Reviewing HOF votes with BBWAA voter and The Athletic's Daniel Brown - Ep. 645

We are very lucky to be here to do our now annual podcast with athletic writer Dan Brown to discuss the Hall of Fame news as we have our two new introductions. We'll be discussing the election of Andrew Jones and Carlos Beltran. So we're very excited to be doing that today. And with a bit of baseball news, both of the New York team settled their center field issues this week, you could say, with the Mets making a trade that would make most people go, that was it.

to get Luis Robert, who was on the town. It's actually Luis Robert. I always want to say Robert too, but actually. I've always already heard it that way. So the Mets solved their issues there. The Yankees get back Bellinger on a pretty, on a big deal. Bellinger with opt-outs, but he's getting his $150 million contract. And with that, most of the big name free agent, at least hitters are off the board now, ladies and gentlemen. It's down to where Frambrouval does goes. Right. So.

Obviously this podcast will drop on Monday. So this news happened on Wednesday the week prior and you're going to get a huge snowstorm there. I know if you know this this weekend, like 15 inches of snow. Yeah. Back east. But it's a little bit old news except that Luis Robert's news came in on the heels of the Mets losing out on some of the other players and they had to do something about center field and

I think the Mets are better positioned today actually than they were last year. Remember what they had in center field starting last season? Who's the Mets combination? Jose J.Siri and still Taylor, right? tie rolling Taylor. right. But Taylor is now squarely back to his fourth outfield. This takes a ton of pressure off of Bench. You're not looking at an outfield where you had potentially two really young guys Bench can play left field. You might even be able to get away with putting Beatty out there for a little bit of the year because

Robert plays very good defensive center field. You don't want to have to compensate too much for Soto and Beatty. But just as a note, one of the people on the roster that people were talking about how the Mets got Bichette and, you know, will he be a good third baseman? Well, their infield coach is Kai Correa, who in some respects is credited for turning JD Davis into what would some people consider a passable defensive third baseman because there was an interesting stat one.

Almost Cooperstown (02:22.51)
JD Davis's first year in the team in 2012, in 27 games he managed to put out three outs under negative three outs above average, or I guess average. He was somehow miraculously bad in a short period of play. The next year when he played third base for the Mets most of the year, he was actually like a league average defender. And Korea's gotten a lot of credit for being somebody that can teach people how to play the position. So you hope.

that he can work his magic with Bichette at third, because when you look at this Mets team as just, you know, a final Mets notes before we probably hop in with Dan in a moment, this is a team that's going to strike out less, they're going to put the bat on the ball more, and they're going to feel their positions better, which was a big issue with them last year. They had a lineup of guys that struck out a ton, and we saw that constant end of killing rallies, and they hit into a ton of double plays. So I think less strikeouts and less double plays from that lineup was a big thing they were trying to fix this offseason.

Yeah, I think it's the upside is there. We don't know what you're to get from Robert, but I think they think they're better than they were going into last season, at least in center field at first base. Not so much, right? Because, OK, you did what you did. But now you're like, OK, we lost our first base. The Yankees got Bellinger, so he won't be playing first base with the Mets. You know, we got to do that now. And right once that once the Mets signed Robert before the Yankees signed Bellinger so they had to know.

that they weren't. They were never in on Bellinger. Look, and if you're met, then we are well, how much better is Robert than what we had last year? Last year, the Mets centerfielders put up staggeringly bad numbers. Like you really have to look at it. They were like 220 with like a sub 750 OPS. They're going to be better this year just because it's hard to be that bad two years in a row. He's going to play so overlying ball, glove defense and centerfield. He has the pop at a bare minimum to hit 20 holes.

The real question is, is he gonna be the guy that we saw the last couple of years who had awful stats everywhere else? Or do you look at some of the stuff and say, hey, he was in a light white socks lineup with no protection and realistically no hope to really compete. And you hope that, know what, he had some pretty bad back block last year and he still has the bat speed. You hope he can, he's the prime kind of guy for a bounce back year here in New York where there's, he goes from being the guy in Chicago to being.

Almost Cooperstown (04:39.188)
another guy on this team. Nobody's expecting anything from him here. He's the Kyle Tucker of the Mets. No, that's not true. I don't mean that. Even Mets fans can't go that far. And the Mets today also sign on here on Wednesday, former Astros starter Luis Garcia, who oft injured would be he had a fantastic rookie year. And then he really hasn't.

been on the field very much because he keeps getting injured. that's a death signing and a hope signing that he's going to be. It's a cheaper flyer than training for Sandy Allen contra. That's kind of how I they're not done with that yet, but we'll see about those things. I think the Marlins don't have any interest in giving them up. The Marlins offseason moves really other than the deal of Cabrera, which I think you could make a lot of arguments that they probably sold. If you're selling on him now was the right time.

because he was one bad half season away from being basically untradeable at set. So I think that that was the right move from them. And you go, okay, you know what? We showed some signs of life last year. Who knows if we trade him before the year, you're basically throwing up the white flag before it begins. And I think they don't want that. So we're gonna introduce Dan here and he's gonna jump on behind us. he is an editor at the athletic and a writer.

and just somebody that we've gotten to spend a little time with every year for this Hall of Fame. Recap and hope you enjoy it and thanks. It's coming right up. So we're happy that Daniel Brown from the Athletic has joined us again. This is year number three and if you haven't noticed Dan, this is kind of becoming a habit. I guess you like it because you keep coming back. Yeah, I want to do the Cal Ripken thing and come like 2,000 plus times.

