever seen, and there isn't a close second, not just on this planet, but this galaxy. Righties, lefties, it didn't matter with Barry. Here's how good he was that year. The first game of the season, he hit a homer off Roy Oswalt in Houston to win the game. That gave him 659. He told us, 'I'm not going to hit any more home runs here, I want to tie Willie [Mays, at 66
at home.' The rest of that series, he got his hits, he hit singles and doubles, but no homers. When we got home, he said, 'OK, I'm going to tie Willie today.' And the first at-bat, boom, he went deep. The next day, he came to the park and said, 'Today, I'm going pass Willie.' First at-bat, he hit another homer. I've never seen anything like it."Yet Bonds, fairly or unfairly, is seen as the face of the steroid era. He is a convicted felon. He has no chance of getting in the Hall of Fame the first year, and likely won't for many years to come. Some will vote for him using the logic that he was already a Hall of Famer before he started using performance-enhancing drugs. He already had three MVPs, 400 homers, 400 steals and seven Gold Gloves. But that logic is challenged by some people, such as Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, who contends that in golf if you shoot 31 on the front nine and you cheat on the back nine, you are disqualified for the round.
Clemens won seven Cy Young Awards, two more than anyone else. He is, by any statistical measure, the best pitcher of the past 50 years, if not the best since Walter Johnson. I asked the same revered historian for his Mount Rushmore of pitchers, and without hesitation he said, "Roger Clemens is first." But Clemens is, after Bonds, the next face of the steroid era. He has been charged with lying before Congress about his use of performance-enhancing drugs. He has no chance to make it to Cooperstown next year, or for many, many years to come.
Sosa hit the seventh-most home runs (609) of all time. There have been eight 60-homer seasons in baseball history, and he has three of them. He hit more homers (479) than anyone for any 10-year period. He is the only player in National League history to have six consecutive years of 40 home runs. In 2001, he had 94 more RBIs than anyone on his team, a record for such things. Yet due to his connection to PEDs, he likely has no chance to make it to Cooperstown in the first year he'll be eligible, and perhaps for many, many years to come.
[+] Enlarge
Stan Honda/AFP/Getty ImagesRoger Clemens is a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, but he's also widely believed to have used performance-enhancing drugs.
Piazza is the greatest hitting catcher of all time. Period. His lifetime average is .308, he has 427 home runs and his .922 OPS is 125 points higher than Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk, and 149 points higher than Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter. For a five-year period with the Dodgers, Piazza hit .318, .319, .346, .336 and .362. But he won't make it to Cooperstown in his first year of eligibility because of suspicion of PED use. He acknowledged using androstenedione early in his career, and only briefly, but he never tested positive for PEDs, and wasn't named in the Mitchell report. But suspicion might be enough these days to keep a player out of the Hall of Fame.
As for Jeff Bagwell, one of the top-10 first basemen of all time and one of the three best in NL history, he increased his vote total by nearly 15 percent as he went from 41.7 percent last year to 56 percent this year.
Biggio's case is strong. He finished his career with 3,060 hits. He also has more doubles than Hank Aaron, and more extra-base hits than Al Kaline, Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell and Mickey Mantle. Biggio is one of five players with more than 250 home runs and more than 400 steals, joining Barry and Bobby Bonds, Rickey Henderson and Joe Morgan. He scored more runs than Ted Williams, and played in more winning games than Frank Robinson. And yet one must go even deeper to comprehend his value. He has been hit by a pitch more times than anyone in history. In 1997, he did not ground into a double play. He is one of only two players in history to play a full season behind the plate, and a full season at second base, and is the only player to also play a full season in center field. He won four consecutive Gold Gloves at second base. He did all this while playing for only one team.
Schilling won 216 games and had a .597 winning percentage. He also had three 20-win seasons, three 300-strikeout seasons and won World Series rings with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Boston Red Sox. His numbers are borderline for Cooperstown, but his staggering numbers in the postseason -- his WHIP is under 1.00 -- might be enough to get him in, although maybe not on the first ballot.
Those are six new candidates for the 2012 ballot. Included is the best hitter most of us have ever seen, the best pitcher most of us have ever seen, the greatest hitting catcher of all time and a 600-home run man -- and none of those four may get in on the first ballot, or perhaps for many years to come. Then, for the first time, we will have to wonder about the relevance of the Hall of Fame.
