It's A Hall Of Fame Ballot

Totally normal, nothing strange here.

Last year, I voted for the Hall of Fame for the first time. I declared myself a Small Hall guy and put only six names on my ballot. I almost voted for Todd Helton, but I didn’t.

That year, Helton’s share of the vote shot up from 52 percent to 72 percent, which more or less guaranteed that he would reach 75 percent and get elected this year.  

When I saw that 72 percent, I knew what was going to happen inside my brain, and it did: I immediately started remembering Todd Helton differently. He was, I now remembered with great fondness, the toughest non-Bonds out in the National League for almost a decade! The Giants had a lefty specialist during Helton’s peak named Alan Embree. Embree was the guy you saved for Helton. Helton hit .357/.438/.786 against Embree. That the kind of opponent Helton was. His stats were helped by his home ballpark, sure, but he was also the perfect complement to his ballpark, and anyway during his seven-year peak he also hit better on the road than Chipper Jones and Jim Thome. I read the HOF cases for him with more generosity. I remember that guy—a great fit for Cooperstown!

Is this motivated reasoning to get myself from 49/51 to 51/49? To some degree, it probably is. My brain knew it would be a lot more satisfying (until the end of time) to have voted for a player in the Hall of Fame than to have voted against him. The thought definitely came up that I was going to be a bit bummed out, and maybe embarrassed, and definitely disappointed to tell my friends at poker night¹ that I hadn’t been one of the people who put Todd Helton into the Hall of Fame.

So to what degree I just told you a story of cause and effect, I don’t know. But this year, I voted for Todd Helton.

Photo by Jennifer Linnea via Wikimedia Commons

*

Last year, 323 ballots were collected by Ryan Thibodaux’ Hall of Fame Tracker. I put them all into my own spreadsheet, because I wanted to see whether my ballot was, relatively speaking, normal.

I did that by calculating the total “disagreement” of each voter’s ballot. Nothing fancy: If a voter checked the box for Scott Rolen (who got 80.4 percent of the vote) then their “disagreement” for that pick was .196, because it disagreed with 19.6 percent of voters. If they didn’t pick Rolen, their disagreement was .804. Everybody’s disagreement for John Lackey was 0, because nobody voted for him. Etc. Add it up and that’s the ballot’s Disagreement Score.

The lowest possible disagreement score was 4.2—that’s if you voted for every player who ended up over 50 percent, and voted against every player who ended up below 50 percent:

• Todd Helton,

• Andruw Jones,

• Scott Rolen,

• Gary Sheffield,

• Billy Wagner,

• And nobody else.

Eight ballots managed to do exactly that. Those five players plus either Jeff Kent or Carlos Beltrán would produce a slightly higher disagreement score of 4.3. Ten voters managed that—but five voted for Beltrán, and five voted for Kent. Five more voted for those five players plus Jeff Kent and Carlos Beltrán.

So this tells us a couple things. One is that the “consensus” ballot tends toward small-Hall decisions, ballots with only five or six or seven of the 10 lines used up—because any more than that would have you supporting players who are under 50 percent. In fact, it was statistically impossible to submit a full, 10-name ballot without having a higher-than-average disagreement score. (The median disagreement score is 5.5.) Naming lots of names is inherently disagreeable.

Consider this ballot:

• Bobby Abreu,

• Carlos Beltrán,

• Todd Helton,

• Andruw Jones,

• Jeff Kent,

• Manny Ramirez,

• Alex Rodriguez,

• Scott Rolen,

• Gary Sheffield,

• Billy Wagner

That is a perfectly reasonable ballot, a vote for the nine players with the most support and Bobby Abreu. It is so reasonable, in fact, that it was the most common ballot submitted—nine people submitted exactly those 10 players. But it was also one with a high disagreement score. Its disagreement score of 5.7 was almost identical to the second-most common ballot, which was its exact opposite: The blank ballot. Eight people submitted the blank ballot, with none of those names. The blank ballot’s disagreement score was 5.8.

The other thing it tells us is that there really isn’t a lot of consensus, relatively speaking. Even in our largest cluster of consensus—all the 50-percent-plus candidates, plus one, the other, both or neither of Beltrán and Kent—split the cluster pretty evenly, between one, the other, both, or neither.

All the ballots mentioned so far had lower disagreement scores than mine. My disagreement score was 6.5, the 43^rd highest out of 323. I’m not saying that’s bad, though I will admit to feeling uncomfortable about it.

**

As soon as I sent my six-names-and-no-Helton ballot in last year—like within hours—I regretted how stingy I’d been. I was pretty sure that this year I’d vote for more players. I was certain, for example, I’d vote for Gary Sheffield. Sheffield had almost exactly Miguel Cabrera’s career as a hitter—

• Sheffield: .293/.393/.514, 140 OPS+, 509 HR, 81 offensive WAR

• Cabrera: .306/.380/.518, 140 OPS+, 511 HR, 78 offensive WAR

—but his total WAR got knocked down to that squishy, borderline-HOF level² thanks to atrocious defensive numbers. He clearly was a Hall of Fame hitter, and I can’t believe I ever voted against him.

So that’s one. I already told you that I voted for Helton. So that’s two. 

Quick thought experiment: In 1936, the BBWAA voted for the first time on who should be in the Hall of Fame. They were limited to players from the 20^th century, and voting for active players was allowed. I basically started following baseball in 1987, which means that last year would be the equivalent of 1936 in my baseball century. What if I had the same responsibility the 1936 writers had, and I got to vote for 10 players of my era who had flawless resumes, who provided absolutely no excuse to vote against them, and who brought me great joy? I’d probably vote, in order:

• Pedro Martínez

• Randy Johnson

• Greg Maddux

• Mike Trout

• Ichiro Suzuki

• Albert Pujols

• Mariano Rivera

• Clayton Kershaw

• Ken Griffey, Jr.