That's cool. Seven years of podcasts. So, yeah, you know, we're here to talk about the Hall of Fame. The votes came in. This is recording on Wednesday. This is going to drop the following Monday on Tuesday. And I'll let you talk about what you your votes and obviously how you came to it. But as a a

Almost Cooperstown (06:47.234)
fan and watcher of this and I don't know about you Gordon, was ended up being a little boring because we had the track of Beltran and Carlos Beltran and Andrew Jones, congratulations to them both they got in and we kind of knew and so when it got announced it was a to me it was a little anticlimactic and I don't know that nobody else feels that way that's how it hit me a little bit. That is I mean I love Ryan Teberto and the Hall of Fame tracker and you know think it's a blast every year especially when it's

got a couple guys who are like on the fringes and like, or if they're in their last year, the drama kind of builds and it's sometimes can generate the excitement. In this case, yeah, was some candidates that there was such, I want to say kind of a split enthusiasm for. So I don't know even if it would have come out of nowhere, if you hadn't seen the train, if people would have had, you know, been doing cartwheels upon the election day. I will say not to, not to...

to send things on an opening bad note. But I'm sick of the bad notes. Every Hall of Fame announcement come out and people are mad. And I read our coverage, the athletics coverage this morning. Tyler Kepner wrote a great story about Beltran and Andrew. they killed him. and then Jason Stark weighed in. And, the comment section was anger, which I, you know, I get the fact that these are

As with everything now, it seems to be a controversial choice. But there's that moment that I remember the Hall of Fame being of like, so great, Orlando Sabata has been inducted, or, Ferguson Jenkins made it, or whatever happiness and joy that came from Hall of Fame announcement day. It's annually, for the three years we've been doing this, it's annually the source of at least some kind of hand wringing anger. And even when somebody like Yitro would all...

great sales in the debate is like, well, who's the jackass? You know, we focus on that one guy instead of this each rose achievement and career. And, you know, he's had the highest voting in the history of baseball and people are mad and I don't know how to avoid it. But my one thing, cause you talk about the tracker. I do think I do have considered, it better to not, not share the vote?

Almost Cooperstown (09:13.966)
the voting, even the percentages until after induction day. You know, in other sports we never know. In football you don't know, you you get 75.6 % and he's up from 54 % line. We just know they're Hall of Famers and there's sense of joy and be mad later once they're inducted. You know, keeping the focus on the achievements of these athletes. And I know, you know, it's probably going to be avoidable because of, especially the Beltron being such a lightning rod for

the science dealing, you know, there's never gonna be a parade in the streets, but man, it's just a trend that I would like to figure out a way to end. And Beltran, just with Beltran's controversy, it feels so, especially because the whole of him, got put in for being a player.

And a lot of almost all of his controversy stuff that happened after his playing career was over. So it really feels like people are just kind of waiting for that to like take their shots at the guy when it's just like, okay, I understand that there was controversy I want to die. like, as far as he goes as a player, because SWAT was pretty much a slam dunk in most people's minds. So it feels like controversy almost for controversy's Sage. Well, on that note, if you look at the comment section, which I don't generally advise that you do, but you know,

they get announced and you look at the thing and it's like, what about Whitaker? What about, where's Garvey? is Harold... Same old, same old. You're gonna find a reason to be, everybody's mad about everything all the time. individually, I think all those grievances that people might have, there's some validity to them. I don't dismiss them. I just think there should be one day where we can celebrate the achievements of great players and...

I think you're onto something when you say that maybe we just don't publicize the votes. 84%, I think, of the votes are going to end up being public. looked that up before, something like that. So most of them are public, and I think that overall is better for the process. I'll let you as a voter determine, tell me how you feel about that. But I think that...

Almost Cooperstown (11:20.526)
We could wait because you're right, we would just celebrate the wow, Andrew Jones finally made it in and he was an amazing center fielder and Beltran was a terrific player. then Lino and then a day or two later, how is that going to ruin the process by having people know it after the fact instead of all along knowing what's in arguing about it in a bizarre way that had nothing to do with what actually happened?

As I say, it's kind like we've come the other way. Like back in the day, I feel like you would have never talked about some of these things about these players because of like, you know, you wouldn't ruin the prestige of the moment by bringing up these things that are, you know, these

darker aspects of their careers and stuff. so aspects and parts of their story wouldn't be told because, we wouldn't do that here. But I feel like we've almost pivoted from that to almost the complete other way where, we got to make sure all we talk about are the bad stuff. And we can't ever celebrate these guys as players because, remember that one time they did something we really didn't like. So it is only truly the most pure players. You're down to celebrating Derek Jeter.

