Jump to content
  • Welcome to AngelsWin.com

    AngelsWin.com - THE Internet Home for Angels fans! Unraveling Angels Baseball ... One Thread at a Time.

    Register today to join the most interactive online Angels community on the net!

    Once you're a member you'll see less advertisements. Become a Premium member and you won't see any ads! 

     

IGNORED

AngelsWin.com Today: Should Some Bloggers Be Allowed to Vote for the Hall of Fame?


AngelsWin.com

Recommended Posts

15 minutes ago, floplag said:

Yes but, part of that opinion was that the baseball writers who were aware, and said/did nothing, yet now are voting against these guys when MLB let them go to bring back the fans... for me thats a pretty egregious position. 
I dont have a problem with more people voting, especially when so many are making it a political statement, but the fact that those guys are not in there is to me rather puzzling. 

Then you could say the same about fans who watched or went to games during that era and now want to punish the players for cheating. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, floplag said:

OK, i am curious the point you are making with that though?   are you in favor, or opposed? 

I vote for the steroid guys. I believe they should be in the HOF. 
 

My point is that you shouldn’t criticize HOF voters as if they have some weird opinion that isn’t shared by a large segment of the population. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

Then you could say the same about fans who watched or went to games during that era and now want to punish the players for cheating. 

Agreed, im not one of them, but withholding accolades is the prevue of the writers, not he fans. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

I vote for the steroid guys. I believe they should be in the HOF. 
 

My point is that you shouldn’t criticize HOF voters as if they have some weird opinion that isn’t shared by a large segment of the population. 

2/3 isnt large?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

Then you could say the same about fans who watched or went to games during that era and now want to punish the players for cheating. 

Does it typically skew generationally at all that you've noticed? My impression is that older writers and fans tend to be more hardline anti steroid guys in the hall whereas younger ones are more likely to want them in.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

About 60 percent of HOF voters vote for Bonds Clemens. It takes 75 percent to get in. They wouldn’t get 75 percent from any group. 

Understood, but thats the problem... id like to hear the reasons the other 40% dont.
If you believe those two players are not hall worthy, then who is exactly?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

29 minutes ago, floplag said:

Understood, but thats the problem... id like to hear the reasons the other 40% dont.
If you believe those two players are not hall worthy, then who is exactly?

I believe they are HOF worthy. I vote for them every year. To boil it down, I don’t really care about steroid use because I think a lot of guys did it and the sport itself encouraged them (or at least didn’t discourage them).

But none of that is my point. 
 

My point is that the argument on the other side (they cheated and shouldn’t be honored) is one that is held by a lot of people too. As long as more than 25 percent hold that view, they won’t get in. And clearly that view is held by more than 25 percent of any group you include: writers, fans, etc.

So the idea that “writers are holding the steroid users to a different standard” is the idea that I reject. 
 

I believe writers hold them to the same standard as anyone else. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

I believe they are HOF worthy. I vote for them every year. To boil it down, I don’t really care about steroid use because I think a lot of guys did it and the sport itself encouraged them (or at least didn’t discourage them).

But none of that is my point. 
 

My point is that the argument on the other side (they cheated and shouldn’t be honored) is one that is held by a lot of people too. As long as more than 25 percent hold that view, they won’t get in. And clearly that view is held by more than 25 percent of any group you include: writers, fans, etc.

So the idea that “writers are holding the steroid users to a different standard” is the idea that I reject. 
 

I believe writers hold them to the same standard as anyone else. 

Well, im not sure how you can argue that when the stated reason for most is steroids. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

flop, I'm not sure what the issue is. Jeff is making a pretty simple and intuitively obvious contention: that writers (voters) aren't really any different than fans in this regard. The point being that the voting writers are basically representative of fans as a whole.

This is not to say that the numbers are exactly the same - and I don't think that Jeff is saying that. But if 40% of voting writers are not voting for roiders, I don't see what's so hard to believe that roughly the same number of fans feel the same way, or thereabouts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Angelsjunky said:

flop, I'm not sure what the issue is. Jeff is making a pretty simple and intuitively obvious contention: that writers (voters) aren't really any different than fans in this regard. The point being that the voting writers are basically representative of fans as a whole.

This is not to say that the numbers are exactly the same - and I don't think that Jeff is saying that. But if 40% of voting writers are not voting for roiders, I don't see what's so hard to believe that roughly the same number of fans feel the same way, or thereabouts.

Exactly. 
 

I’m not arguing whether steroid users should or should not be in the HOF.

I’m arguing that the conflict of opinion would be about the same no matter who voted. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

59 minutes ago, Jeff Fletcher said:

Exactly. 
 

I’m not arguing whether steroid users should or should not be in the HOF.

I’m arguing that the conflict of opinion would be about the same no matter who voted. 

which is the way it should be.  that those voting is a reasonable representation of those they are voting on behalf of.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, Angelsjunky said:

flop, I'm not sure what the issue is. Jeff is making a pretty simple and intuitively obvious contention: that writers (voters) aren't really any different than fans in this regard. The point being that the voting writers are basically representative of fans as a whole.

