Bill James Online on the HOF

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Results - BJOL Hall of Fame Vote

By Dave Fleming


The results of the 2009 BJOL Hall of Fame vote:

Name % # of votes

Rickey Henderson 100% 63
Tim Raines 89% 56
Bert Blyleven 86% 54
Alan Trammell 76% 48
Mark McGwire 64% 40
Andre Dawson 21% 13
Tommy John 18% 11
Dale Murphy 17% 11
Lee Smith 14% 9
Don Mattingly 10% 6
Jack Morris 10% 6
Jim Rice 6% 4
Harold Baines 5% 3
Dave Parker 5% 3
Jesse Orosco 3% 2
David Cone 2% 1
Mo Vaughn 2% 1
Jay Bell 0% 0
Ron Gant 0% 0
Mark Grace 0% 0
Dan Plesac 0% 0
Greg Vaughn 0% 0
Matt Williams 0% 0



We had one write-in each for Pete Rose, John Wetteland, Steve Garvey, Sweet Lou Whittaker, Vern Stephens, Ron Santo, Darrell Evans, and Dwight Evans. Gene Tenace received two write-in votes.

On Unanimous Elections

I’m happy to see that Rickey Henderson finished with a unanimous vote somewhere, though it took a correction on one voter’s ballot to get him there.

Before I started watching the votes come in, I figured that I’d see the BBWW elect a player unanimously at some point in my life. Someone like Ripken or Gwynn or Greg Maddux. Having watched first-hand the votes from an online poll come in, I am now certain it will never happen.

To illustrate why, here are the first four ballots cast in the BJOL vote:

agcohen dmcmurray trailbzr taosjohn
Harold Baines
Jay Bell
Bert Blyleven X X X
David Cone
Andre Dawson X
Ron Gant
Mark Grace
Rickey Henderson X X X X
Tommy John X
Don Mattingly X
Mark McGwire X X
Jack Morris X
Dale Murphy
Jesse Orosco
Dave Parker
Dan Plesac
Tim Raines X X X
Jim Rice X
Lee Smith X X
Alan Trammell X X X
Greg Vaughn
Mo Vaughn
Matt Williams



What’s interesting is that these are intelligent ballots. By that I mean they are consistent, without contradictions. Sure, Trailbzr didn’t vote for Blyleven, but he didn’t vote for Jack Morris or Tommy John, either. He has a benchmark for pitchers, and his ballot shows that benchmark. The same holds for Taosjohn, who voted for the best outfielder on the list. He didn’t vote for Raines, but he didn’t vote for Dawson or Rice or Murphy, either.

These are intelligent ballots. They demonstrate a reasonable amount of thought. Yet it only took four ballots to lose consensus on twenty-two players.

How BJOL Compares to the BBWAA

Our vote is on the left. The BBWAA vote is on the right:

Rickey Henderson 100% Rickey Henderson 95%
Tim Raines 89% Jim Rice 76%
Bert Blyleven 86% Andre Dawson 67%
Alan Trammell 76% Bert Blyleven 63%
Mark McGwire 64% Lee Smith 45%
Andre Dawson 21% Jack Morris 44%
Tommy John 18% Tommy John 32%
Dale Murphy 17% Tim Raines 23%
Lee Smith 14% Mark McGwire 22%
Don Mattingly 10% Alan Trammell 17%
Jack Morris 10% Dave Parker 15%
Jim Rice 6% Don Mattingly 12%
Harold Baines 5% Dale Murphy 12%
Dave Parker 5% Harold Baines 6%
Jesse Orosco 3% Mark Grace 4%
David Cone 2% David Cone 4%
Mo Vaughn 2% Matt Williams 1%
Jay Bell 0% Mo Vaughn 1%
Ron Gant 0% Jay Bell 0%
Mark Grace 0% Jesse Orosco 0%
Dan Plesac 0% Dan Plesac 0%
Greg Vaughn 0% Greg Vaughn 0%
Matt Williams 0% Ron Gant 0%



Both the BJOL and the BBWAA agreed on the likes of Greg Vaughn and Dan Plesac. And both groups agreed on Rickey Henderson’s enshrinement. In between that there were a lot of disagreements. And those disagreements are worth a look.

Players Preferred by BBWAA

These are the players who did far better in the BBWAA vote than the BJOL vote, and the difference in the percentage of the two votes:

Name % Diff.
Jim Rice 70
Andre Dawson 46
Jack Morris 34
Lee Smith 31
Tommy John 14
Dave Parker 10



Jim Rice had the most dramatic difference between the BJOL vote and the BBWAA vote, a stunning 70% difference. While 76% of BBWAA voters believed Rice deserved enshrinement, only 6% of the BJOL felt similarly. Of course, the BBWAA voters had fifteen years to consider his career, so perhaps they know something we don’t.

Dawson and Morris did well, which is no surprise. Like Rice, the HOF case for both Morris and Dawson rests less on the numbers, and more on anecdotal remembrances.