And even people took shots at him. People took shots at Mariana Rivera and Ituro. Who's left if you can't celebrate those guys? don't know if it's a voting dynamic or if it's a societal shift, because we kind of do this in general. I don't know what role social media has played, because you can have an argument all the time, every day, with anybody you want. But this notion of it being a joyous thing.

It rarely is. And I don't know how we restore that. mean, I think induction day is generally pretty, I think we get there. It's a true celebration and people get their due and all that stuff. it just, you people want to be about matter of the writers and, but this whole notion of like, you know, player X gets elected and then half the comments are why not player YZF? You know, and I,

Almost Cooperstown (13:13.838)
I'm a big Whittaker fan myself, but it just kind of came out of nowhere. Well, he wasn't on the ballot. That committee has already made its ruling. This isn't the time to pick that fight. But we do. And here I am saying we should be more positive, and I'm talking about all the negative stuff. But I do think that it's disappointing to see that. I wonder if when Ted Williams got elected, if people were mad, why didn't, you know.

were the 15 people who didn't vote for him, which because he was the leader. Remember, each year old last year when he got up and he talked about the one guy like to buy him a beer. Yeah, I thought to myself, each year old drinks beer. So that was that was my takeaway from that. I didn't know that. So, you know, you everybody in the athletic who wrote and has votes, they publicize their votes. And so let's talk about your votes.

I think they're much the same as they were last year with a couple of changes and I'll name them. You voted for 10, which we're in favor of. Bobby Abreu, Beltran, Mark Burley, Felix Hernandez, Andrew Jones, Andy Pettit, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley. And three Phillies in there. I'm sure that that was not done with any intent, but it is kind of interesting that that ended up being part of the equation.

Yeah, no, wasn't. That was it. Because that could have been that Jimmy Rollins vote could have been Dustin Pedroia vote. And maybe maybe I found this year to be the hardest year to vote in my, I haven't been voting forever, but whatever, five, six years of voting, I found this year to be harder, this hardest year in part because there wasn't the slam dunk choices. There wasn't. I like to be consistent. You know, if I vote for this guy and somebody else is similar,

Which that's what got me in trouble a little bit. I shouldn't say trouble, which made harder is I read a compelling case for Felix Hernandez. Like Trello wrote for MLB.com that for the 10 year stretch, he was the best pitcher in the majors for that 10 year stretch, which to me is a kind of a definition of a hall of Famer. You're the best at your job for a 10 year stretch for a decade long stretch. That's pretty good mark of a hall of Famer.

Almost Cooperstown (15:39.278)
I decided after reading that, yeah, I'm going to vote for him. And I had him last year. had him. And I loved him as a player, but I didn't vote for him last year. But then it's tough. You vote for him, and Pettit has a way better war. Hamels has a better lifetime. ERA+. There was a of a cluster of those pitches. If you look at things like war, ERA +,

You know, all the career market are pretty similar. I, you know, I also look at the war seven that gives you a look at their peak years and you know, maybe, um, Burleigh wasn't quite as high on that list, but he had some other things going in his favor. So it's hard to vote for one and not all. So I ran out of room for Hamels, which would have been another, yet another Philly, but I'll vote for him next year. And by then I did the thing where I went to the tracker and saw that Hamels.

was going to safely cross the threshold for the 5 % because otherwise I might have voted now because you need to know that because we've made mistakes as the voting body. We've made mistakes and not given more people more time in the ballot, i.e. Kenny Lofton, you know, making sure they advance. That's a voter's responsibility when you think about it to if you really want to make sure that, you know, people get considered and not pass away. And so if you didn't have the tracker out there,

You wouldn't know that necessarily and you might have to approach it differently. Yeah. Yeah. So I do. I, by then I, I, cause I voted fairly late in the stage. So was pretty well established that he was comfortably going to pass. Um, so that allowed me to get the guys like Burley who I also didn't vote for last year. But I just think as we reevaluate starting pitchers, which is the argument, I think he, you know, another year doesn't hurt to figure out like, okay, how good was he when we know what we know now, but the numbers and

the way the role of the starting pitcher has evolved. Some of that's going to go away because guys who are no doubt Hall of Famers, Kershaw, Verlander, or Scherzer, they're not that far off from making it easy. But that group that we're talking about, that's a tough one for me to check the box or not. Where are you guys going to put those pitchers? Well, I think you raise a really good point there because if you're going to sit there and make the argument that, oh, Felix Hernandez, who I do think

Almost Cooperstown (18:01.74)
deserves to belong in the Hall of Fame. Well, it's like, he's not like there isn't something that statistically sets him apart from Burley, from Hamels that you could point to and be like, he's so much definitively better in this one aspect than them. then it kind of just, if I'm not going to go off of that, it kind of becomes a vibe thing where I'm just like, well, I just feel like Felix Hernandez was better than those guys. And that's not really a methodology based approach. And so if I'm going to, if I'm going to say Hernandez deserves to be in,

The other guys kind of creep into the argument where I have to be willing to put them in too. Otherwise I'm kind of all over them. I'm kind of in mock step there with you where I'm like, and it fits with expanding the hall because when you look at those guys, we really are talking about the best pictures of that era. And maybe that's kind of an hour full for not about it, for trying to evaluate them on the bag, the best pictures from a previous era. Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, and then, you know, I guess they're all kind of a little laughter.

