BP Hall of Fame Voting

Hideo Nomo with a 10 player limit? Todd Jones without a limit?

Jordan Gorosh voted for Edgar Martinez twice!

While the masses cry for an expansion of the 10 player limit I say leave it a lone, particularly with an electorate like BP's panel here. When you have a group that feels compelled to use every slot on the ballot the risk is way too high that candidates with marginal cases will get in.

If the BBWAA let the voters have extra slots Jack Morris would be in the HoF. It is the Law of Unintended Consequences rearing its ugly head (again).

I agree we have more than ten fully qualified candidates this year, but if we miraculously elected the top ten our logjam goes away. A better rule change would be to get rid of the 5% rule and let every player eligible have at least three years on the ballot. If they don't get to 5% by then then drop them.

Look, Mike Maddux has had a fine career as a pitching coach, and he did last 15 seasons in the bigs. But he was mostly a middle reliever, and an average one as his 102 ERA+ indicates.

That's just not enough for a HOF vote.

It's instructive and gratifying to see the variety of opinion here. The exercise goes to show that 75 percent of votes is a high threshold, and that significant disagreements remain even among "enlightened" baseball analysts on who deserves election to the Hall.

Were there any instructions given to the voters beyond those presented in the article? For example, were voters advised to vote solely based on whom they think should be elected, without giving consideration to what other voters might do?

It is informative to me that even with a fact-based and statistic-based site (and yes, I know you have a lot of folks who aren't that way who are marginal contributors) that Curt Schilling isn't a HOFer even after allowing an expanded ballot.

I'm kind of stunned by that.

Are the two guys who left Bonds and Clemens off their ballots, but voted for 10 other candidates who similarly played during a period in which there was no steriod testing, going to explain their votes?

The ten vote limit worked well. It may have seemed like you had to cut off limbs but look at the result. You "elected" seven guys of whom 4 are holdovers from last year. If this was the real election then next year you would be confronted with a much easier group to chose from even though you will be adding 3 top tier guys to the ballot.

One more election like this and your perceived problem goes away.

All the electorate has to do is pick the ten best qualified guys and this problem goes away in short order.

The list of players eliminated for consideration is more interesting than those who got in. I have to think reform is coming.