Will the 2013 ballot bring official changes to the voting process, and if so, what would those changes be? There are no easy answers, only difficult questions. And, as we look another 25 years down the road and wonder what we're going to do with Alex Rodriguez, we realize the questions are only going to get harder.
The battle over Jeff Bagwell.
Spoiler [+]
Jeff Bagwell is one of 12 players in baseball history with 400 or more homers and a career on-base percentage of .400 or better. He slugged 449 homers, finished first in the MVP voting in one season, second in another, and in the top 10 six times.
He was a strong defensive player, once winning a Gold Glove Award, and he was an exceptional baserunner, stealing 202 bases despite relatively modest speed. He was a great teammate, didn't live on police blogs, and treated others with tremendous respect. There is nothing about Bagwell's performance that isn't worthy of the Hall of Fame.
But he got votes from just 56 percent of the writers in this year's Hall of Fame voting, and in many respects, his candidacy has become the perfect barometer to gauge the size and scope of the writers' bloc that has devoted itself to doing something that the institution of baseball still doesn't do -- protect the Hall of Fame from performance-enhancing drugs.
To date, there is no evidence that Bagwell ever tested positive for a PED. No documentation, through a report or a lawsuit or investigation, has ever linked Bagwell to the use of a PED.
But some writers have explained in columns that they haven't voted for Bagwell because of suspicion of PED-use, an extraordinary standard. Bagwell's voting percentage climbed from 41.7 to 56 this year, a significant jump, but there appears to be a wall of dissent before him. All it takes to keep a player out of the Hall of Fame is 25 percent plus one of the writers voting 'no.' Bagwell is seemingly close, and yet he is so far away if the steroid vigilantes among the writers don't change their stance.
Bagwell played his first game on April 8, 1991, and his final game on Oct. 2, 2005. In a career of almost 10,000 plate appearances, Bagwell's last 14 plate appearances came after the first notable suspension of any major-leaguer for performance-enhancing drugs -- Rafael Palmeiro.
For almost the entirety of Bagwell's career, there was no attempt to curb the use of steroids in Major League Baseball. The union leadership, the most powerful entity in the sport, didn't address it. The owners didn't address it, nor did the players, clean or dirty. It was in that climate of indifference that a lot of players -- some estimate more than 50 percent -- chose to use PEDs to help their careers, to compete against other users, to make money.
The sport cashed in; owners cashed in. The Houston Astros cashed in; they built a new ballpark, and Drayton McLane recently sold the franchise -- which he purchased in 1992 for $117 million, right after Bagwell began his career -- for $680 million.
Despite the broad suspicion that many, many players used performance-enhancing drugs, no outcome has been altered. No won-loss record has been altered. No championships have been taken away, in the way that Olympics have stripped medals.
None of the results of the Astros' games or seasons have been vacated; the team hasn't given back any of the money it made. Major League Baseball hasn't added asterisks to the record book because suspected steroid use, and in many respects, the sport has moved on, beyond an era it would like to forget. Mark McGwire has been the St. Louis Cardinals' hitting coach, and since his retirement, Bagwell been hired by the Astros. Manny Ramirez was signed by the Tampa Bay Rays after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs while with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he probably will be signed again.
At no point has Major League Baseball or the Hall of Fame moved to make PED users -- suspected or proven -- ineligible for induction, maybe because they realize you can't fully determine who did what, and when they did it, and what the impact of that use was, in its time.
But there are writers who want to pretend that what happened in the steroid era didn't happen, that those achievements that McGwire and Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and Bagwell and others accomplished -- all bought, all paid for, all under the auspices of baseball's powers that be -- didn't happen.
You'd like to think that the work of writers is to reflect history. Not whitewash it.
[h3]Hall of Fame[/h3]
• Barry Larkin was voted in, and I described him to my 7-year-old this way: He was a lot like Derek Jeter, a combination of speed and power, someone who could really hit in any spot of the lineup, while excelling at a premium defensive position. Larkin didn't play as long as Jeter has, nor did he play on the October stage as Jeter, but the reasons why Larkin was special are the same as why we laud Jeter now.
Congrats to a classy colleague ...
Larkin wants to celebrate with Cincinnati Reds fans. His former teammates are really happy for him. The writers got it right this time, writes Hal McCoy.
Larkin was always about grace, writes Paul Daugherty. Larkin would be a charter member in the hall of class guys, writes Bob Ryan.
Some Atlanta Braves offered raves about Larkin, as Carroll Rogers writes.
