The HOF: Voting Principles in Regards to Stats and Character

Last year I wrote a piece on who I’d vote for the baseball HOF. It was purely a fun piece as I have no anticipation of ever having a vote for the actual HOF. In that piece, I discussed my general thought process on the voting process and the weight of the character clause. I stand by that piece and what I said in it, however, I wanted to take a deeper look at the character clause element.

This current piece was inspired by all of the hullaballoo around Schilling. He seemed at one point to be a sure entry this year despite working really hard to alienate and drive a wedge between himself and those responsible for voting on his candidacy. Last year I wrote on Schilling, “As villainous as he’s been, he hasn’t committed any crimes, even if he is a shady businessman, racist, and has called for lynching journalists. He still gets my vote for his on-field performance.” Since then, Schilling has only done more to drive a villainous image for himself with his vocal support of the Capitol Insurrection and had voters asking if they could rescind their votes for him and he ended up falling just short at 71%.

That said, we have now reached the second time in a decade where not a single candidate was elected to the HOF. Last year, I also said, “starting with the stats, there are 17 players on the current ballot that should realistically be considered for the HOF and 7 others that should at least have a conversation about their value…. there is no reason for anyone to turn in a ballot that has fewer than 10 selections. From a purely statistical standpoint, the top 7 stand out and distance themselves from the rest fairly substantially, while the next 10 are bunched really close together.” This years ballot wasn’t much different with still 17 players worth discussing their relative value and 13 that should realistically be inducted, with 7 standing out as sure things.

We’ve also been at a point where substantially fewer players are elected to the HOF, and the standards for HOF induction have reached a crescendo of “Best of the Best” when historically, the metric seemed to be more in-line with “best on a team.” Jeremy Frank, aka, @mlbrandomstats shared a graphic showing this trend that makes this point quite clear. Historically, voters have also catered to specific positions and held other positions to crazy high standards, and we still see that at 3B, especially. (e.g., Rolen is a slam-dunk candidate. Arguably a top-10 3B in baseball history but treated like he’s a borderline candidate.) Which makes the 14 blank and the few Kent only ballots even more ridiculous and self-righteous.

This is where the character clause comes into play. Of those 7 “sure things,” 4 have issues that writers have used the character clause to justify not voting for them. Of the 13, there’s 7 with character clause issues. I’ve made my PED argument enough times that I’m not going to rehash it here, other than to state it’s a non-issue, if it were to be a disqualifier, then it would have disqualification as a consequence, not just suspensions (which clearly do more to hurt a PED users stat-line than the PEDs supposedly improve them). Gambling has a clear consequence of ineligibility, if PEDs were problematic from a performance or integrity of the game standpoint, then they, too, would have the same consequence.

In short, I stated in the previous piece, “any player that committed a crime (non-victim-less) shouldn’t be eligible for the HOF.” I also stated that with domestic violence accusations, I wasn’t quite sure where to draw the line, but I did draw a line between the accusations on Bonds and those of Clemens given that the accusations against Clemens are regarding a minor and include grooming and rape allegations.

This whole Schilling fiasco made me think more about what the HOF has been, is, and should be, and I’m fully on board with putting them all in based entirely on their on-field performance. The HOF isn’t making statements about who these people are or that they endorse their viewpoints. There are already tons of shady characters in the hall and there will continue to be tons of shady characters in the hall. Shoot, Mariano Riviera’s political views don’t seem all that different from Schillings, but he’s mostly refrained from making a spectacle of himself online and was the first unanimous induction. Does this discount Schilling’s statements? no. Does this make Bonds or Clemens domestic and criminal accusations less meaningful? No. The hall is about baseball performance and celebrating those performances in a way that is reflected of the context they were performed.

There is nothing keeping the hall from notating that Cap Anson was a racist that kept baseball segregated for decades and harmed the game and the nation. There’s nothing keeping the hall from noting that Clemens has reasonable accusations of raping a minor or that Bonds had domestic violence accusations, or that Schilling was a grade-A scumbag. With how public many of Schilling’s statements have been, it’s even easier to acknowledge how uncool he was as a person. Never once have I heard anyone ever say, “He’s in the HOF, he must be a great guy to emulate.” The character stories come in the articles and histories we tell relative to them. We talk of vaudeville attempts, heroism, charity, kindness, racism, alcoholism, violence, etc. in the stories we tell, so why does that have to be any different here?

It’s a museum to highlight baseball accomplishments. It’s the Hall of Fame, where we gather stories that inspired (Schilling’s bloody sock, Sosa and McGwire), stories of dominance (Bonds, Clemens, Wagner), stories of everyday greatness (Rolen, Helton, Abreu), STORIES OF BASEBALL.

So yeah, put Shoeless Joe and Pete Rose in, too. Lifetime ban on playing, managing, or working in the game for gambling, but what’s that have to do with a non-affiliated museum honoring on-field accomplishments? That’s right, absolutely nothing. Put them all in.

If they were good enough on the field, put them in the hall. Historically, that means if they were top 10-15%. So, let’s use that range as our threshold and celebrate baseball by celebrating baseball. Let’s talk about Santana’s dominance, Mark Grace’s defense and how he led MLB in hits and doubles in the 90s, etc…

All of these players that received 5% in this years vote should be in the HOF. Many who didn’t get that 5% honor, should be as well (Kenny Lofton and Johan Santana, for example). What is the Hall of Fame as a museum if it isn’t telling these baseball stories? So, tell the stories. Add in the context of character and who they were if people feel like inducting players gives them personal validation of any kind. The more I think of it, though, it shouldn’t. That’s not what the hall is, has been, or ever should be. It’s about baseball and only baseball. We tell the stories of character; the hall tells the stories of what happened on the field (obviously, with a little overlap each way).