JcHc3in1

I realize the day is still young, but I have serious doubts that I'm going to read anything as good as this today. 

Looks like Sammy Sosa is in danger of falling off the ballot. Steroids aside he is a borderline candidate.

I don't like this argument at all.  Why should I respect somebody "putting a lot of thought into it" if that thought is poorly reasoned and logically retarded?  

That might be 2 more than who actually get voted in.
 
Kent and Schilling are way too low, imo.
 
Thanks for tallying all this up!

Jeff, I don't agree with you. If Maddux is on every single other ballot except for Ken's and Ken ends up voting for an inferior pitcher, a pitcher who spent nearly half his career pitching when Maddux also pitched, I think that's a pretty good argument that the privilege of voting for Hall of Famers should be given to someone else.

Top-10 (in alphabetical order):
Jeff Bagwell
Craig Biggio
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Tom Glavine
Greg Maddux
Tim Raines
Curt Schilling
Frank Thomas
Alan Trammell
 
If the ballot was larger than 10:
Edgar Martinez
Fred McGriff
Mike Mussina
Rafael Palmeiro
Mike Piazza
 
Haven't made up my mind on these guys:
Jeff Kent
Don Mattingly
Mark McGwire
Lee Smith
Larry Walker

I don't think he's a villian, far from it,  But he's completely talking out of his rear end and his justification for voting this year is at best a reach in light of the guy he may have kept from making history.
 
 
 
 

It isn't stunning, but it is disappointing, and I don't like his chances long term, especially considering how crowded the ballot has become.
 
He was awesome.  The "he was only a DH" argument is fair if you are comparing him to someone that performed as well as he did offensively, but not many did when he was playing.   The voting also leans too much towards longevity and not enough towards dominance for my liking.  Funny to say when talking about a guy that played 2,000 games over 18 seasons.  He "only" accumulated 2,247 hits.  Nevermind the fact he has the 21st highest OBP in MLB history and led the AL three times... and is 95th in AVG for his career.   Only a couple guys ahead of him in career OBP played after 1900 and aren't in the Hall Of Fame.  

I listened to the interview with Gurnick.   Clearly he's very conflicted.   I have always maintained in my argument about the HOF, that it full of liars, cheaters, murders, and so on...
 
Now it's good to see some of these writers acknowledging that you can't have a huge void in the HOF that covers 20 years, and misses out on the guy with the most Cy Youngs, or the dude who hit the most bombs.  
 
Gurnick should have abstained this year, but wanted to help Morris along.  
 
It's tough to wipe out a 20+ year period off a ballot.   He won't vote again.   It's too bad..   He's not the villain people make him out to be.   But he didn't handle it well.

Used the Jedi Mind trick.
 
Tell you what I find laughable about the guys who refuse to cast votes for guys like Bonds and the sort..   If they didn't vote for them, how did guys like Bonds and Clemens win their MVPs and Cy Youngs?
 
They had access to these guys in the clubhouse, they saw what was going on.  To pretend they care so much about the game AFTER the fact is a ****ing joke.
 
Buster Olney has always been pretty up-front about his stance.  One of the very few.

MLB Network Radio ‏@MLBNetworkRadio

Ken Gurnick just told us on "Inside Pitch" this year's ballot will be his last as a HOF voter; he'll abstain rather than cast blank ballots

Your top 16 is pretty much identical to mine save for Raffy.   Id' find a way for Walker to get in over time if I had a vote too.  
 
I'd not vote for McGwire because there is no doubt in my mind he would have been out of baseball for health reasons had it not been for PEDs.  But that brings up some ethical questions.  Beltre is no doubt benefiting from his legal usage of testosterone due to his injury.  Say a guy goes through chemo to overcome cancer, is that really any different than a player seeking out medicinal help to overcome injuries?   
 
Its all so fuzzy and hypocritical in some ways.

Wait is that Dodgers beat writer serious?
 
Those are the types of guys who have no business voting for anything meaningful ever again. 