• Next year, a whole bunch of big names become eligible -- Bonds, Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio and Curt Schilling.
Some arguments supporting Schilling's candidacy, from Mark Simon of ESPN Research:
Argument No. 1: Schilling was the ___ of his time
"Let's do a simple comparison here. Let's compare Curt Schilling to the first-ballot Hall of Famer whose career he most res
embles. Though the two played in different eras, we can use a cross-era Next Level stat to compare them.
[h4]Schilling's Cooperstown case[/h4]
How Curt Schilling's career compares to a Hall of Fame pitcher
[table][tr][th=""]
Career
[/th][th=""]
Schilling
[/th][th=""]
Pitcher X
[/th][/tr][tr][td]
Win Pct
[/td][td]
.597
[/td][td]
.591
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Games over .500
[/td][td]
70
[/td][td]
77
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
ERA+
[/td][td]
128
[/td][td]
128
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Strikeouts
[/td][td]
3,116
[/td][td]
3,117
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
K per 9
[/td][td]
8.6
[/td][td]
7.2
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
K-BB Ratio
[/td][td]
4.4
[/td][td]
2.3
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Starts
[/td][td]
436
[/td][td]
482
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
World Series W-L
[/td][td]
4-1
[/td][td]
7-2
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Postseason ERA
[/td][td]
2.06
[/td][td]
1.89
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
WS Titles
[/td][td]
3
[/td][td]
2
[/td][/tr][/table]
"We use ERA+, which compares a pitcher's ERA to that of his peers in his era, making a slight adjustment for ballparks pitched in. The higher the number, the better the pitcher was than his peers. The numbers are available on Baseball-Reference.com."
Pitcher X is Hall of Famer Bob Gibson.
For reference, Schilling's ERA+ is a match both for Gibson and fellow Hall of Famer Tom Seaver. And it's better than Hall of Famer Jim Palmer's 126.
Argument #2: Postseason performance
"Curt Schilling was 11-2 with a 2.23 career ERA in postseason. Schilling pitched in the postseason between 1993 and 2007. The major-league postseason ERA in that span was 3.98. Of the 93 pitchers to make at least five postseason starts in the last 25 seasons, Schilling's ERA ranks second-best to Doug Drabek (2.05).
"Schilling was 4-1 with a 2.06 ERA in seven career World Series starts. Since the first season after the end of World War II (1946), 38 pitchers have started at least five World Series games."
"The only pitchers with a better World Series ERA than Schilling in that span are Sandy Koufax (0.95) and Bob Gibson (1.89)."
• Jack Morris took a big jump in the voting. I agree with what Lynn Henning writes here: Morris' candidacy could be caught in the vortex of next year's ballot. So far, Morris is 0-for-13.
Fred McGriff's polling numbers grew a little.
Bernie Williams' Hall of Fame candidacy did not start strongly, as Bernie Williams writes.
Edgar Martinez's climb to the Hall of Fame will require patience, writes Larry Stone.
[h3]Notables[/h3]
• It's the middle of January and the start of spring training is five weeks away, and if you're the agent for a free player, said one general manager, "you have to get a job for your guy." This would go a long way toward explaining the renewed aggression being shown by some agents in recent days, general managers say, and why a flurry of signings have kicked off -- from Aaron Cook signing with the Boston Red Sox, who has a good relationship with Boston pitching coach Bob McClure, to Paul Maholm, who landed with the Chicago Cubs.
"There are some good value buys out there," said one executive. "If you've got some extra cash, there are some good pitchers left."
Time will tell whether the prices on the highest-profile pitchers will drop, as well. Hiroki Kuroda, who seems to be waiting for someone to pull the trigger on his asking price of $13-14 million. Edwin Jackson, who had hoped for a John Lackey-type contract when the offseason began. And Ryan Madson, who seemingly was on the verge of re-signing with the Philadelphia Phillies back in November and is, instead, left standing with the closers' game of musical chairs all but over.
It's now Jan. 10 and Prince Fielder is still not signed, and Adam Kilgore wonders why.
• The Oakland Athletics were mostly irrelevant in the AL West race last year, so if you didn't notice how good Brandon McCarthy was, you're forgiven. After the All-Star break, McCarthy had a 3.15 ERA, allowing just 13 walks in 94.1 innings, holding opponents to a .241 batting average. McCarthy is on target to be eligible for free agency next fall, so it figures that one of two things will happen:
1) The 28-year-old McCarthy could be traded by the Athletics, becoming the latest starting pitcher to be dealt by an organization that is loading up for 2015 and beyond.
