Murray Chass Makes Me Angry

I thought my anger about sports journalism was abating. Till I read this: a self-righteous bullshit article from a guy who wants to knock others down. You can see a picture of the man on the right, looking grim and rough and ready to tussle with some stat geeks. Well, shit, Murray Chass, it's on.

A Never-Ending Debate

There is nothing in sports that creates the controversy and the debate provoked by voting for the Hall of Fame.

There is nothing in a sub-standard article that can create controversy and debate like a hyperbolic, universal opening statement.

More than a week after the results of the latest voting were announced, I was still getting e-mail about the results. Everyone is an expert, fans and bloggers alike.

No, this is not true. People who are knowledgeable, thoughtful, and often even logical fans are experts. The thing is - you can't tell if someone is a baseball expert just by their job, or even by their photographic pose up against a baseball fence.

They all know better than the people who actually vote in the election, and they eagerly tell us so.

Murray Chass has made this statement sarcastically. I re-submit this statement, un-sarcastically.

A reader of this site told me in an e-mail that my ballot, which I disclosed before the results were announced, “contains votes for players I do not believe deserve to be in the Hall of Fame and you failed to vote for players who clearly deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.”

Not surprising, since Murray did indeed vote for Jack Morris. Good work, reader who e-mails.

“Clearly deserve” in whose judgment? His, of course. Does that make him right and me wrong? Of course not. Am I right? Yes. Why? Because my opinion counts and his doesn’t. My ballot was one of the 539 counted in the election. He did not have a vote. Therefore, his opinion is worthless as far as the election is concerned.

This made me so angry. Even reading this for a third time, I am still angry. Hey Murray, just because you graduated from Pitt in 1960 and started working the trade for all these years still doesn't mean you can think. It just means you've been reporting for work.

Also, your opinion is worthless. I am angry.

I am still angry about this paragraph.

That’s the real problem self-proclaimed experts have. They want to be the ones voting, but they don’t have that privilege. It’s their own fault. They chose the wrong profession. Accountants, lawyers, doctors, teachers and salesmen don’t get to vote for the Hall of Fame. Baseball writers do.

Except that the constraints for entry into the "baseball writers' profession" is pretty fucking low. You pretty much need a BA in English, which is a lot easier to get than a JD or an MD. Even HatGuy got one. Mine wasn't very hard to get at all. The point of this is, Murray, is that just because you're a baseball writer doesn't make you any fucking smarter than someone who decided not to become a baseball writer because they'd rather do something else with their days. I bet Larry B or Chris W could've become pretty good sportswriters. I could've become a sportswriter.

I am still angry.

When I started out in life, I wanted to be a baseball writer, not so that I could vote for the Hall of Fame. I didn’t know anything about voting then, but it is something that came with the territory.

And now it's a territory that you want to clutch to your exclusive little chest, even holding it away from people like me, who started out in life loving baseball but not wanting to write about it all day.

Actually, I don’t believe baseball writers should be voting for the Hall of Fame, though I don’t know of a more qualified group, which is why the Hall maintains its association with the Baseball Writers Association.

How do you think one should gain election, Murray Chass?

Side question: could we have the players of the just-passed era vote? I guess that means we'd have to give Lenny Dykstra and Rob Dibble a vote, though. Maybe we could have the players of the just-passed-era who aren't loudmouthed idiots vote.

Nearly 20 years ago I introduced a motion at a Baseball Writers Association meeting that the organization should withdraw from voting. This was at the time Pete Rose became eligible for the writers’ ballot, and to make sure we didn’t elect him, the Hall’s board of directors changed the rules, deciding that anyone who was permanently ineligible from baseball was not eligible for the Hall of Fame. That meant Joe Jackson and Pete Rose.

It's not that bizarre of a conclusion to draw. The voters had already de facto been enforcing it by never voting for Jackson, even though he seems pretty close to HOF standards for a short career.

I was not going to vote for Rose, but I objected to the board’s action. If Hall officials couldn’t trust the writers to do the right thing, I felt, we should end our association with the Hall and its election. If they manipulated the ballot in that instance, they could do it whenever they felt like it.