Clemens but but yeah it's sorry that it's gonna be a thing for a while when we you're not gonna obviously you're not gonna have 300 wins but you're not gonna have a ton of innings you're not gonna have you might not have another 3,000 strikeout guy like all these little benchmarks it you won't have like six 20 game seasons or yeah yeah yeah exactly

Right, right. Especially a lot of career collection statistics, like 3,000 strikeouts, the kind of thing. Like, is unlikely to get back, get to that purely on the basis of he's just not going to have the opportunities to strike out 3,000 guys across his career. But you're going to be able to look at a guy like, here's going to be a guy when he retires, he's not going to have the career stats. Chris Sale. Chris Sale is probably going to retire with the highest K per nine of any starting pitcher ever.

And he'd the kind of guy who was like, okay, well, if he pitched it a different time and his arm doesn't fall off, he's going to get three vets and strikeouts. Yeah. And he might be the last guy. I mean, he literally might be the last guy ever to do it. Zach Greinke is another guy we don't talk about in that same vein of guys who like, you know, the his career, when you stack him up against the guys we're talking about, Burley and Andy Pettit, if you're asking me my opinion, I think Greinke was better than those guys. Yeah. Yeah, I think so, too.

Almost Cooperstown (20:17.966)
I think he'll get it. I writers tend to like him. Yeah. Well, it weird. was I think he that's why they let put it this way when Greg gets put in there going to be some amazing pieces. He's such a character that there's no way he's not going to have and he's going have a very interesting speech if he gets it. I'm sure of it. Then you were on to something when you then you talked about the fact that those three pictures kind of like if you got one, you got to have all three.

And I think your colleague Jason Stark kind of advanced that the way voting is going, know, when you think about the fact that Chase Utley got such love shown to him this year and anybody that's had the raise in what his Hall of Fame vote percentage was is gonna get in basically. He is on that path now that for eventual enshrine and based upon the increase he's gotten, you know, early in his voting. But.

That allows guys with fewer gains played, fewer at bats, all kinds of stuff to be considered where we've here before. I David Wright actually has a chance. I'm a Met fan, I love David Wright, but man, I never really thought he had any chance at all with the sort of brevity and lack of counting stats that all of sudden the ground's small for the younger voters, it seems like what we're hearing, they're more willing to not look at things as traditionally as prior veteran voters might.

Yeah, I mean those younger generation, I don't know if they look at counting stats at all if you said You know what? I mean, is it oddly who's got around 1500 hits? I don't even know the number but it's not less than 2000 by law. Yeah. Yeah, which is But if you look at the war and you factor in his defense and his base running and all this stuff and the position he plays He stacks up pretty well. You look at those numbers and it's a pretty easy case. I love that I love the jaws number that puts you can compare

people from the second, second, uh, from the similar position and look at their stats and how they stack up against other second baseman or other short stops. know, probably I can't remember off the top of my head, but like 13th. And I think the 13th best second baseman in major league history should probably be in the, in the hall of fame. I should win a career for anybody who's yelling at the screen. Just say, I'll just say that periodically throughout the podcast, but, um, uh, yeah, no, the, the, the trend.

Almost Cooperstown (22:38.156)
voting and it's already different. look at different numbers because you have to. That's the one thing is somebody who's of a certain age is tricky for me to.

Look at a player I thought I knew by a different lens. Like, I don't remember him being that good. And you know, from, not that he's the classic example, but Abreu's a guy I never thought, hey, I took my kid to see Bobby Abreu and I don't even have kids. But if I did, you know, you'd say like, you saw Demagio, you saw Williams, we saw Bonds. Seeing Bobby Abreu, you wouldn't, that's not destination viewing. But then you look at the numbers.

in a vacuum without the crowd, without the whatever. look at the, and he stacks up, he's up there with Winfield and Parker and Vladimir Guerrero and all these things. And so, which is right, how you remember him and whether he was a hall of fame with the emphasis on fame or how does he stack up statistically with other similar players? Or both. Or both. Right.

And you might run into an issue where like Bobby Abreu's biggest issue might have been when he played in that. If you weren't somebody that watched the Phillies every day, you could still generally watch Bobby Abreu and get a sense of what he was like as a player. When you talk about players from back in the day, you only understood a lot of them through what you read in the paper, what you heard. So it allowed the mythology of the players to grow to a much higher degree. Whereas

Even I, who was somebody that grew up at the time, not a Philly fan, I know who Bobby Abreu was as a player. I saw him play enough. I remember what he was good at. I remember what he was, you know, I at have a perception of him. But if somebody told me, imagine, you know, Ruth Garrag is a player, I only know what's been told to me. So I only really know the legend of, you know, of him. So it's you relate to these players very differently. So I think it's become much easier when you talk about those old guys to lionize them in a much greater way than where Bobby Abreu.

