The Baseball Hall of Fame, or Here We Go Again, part 1

One of the most pleasing developments on television this year was the return of Keith Olbermann to ESPN.  Occasionally he does give the air of someone who has bought “a roll of stamps to mail it in” to use his oft-repeated highlight quote, but Olbermann is a rare commodity: a deep thinker who can also be astonishingly flip.  When he and Dan Patrick anchored ESPN’s SportsCenter, they inspired books (“The Big Show” by Olbermann and Patrick) and a TV series (SportsNight by Aaron Sorkin).  The current crew at ESPN are competent, but they have trouble inspiring a good promotional ad.

A few weeks ago Olbermann made one of his vintage rants on the topic of the Baseball Hall of Fame.  In his opinion, the place should be (figuratively) blown up and the whole thing should be started over.  Past mistakes of the Hall have piled up over the years (Jesse Haines?  Johnny Evers?) and have the effect of influencing future mistakes—after all, if Johnny Evers is good enough to get in, why not Jose Offerman (similarity score of 892)?  But the recent difficulties in dealing with the Steroid Era have severed all ties between the Hall of Fame voters and reality.

Mike Piazza, the best hitting catcher in major league history, a man who hit more home runs as a catcher than anyone else and once batted .362 despite being slower than a tortoise on Quaaludes, only got 58% of the vote last year mostly because of his “backne.”  One voter said he was sure Piazza used steroids because how else could you explain his going from such a low draft pick to being such a good player?  The answer, for anyone who saw the movie Moneyball, is that most baseball scouts are idiots.  Tom Brady was a low draft pick and became a star; is he on steroids too?  HoF voters are so steroid-phobic that even players never implicated with steroids, such as Craig Biggio, are irrevocably tarred by association.  (Note—I confess that Piazza is my all-time favorite baseball player, so I am a little bitter about him not getting in on the first ballot). 

Of course another factor with Piazza is his less than stellar defensive skills.  Yes, he lacked a cannon for an arm like Johnny Bench or Ivan Rodriquez.  But at the catcher position, defense also includes handling pitchers, and if you take into account the excellent pitching staffs he caught in LA and New York, it makes this liability less glaring.  He also played in an era when the inability to throw out base stealers was less critical than when Rickey Henderson and Tim Raines were running amok on the base paths.

Speaking of defensive skills, almost-career designated hitter Edgar Martinez only polled at 36% last year in his fourth year of eligibility (his 35.9% was actually less than the 36.2% he got in his first year).  The supposed reason for this is, as a DH, he did not contribute to his team with his defense.  Very well, but is Harmon Killebrew in the Hall of Fame for his defense?  Is Bill Mazerowski in for his offense?  Martinez ranks 34^th all-time in OPS and is in the same ballpark in several other Sabremetic measures like WAR and WPA.  As a DH he was not a defensive liability, which is something you can’t say about some other players in the Hall of Fame who played before the invention of the DH.

There is one player not polling well in the HoF voting that I am glad to see being kept out, but for different reasons.  Before he wagged his finger at Congress, Rafael Palmiero was considered a lock for the Hall of Fame due to his 3,000 hits and 500 home runs.  After testing positive for steroids he is now in danger of polling below 5% and being taken off the ballot permanently (or until voted in by the Veteran’s Committee in 2053).  I just have one question—what did he ever do?  Ok, he put up some impressive counting stats, but that just proves he had a long, injury-free career playing in a high-offense era and in hitter-friendly ballparks.  He only started one All Star game in his 20 year career.  He was a back-up in three others, so in 16 of his 20 seasons he wasn’t considered one of the three best players in his league at his position.  He was on a team that made the playoffs in only three seasons, posting a post-season batting average of .244 with four home runs in 22 games, and he never played in a World Series.  He finished in the top five of MVP voting only once (in 1999, finishing 5^th).  He led the league in doubles once, but that’s about the only major category he ever led the league in (okay, he also led the league in singles and hits in one year, and in runs scored in another).   So how does this add up to being one of the all-time greats but for a finger-wagging incident while testifying in Congress? 

I have more to say about the Baseball Hall of Fame, but I will leave something for my next post.