Two people voted for Jay Bell. You barely remembered to send your ballot in. The writers moped around for fourteen years and then collectively pity-voted Jim Rice in. Nobody should trust the writers to do the right thing until they clean house a little.

After listening to the discussion among the writers at the meeting, I sensed that the motion had a chance to pass. Dave Nightingale, a writer from Chicago, sensed the same thing, though unlike me, not happily. He quickly introduced a motion to table the vote, made some good arguments in support and saved the day for the BBWAA-Hall of Fame connection.

Sounds like a nice little meeting. I wonder how many jokes got made every day about good ol' Dave Nightingale's pretty awesome last name.

The vote was tabled until a vote of all of the members could be conducted by mail. With that development, I knew my motion had no chance. It lost easily.

So you tried to sneak through a motion in a sparsely-attended meeting, when you knew you didn't represent the opinions of the whole organization, Murray?

Sounds pretty shady.

Lisa Olson feels the same way I did then. A former sports writer with the New York Daily News, Lisa attracted unwanted post-election attention when an item on deadspin.com about the Hall of Fame voting said she always submits a blank ballot, has every year she has voted.

Don't want attention? Don't work in the media.

A blank ballot counts. It means the voter doesn’t think anyone should be elected that year, and it is counted in the tally. Depending on the number of blank ballots that are returned, they can affect the outcome of the election. The 75 percent threshold candidates need for election is affected by the total number of votes.

I grasp this. Even though I haven't worked in the industry for forty years, I grasp this.

For example, this year there were 5 blank ballots among the 539 total ballots. Seventy-five percent of 539 requires 405 votes for election. Seventy-five percent of 534 requires 401. Without the blank ballots, Bert Blyleven would have missed election by one vote, not five.

Thanks for the unnecessary math, Murray. But I thought you were against extra math in baseball?

But back to Lisa Olson. The report of her annual blank ballot made me curious enough to ask her why she does that. She doesn’t, she replied.

Lisa, who writes for fanhouse.com, explained that she doesn’t return any kind of ballot, blank or otherwise.

Well, Jay Mariotti writes for fanhouse.com, which doesn't necessarily mean that Lisa Olson is a terrible person... but it's still a bad association to have your name under his on your website. It's bad enough that my name comes up in the same space as Jarrett's, but that's just the way things work here.

“I don’t participate,” she wrote in an e-mail, “because I believe journalists shouldn’t be voting on people they cover. As someone else noted, it’s akin to having journalists who cover the pentagon vote on who should receive the purple star. Who knows, maybe some day my mind-set will change, but that is how I feel now. I’ve no problem with journos who do participate; we all follow our own conscience. And not participating is much different than sending in a blank ballot. My decision to not participate has zero impact on the outcome.”

That seems vaguely sensible. Also the abbreviation "journos" is weird. 'Journos' sounds too close to 'winos'.

Gee, what a shock. A blog got it wrong. Barry Petchesky, who wrote the item, was good enough to explain his mistake in an e-mail.

Lots of blogs get it wrong. Lots of writers get it wrong. Everyone gets things wrong.

“On Lisa’s site, FanHouse,” he wrote, “they published the ballots of each of their voting members, with a note saying that Lisa ‘abstained from taking part in the voting process as she has in every election since she became eligible.’”

Petchesky said he attempted to ask Olson about her ballot via e-mail but heard nothing before he posted his item.

“A few hours later,” he wrote, “I got an email from FanHouse editor Andrew Johnson pointing out that Lisa’s abstention didn’t count as a ‘no vote’ against any players. I then updated the post to reflect this. Six or so hours later I received an email from Lisa explaining her reasoning for abstaining from the vote, and I updated my post again, publishing her note. I sent her an email apologizing for the confusion.”

Seems rational. People do make mistakes, including baseball writers. If they didn't, we wouldn't have used the label "WRONG" ninety-two times on this blog. And that's not even including most of my posts, which don't include the label "WRONG" even though they certainly merit the use of the label "WRONG".