This is not to say that the numbers are exactly the same - and I don't think that Jeff is saying that. But if 40% of voting writers are not voting for roiders, I don't see what's so hard to believe that roughly the same number of fans feel the same way, or thereabouts.

It isnt about who the voters are, @Jeff Fletcher is completely right in that regard.  The point is the why, not the who in the case of the steroid era players.  I Agree with what hes said, i simply think that if 40% of all possible voters dont think those two players would, then they are using steroid to scapegoat them, which is what i disagree with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/31/2020 at 9:09 AM, Jeff Fletcher said:

(somehow I deleted the comment, but it was about the media and its opinion on steroids.)
 

I did a Twitter poll a few weeks ago about the steroid issue and the ratio of opinion among Twitter people was about the same as among HOF voters. 
 

I think the issue divides all groups (writers, fans, players, broadcasters, etc) in roughly the same proportion, so it would remain an issue no matter who voted. 
 

Also, in order to get a HOF vote a person has to spend 10 years as an active member of the BBWAA. So if you want to include anyone else, you need to find a similar threshold.

I think it’s more likely that they just let anyone vote online and have that count for a small percentage of the process. That eliminates the need to try to parse which bloggers should vote and which don’t. 
 

The BBWAA has already admitted many non-legacy writers from FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus, etc.

Thanks for chiming in Jeff with some thoughtful replies.

 

First, this isn't a criticism of you or your voting habits. I do not think that you need to defend your vote to anyone but yourself. There are some voters out there whom I would question, but knowing the person you are, I'm sure you take the deep time and consideration to give it the seriousness of the vote that it deserves.

 

But, here is what I would point out. From what I can find online (I know, not always the most reliable source), in 2015, there were 549 votes for the HOF by members of the BBWAA. This year, it's down to 397 eligible voters. (If my numbers are off, and you have better information, please correct them). That's a 27.7% drop in just 5 years. 

 

Additionally, from what I've been told (and have seen online), several media outlets have created policies that their writers cannot vote for the HOF, even if eligible. Others have made it a negotiable item for their writers.

 

Either way, that is a rapid and sharp decline in voters. Worse yet, that trend seems to be continuing. At some point, it will be too few gatekeepers for the HOF. While I'm not privy to the membership of the BBWAA, I would be curious to see how it compares with that of fans in general.

 

I think that it would be wise for the BBWAA to come up with a way to expand its voting membership so as to maintain relevance while it still has a sufficient number of members who have the experience to develop the criteria for eligibility. I fully understand the need and requirements of 10 years of writing. As I said multiple times, there would need to be criteria established for any "blogger" to have voting privileges. I would rather see the BBWAA work towards that while there is a sufficient number of members who have experience in the old system (so as to create decent thresholds for the future) than to wait another 5-10 years and see another drop of 27%+.

 

If the discussion for this doesn't happen now, and the continued drop continues to happen, it may become too late to have the thoughtful discussion and process, and that would lead to a worse outcome. It would be better to plan for a change in advance.

 

As for your idea of allowing some bloggers to vote and have that vote count for a percentage, that would be an interesting starting point. It would be interesting to see if the BBWAA would be willing to run a trial for a few years where some bloggers could vote hypothetically for maybe 15-20% of the total (not in a real vote, but in a simulated vote--much like MLB trying out rules in the Minors or Independent Leagues to see how they play out). Has there been any discussion of the dwindling number of voters and possibly making some changes?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Dave Saltzer Don't worry. I didn't take offense.

A few things: 

Here are the recent ballot totals: 2014: 571; 2015: 549; 2016: 440; 2017: 381; 2018: 422; 2019: 425; 2020: 397.

The rules were changed after 2015 so that writers no longer had lifetime voting rights, and that purged a bunch of voters at once. Since then, it's been more constant, so I don't think we're losing voters at a significant rate. I think that most people feel it was a good thing to have fewer voters because most of the people who were eliminated were writers who hadn't covered baseball in a long time, so the belief is the smaller electorate has a higher percentage of voters who are actively involved in covering baseball. And it's still a lot of people.

My main issue with your premise is that I think you're looking to add a segment of voters that is going to be very difficult to define. The BBWAA voters are those who have been professional baseball journalists for 10 years. The high level baseball writers who are still not traditional beat writers are still included in that group. We have writers from FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus and a few other sites. The threshold is that it is their job to write about baseball.

So if you want to open that up to people who are not professionals, they are just fans. So who is going to define which "fan with a blog" can vote and which one can't? I am sure there are tons of fans without blogs who could do just as good a job of voting.

As I said before, I think it's more likely that a portion of the voting responsibility just goes to all fans, rather than trying to parse out which bloggers are more qualified than others.

Also, the HOF decides who votes for the HOF, not the BBWAA. They make the rules and we follow their rules. If it were up to us, there would be no limit of 10 and all the votes would be made public, but the HOF rejected both of those. It's their show.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...