Top-10 (in alphabetical order):
Jeff Bagwell
Craig Biggio
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Tom Glavine
Greg Maddux
Tim Raines
Curt Schilling
Frank Thomas
Alan Trammell
 
If the ballot was larger than 10:
Edgar Martinez
Fred McGriff
Mike Mussina
Rafael Palmeiro
Mike Piazza
 
Haven't made up my mind on these guys:
Jeff Kent
Don Mattingly
Mark McGwire
Lee Smith
Larry Walker

Funny how Morris and Maddux's career's overlapped by 9 years and in that time Maddux won a few Cy Youngs, but apparently those 9 years don't count.
 
I've never had any issue with people wanting to vote Morris in, IMO much of the vote is just a popularity contest and I've been bent since Grich got so little love while a guy like Mazeroski had people taking up his cause...  But this Dodger's hack and his reasoning are just annoying and actually have me rooting against Morris inclusion.
 
Can't believe how people are all over Glavine and not showing Mussina the same consideration.  Mussina pitched his entire career in the toughest division in MLB.  Guess Moose should have hung around and won 300 so his candidacy would have been automatic instead of retiring at age 39 after a 20 win season where he put up a 131 ERA+.

How is Jack Morris even on the ballot?

Rosenthal is defending this idiot.

Ya writing utter crap, poorly I might add, for shock value is so much better and honorable than kissing ass. 

There's a couple somewhat valid points in there that would benefit from being in an article not written by T.J. Simers.
 
But then it's buried under a thick layer of T.J.'s annoying as **** shtick. And his jilted lover nonsense about Arte not wanting to hang out with him(I can't possibly imagine why "Angry Arte" would want to spend as little time in your vicinity as possible, T.J.!)

He's an awful writer...and nothing in this article did anything to dispove that assertion. 
 
The only way you would like this article is if you didn't like Arte to begin with, which is basically what I'm witnessing in this thread.  He could have saved himself a column and just wrote "Arte sucks" and some would have said "he's a got a point".

"It’s shocking, perplexing and inexcusable to have an inexpensively built team like the A’s dominate the Angels’ high rollers two years in a row."  And if you wrote for a New York paper you could say the same about the Yankees.  So what?
 
"It’s now been four straight years of missing the playoffs. Holy What a Waste of Weaver, in that time the Clippers, Ducks and Dodgers have all won division titles, the Kings a Stanley Cup and the Lakers an NBA title."  So what?  Totally irrelevant to baseball.  And nice to see that division titles are important.  What about the ten years prior to the last four; how would the Clippers, Ducks, Dodgers, and Kings compare to the Angels in that time period?
 
"Now the wait is on to see who Moreno will blame for this flop of a season. But isn’t that the problem here: accountability, or the lack of it?"  I have never heard of Moreno publicly blaming anybody.
 
"The disgraceful and disappointing Angels are the spitting image of their uptight, inconsistent owner who doesn’t have the stomach anymore to face fans, media or anyone else who might question his emotional leadership."  Innuendo!
 
“I saw him when he first bought the team; he came down here and cleaned off the counter,” said a longtime worker in a concession stand just down from the Diamond Club in Angel Stadium on Tuesday night. “Haven’t seen him since.’’  Anecdotal evidence!
 
"I began referring to Moreno as â€œAngry Arte,” but now realize I had it wrong."  I like that he's so proud of grade-school level name-calling.  "Look, I called him a name and I alliterated!"
 
"They tell me Moreno hasn’t talked to anyone in the Southern California media for some time. Maybe he’s called all you fans personally to chat."  Who is this vague "they" you refer to?  Where did you come up with that last sentence?
 
 
I could go on and on, but I think you get get the point, if you're smarter than Simers (see what I did there, being Simers-esque?)

Arte won't talk to me! Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

Simers sounds like a 15 year old who got dumped.
 
He's Taylor Swift without the talent.
 
Honestly, what horrible writing.  Name calling, "Mickey Mouse", and one food worker's comment?
 
He is just awful.

Now Imers is blaming Moreno for Trout being out of the lineup yesterday. And he wonders why Moreno doesn't want to spend any time with him.

Simers always used terrible analogies and data points in an attempt to prove his point.
Quite honestly he often does his targets a service with his scattered, emotionally reckless rants.