But as usually happens with these things, Petchesky’s correction never caught up to his mistake, and Olson was branded as a blank-ballot voter. Worse, instead of eliminating the original erroneous report altogether, the blog left it on the site in with the updated information following.

It's not like newspapers go out and grab all the copies of their newspapers when they want to redact their mistakes. They publish a little "mistakes" section in some obscure portion, and then move on. People would also be suspicious if the blog erased all evidence of their mistake.

I suppose that’s like having a report that a crazy man killed 27 people on a college campus, then finding out no such thing happened but leaving the report on the blog with a correction appended saying “never mind.”

Which is pretty much what newspapers do.

That’s just one difference between a blog and a newspaper article. A newspaper would have deleted all mention of Olson and her ballot once the correct story was learned.

How? By storming into the houses of the thousands of subscribers who already had copies of their newspapers, upsetting their breakfasts, scaring their children and stealing their printed print news source back so as to eliminate their mistake?

If you look at NYTimes.com - the same organization for which employed Murray Chass as a writer - the "Corrections" link is tiny, gray, and pretty far from the top... even though a there's quite a few of them.

Blogs have had a field day with the Hall of Fame voting, and their focus seems to have been on criticizing voters.

Rightfully so. This blog has been more right than a lot of fucking baseball writers in the past, including you, Murray Chass. Last week, the right rankings went:

1. Larry B
2. Murray Chass

In one of the severest posts, on baseballanalysts.com, Patrick Sullivan, a name unknown to me, ridiculed Dan Shaughnessy, a highly respected columnist for the Boston Globe, for writing that … well, just about anything. I don’t know that Shaughnessy wrote a sentence that Sullivan didn’t ridicule.

Good work, Sullivan. And I don't really care if you're a 'highly respected columnist for the Boston Globe', if you say something stupid, you deserve the ridicule.

One of the statements he faulted Shaughnessy for was his belief that Jack Morris was better than Curt Schilling. Preposterous, Sullivan suggested. True, I say in agreement with Shaughnessy. But then I would probably take Shaughnessy’s view over Sullivan’s on any subject. Shaughnessy has a track record; Sullivan doesn’t, as far as I know.

Note the absence of statistics - or even anecdotal evidence - to support the viewpoint. It seems that if Dan Shauhnessy wanted to claim that shit tasted great, Murray Chass would be the first one to shove his head in the horse's ass.

LOGIC AND TRUTH EXIST.

I have had a similar debate with a reader over Morris and Bert Blyleven. Like Sullivan in his case for Schilling, the reader used statistics to argue his case for Blyleven.

How silly. What else should the reader use to argue his case for Blyleven? A game he once saw back in 1974? An ice-cream cone? Some ice cubes, a nine iron, a buffalo, preferably stuffed for safety's sake?

Most of the Hall arguments today seem to be statistics-centered. I get the idea that the stats zealots would draw up charts based on their new-fangled numbers and decide on the basis of the numbers who should be in the Hall of Fame. No thinking necessary.

Actually, that involves a lot of thinking. Evaluating performance - especially for a player I could never see personally, like Bert Blyleven - is tricky. But this is the first time I've ever seen a writer allege that baseball statisticians are not thinking.

I'm not even a stat zealot. I like playing and watching the game. I just also like thinking. And thinking includes figuring out ways to evaluate baseball games and players that I did not watch in person.

Blyleven’s statistics have endeared him to the stats zealots. One of their big numbers is his strikeouts. He had a lot of them, 3,701. Tommy John, who otherwise had similar career statistics to Blyleven’s, struck out 2,245.

So they do have similar career statistics...

I think strikeouts get far too much attention and emphasis. Strikeouts are sexy.

They're also very effective at keeping runs from scoring. A lot fewer runners get on base on an error after a strikeout than after a batted ball. A strikeout pretty much never moves a runner over. A strikeout is simply more effective than a batted ball at preventing runs from scoring... which is the whole goal of pitching.

Thinking: it's good for you.

