Hall of Fame thoughts: It’s about time for Craig Biggio
In the last two articles on the Hall of Fame, we discussed who belongs and who doesn’t, with a focus on the folly of the Veteran’s Committee in the past while also touching on the Yankee mystique.
As for this year’s new candidates, using the no-brainer method, if I had had a vote, I would’ve put Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez in the Hall in a rabbit’s heartbeat.
John Smoltz would also get my vote based on his 3,084 career strikeouts (which ranks sixteenth all-time) and his career WAR which stands at 102nd-best all-time. He won nearly 60 percent of his decisions and while his win total of 213 may not floor you, only 88 men won more big league games and I bet those men didn’t: a) lead their league in saves with a staggering total of 55 as Smoltz did in 2002 and b) rack up 154 saves (75th all-time). A Cy Young Award winner, Smoltz clearly put up Hall of Fame numbers.
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As for the holdovers from previous elections, my biggest beef concerns voters who didn’t give a nod to Craig Biggio (although I also still can’t understand why a guy like Lee Smith or Fred McGriff isn’t getting enough votes for induction, or at least coming close).
First of all, I find it astonishing how some voters (and these are Baseball Writers Association of America members) who have covered the game for at least 10 consecutive years at some point in their careers) say no to a worthy candidate the first time the player is on the ballot, then vote yes later. I’m starting to wonder if it’s because it seems like nobody will ever be a unanimous choice, some voters are bestowing the concept of induction for first time candidates with the status of (or nearly as good as the status of) unanimous induction. They seemingly want to reserve first-year induction for men like Greg Maddux — and even he was overlooked by 16 voters (that still gave him the eighth-highest percentage of votes ever at 97.2).
Voters realize, of course, that a given player’s stats are not going to change once they’re retired, yet they’ll deem that player’s body of work not good enough to get into the Hall one year then turn around and later cast a yes vote for that man. Looked at it that way, their thought process is totally illogical. And, getting back to Biggio, his 20 years of service, all with the Houston Astros, his 3,060 hits (#21 all-time), his 668 doubles (#5) and his 414 steals (#66) should have made him a first-round inductee.
Biggio switched from being the Astros’ catcher to becoming a Gold Glover at second base before he helped his club yet again by moving to the outfield where he manned center and left field for Houston.
He even ranks 15th all-time for runs scored, number 18 for the most career times reaching base, 33rd lifetime for total bases, and his WAR is 134th best in the history of the game. Still, in his first year of eligibility, he earned just 68.2 percent of the votes – leading many to believe the voters just didn’t want him to go in during his first go-round, but that Biggio would get the necessary 75+% in 2014. He didn’t. He fell a tantalizing 0.2 percent shy of reaching Cooperstown. How could 144 voters look over his stats and say Biggio is not a Hall of Famer? His 74.8 percent of the votes put him in a tie with Nellie Fox (1985) and Pie Traynor (1947) for the smallest margin to miss out on induction.
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Biggio was just about as good as Derek Jeter— perhaps better when you factor in Jeter’s poor defense. Yet I don’t see any specials on Biggio on, say, MLB Network. Biggio seems to be yet another victim of the lack of hype for players outside of New York— and I guess he lacked that so-called mystique which Yankees seem to enjoy.
Behind Biggio in earning the highest percentages of votes cast in 2014 were Mike Piazza (62.2 percent) and Jeff Bagwell (54.3 percent). Rumors and/or speculation about their use of PEDs has apparently kept the vote totals down for each of them. Next on the list was Tim Raines (46.1 percent), and he was involved in baseball’s drug scandal in the 1980s — remember how he said he slid into bags headfirst because he always kept a vial of cocaine in his back pocket and didn’t want to risk breaking it. Given those circumstances, I can see their not getting in. Otherwise, based on stats, these guys were great.
Likewise, next on our list comes Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds with 35.4 percent and 34.7 percent of the votes, respectively. Many fervently hope these men, and all others linked to PEDs, never sully the Hall of Fame. One member of the Hall, Al Kaline, stated to the Associated Press last year that while he is honored to be in Cooperstown, he would have felt “a little uneasy sitting up there on the stage, listening to some of these new guys talk about how great they were. . . . I don’t know how great some of these players up for election would’ve been without drugs. But to me, it’s cheating.”
And, if memory serves, some Hall of Famers such as Bob Feller once said that if men such as Bonds got in, they would not attend any Hall of Fame ceremonies or events if any of the cheaters were on hand. Bravo!