Almost Cooperstown (24:39.426)
You know what he is. And that was a damn good baseball player. Yeah. Abreu was so good at so many things, but not exceptional at any one thing. And I think that in some ways he was as smooth as Beltran in the way he conducted his business on the field. And so that hurt Beltran a little bit because I remember Willie Randolph when he was managing the Mets.

you don't want to call us this is really that this is a matter until i see the numbers on the fence going by when he's running to go catch a fly ball and i'm going by really fast so i guess he is right this is so you have that effortless style and both uh... a brave did as well and so it's hard when you're a right fielder but in the center field is a little easier than that

But if you're a right fielder, now unless you've got a cannon for an arm who can cut down guys all the time, just being a good right fielder and being a good average hitter and good stolen bases and a good home run guy and a good on base guy, it's like, yeah, that's great. But where's the pizzazz? Yeah. There's the pizzazz, which is the loophole, wormhole, whatever. Because you're like, OK, well, if we understood the stats then as we did now, he might have been a star in his time.

Certainly all the seam heads would have known like, hey, Bobby Bray is incredibly valuable. for me, it was more in retrospect. like, anyway, that guy was pretty valuable. I didn't, I was at a game where he hit inside the park, game walk off home run against the Giants in Philadelphia. But that's kind of the only memory I have of Bobby Bray. I didn't know home run Derby, I guess. But he's not the guy you would have his poster on your wall.

And I think to your point, I think that's the kind of guy when you look at the stats, you have to go, well, wait a second, maybe I'm not seeing this the way that it really was. This guy was so consistent at such a high level that has to count, which is why we, I would conclude him as well for the same reason. And he had the length to his career enough, you know, he had enough counting stats. I think.

Almost Cooperstown (26:42.252)
Yeah. I think that's why a guy like Beltran, people were finally like, wait, wait a second. What are we doing here? Because when you look at the full breadth of the career and what he did, it's, know, like, okay, yeah, he's a hall of Famer. I people just really didn't want to give it to him as a first ballot kind of thing. So he was held back by that. And now, I mean, when you look at his career, kind of like you said before, you know, Beltran in a lot of ways paves the way for Bobby Abreu because Beltran was just, you don't want to say this about somebody who's almost like the better version of Bobby Abreu.

No, that's a good yeah. For sure. I mean, they I broke down the Sarah Lang's was on fire yesterday with some great stats. But the only players with 400 homers 300 stolen bases are Barry Bonds, Andre Dawson, Willie Mays and Carlos Beltran. It's good company. Good company to keep the highest postseason OPS Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth.

Albert Pujols, Carlos Beltran. Great. company. That's a good list to be on. And then highest, he had the highest stolen bass percentage, which I didn't know, better than Reigns. Yeah, 86 % for his career. And it wasn't like he stole 20 basses. He stole basses regularly. So yeah, I think, and his counterpart, Andrew Jones, let just talk about him for a second. It just seemed.

It seemed to me for the longest time that he wasn't going to get in. I just kind of felt like, you know, people are going to ding him for those last five years. And by the way, they were nomadic in addition to being, you know, not good. I didn't realize, you know, that he played for five team after he left Atlanta. Was it Dodgers? can't remember. Dodgers. was Dodgers, Rangers, White Sox. And then he finished up with two years with the Yankees.

Not playing very much, you know. He had his best year of that crew that group with the White Sox. He actually had an OK year with them, probably because he had put up one point nine war with all the other seasons after he left Atlanta were less than one war. So he did not play well after that. what from a voter's perspective, you know, had Jones retired after 12 years at the Braves? Yeah, I'm done. I've done my career and never played anywhere else. Does he get in sooner?

Almost Cooperstown (29:10.048)
Yeah. I mean, especially if you had some kind of like a curvy pocket thing where it like a some kind of a you could have some compassion for the circumstances instead of just like flaming out. you know, kind of probably the same thing with Dale Murphy, too. If you'd only had some sad sack case. But so the natural aging curve. But yeah, Andrew Jones, ten gold gloves, 400 plus homers. That's enough.

Maybe the best defensive center fielder ever. Willie Mays, I mean Dave O'Brien or whatever, he just retired but he covered the Braves for many years for the Athletic. It was behind the cage and Mays came up and said, Andrew Jones is the best defensive center fielder I've ever seen. So Willie Mays says, I feel comfortable clicking that box. And he didn't even get 8 % of the vote his first year on the ballot. It's an incredible rise for him.

And he felt like a guy that so much of like he was a guy that was being punished by the old way of looking at players of being like, we didn't have the career average that we wanted him to have like, because I think his career average is pretty is pretty bad actually, when you look at it. But but when you look at all of his other statistics, when you look at everything else, and yeah, he's a career 250 hitter. And I feel like there are a lot of Hall of Fame voters are like, I don't want to put a career 250 hitter into the Hall of Fame.

But that really overlooked what he was like as a player and in some ways one of the first guys to really be a three true outcome kind of hitter and that he was going to hit the ball. He's going to strike out or hit the ball a long way a lot of the time. But unlike a lot of the other guys that profiled it as that type of hitter, he did something that virtually none of them ever do, which is play elite defense. And he did that at a premium position to play elite defense. So again, I steal from Sarah Lang's, but.

