Lincoln Mitchell

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Tagged with: Roger Clemens

Three Yankees for the Hall of Fame

Six one time Yankees are on the Hall of Fame ballot this year. The six Yankees are: Roger Clemens, Johnny Damon, Andruw Jones, Hideki Matsui, Mike Mussina and Gary Sheffield. A seventh, Fred McGriff, was traded to the Blue Jays for a journeyman pitcher named Dale Murray while still in the minors. That remains one of the worst trades in Yankee history. The six Yankees include one very good player, Mastui, who despite his heroics in the 2009 World Series, is not a serious candidate and will likely get little support. Another candidate, Roger Clemens, has unequivocal Hall of Fame credentials as the best pitcher of his generation, but has been associated with PED use. The debate around Clemens is essentially a steroids debate about which pretty much everybody has already made up their mind. My position is that If I had a vote, I would vote for Clemens and Barry Bonds, but the remaining five candidates on the ballot are all more interesting from a purely baseball perspective.

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Alex Rodriguez in 2015 →

While Rodriguez exploits with the bat have been impressive, his success in winning back the affection of Yankee fans, and even some fans who hate that team, has been even more impressive. Rodriguez has learned that clashing with, and showing up, the Steinbrenner brothers is something that many baseball fans appreciate. For Yankee haters in particular, Rodriguez's success this year, and the embarrassment that success has caused the Yankee management, is probably very dissonant.

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Barry Bonds Back with the Giants →

Bonds had a nine year peak where he hit .305/.438/.600 for an OPS+ of 181. He finished in the top ten in MVP voting eight of those years while winning eight gold gloves and stealing 300 bases. Those are extraordinary numbers, but they are even more impressive because those years 1990-98, were not only a time when Bonds was not taking steroids, but, at least for the last few years of that period, a time when many others were. During those years, Bonds accumulated 76.2 WAR, the most in a nine year period since Willie Mays in his prime. Lost in the noise about Bonds and PEDs is that a clean Barry Bonds dominated the early steroid era in a way not seen in a generation. During those years, Bonds was also a remarkable player to watch. He was a complete player who could run, hit for power, steal bases and exhibit an extraordinary batting eye.

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Derek Jeter, Still Baseball's Most Underrated Overrated Player →

Jeter is one of the most intriguing of baseball players because for most of his career he has simultaneously been overrated, he is clearly not the greatest player or even the greatest Yankee in history, and underrated. He is not strong on defense, but has not been as bad as many think. Moreover, Jeter's extremely cautious style with the media has led most of the media to cover him as some sort of baseball saint, always ready with a good team oriented quote, respectful of the game and its history and almost never willing to criticize a teammate, or opponent. A minority of fans, however, see this is as a highly choreographed image by Jeter, which of course it is, and decry him for not being genuine.

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The Alex Rodriguez Suspension is Bad for Other Players Too →

As usual, this major decision by MLB does not bring any more clarity to the PED issue except to concretize baseball's policy that if you can be a truly great player, you can take steroids, and you can be not nice, but you can't be all three. Rodriguez is clearly the unfortunate player who is most directly impacted by this as he, like Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, clearly fits all three categories, but this suspension is bigger Rodriguez. It demonstrates again that the players are powerless against the league and the teams and that MLB continues to look for simple and high profile solutions to the PED problem rather than a thoughtful and more comprehensive approach.

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A Step in the Right Direction for the Hall of Fame →

Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas's election to the Hall of Fame represents one of the best years for Hall of Fame selection in a long time. Although there were numerous other deserving candidates including those tainted by steroids, like Barry Bonds and those with no steroid association, like Craig Biggio and Mike Mussina, it is still a good sign that three players, the most since 2003, were elected by the BBWAA. Biggio missed by an agonizing 0.2% and is in strong position to get elected next year.

