re: Baseball Hall of Fame Announcement Thread- Bagwell, Raines, Pudge Elected to HOF

Bring a lifelong Stros fan, I'm happy to see Biggio & Bagwell get in.

First off, I'm thrilled Tim Raines got in. It was his last year on the ballot, and he is arguably the 2nd greatest leadoff hitter ever. He's the best percentage base stealer of all-time, and while he didn't have Gwynn's batting average, he got on base more and scored more runs. Poz had a great piece today that Raines long journey to the Hall is what makes it great: we spent a decade remembering a guy like Raines... other sports don't do that (I think he used Mike Gartner and Alex English as his other sports examples). Raines' whole candidacy was a love letter to baseball.

I'm disappointed Hoffman and Vlad didn't get in. A five-man class would alleviate the backlog of worthy candidates, especially since next year's batch is sort of great as well. Hoffman has the all-time saves record and while you can argue he didn't pitch enough innings or whatever, we've already broken the seal on relievers getting in the Hall. If we induct RHP, we induct the best regular season closer ever (Mo Rivera, of course, is a no-brainer, and I've argued he's the best postseason pitcher ever). Best closer ever is a pretty high bar.

Vlad's case isn't quite as good as Larry Walker's. Walker has a higher career WAR, WAR7, and JAWS. He has 30 more points of career OPS and essentially the same OPS+. He stole more bases and was a far better defensive player. But Walker ain't getting in until Vlad does, but I'll also make the case for Vlad on non-statistical grounds: he is the most fun/unique player of his era and I think he is THE most important Dominican player. There were Dominicans before him, but he was the guy who really represented the island, and was the totem. I think that counts for a lot. You don't walk off the island.

Moose, I've accepted, won't get in the Hall. But he easily could have won 300, but he retired right after a 20-win season because... well, he didn't need to chase milestones. He wasn't that kind of guy. It didn't matter to him. But he was top 5 in Cy Young voting 6 times, top 5 in ERA 7 times, top 5 in strikeouts 6 times, and won 7 Gold Gloves. Mussina requires one to appreciate consistent excellence, and frankly... we don't. It's a shame we don't, if it were easy, everyone would do it.

Clemens and Bonds are no brainers, but they've cleared 50%. Nearly every player to get to 50% eventually has been inducted. The tide is turning, and they will likely be inducted in a few years. Rodriguez and Selig's induction helps, as it removes a big stigma of the steroid era.

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Smoltz- 1 cy, 3000Ks, pristine postseason resume', 150 saves/200wins

Glavine- 300 wins, 2 Cys

Maddux- 4 cy, 300/3000 club

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It was ridiculous having these three guys on the same damn team for so long.

I think Walker is getting way overlooked too. The knock on him is playing in Colorado, but 70% of his career games were played away from Coors Field.

Walker has the coors field stuff against him which is silly. He also has the problem of having played for the expos.

Edgar will get in eventually.

I will pay little attention to the HOF until Bonds gets in. Best I have ever seen. Dude hit a homerun in every Giants game I took my kids to see. The selective hate on juicers/alleged juicers defies logic.

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I think Walker is getting way overlooked too. The knock on him is playing in Colorado, but 70% of his career games were played away from Coors Field.

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Career outside Coors Field:

.282/.372/.501 (.873)

Voters don't know what to do with Coors Field and I don't blame them. Compare Larry Walker to Jim Edmonds, who didn't even see a second ballot:

.284/.376/.527 (.903) and 8 GGs in center (plus the greatest catch in MLB history).

Big changes for next years HOF voting.

Derrek Goold from STL Post dispatch is BWA president, i believe, and he pushed very hard for transparency and for baseball writers and those in the business to be voting. Not NFL/NHL/NBA writers who haven't wrote or reported on baseball in 30 years.

They took the votes from these guys and put it into the hands of people who actually follow and report on Baseball. U had football guys voting on MVP,Cy young, HOF. Many from old sports magazines, who got BWA cards for just being a writer at the mag(sporting news,etc)

Also, after talking to other voters, he came to the conclusion, that these guys who are the morale police, are actually voting for people they like who were juicers, and making guys like bonds/clemens villains. They did not want their votes to be public, they wanted to be huge d-bags, and continue to vote like jackasses. Now, all votes will be made public, so either ur for juicers or ur not. There will be no in betweens, or they will get called out.

One guy, he said, was all uppity about the votes being public, and continued his rant about juicers, yet this guy voted for coke dealers, coke heads, wife beaters, etc.

I always laughed when local dude, Howard Balzer, who hadn't covered baseball since the 70's at the Sporting News, was talking about how he had to get his MLB MVP/Cy Young, and other ballots in. lol

These cock-sucking reporters trying to dig up dirt on these hall of famers during their first presser