Baseball Stew: Foolish Voting in Hall of Fame Elections

It’s incredible that some media “experts” have been guilty of very foolish voting when it comes time to cast their ballots for Hall of Fame membership. Members of the Baseball Writers Association of America who have the duty and the honor of voting for Hall of Fame candidates yet don’t take the process seriously should have their votes stripped.

That actually was the case with one member of the media in 2014. That year, Dan Le Batard, a columnist for the Miami Herald, said he believed many good baseball fans were more qualified to vote than some members of the BBWAA. He actually turned his ballot over to Deadspin, which then allowed its readers to vote on how they should fill out the ballot.

It was a (pick one or more from the following)—  a) foolish   b) frivolous  c) ridiculous  d) costly  decision. All of the above sounds pretty good to me. Eventually the BBWAA suspended him for a year and forever stripped him of his Hall of Fame voting privileges.

But how about taking away the voting rights of the guy who cast a vote for Aaron Sele in 2013? Sele won 148 games (versus 112 losses) and put up a 4.61 ERA in his career. Let’s repeat that: an ERA of 4.61 and a single voter actually felt Sele deserved one of his votes!

Sele hardly delivered the types of stats which would allow him to have a plaque next to a Walter or a Randy Johnson. I know stripping his vote is extreme, but that vote was another example of a ludicrous decision.

I know it could never happen, but what if 75% of the voters thought, “Yeah, Sele was a nice guy, I’ll give him a token vote just so he can say he actually received a vote for the Hall of Fame.” Can you imagine the furor? Voting in a guy like Sele would make a mockery of the honor, so it seems to follow that anyone casting a vote for such a player is disrespecting the Hall of Fame. Again, while that would never occur, it’s yet another example of irresponsible behavior by a member of the BBWAA.

Not to single Sele out, in that same 2013 election Sandy Alomar, Jr. got 16 votes, Steve Finley received four votes, and Shawn Green two. Face it, none of them are Hall of Famers. Every team needs solid players such as the men mentioned, but they are NOT Hall of Fame material. Their stats: Green—328 HR, 1070 RBI, .283 batting average; Finley—304, 1,167, .271; Alomar, Jr.—112, 588, .273.

Alomar Jr. gets a little bit of a break for being a catcher, but by any valuation system, he is still the worst player of the three. However, somehow his vote total somehow doubled the combined totals of the other two men. Meanwhile, other solid players Reggie Sanders, Jeff Conine, and Ryan Klesko got no votes, which is no big deal, but it illustrates the inconsistency in the voting by misguided members of the BBWAA.

In the 2014 election things didn’t improve as two writers each voted for Eric Gagne and J.T. Snow. Gagne had flashes of brilliance, but he managed just 187 saves over 10 seasons with an ERA of 3.47–again, not Hall material. Snow, meanwhile, did win six straight Gold Gloves, but he managed just 189 homers, 877 RBI, and a .268 career average.

How in the world can a writer who has supposedly has paid close attention to the game of baseball for 10 consecutive years vote for players who were, at best, dependable but far from elite? It’s incredibly foolish. Such ignorance or disregard for the game should, at the most, lead to baseball’s equivalent to disbarment. At the very least, it should warrant some sort of punishment, such as a suspension.

One anonymous source said he believed about half of the BBWAA members who do vote in Hall of Fame elections haven’t even been to a big league park for 10 years. And these voters are supposed to keep up with the pulse of the game? Are they well informed when they vote on men who retired as recently as five years ago?

Then there was the case of the two voters, Ken Gurnick and Larry Rocca, who did not vote for Greg Maddux in 2014 because he played during the Age of the Steroids in baseball. Gurnick voted for just one player (he could have voted for as many as 10), and that was Jack Morris who was in his final year on the ballot. Gurnick also said he plans on abstaining from voting in future balloting. Here’s how Gurnick explained himself to the Associated Press.

"‘‘To me, I didn’t exclude Maddux. I excluded everybody from that era, everybody from the Steroid Era,’’ Gurnick said. ‘‘It wasn’t about Greg Maddux, it was about the entire era. I just don’t know who did and who didn’t.’’"

Make sense to you? No? Neither did the decision of 14 other writers who, for whatever decision, didn’t vote for Maddux.

In addition, there have been some blank ballots which were reportedly turned in as a protest against steroid use. And, as mentioned, some writers said they left names off simply because there has never been a unanimous inductee. On the whole, there are countless misguided decisions being made in the Baseball Hall of Fame voting, and the Hall needs to find some way to address them.