John, however, was a sinkerball pitcher and got more outs on batted balls and fared just as well as Blyleven.

Maybe because he might have played on better teams with better defense? I don't know what the aggregate W/L of all their teams was, but John's teams went to the playoffs five times and Blyleven's only went three.

John had a career 288-231 record with a 3.34 earned run average. Blyleven’s record was 287-250 and his e.r.a. 3.31. John retired 57 percent of the batters he faced, Blyleven, with all his strikeouts, 59 percent. Yet in the eyes of the stats zealots, the voters were justified for not electing John but not for rejecting Blyleven.

Well, the strikeouts do suggest that John's defense had to get 1,300 more guys out than Blyleven's defense... but if you ask me, both of those guys can stay the hell out of my Hall of Fame.

The arguments will go on incessantly, and the conclusions will be I’m right, you’re wrong. Or is it you’re right, I’m wrong?

But apparently only you count, since you have your own blog and your own picture and your own ego and your own vote and your own Hall of Fame.

I am still angry.

The Never Ending Parade of Awful Hall of Fame Voters

The BBWAA is becoming a joke.

FJayM readers who are not baseball fans - we realize that you might be bored about baseball HOF posts. But the voters are absolutely ridiculous. Here's one from someone named Danny Knobler, who apparently has a Hall of Fame vote, and isn't shy about disclosing his stupid reasons for his votes. For the record: I don't really have a position on whether Edgar Martinez belongs in the HOF, but I do have a certifiably angry position about Danny Knobler's eligibility to vote on it.

Designated pioneer? Martinez's bat not enough to crack Hall ballot

There will someday be a designated hitter in the Hall of Fame. I will someday vote for a designated hitter for the Hall of Fame.

This is where Danny Knobler explains to us that he is not a prejudiced person. Articles where people open with their lack of prejudice often later reveal that they are, in some form, prejudiced. I am probably prejudiced too, but it's okay, because I'm prejudiced against bad baseball players making the Hall of Fame.

Actually, I guess I already have.

Oh! You're confusing me, Danny! What do you really mean, here?

I voted for Andre Dawson on this year's ballot, and according to baseball-reference.com, Dawson was a designated hitter 171 times in his 21 years in the major leagues. Of course, Dawson also won eight Gold Gloves as an outfielder, so we'll never think of him as a DH.

Oh, so you didn't really vote for a DH? But you said you did? Well, at least you have heard of baseball-reference.com, so that's good.

By my count, 24 Hall of Famers spent at least one game as a DH, and 16 of them accumulated a full season's worth of games (130 or more) as a DH during their careers.

By my count, this is research! Although this includes Ryne Sandberg, who played one game as a DH. And one season's worth of DH games shouldn't count as being a real DH. Maybe over 20% of the games as DH should count against a player? Readers, what do you say?

Paul Molitor played nearly half his games as, some would say, half a player.

An underexposed statistic, to be true. I didn't even know this.

And yet, yes, Edgar Martinez is different. He didn't play half his games as a DH; it was almost three-quarters of his games. He barely used a glove for the final 10 years of a very good 18-year career with the Mariners.

A very good career? Then he should be elected to the Hall of Very Good!

Edgar Martinez is on the ballot for the first time this year, and I didn't vote for him. I voted for Dawson, Jack Morris, Roberto Alomar and Mark McGwire (more on them later), but not for Martinez.

(More on them later) Danny Knobler? Then (more insults for you) - later in this post!

I didn't withhold my vote from Martinez because he was a designated hitter. Or at least, I didn't leave him off the ballot solely because Martinez was a designated hitter.

This is a continuation of the theme established in the first paragraph, where Danny Knobler explains that he doesn't dislike designated hitters just because they were born designated hitters. In fact, a lot of his friends were designated hitters. He even invited eleven designated hitters to his wedding, but only three of them came. But the photos still show some designated hitters so that Danny Knobler can remind his friends that he is not prejudiced against designated hitters, even if he doesn't usually hang out with designated hitters because they're too lazy to get a decent job like playing defense.