2) Oakland could sign McCarthy to a multi-year deal, as the two sides go through the arbitration process this month. Signing McCarthy, of course, wouldn't preclude the Athletics from trading the right-hander sometime down the road.
[h3]Moves, deals and decisions[/h3]
1. The New York Yankees will determine in the next couple of weeks whether they will expand their current budget, and this, of course, will determine exactly who they might add for their pitching staff.
2. The Washington Nationals continue to look for another relief pitcher, whether it be Todd Coffey or someone who could do for them what Coffey did last year.
3. The Phillies are among the teams considering Kerry Wood.
4. The Toronto Blue Jays completed their signing of Darren Oliver.
5. The Baltimore Orioles signed a lefty from Taiwan.
6. The Orioles formally hired a front-office official, as Eduardo Encina writes.
7. The Cleveland Indians signed a lefty.
8. Jeff Moorad's ownership acquisition of the San Diego Padres will be completed Thursday. John Moores deserves credit for saving baseball in San Diego.
9. The Milwaukee Brewers watched an outfielder.
He was a strong defensive player, once winning a Gold Glove Award, and he was an exceptional baserunner, stealing 202 bases despite relatively modest speed. He was a great teammate, didn't live on police blogs, and treated others with tremendous respect. There is nothing about Bagwell's performance that isn't worthy of the Hall of Fame.
But he got votes from just 56 percent of the writers in this year's Hall of Fame voting, and in many respects, his candidacy has become the perfect barometer to gauge the size and scope of the writers' bloc that has devoted itself to doing something that the institution of baseball still doesn't do -- protect the Hall of Fame from performance-enhancing drugs.
To date, there is no evidence that Bagwell ever tested positive for a PED. No documentation, through a report or a lawsuit or investigation, has ever linked Bagwell to the use of a PED.
But some writers have explained in columns that they haven't voted for Bagwell because of suspicion of PED-use, an extraordinary standard. Bagwell's voting percentage climbed from 41.7 to 56 this year, a significant jump, but there appears to be a wall of dissent before him. All it takes to keep a player out of the Hall of Fame is 25 percent plus one of the writers voting 'no.' Bagwell is seemingly close, and yet he is so far away if the steroid vigilantes among the writers don't change their stance.
Bagwell played his first game on April 8, 1991, and his final game on Oct. 2, 2005. In a career of almost 10,000 plate appearances, Bagwell's last 14 plate appearances came after the first notable suspension of any major-leaguer for performance-enhancing drugs -- Rafael Palmeiro.
For almost the entirety of Bagwell's career, there was no attempt to curb the use of steroids in Major League Baseball. The union leadership, the most powerful entity in the sport, didn't address it. The owners didn't address it, nor did the players, clean or dirty. It was in that climate of indifference that a lot of players -- some estimate more than 50 percent -- chose to use PEDs to help their careers, to compete against other users, to make money.
The sport cashed in; owners cashed in. The Houston Astros cashed in; they built a new ballpark, and Drayton McLane recently sold the franchise -- which he purchased in 1992 for $117 million, right after Bagwell began his career -- for $680 million.
Despite the broad suspicion that many, many players used performance-enhancing drugs, no outcome has been altered. No won-loss record has been altered. No championships have been taken away, in the way that Olympics have stripped medals.
None of the results of the Astros' games or seasons have been vacated; the team hasn't given back any of the money it made. Major League Baseball hasn't added asterisks to the record book because suspected steroid use, and in many respects, the sport has moved on, beyond an era it would like to forget. Mark McGwire has been the St. Louis Cardinals' hitting coach, and since his retirement, Bagwell been hired by the Astros. Manny Ramirez was signed by the Tampa Bay Rays after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs while with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he probably will be signed again.
At no point has Major League Baseball or the Hall of Fame moved to make PED users -- suspected or proven -- ineligible for induction, maybe because they realize you can't fully determine who did what, and when they did it, and what the impact of that use was, in its time.
But there are writers who want to pretend that what happened in the steroid era didn't happen, that those achievements that McGwire and Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and Bagwell and others accomplished -- all bought, all paid for, all under the auspices of baseball's powers that be -- didn't happen.
You'd like to think that the work of writers is to reflect history. Not whitewash it.
