Is there a right solution to “fix” the Baseball Hall of Fame?

At 2 p.m. on January 6th, 2015, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Craig Biggio and John Smoltz were elected into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. Also at 2 p.m. on January 6th, 2015, Curt Schilling, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell and a myriad of other worthy candidates were not elected into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame — at least for another year.

Celebration for the four players voted into the Hall by the BBWAA ensued, but spite towards the system and the voting body for “snubbing” so many all-time greats did as well. It is not at all erroneous to insinuate the results only augmented the already high-level of existing animosity the masses and pundits had towards the voting system.

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While it is impossible for every single baseball fan to agree on a single thing, I surmise the vast majority would agree that the system in place should be refined. To a lot of fans, it is simply unacceptable that the BBWAA does not elect every single man they deem to fit their subjective Baseball Hall of Fame credentials. On the other side of the pulpit, a majority of baseball writers who hold voting credentials are infuriated with the fact the Hall

turned down their proposal to increase the maximum number of votes for a writer from 10 to 12

. So, no one is seemingly happy with the way things currently stand — the voters who control the destiny of these men’s fate included.

We fans, despite our Twitter presences, have very little influence over who gets in and who does not get in; thus, our opinions of whom should be in the Hall does not hold much weight. But the writers do have an influence! They are the ones who are voting for Pete’s sake, and one can sympathize with their gripe that they are limited to voting for just ten candidates per year. Still, it is hard to imagine that the previously proposed increase would have a huge impact on players getting in. After all, it is just two extra votes, isn’t it?

Looking at Ryan Thibs’ HoF Tracker I have calculated that of the 136 voters he tracked on the Google Spreadsheet, 49 of them (36%) did not use the maximum ten spaces (note: this number, while checked, could be slightly imprecise). It is thereby logical to presume that they would have not voted for more players if they were allocated 12 instead of 10. 36% is not a large majority but in context it does matter.

According to Baseball Hall’s official website, 549 ballots were cast, making it so 412 were needed for a player to pass the required 75% threshold. If one were to assume — and for simplicity purposes I am — that the 36% number collected in a relatively small sample size carried over for the remaining ballots, then that would make it so 198 voters, in total, would have no use for the increase in votes, leaving us with 351 voters who might. Piazza finished with 384 votes, 28 shy of admission. Could 702 (351 times two) additional votes have enabled Piazza to be elected?

Well, yes, seeing as how Piazza would just have had to eclipse .04% of those votes to be voted into Cooperstown. As a consequence of that paltry number, my gut tells me he would have been a Hall of Famer.

Let’s look next at Jeff Bagwell who, with 306 votes, fell 106 votes short of admission and was the second closest to making it but did not. Bagwell would have needed to accrue 15% of those votes to be inducted, which is entirely possible. But one has to consider that there is already a 55.7% chance those voters already voted for the Astros’ great.

Based on a hunch, I would say that Bagwell, had the Hall increased its voting limit to 12, probably would not have made it. I could be wrong, certainly. I do not yet possess the mathematical skills to estimate the likelihood Bagwell would have gotten in or not with 702 additional votes — assuming, of course, every voter used their two extra votes, which they all wouldn’t. Yet if I had to take a guess, I would say the probability of him making it or not with the voting limit increased to 12 would have leaned closer to not.

Baseball Prospectus’ Russell Carleton completed a similar exercise last year, if one is interested in making a more educated assumption to scale the potential effect of the proposed increase.

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All said, I do not believe that increasing the number of votes per person to 12 would do much of anything to ameliorate the perceived broken system. An increase to 15 would be interesting, but would it then implore writers to elect more unworthy candidates and therefore tarnish the Hall of Fame’s exclusivity?

Then again, what is exclusivity in terms of the Baseball Hall of Fame? Its definition varies from person to person and therein lies the problem. Sabermetrically-inclined writers occupy a faction of the voters while writers with more traditional beliefs occupy another. Voters who exult players tied to PEDs because of the hypocrisy (there are players in the Hall who have used PEDs) and the lack of evidence to the degree for which it debases a player accolades occupies a faction while those who believe that PED-players cheated occupy another faction of the voters.

In the aggregate, it comes down to what one puts their faith in when defining a Hall of Fame player: do you use JAWS, a system developed by Jay Jaffe, the eye-test, or a combination of the two? Though I consider myself a guy who relies on the numbers, I can’t fault those who do not. Opinions, though some are more factually based, are just that: opinions. Right now, the cry of the masses that the Hall of Fame system is broken is merely a general consensus held opinion.

What would make the system successful? If the steroid players were enshrined? Some do believe that. Then there are those who think inducting the steroid players would ruin the integrity of the Hall. Either way, you can’t win. Is Curt Schilling not better than John Smoltz? Yeah, he probably is, but a large majority, including the BBWAA, does not believe that.

The point being: no matter what the Hall of Fame does people are inevitably going to complain based on their opinions of who and who should not be a Hall of Famer. The system will be “broken” regardless of what they do. When you have an exercise like this that is entirely opinion-based, it is hard to be content, unless things go your way, with the system.

I do not think the system currently in place is broken. It has worked for a long time, and though the logjam is relatively new, the logjam is only a logjam because people think it is a logjam; because they believe more players are Hall of Fame worthy. And they are right; the talent in this year’s class was savoring, hence why four, almost five, players are heading to Cooperstown.

It is a hard subject to think about, really. I would not at all be opposed to changing the system to better represent players in the steroid era and those going forward, but do not expect that these changes will end the bickering and end the call for more changes.

It is impossible to appease everyone, and that, my friends, is the crux in definitively finding a “right” solution to fix the Hall of Fame.