400 homers, 10 gold gloves. It's Andrew Jones, then Willie Mays, Ken Griffey, Mike Schmidt, end of list. Yeah. Check the box. Yeah. And we've talked about this before with you, Gordon and I, we have one of our early podcasts was about 36 players we'd put in the Hall of Fame right now. Because if you put in something like that, it doesn't matter how many, 30, 40, something like that. Well, the guys we'd be arguing about would be much more interesting.

Almost Cooperstown (31:27.086)
Right. Yeah. And that's who I want. I want to argue about Pedroia like, oh, was it long enough? I love this player and he did so much. He's a guy whose contribution supersedes his numbers. And you have to be able to use both, you know, the statistical aspect as well as I watched the guy play. That dude looked like a Hall of Famer when he was playing. Yeah. I mean, this is kind of a little side note, but I looked this up before before the podcast because it was an odd ballot, right? It's not.

It's not star-studded, but you've got a lot of, I mean, you see the line a lot in Twitter and comments that you're the holler very good, always holler very good. He's holler very good. And then, you know, they're not great because everybody's comparing this, these candidates to COFAX, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio. So this is my, this wasn't a class of DiMaggio, Walter Johnson, Mickey Manil, but, but it was a class of Stan Kowaleski.

Red Faber, Burley Grimes, Epirixi, Harry Hooper, Ross Youngs, Travis Jackson. All of those are Hall of Famers. It's the same, you know, they're, are in the same company as Ted Williams and Sandy Koufax. There are Hall of Famers who are not as top tier. Renowned. But this, this is the group. This is a group that's kind of like all those guys, but you have to weigh them on their own merits and not against Ruth and Garrett. Cause nobody would ever get in again.

Because it is it's not the Hall of Ruth. It's not the Hall of Lou Gary gets the Hall of Fame You don't have to not every player you get you can't set the standard of be the greatest player to ever play the game to get into the Hall of Fame is that only one guy can ever be in there at a time I will grant some that there is there are some dubious selections throughout the history of the Hall of Fame, but that's the point is it's These votes are not ruining the Hall of Fame. These votes are not watering down the Hall of Fame. It has always been kind of a

tiered system where there's different variations of Hall of Famers, but that means, doesn't mean we should stop voting for great players. These guys were great players. So this Hall of Very Good thing, I get, I get the concept, cause there is a line at some point, but it's a kind of a disservice to guys who, who's, who's statistical records and playing career match up.

Almost Cooperstown (33:51.15)
not just like in the business but very favorable or even better than some of the current Hall of Famers. You know, our podcast at one point we thought about calling it the Hall of Very Good but we went for almost Cooperstown and it's a better, know, because we don't want to sort of jump on that ship about, you know, these guys, you know, we want to talk about the marginal cases and we have to do that we think

Cupana should be in because as I keep saying 274 players I think now in the Hall of Fame, maybe 276 with these two out of 23,000 it's 1.2 % of all players who ever played if you added 30 players in it would go to 1.3 % that doesn't ruin the Hall of Fame. that's what all that talk is about you know that you're gonna ruin it by maybe watering it down from people who never go to the Hall of Fame themselves by the way.

Those people aren't even going there. Yeah. And like I say, I get it. There are guys that I think are, had great careers and are below my line. But, but the fair thing to do is look who's in by the standards that have now have close to a hundred years of similar cases, know, case studies. can look, does this fit in this company or not? And I think these, players got elected yesterday, Yep.

And you know, the next year's vote is going to be different because, you finally got Mani off the ballot since you were never going to vote the guy in the first place. you know, unfortunately, the same thing seems to be happening with A-Rod. Pettit may have worked himself out of that now a little bit with some of the way the, I'm guessing the younger voters are looking at what happened with him comparatively. But, you know, you're going to have only really Buster Posey is going to probably be the only surefire.

And I don't know if he should be a first ballot all-favorite, but we can talk about that another time. But he's the guy, the new guy in the ballot next year that's going to sort of, you know, take some of the opportunities away from other guys that are moving up the ladder, maybe like a pet had 46 % this year. Is Felix going to get up there next year because he's there?

Almost Cooperstown (36:00.494)
We have two guys coming off the ballot because you have Beltran and Jones who got elected. So that's two guys on there that were taking up votes. Man, he's coming off of it and he's just 40%. That's a lot of votes that just got freed up. And as you said, the only guy coming on next year that's really going to accrue any kind of sizable vote portion is Buster Posey.

And maybe John Lester, just because people like him a lot. I don't see him as a really serious Hall of Fame candidate, but I think he'll do better than people expect. But a lot of other guys on that list are, you know, really strong candidates. So that's going to bump up some of the other numbers here just because you got to vote for some guys. Yeah. Yeah, that is that is the one thing I My my my vision of being a being a Hall of Fame voters like, oh, I'm going to vote for the Hall of Famers, which, you know, at heart I do.