• Adrián Beltré

So Beltré, on the ballot for the first time this year, obviously makes three.

I did not have to struggle over ballot newcomers Joe Mauer or Chase Utley. From 2006 through 2010, Utley was baseball’s second best player. Mauer was probably third. Mauer will get elected in his first or second year on the ballot. Utley might get there eventually, but he’s probably going to end up on fewer than half the ballots this year. This was prophesied by my HOF-Snubs art in 2011:

That’s four and five. Andy Pettitte is my personal project. He makes six.

Alex Rodriguez is in. I think it’s great that PED users get suspended now, like Rodriguez did. I like clear discipline for such things, instead of making Hall of Fame voters feel like they’re the ones primarily responsible for litigating the ethics of it all years or decades later. I think discipline for game-fairness type stuff is the purview of the game designers and participants. So I vote for cheaters, sometimes reluctantly (when it comes to PEDs) and sometimes without reservation (when it comes to banging trash cans). So Carlos Beltrán is in, too. These two make eight.

I left Mark Buehrle off last year. I put him on this year. I don’t feel strongly that he should be in the Hall of Fame—he’s got Andy Pettitte’s career but without Pettitte’s huge postseason resume, which is a big part of the Pettitte case. I do feel strongly that the Hall of Fame ballot should have more than four starting pitchers on it, for goodness sakes, which is what we had this year thanks to the lost generation of pitchers who were born in the 1970s. Two of those four—Bartolo Colón and James Shields—will likely fall off the ballot after one try, and best as I can tell only two of the 15 most likely additions to next year’s ballot will be pitchers. This will also be the fifth year in a row without a starting pitcher being elected. That’s all wild, to me. Buehrle is my ninth selection, if only to keep him on the ballot.

I left Bobby Abreu off last year. I put him on this year. Bobby Abreu is the classic example of a player who was underrecognized throughout his career—in MVP voting, in All-Star appearances, in pay, in corresponding vibes—and then, when his HOF candidacy comes up, it’s easy to cite his lack of MVP votes, All-Star appearances, etc., and replicate the mistake. I’ll just note this:

Abreu had seven seasons (consecutively, in fact) with more than 5 WAR. There are only 11 other players since 1900 who have done that who aren’t in the Hall of Fame, and five of those 11 were either banned from the Hall or have been kept out due to PED. But that’s not my main point about Abreu. My main point is that he had this Hall-worthy run of seasons and he didn’t make the All-Star team until the seventh of them! That’s how overlooked he was early in his career. He was 30 years old, with a career .305/.412/.517 slash line, and more career WAR than 10-time All-Star Steve Garvey retired with, before he made his first All-Star team. I don’t vote for him expecting he’ll get in, but as a small statement toward correcting the record.

That’s 10.

I didn’t vote for Andruw Jones or Manny Ramirez. Jones pleaded guilty to a domestic violence charge in 2012. Ramirez was charged with battery against his wife in 2011, but the charges were dropped. I voted for both last year, but I chose not to vote for them again.

I didn’t vote for Billy Wagner. Like Helton, he got so close last year that he’s got a great chance of going in this year, and so the same part of my brain kicked in trying to get me to yes on him. But I don’t think there’s much case for the common relief ace. My standards aren’t quite “Mariano Rivera or nobody,” but at the same time there hasn’t been anybody—including Wagner—who has come remotely close to Rivera in the one-inning era. Wagner maybe was the closest, but with half of Rivera’s regular-season WAR and less than none of Rivera’s postseason success:

• Rivera: 141 postseason innings, 11 earned runs

• Wagner: 12 postseason innings, 13 earned runs

I’m not rooting against Wagner making it, though. I especially hope he doesn’t miss by one vote.

I’m happy to answer any questions.

***

As I write this, there are 155 published 2024 ballots on the Hall of Fame Tracker. I just dropped them into a spreadsheet to see how my disagreement score looks this year.

It is—yeesh. If you believe ballots should look like other ballots, I’m getting worse. Only six ballots disagree with the overall voting more than mine. Andy Pettitte (and now Mark Buehrle) are killing me.

This still makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want to be weird. I’m not trying to get attention. I was going to headline this piece “I Might Be Terrible At Hall Of Fame Voting,” but I didn’t want to make it too easy for strangers on social media to spot it and agree.

But as I’ve written, it’s a strange, high-disagreement era in Hall of Fame voting. There are philosophical splits in several, non-overlapping directions. PEDs have been the obvious one, domestic violence has become one, WAR vs other stuff is one, and then there are the usual disagreements (Small Hall vs. Large Hall, who was friendly to writers) that have always existed. It’s easy to fill out a ballot that is sensible, that feels intellectually consistent, but that ends up with yeses for a bunch of guys who finish at 15 percent and nos for some guys who finish over 50 percent. Almost half of all ballots filled out this year will be unique.

When I mailed my ballot this year, I didn’t feel the same instant regrets I did last year. I think that means I’m getting better, even if my ballot’s disagreement score is getting higher. I’m reassured that there are some great writers with very high disagreement scores. Two of the, oh, five people whose work in baseball research who I respect the most have extremely high disagreement scores. So disagreeing isn’t necessarily a flaw. Ultimately, I do think many of us would love our ballot to be the winning one. Sometimes we try to persuade, sometimes we try to be persuaded.

1. In my experience, poker-night opinion is that every good player should be in the Hall of Fame, except the cheaters; and that about thrice as many players were cheaters than you might think.

2. 55 to 65 WAR (for non-catchers and non-closers) is the squishy, borderline level, where other factors—the player’s peak, the player’s hardware, general vibes—tend to carry the day. Sheffield’s WAR was 60.5.