Does it matter that he didn't play defense for most of his career? Yes, just as it matters that Alomar was a 10-time Gold Glove winner. Defense is part of the game.

Oh, so you are prejudiced against designated hitters for being designated hitters? I bet Danny explained that he wasn't prejudiced against designated hitters when they didn't show up to his wedding because designated hitters can't afford the kind of gifts that Danny Knobler expects at his wedding. It's not because they're designated hitters, it's just the way it is.

Yet, we elect players to the Hall of Fame who weren't brilliant defenders, players whose offensive greatness made up for their defensive weakness. We can elect a DH who was so dominating at the plate that we overlook the fact that he rarely did anything else.

Has there been one of these? Anyone who had a .312 average and a pretty fucking amazing career 147 OPS+? I'm not really arguing for Edgar's inclusion here, but if you can't concede that Edgar Martinez from 1997-2001 was dominant at the plate, you are bad at understanding baseball.

For a while before the Hall of Fame ballot arrived, I thought Edgar Martinez might be that player.

Because, of course, you were unprejudiced, and decided to look at all of Edgar Martinez's career before you made a judgment.

The more I looked at it, the more I decided he wasn't.

I wonder if "the more I looked at it" means "when I looked up his career BA, HR and RBI".

I don't rely totally on stats, but 309 home runs and 1,261 RBI (Martinez's career totals) aren't enough to make him stand out.

Yep. It does.

He made seven All-Star teams, but that puts him in line with Don Mattingly, Dave Parker, Tim Raines and Alan Trammell, other outstanding players who have not gotten my vote.

Irrelevant.

He was in the top five in MVP voting only once. His postseason numbers were average at best.

1. Writers didn't like him. You can't claim to adhere to objective standards for a HOF, then cite a non-objective standard like MVP votes.

2. He didn't play well in thirty-four games (though he had 3 series where he OPS'd over 1.0)

The Hall of Fame tells us that only 1 percent of all major league players are elected, and that the Hall is the place where "excellence is honored."

That's why it's not the Hall of Very Good, because excellence is not honored at the Hall of Very Good.

As many have said, it's not the Hall of Fame for very good players. It's only for the best, those who were dominant in their era.

Oh. Well fuck, OPS+ing over 150 for seven straight years isn't being dominant in your era. I mean, Jack Morris never ERA+'d over 125 in ANY season, but that's not much to know.

Edgar Martinez was very good, but just short of being dominant.

You might be fucking right, but you're too superficial to support this point. You can't cite anything about relative defensive values, or his overall offensive production. You don't cite ANY of Edgar's numbers except his career HR and RBI totals.

He was one of the best clutch hitters I've seen,

And in other news, FJayM is big time. Danny Knobler appears to be deliberately attempting to get himself in print here. He has mentioned clutch hitting, has avoided citing relevant statistics, based decisions on popularity contests, and refused to look closely at any player's numerical production. At least he didn't praise teams' grittiness this time.

and just as I look carefully every year to see if I can justify voting for Trammell (and so far I haven't), I looked carefully at Martinez's career to see if I could justify voting for him.

You have not looked carefully at his career. You have only cited his career HR and RBI totals. I wish I was a baseball writer, where "looking carefully" at a player's career probably constitutes an entire morning's work. Shit, I could "look carefully" at Mickey Morandini's entire career and then knock back a snifter of bourbon and call myself a Hall of Fame voter. Shit. I'm in the wrong profession.

Perhaps if that terrible knee injury hadn't ended his career as a third baseman and forced him to DH, I would have looked at him differently. It's impossible to say.

He almost plays the sympathy card here. Weird.

Perhaps in another year, I'll change my mind on him, or be convinced by arguments of others that I should include him.

This is why I hate Hall of Fame voting. Apparently, standards for this Hall of Whatever are determined by anyone who can craft an argument to persuade the Danny Knoblers of the world.

Edgar Martinez isn't going to become a better player in the next few years. Jack Morris isn't going to become a better pitcher in the next few years. Jim Rice certainly didn't spend fifteen years on the ballot becoming a better outfielder.