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Jack Morris, Mike Mussina and the Hall of Fame →

This year, due to the quality of players on the ballot, the question of which players get less than 5% of the vote and fall off the ballot is almost as interesting as who will get elected. It is very possible that players with clear Hall of Fame credentials will not meet this 5% threshold and thus not get future consideration by the BBWAA. In this regard former Oriole and Yankee pitcher Mike Mussina is one of the most interesting candidates. He is not as well known as many of the other players on the ballot, but his career numbers compare favorably to many Hall of Famers. Mussina falling off the ballot is a real possibility, but is made more notable by the likelihood that an inferior pitcher, Jack Morris will be elected.

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Jhonny Peralta and PED Inconsistency from Major League Baseball →

Peralta's signing also indicates that the Cardinals believe that Peralta not only has served his time, so to speak, but that he is capable of performing at a high level even without the steroids. After all, Peralta will face a 100 game suspension if he tests positive again. If Peralta can perform as he has in his better years, this will be a good signing for the Cardinals, but if he cannot do that without PEDs, it will not. The Cardinals must know this and believe that Peralta does not need PEDs to post an OPS+ in the 110-120 range. The Cardinals almost certainly would not have singed Peralta if they thought his production was dependent on PEDs. If the Cardinals, a team reputed to be one of the smartest run franchises in the game thinks that a proven steroid user, who is generally speaking good but not great, can play well without steroids, perhaps steroids are not the magic slugging pills they have been portrayed to be for well over a decade

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David Ortiz and the Hall of Fame →

This will, and probably should, be enough to get Ortiz into the Hall of Fame. On the surface it seems wrong that a player who is, on the numbers, a strong, but not overwhelming Hall of Fame candidate and who has some connection to steroids will get into Cooperstown before some of the greatest players of his generation who have their own strange and unclear relationship with steroids. There is, of course, an inconsistency here. Had Ortiz not been so good with the media, and such a likable player, the Hall of Fame discussion, and the discussion of his recent World Series performance would be very different right now. It is possible that if Ortiz is elected, the rancor towards other players with connections to steroid use will slowly recede because the questions around Ortiz will linger. If not, the Hall of Fame will look even more absurd with Ortiz on the inside and Bagwell, not to mention Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rodriguez on the outside.

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The Yankees Have a Tough Choice on Robinson Cano →

This is a very tough decision for the Yankees involving a very good and popular player. Letting Cano go at a time when the rest of the team is aging and there is limited promise in the farm system would make it hard for the Yankees to contend in 2014 and 2015. Keeping him would ensure that the latest cycle of Yankee dysfunction, overpaying for aging stars, will continue unabated while other teams are getting smarter in this regard.

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A New Voting System for the Hall of Fame →

The current system allows voters to list up to ten players on their ballot. Players listed on 75 percent or more of the ballots win election to the Hall of Fame. Those who do not make 75 percent, but who get more than 5 percent, are kept on the ballot for another year, and can remain on the ballot for up to 15 years. Players who receive less than 5 percent of the vote are dropped from the ballot for good, although they can become eligible for the veteran's committee special ballot after several more years. One major problem with this system is that once it gets backlogged, as it is now, it is very hard to change that. In the next few years, due to this back log, there will be more than ten very strong candidates on the ballot, forcing voters to make tough choices. More significantly, this may also lead to mid-range candidates being dropped from the ballot after only one appearance. This is what happened to Kenny Lofton this year.

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Some Perspective on the Steroid Era →

For baseball fans, December is the time of year when the hot stove heats up as rumors and confirmations of trades and free agent signing take our attention away from less important things like work or the holiday season. This is a fun and welcome distraction, but the newer December ritual of reporters and baseball people of a certain age, most recently Tommy Lasorda, making pronouncements about how steroid users, according to their subjective definition, do not belong in the Hall of Fame, has become tiresome.

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Roger Clemens Acquittal Still Resolves Nothing

Roger Clemens’ acquittal on perjury charges may be a triumph of justice as the government case against him was weak. For this baseball fans should be relieved, as few fans, even those who never liked Roger Clemens, would have liked to have seen the baseball legend doing time based on a flimsy government case against him. However, Clemens’ acquittal speaks to the problems that baseball still faces in its efforts to put the steroid era in the past, because it does nothing to change the realities that Clemens took steroids and MLB did not seem to care.