I was surprised to see that Tommy John got more votes from the BBWAA than the BJOL. Here’s an interesting graph, comparing how John and Blyleven have done in recent BBWAA votes:

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
John 27% 19% 27% 28% 27%
Blyleven 18% 14% 17% 24% 26%




From 1998-2002, John did considerably better than Blyleven on the BBWAA ballots. Then things changed dramatically:

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
John 23% 22% 24% 30% 23% 29% 32%
Blyleven 29% 35% 41% 53% 48% 62% 63%



Suddenly, in 2003, the Beast from Zeist started to blow John out of the water. What happened?

One possibility is that 2002 is about the time when sabermetric thinking finally started to infiltrate the thinking of the BBWAA voters. Blyleven is a player who has gotten a lot of attention from sabermetricians, and it seems like all that noise is getting though to some folks.

Players Preferred by the BJOL

These are the players preferred by the readers of the BJOL, and the percentage difference between the two votes.

Name % Diff.
Tim Raines 66
Alan Trammell 59
Mark McGwire 42
Bert Blyleven 23



These are all interesting cases. Tim Raines is obviously a Hall of Fame-level player, and I’m glad (and not surprised) that the readers of the BJOL were quick to put him in the Hall of Fame.

Alan Trammell edged over the 75% threshold by two votes, becoming the fourth player chosen by the BJOL readers and writers. And while I sincerely hope that Trammell eventually gets into the HOF, it seems extremely unlikely that he will be elected by the writers. Trammell was the only infielder who was a legitimate candidate for the Hall of Fame this year, but he actually got fewer votes this year than he did in 2008.

Mark McGwire finished fourth in the BJOL vote, which was, to be frank, a little surprising. Here’s a question for the comments section: are sabermetrically-inclined fans more inclined to forgive known steroid users? And if so, why?

I have a theory. I’d like to know if you think it has any merit.

I think we can all agree that using steroids helps performance, to some degree. Where the divide exists is our response to that reality. We can’t know, for sure, how much Mark McGwire’s career was benefited by his steroid use. Same holds for Bonds or Palmiero: we can’t know.

The non-sabermetrically-inclined fan, having recognized this, chooses to discount the entirety of a player’s career. This is the easy decision, and there is a righteousness to it: those guys almost certainly cheated, and they should suffer for it.

For those of us who are more sabermetrically inclined, I think we’re more inclined to ask, “Well, just how much did steroids help this guy? What other factors were at play? We keep on asking questions.

I want to be clear that I don’t necessarily think that either way is the right way of looking at the issue, only that it might help explain the difference between the BBWAA vote and the BJOL vote.

As to whether or not the theory holds water, I don’t know. What do you think?

The Forgotten Three

Don Mattingly got 10% of the BJOL vote, 12% of the BBWAA vote.

Dale Murphy had 17% of the BJOL vote, 12% of the BBWAA vote.

Dave Parker got 5% of the BJOL vote, 15% of the BBWAA vote. These were the three high-profile players that the BJOL and the BBWAA were in agreement on. Why?

One thing that is obvious is that all three were prominent players, Most Valuable Player winners who were hugely famous during their peaks. But neither the mainstream baseball writers nor the sabermetrically inclined readers of the BJOL found anything deserving in the careers of these players.

It’s a curious thing, isn’t it? Take Parker: as a player, Dave Parker was a clone of Jim Rice, but Parker had more speed and a better throwing arm. Sure, there was the drug charges, but Parker’s never garnered anything close to the same attention that Rice has received from the BBWAA, despite being a superior player.

As for Donnie Baseball and Dale Murphy: it’s a little surprising that these guys, who were both immensely popular during the 1980’s, haven’t gotten more attention from the BBWAA. If I had to speculate, I think part of the reason they haven’t gotten more attention is because for so long everyone just assumed they’d end up in the Hall of Fame. Murphy won two straight MVP awards, and got a lot of attention for his charity work. Mattingly was widely thought of as the best player of the mid-80’s. The fact that their careers stopped before they could get to the benchmarks everyone expected they’d get to makes their candidacy less appealing.

So the BBWAA has let these three slide, and the sabermetricians haven’t really jumped to their cause. This isn’t surprising: I think, generally, those of us who are interested in stats like to find the things that others have missed. We want to find the Arky Vaughns or the Blylevens or the Darrell Evans’s or the Gene Tenaces. We want the guys who were ignored, and no one ever ignored Mattingly or Parker or Murphy. They got a lot of attention over the years. And now, well, now it seems no one is paying any attention to them.

I think it’s a shame. I don’t know if Dave Parker was a Hall of Famer, but he was a better player than Jim Rice. Don Mattingly was one of my favorite players. Maybe he’s not as deserving as Will Clark, but I wouldn’t mind seeing him in.

And Dale Murphy…well, I think Dale Murphy absolutely deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. He’s a forgotten great, a player who deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, and it’s time someone took up his cause.

(Dave Fleming is a writer living in Iowa City. He’ll be taking the next two week off from posting articles here, as he’s going on a long-anticipated honeymoon to the sunny shores of Hawaii.)

aro13

Long read but good stuff!