A decent-sized handful of players have become Hall of Famers because of whiny-ass sympathy votes. "Oh my god he's been on the ballot for so many years let's just vote him in already."

There. I said it. It's true.

Or perhaps enough others will vote for Martinez that he'll get elected without my vote.

It's almost like he wants that to happen, except he doesn't? Fuck, I wish this guy had some clear principles.

For this year, though, he didn't get my vote.

Next year, when someone smarter than you looks at the statistics in a different way than you, you might change your mind.

There will be a full-time DH I'll vote for, I'm fairly sure of it. Just not this one, not this year.

Harold Baines, we're talkin' to you! You have more HR and RBI than Edgar anyways!

Now, as for the rest of my ballot, a few quick notes:

Now, as for the rest of this post, a few quick insults:

• I vote for Morris every year, and I strongly believe he deserves election. It's not only because he was the winningest pitcher of the 1980s,

Oh. Sure. It's not only because you spent eighteen years as a Tigers beat writer, coincidentally during Jack Morris's career.

but yes, that does help (he was dominant in his era).

Note the lack of statistical support. Note that this claim was inserted in parenthesis - generally defined as material that could be omitted without changing the meaning of a sentence.

It's not only because he pitched one of the best games in World Series history in 1991, but that helps, too (coming up big on the biggest stage is a sure sign of excellence).

Don Larsen, get in the Hall of Fame already! Bucky Dent, come right in! I've used too many exclamation points in this post to satirize all the stupid claims in it!

I know people can't reconcile my vote for Morris with my lack of support for Bert Blyleven,but we judge Hall of Fame candidates on our own standards, and on my standards, Morris is a clear Hall of Famer.

Oh. Ok. Why don't we call it the Hall of Danny Knobler then? What the hell is the point of a Hall of Famer if you believe this? The BBWAA is a joke. Apparently their standards are: "If you've been a writer for awhile and are good enough or have enough friends to have not gotten fired by now, you're probably good enough to vote for the Hall of Fame."

• Alomar is a first-time candidate, but I never make a distinction between those in their first year on the ballot and those who aren't.I believe you're either a Hall of Famer or you're not.

Except when you - three paragraphs before - admit that you're willing to change your opinions. So apparently you're a Hall of Famer or maybe you will be next year.

I believe that you're either a decent writer or you're not. And it only takes one article to come to the conclusion that you're not.

When I change my vote from year to year, as I sometimes do, it's only because my feelings about a player's career has changed. Alomar deserves in.

Well, I'm glad you wrote this article. Apparently you are either a Hall of Famer or you're not, but Danny Knobler's feelings about you can still change. I'd hate to be his wife.

• McGwire is the toughest vote, even though it's pretty clear by now that my vote isn't going to put him in the Hall (it takes 75 percent of the votes to get in, and McGwire has had 24, 24 and 22 in his three years on the ballot).

Hey! Stats! Except these are kind of pointless and don't support any of Knobler's main points!

I still can't say I feel great about voting for him, but so far, my view hasn't changed. That view is that if I disqualify McGwire for his almost-certain use of steroids (which would be the only reason not to consider him), then I can't feel right about voting for anyone who played in the steroid era. Not that they all used steroids, because obviously not everyone did, but the numbers were so high and the testing so lacking that we really have little idea who used and who didn't.

This is a pile of steaming illogical garbage. We do have an idea who used and who didn't. Unless something new comes out, I bet Ken Griffey Jr. gets elected first ballot. As for the logic of your position: I wonder why you voted for Roberto Alomar - who perhaps had his best season in 2001 - if you won't vote for anyone from that era.

Yes, we have a better idea that McGwire did use, but I don't feel comfortable with the sliding scale.

Then don't feel comfortable with voting for Alomar.

For now, he gets my vote, although I'll admit it's an easier vote to cast when I know so many others are so strongly opposed that he has no real chance of being elected.

Well, I'm glad that you base your vote mostly on what other people are doing. You, Danny Knobler, have just executed one of the best (worst?) articles I've found recently.