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Darrell Evans, Tony Perez and Why the Hall of Fame Matters

Therefore, what is at stake in Hall of Fame voting is how the game’s history gets passed down from one generation to another. This is further complicated by the vague and differing definitions of what makes a Hall of Famer, specifically the relationship between narrative and numbers in evaluating players. Jim Rice, for example, got an increase in support because of his great 1978 season and the false, but broadly accepted narrative that he was the most feared hitter of his generation.

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Don't Dismiss Bernie Williams' Hall of Fame Candidacy Too Quickly

The arguments against Williams are clear. He was not great defensively, was never one of the best hitters in the game, was surrounded by better players and did not play much past his prime. The arguments in favor of Williams candidacy are less obvious, but also very powerful. Williams was a very good hitter who had a very long prime. Between 1995-2002, a period of eight years, he hit .321/.406/.531, good for an OPS+ of 142. He did this while playing a key defensive position decently. Although he retired at age 37, thus truncating the decline phase of his career, he remained a useful player until the end hitting .281/.332/.436 during his last year with the Yankees.

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Justin Verlander's Season in Context

If Verlander’s season is an aberration and high win totals continue to recede into the past, then his season will still stand out as a great season. It is also possible that Verlander’s season, specifically with regards to his win totals, will end up looking more like Fielder’s 1990 which, at the time seemed like a great home run year for Fielder, but was more of a harbinger of what was coming and quickly forgotten in the fifteen or so year offensive explosion that followed.

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Is Matt Cain His Generation's Bert Blyleven

Cain is, however, an intriguing pitcher from a statistical angle. His career win-loss record is an unimpressive 65-67, but this is largely because during 2007 and 2008, he got very poor run support posting a 15-30 record despite an ERA+ of 120. While Cain has been unlucky in one area, some argue that he has been lucky in others, because he has managed to post a lower ERA than his other numbers, such as walks and strikeouts would suggest. Cain has consistently managed to hold his opponents to a lower BABIP than most pitchers, as when Cain is pitching more batted balls turn into outs than might be generally expected.

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Clemens, Johnson, Maddux and Martinez in Historical Perspective

When Philadelphia Phillies manager Charlie Manuel sent Chad Durbin to the mound to start the bottom of the fifth inning of game six of the 2009 World Series, replacing future Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez, it was the end of a baseball era. Martinez’s last game in the big leagues had not gone well as the New York Yankees, led by Hideki Matsui, rocked him for four runs in four innings. Martinez was the last of a quartet of pitching superstars also including Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux, who, at a time when offensive production was higher than ever, dominated the game as no other group of pitching peers ever have.

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Passing the Steroid Buck-Major League Baseball and Hall of Fame Voting

The recent Hall of Fame balloting yielded some interesting results. First, for the first time in several years there were no false positives. The two players elected, Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar, were well deserving of the honor and in no way bring down the overall quality of players in the Hall of Fame. This is different than each of the last two years when the election of borderline candidates like Jim Rice and Andre Dawson troubled many because many clearly superior players, for example Tim Raines, did not get elected while other superior players, like Will Clark, who were contemporaries of these two received little or no support when they were on the ballot.

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Five Questions for 2011

There were several reasons why 2010 was a memorable baseball season. Fans of the San Francisco Giants saw their team win the World Series for the first time ever in San Francisco, while Texas Ranger fans saw their team play in the World Series for the first time ever. There were two perfect games and one almost perfect game thrown. Pitching dominated the game to an extent not seen for years. New stars such as Joey Votto emerged while proven stars like Roy Halladay switched leagues but otherwise maintained their dominant level of play. The trends and events raise some interesting questions to look at as the 2011 season approaches with bearing both on and off the field.

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