But sometimes you're voting to keep the guy on the ballot or you're voting to give him momentum. You know your vote is not going to decide whether he's in or out because so many of these guys, it's been about, you know, these recent cases show it's about building momentum, getting some traction, getting talked about more, getting more people looking harder at your case. And that sometimes is what a vote is good for is not, you know, to get the bronze plaque ready. It's to like get them another year of consideration.

Right, take one more. I look at how we change our opinions as we look at this guy's because it's one thing to look at a guy's career numbers in isolation. But as we get better and better at, you know, statistically comparing these guys, all of a sudden, when you look at a guy in relation to his own peers, you start getting a better idea of who he truly was. And you start pulling some of those stats and being like, OK, yeah, Andrew Jones is one of only like five guys that had had hit 400 home runs and won 10 gold gloves. Everybody else that did it is also in the Hall of Fame.

So you start, when you start being able to look at stuff like that and going, okay, wait a second. We really do have proof that some of these guys are great that you can't necessarily get in just one off season of looking at just their own career stack page in isolation. For sure. And those, the two guys elected are, this was written this morning, maybe it was in Jason Stars' book, the ninth and the 10th center fielder is elected to the hall of fame.

Almost Cooperstown (38:16.481)
in the history of baseball. And when I think only 10 centerfielders are in the Hall of Fame in the history of baseball, that just sounds crazy in and of itself to me. Well, I don't think that's right. Ninth and tenth centerfielders? Yes. So we just did a... I think it may be... was the athletic did a... Chad Jennings did a really good story on the dearth of centerfielders in the Hall of Fame. And my memories of something like 22 of the 24 centerfielders in the Hall of Fame were...

selected before 1950 or debuted before 1952 and it's only Griffey and

I can't remember if it's Puckett maybe who have done it since. So there's more I think. Maybe I misread it and maybe it's guys with 400 own runs. don't know if there's eight. Maybe, maybe. Yeah, I don't know. You are right. There are 24 centerfielders in the Hall of Fame but I think what you were seeing there, Dad, is the same thing that you're seeing and that the vast majority of them, I would say, played their careers before 1950. Like there's this guy.

weird gap that all of a sudden where you go and like the only when I look at the recent players and I am sure there is going to be somebody on this list who I just don't recognize but I'm looking at these names the only guys that I'm really aware of like that played during my time of being alive were Puckett, now Andrew Jones, Ken Griffey Jr, Andre Dawson, and Miltram. Those five guys and maybe there's like a couple other players but I'm not recognizing a lot of other contemporary names on this list.

So you're looking at a lot of much older ballplayers. So what's happened in that time period where now we've only gotten five guys in and why has it dropped off so much at such a, know, premium position in baseball? Yeah. So Chad Jennings did a pretty good story on this and he talked to Fred Lynn and he talked to Torrey Hunter and he talked to Cameron, but just some other centerfielders who kind of may be on a hall of fame trajectory at one point in their careers. And Lynn, for example, said, look, you get injured a lot playing centerfield.

Almost Cooperstown (40:17.986)
banging in the walls of the time, you're covering a ton of ground. The advent of the designated hitter allowed teams to move a corner outfielder to DH. And then maybe somebody who was playing center can now play right or left instead to protect their bat. So it's an interesting, mean, it's a stunning, it's one of those things that the reason the number was in my head is because I looked at it 20 times like, what? Only.

I think we didn't count Dawson because it must be some kind of I don't think he was primarily a center fielder as it was in my opinion. I thought he played right field more than he played center. So so on that count, was another that's another reason and like, hey, let's celebrate the center fielder's who are. The students at the time and. I think we talked about Kenny Lofton, which you always have to have your Kenny Lofton mention when we talk about a guy who's.

That's, mean, he's the, Ken Lofton's the biggest reason if I have any hesitation, if I got anything, I will vote for them because they, to keep them on the ballot because Lofton coming and going is a disgrace. I wanted to ask you, I wanted to ask you this, Dan, the committee, the era committees, I should say, right? That do, you know, the look at veterans and so on and so forth. You know, we have younger voters now in the BBWA that seem to be

changing the way voting is looked at and the way that it's, I see changes, but the committee voters are older and are probably still holding to the same feelings they've had about, know, PEDs and things that they did, they've had all the time. So I don't know that these players who are hoping for another shot on these committees, it's gonna be a long time for that, I don't know how you feel about that and the responsibility there.

Well, you know, that's really interesting because I looked at, know, there's a number of players on the former players on the committee and former, you know, Hall of Fame players on that committee. So you always wonder like, hey, what do players think about what a Hall of Fame players think about the PED guys? And it's been resounding. It's come up enough times. It's been a resounding no support and it almost changed. And brother, the way I voted this year on the PED, like if they don't want them, who am I to say these guys should go into your hall? Like, I think they.

Almost Cooperstown (42:40.568)
They're probably at this point not just voting for themselves and their opinion, representing the, presumption would be they're representing some kind of hall of fame consensus among the players. Like we don't want our hall to include these players. I don't think it's individual. And so, know, Joe Morgan and others is more or less said as much, but the fact that they're getting no support shows it doesn't look like they're even divided among themselves.

