Chicago Cubs starter Marcus Stroman continues to have flawed takes on Twitter

Chicago Cubs pitcher Marcus Stroman has never been to be shy about his thoughts and ideas, whether they are great, without logic, or just ruffling feathers. Most of the time, he voices his opinions on Twitter and, seemingly, blocks almost everyone that disagrees with him.

On Tuesday, Stroman offered a very cold take without logic or analysis that is needed before proposing such a radical change … like looking at the history of it.

Marcus Stroman offered up the very dated take that if you haven’t played in professional baseball before, you don’t know anything about how to analyze players for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Stroman must not realize that his employers have, often, never played the game either but their job is to analyze what he is doing.

Chicago Cubs starter Marcus Stroman offered a “dinosaur” of a take of his own on Twitter about the Hall of Fame.

Marcus Stroman thinks that members of the BBWAA who have been with the organization for 10 years or longer should not have a vote for the Hall of Fame.

While the BBWAA system is far from perfect, Stroman claims that the writers are “biased” but he, seemingly, thinks that players are not.

Any casual observer knows that players are VERY biased. Part of the time, they are paid to be biased (how often do you hear a player trashing their team in Spring Training? It’s always “we’re going to be good” or “I’m in the best shape of my life” and not “our team sucks.”)

But they, like any human being, are biased. Look no further than the Era Committees (formerly known as Veterans Committees).

In the 2019 Hall of Fame class, Harold Baines was voted into the Hall by the “Today’s Game Era Committee.” When you objectively look at the numbers, Baines is short of other Hall of Famers. But of the 16 people that were part of that committee, nine were Hall of Famers, seven of those played in the majors, and five of the Hall of Famers went in as players.

Baines got 12 votes (which was the minimum for induction) and of the 16 voters, Roberto Alomar, Pat Gillick, Tony LaRussa, and Jerry Reinsdorf were a teammate, GM, manager, or owner of a team that Baines was on. Reinsdorf even retired Baines #3 with the White Sox 12 years (!) before he retired playing baseball.

But look back even further.

As Joe Posnanski (formerly of Sports Illustrated and the Kansas City Star) wrote about in 2018, in 2003, the Hall of Fame decided to make the Veterans Committee to Hall of Famers. They chose 78 Hall of Famers and they chose 260 people to vote on every other year for induction. They did not vote a single person in. Only Gil Hodges (inducted in 2022) got over 60 percent of the vote.

That vote was all Hall of Fame writers or broadcasters so, in 2009, they changed it again. 11 writers and six current HOF players combined to make a ballot of 10 players but for voting on those 10 players, it would living Hall of Fame players and only living Hall of Famers.

And guess what? Nobody made it in … again. Ron Santo was the only player who got more than 60 percent of the vote as his 39 ballots comprised 60.9 percent of the vote.

The voting system for the Hall of Fame is far from perfect but the idea that you have to have been a player to analyze what baseball players do is flat out ignorant.

Mike Shildt, for example, never played a professional game in his life and he won the 2019 NL Manager of the Year award. In the four seasons he managed the Cardinals, he got NL Manager of the Year votes every single year.

One of the worst MLB managers of all time was one of the best players of all time in Ted Williams. Williams was a manager for four years and his team lost 90 or more games three times.

Most MLB GMs and front office executives never played either. Stroman’s own team President (Jed Hoyer) never played a professional game in the majors but maybe by Stroman’s standards, Hoyer might not know how to analyze a team or him.

Stroman’s comments just reek of desperation for attention and “negative energy” when he is clueless about the history of these things and when he’s “blocking” negative energy out.

Maybe, if Stroman got off Twitter and did some research (he has plenty of time due to the evergoing lockout), he can learn how to analyze something without being completely ignorant of why players voting on the Hall of Fame is a flawed idea … at best. And, that something that is “my honest opinion” is just that: an opinion. Not “fact.”