[h3]Hall of Fame[/h3]
• Barry Larkin was voted in, and I described him to my 7-year-old this way: He was a lot like Derek Jeter, a combination of speed and power, someone who could really hit in any spot of the lineup, while excelling at a premium defensive position. Larkin didn't play as long as Jeter has, nor did he play on the October stage as Jeter, but the reasons why Larkin was special are the same as why we laud Jeter now.
Congrats to a classy colleague ...
Larkin wants to celebrate with Cincinnati Reds fans. His former teammates are really happy for him. The writers got it right this time, writes Hal McCoy.
Larkin was always about grace, writes Paul Daugherty. Larkin would be a charter member in the hall of class guys, writes Bob Ryan.
Some Atlanta Braves offered raves about Larkin, as Carroll Rogers writes.
• Next year, a whole bunch of big names become eligible -- Bonds, Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio and Curt Schilling.
Some arguments supporting Schilling's candidacy, from Mark Simon of ESPN Research:
Argument No. 1: Schilling was the ___ of his time
"Let's do a simple comparison here. Let's compare Curt Schilling to the first-ballot Hall of Famer whose career he most res
embles. Though the two played in different eras, we can use a cross-era Next Level stat to compare them.
[h4]Schilling's Cooperstown case[/h4]
How Curt Schilling's career compares to a Hall of Fame pitcher
[table][tr][th=""]
Career
[/th][th=""]
Schilling
[/th][th=""]
Pitcher X
[/th][/tr][tr][td]
Win Pct
[/td][td]
.597
[/td][td]
.591
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Games over .500
[/td][td]
70
[/td][td]
77
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
ERA+
[/td][td]
128
[/td][td]
128
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Strikeouts
[/td][td]
3,116
[/td][td]
3,117
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
K per 9
[/td][td]
8.6
[/td][td]
7.2
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
K-BB Ratio
[/td][td]
4.4
[/td][td]
2.3
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Starts
[/td][td]
436
[/td][td]
482
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
World Series W-L
[/td][td]
4-1
[/td][td]
7-2
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
Postseason ERA
[/td][td]
2.06
[/td][td]
1.89
[/td][/tr][tr][td]
WS Titles
[/td][td]
3
[/td][td]
2
[/td][/tr][/table]
"We use ERA+, which compares a pitcher's ERA to that of his peers in his era, making a slight adjustment for ballparks pitched in. The higher the number, the better the pitcher was than his peers. The numbers are available on Baseball-Reference.com."
Pitcher X is Hall of Famer Bob Gibson.
For reference, Schilling's ERA+ is a match both for Gibson and fellow Hall of Famer Tom Seaver. And it's better than Hall of Famer Jim Palmer's 126.
Argument #2: Postseason performance
"Curt Schilling was 11-2 with a 2.23 career ERA in postseason. Schilling pitched in the postseason between 1993 and 2007. The major-league postseason ERA in that span was 3.98. Of the 93 pitchers to make at least five postseason starts in the last 25 seasons, Schilling's ERA ranks second-best to Doug Drabek (2.05).
"Schilling was 4-1 with a 2.06 ERA in seven career World Series starts. Since the first season after the end of World War II (1946), 38 pitchers have started at least five World Series games."
"The only pitchers with a better World Series ERA than Schilling in that span are Sandy Koufax (0.95) and Bob Gibson (1.89)."
• Jack Morris took a big jump in the voting. I agree with what Lynn Henning writes here: Morris' candidacy could be caught in the vortex of next year's ballot. So far, Morris is 0-for-13.
Fred McGriff's polling numbers grew a little.
Bernie Williams' Hall of Fame candidacy did not start strongly, as Bernie Williams writes.
Edgar Martinez's climb to the Hall of Fame will require patience, writes Larry Stone.
[h3]Notables[/h3]
• It's the middle of January and the start of spring training is five weeks away, and if you're the agent for a free player, said one general manager, "you have to get a job for your guy." This would go a long way toward explaining the renewed aggression being shown by some agents in recent days, general managers say, and why a flurry of signings have kicked off -- from Aaron Cook signing with the Boston Red Sox, who has a good relationship with Boston pitching coach Bob McClure, to Paul Maholm, who landed with the Chicago Cubs.
"There are some good value buys out there," said one executive. "If you've got some extra cash, there are some good pitchers left."