So I find that a little bit informative about, I would be curious to see, because I voted for Bonds. I said on this podcast, before I struggle with the PED argument, any of you sees a clear cut, I don't. I it was a rampant, lawless era. I hate the fact that some of the record books have been cheated.

I hate the fact that everything got inflated, not just for these Hall of Fame candidates, but across the board. All the numbers got way, way, way out of whack in a way that players who were playing clean probably really suffered during that time. financially, they're not getting the contract because they're choosing to not use anyway. It was a whole messy era that I don't want to pretend like a condone. I just think it's hard as a Hall of Fame voter to play judge and jury after the fact. So I hold my nose and vote.

So.

Almost Cooperstown (44:09.517)
What was I getting at? Yeah, I don't think those guys are going to change. I Right. I just think that the players seem to be representing some kind of code among the Hall of Famers. Like, let's keep it. And there's nuance there that I think is... I talk about Andy Pettit a lot because...

As I recall, it was before obviously there was a testing program in place, but his use of, and he admitted his HGH use, I believe, was in order to get back on the field more quickly, right? And so that he could play. And so the guy who's taking that kind of stuff to do it for those reasons, and I'm gonna guess that most of the folks were doing it just so they could continue to play and all that. It wasn't, I'm hoping to get an extra five feet on my home run ball so I can hit an extra 50 home runs.

in Mike Yourer make the Hall of Fame. So I always look at it from that standpoint going, well, you have to look at the intent here. if it's before, this current, know, what we have in place now, which I'm much more, I'm OK with people have anybody after it. If you did it, then you're dead to me. You know, OK, I don't agree with that. And not everybody does. at least it's a point of view that I can agree with because it's clear. Everything else is cloudy before that. And how do you know who did and who didn't? You don't. For sure.

That was the point. The point I was getting to with bonds was, you know, if a bonds or Clemens got elected, I'd be curious to see what the Hall of Fame turnout was among the Hall of Famers. If there was a year where like all of a sudden 30 people were sick that day. like it's like the people actually attending dropped out. I might say like I'm not going to applaud bonds coming to the Hall of Fame, which I do think that would be terrible. You know, I do I do think that there would be Hall of Famers who didn't show up. Yeah.

Yeah, just like Johnny Bench probably wouldn't show up if Pete Rose ever really did get in because he has been, you know, said a million times and they were teammates and whatnot, but that's his hard line. And that's okay. That's where he comes from. I get it. You know, I, that's, you know, it's not for me to agree and not agree. That's where he's at. So, um, hopefully next year will be a little easier. Um, you know, getting some of these guys off there, but I don't think it gets easy anymore. Um, with this.

Almost Cooperstown (46:25.87)
We were gonna ask you, I was gonna ask you about the whole salary cap thing, but I think that's a whole nother podcast that I don't wanna get into because of what happened recently with Tucker and the Dodgers and heading towards a labor stoppage. So here's what I'll hope that our conversation that we have next January won't be solely about the Hall of Fame being the only baseball that's gonna be played for the next year. That's right, which is...

You know, it's always posturing around this time of the cycle, but man, I'm scared. I do think that's a possibility that that would be our outlook at this point in 2027. Could be bleak. It's kind of funny because I think we're in a weird situation where I'm so excited for the season this year. You the outlook for baseball, the sport is great. I'm excited even with all the Dodger stuff. But, you know, I look at the Hall of Fame and, you know,

I think that, you know, even though we might have an oblique baseball outlook, we should have a very good, interesting hall of fame discussion next year. Cause I think the ballot is the most interesting it's been in a long while because you don't have this like weird consternation over the guys on it. And outside of Posey, there's a lot of different guys you can make an argument for. So we might see somebody shoot up that we didn't expect, which I think it's a much more interesting statement. Like, okay, what's going to cut? We know one guy's going to get in and that's probably it.

Yeah, I mean, Posey is interesting because he's, know, I mean, I think he, I would vote for him, but there are catchers like, you know, Jorge Posada is guy that didn't get a lot of support. Posada's numbers stack up pretty well against Posey's. And if you're going to count World Series rings as a factor, which I do with Posey, same thing for Posada.

Yeah, know, Yogi Berra went a long way catching for all those Yankee championship teams that made him a slam dunk candidate, not, you know, well beyond his statistics going. You catch for a world champion for 10 seasons, you know, you're probably a Hall of Fame player. Probably a Hall of Fame player, yeah. All right, Dan, well, thank you. I will let you go here because I have so many other things that I'd love to talk to you about. Maybe we'll do that another time because I think...

Almost Cooperstown (48:35.118)
I'm interested from your perspective and I think Gordon is too. We're going to talk about salary cap in the future and maybe it's something we could talk about because I think it's a bit of a not starter for the players association and I have kind of come around a little bit. I've been very defensive of the players position and to think, that you can't make that a no pass zone because you're never going to get anywhere if you don't say, well, what could we do with that? I don't want to get into it here because, know, it's...

conversation on itself. thank you so much for joining us everybody you know check out Dan's stuff in the the athletic. We read every day. We're lucky to have you join us and look forward to having you again. Yeah thanks Bart. Thanks Gordon. Thank you.