Time will tell whether the prices on the highest-profile pitchers will drop, as well. Hiroki Kuroda, who seems to be waiting for someone to pull the trigger on his asking price of $13-14 million. Edwin Jackson, who had hoped for a John Lackey-type contract when the offseason began. And Ryan Madson, who seemingly was on the verge of re-signing with the Philadelphia Phillies back in November and is, instead, left standing with the closers' game of musical chairs all but over.
It's now Jan. 10 and Prince Fielder is still not signed, and Adam Kilgore wonders why.
• The Oakland Athletics were mostly irrelevant in the AL West race last year, so if you didn't notice how good Brandon McCarthy was, you're forgiven. After the All-Star break, McCarthy had a 3.15 ERA, allowing just 13 walks in 94.1 innings, holding opponents to a .241 batting average. McCarthy is on target to be eligible for free agency next fall, so it figures that one of two things will happen:
1) The 28-year-old McCarthy could be traded by the Athletics, becoming the latest starting pitcher to be dealt by an organization that is loading up for 2015 and beyond.
2) Oakland could sign McCarthy to a multi-year deal, as the two sides go through the arbitration process this month. Signing McCarthy, of course, wouldn't preclude the Athletics from trading the right-hander sometime down the road.
[h3]Moves, deals and decisions[/h3]
1. The New York Yankees will determine in the next couple of weeks whether they will expand their current budget, and this, of course, will determine exactly who they might add for their pitching staff.
2. The Washington Nationals continue to look for another relief pitcher, whether it be Todd Coffey or someone who could do for them what Coffey did last year.
3. The Phillies are among the teams considering Kerry Wood.
4. The Toronto Blue Jays completed their signing of Darren Oliver.
5. The Baltimore Orioles signed a lefty from Taiwan.
6. The Orioles formally hired a front-office official, as Eduardo Encina writes.
7. The Cleveland Indians signed a lefty.
8. Jeff Moorad's ownership acquisition of the San Diego Padres will be completed Thursday. John Moores deserves credit for saving baseball in San Diego.
9. The Milwaukee Brewers watched an outfielder.
Man, 2013 is going to be so rich with debate about that stuff.
Just an incredible group of names, but of course this will get messy, and re-hashed, and talking heads will come out with their agendas and such, gonna be entertaining, exhausting, and lively all at the same time.
Just add a wing and put them all in it. Shoeless Joe, Rose, etc etc. Throw em all in there if you want. Good/bad or otherwise, they were an INTEGRAL part of the history of this game. They need to be included as such, in some capacity.
Add the wing.
Just an incredible group of names, but of course this will get messy, and re-hashed, and talking heads will come out with their agendas and such, gonna be entertaining, exhausting, and lively all at the same time.
Just add a wing and put them all in it. Shoeless Joe, Rose, etc etc. Throw em all in there if you want. Good/bad or otherwise, they were an INTEGRAL part of the history of this game. They need to be included as such, in some capacity.
Add the wing.
Man, 2013 is going to be so rich with debate about that stuff.
Just an incredible group of names, but of course this will get messy, and re-hashed, and talking heads will come out with their agendas and such, gonna be entertaining, exhausting, and lively all at the same time.
Just add a wing and put them all in it. Shoeless Joe, Rose, etc etc. Throw em all in there if you want. Good/bad or otherwise, they were an INTEGRAL part of the history of this game. They need to be included as such, in some capacity.
Add the wing.
Just an incredible group of names, but of course this will get messy, and re-hashed, and talking heads will come out with their agendas and such, gonna be entertaining, exhausting, and lively all at the same time.
Just add a wing and put them all in it. Shoeless Joe, Rose, etc etc. Throw em all in there if you want. Good/bad or otherwise, they were an INTEGRAL part of the history of this game. They need to be included as such, in some capacity.
Add the wing.
dacomeup
Supporter
- 25,139
- 34,226
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2006
Barry
Can't wait until 2013 too. Will be very interesting.
Kerry Wood out of Chicago.
Can't wait until 2013 too. Will be very interesting.
Kerry Wood out of Chicago.
dacomeup
Supporter
- 25,139
- 34,226
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2006
Barry
Can't wait until 2013 too. Will be very interesting.
Kerry Wood out of Chicago.
Can't wait until 2013 too. Will be very interesting.
Kerry Wood out of Chicago.
- 9,530
- 91
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2003
Originally Posted by CP1708
wildKYcat wrote:
did Barry make our old NT baseball HOF that CP started?
I was literally just lookin thru my old notes on that yesterday.
Either way, props to him.
We need to rebump that thread.
- Status