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MLB 2014: I paid the $20 mil posting fee for the right to start this thread

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joecct said:
Rose gets in after he's dead. The lIfetime ban should end at death. Ditto for the steroid crew.
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It's not a "lifetime ban". It's "permanent ineligibility". He knew the rules when he did what he did, as well as the punishment that went with it. There was precedent going back over 20 years before he was born.

FTR, I would like to read the Dowd Report to see just how bad the evidence is.
 
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Re: MLB 2014: I paid the $20 mil posting fee for the right to start this thread

Fighting Sioux 23 said:
Since that time is approaching, who would you include on your HOF ballot for this year?

Here is a link to the ballot...

http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_2015.shtml
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My vote, if I had one:
Bonds
Clemens
Unit
Pedro
Bagwell
Walker
Piazza
Mussina
Trammell
Raines

(Going for Trammell and Raines over arguably "better" candidates because both have been waiting too long, Trammell especially.)

My prediction for what WILL happen:
Biggio
Unit
Pedro
Smoltz

Biggio was so very close last year and I think the voters will put him over the top this year. Unit and Pedro are no-brainers (if you ask me, anyway). Smoltz is IMO a worse candidate than a lot of other guys on the ballot but HoF voters love trivia like "he was good as a starter and a reliever". (See Eckersley getting in on his first ballot, for example.) And yes, he was good as a starter and a reliever, but that isn't enough to make him more valuable over the course of his career than a full-time starter like Mussina or a position player like Bagwell, if you ask me anwyay. I think Piazza gets in eventually but not yet, and I think the voters aren't going to go for the most obvious PED users (Bonds and Clemens, in addition to weaker candidates like McGwire and Sosa) no matter how great they were, even though they themselves were happy to uncritically celebrate those players when they were playing.
 
Re: MLB 2014: I paid the $20 mil posting fee for the right to start this thread

Part 1 of the Dowd report, PDF format

Pretty dry stuff, but it looks like he started to bet on the Reds in 1985. A year in which he had 501 plate appearances. He was not just a part-time player quite yet. He passed Ty Cobb for career hits on 9/11/1985. Rose was on the active roster until the end of the 1986 season.

Page 14. Pete Rose was betting on his own team as a player. Page 15 indicates that there was a taped call between Rose and his bookie.

His *** is cooked as far as HOF chances.
 
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Hammer said:
Part 1 of the Dowd report, PDF format

Pretty dry stuff, but it looks like he started to bet on the Reds in 1985. A year in which he had 501 plate appearances. He was not just a part-time player quite yet. He passed Ty Cobb for career hits on 9/11/1985. Rose was on the active roster until the end of the 1986 season.

Page 14. Pete Rose was betting on his own team as a player. Page 15 indicates that there was a taped call between Rose and his bookie.

His *** is cooked as far as HOF chances.
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My point remains that, just like Bonds and Clemens "were Hall of Famers" before they juiced, Rose was also a Hall of Famer before the gambling. They cheated the game just as Rose did. Rewarding them while still punishing Rose is wrong.
 
Re: MLB 2014: I paid the $20 mil posting fee for the right to start this thread

Craig Biggio
Randy Johnson
Pedro Martinez
John Smoltz
Pete Rose
Alan Trammell

I don't care about Rose betting unless it's proven he bet on his teams to lose.
 
Re: MLB 2014: I paid the $20 mil posting fee for the right to start this thread

jmh said:
My vote, if I had one:
Bonds
Clemens
Unit
Pedro
Bagwell
Walker
Piazza
Mussina
Trammell
Raines

(Going for Trammell and Raines over arguably "better" candidates because both have been waiting too long, Trammell especially.)

My prediction for what WILL happen:
Biggio
Unit
Pedro
Smoltz

Biggio was so very close last year and I think the voters will put him over the top this year. Unit and Pedro are no-brainers (if you ask me, anyway). Smoltz is IMO a worse candidate than a lot of other guys on the ballot but HoF voters love trivia like "he was good as a starter and a reliever". (See Eckersley getting in on his first ballot, for example.) And yes, he was good as a starter and a reliever, but that isn't enough to make him more valuable over the course of his career than a full-time starter like Mussina or a position player like Bagwell, if you ask me anwyay. I think Piazza gets in eventually but not yet, and I think the voters aren't going to go for the most obvious PED users (Bonds and Clemens, in addition to weaker candidates like McGwire and Sosa) no matter how great they were, even though they themselves were happy to uncritically celebrate those players when they were playing.
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I agree with you about Biggio...two votes shy last year...he will pick up some votes and get in (probably about 79-80% would be my guess).

I agree with you in the sense that I think Smoltz is clearly the third option of the big three pitchers coming on the ballot this year. However, I still believe he is a HOFer (although, maybe not a first ballot guy).

As for Bagwell, I think he clearly juiced (although, he attributes his massive weight gain and subsequent increased home run capabilities (guy hit 6 HRs in all of minor leagues (850+ PAs), like 50 in his first three full seasons, then all of a sudden nearly hits 40 in the strike shortened 1994 season) to "working out"). I think he probably deserves to be in the Hall at some point in time, but I'm going to put in guys like Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa before I put in Bagwell.

As for Piazza, I honestly don't think he juiced, and I also think he deserves to be in. If not for a backlog on the ballot, he would definitely have been on my top 10.
 
Re: MLB 2014: I paid the $20 mil posting fee for the right to start this thread

I also think we're seeing those 4 this year. And in my mind, all 4 are deserving.

At this point, I think we're sending Trammell, Raines, and Walker to the Veteran's Committee to decide their fate at some unknown point in time. Mussina may head that way eventually as well. Bagwell will probably get in after a few more years without the need of the VC. I have not done any analysis on how Piazza's votes have gone.

Last thing on gambling and steriod use, and then I'm willing to let it go for now:

Gambling on what is supposed to be a competition, when you have an active hand in said competition, is the absoulte Ace of Spades of cardinal sins as it relates to the competition at hand. Whether you're betting to win or to lose, that shreds the fabric of the competition. Once you cross that point, I'm not sure if we're watching athletics or Monday Night Raw. And, in my mind, betting as a head coach or a manager is probably worse than betting as a player. After all, as a player, you can only control your actions, more or less. As a head coach/manager, you have complete control over who plays, and when. Also, if you're only betting to win, then what does it say about the games in which you do not bet at all?

Here's the crux of the matter with Mr. Rose. Again. Pete Rose knew what he was doing. He knew the rules. He knew the consequences of his actions, including banishment from the HOF. And he did it anyway. He has not disputed the Dowd Report, which is really bad, worse than what we've been led to believe (I read a good chunk of it last night, more than what I posted here). Now he doesn't want to deal with the punishment that he agreed to in 1989 when this first all went down. And the only reason he admitted to what he did was to hawk a few more books for his own bank account. He made his own bed. Now go lie down.

Part II: if gambling is the Ace of Spades, then PED's have to be somewhere around the King of Diamonds or so. It's bad. Very bad. No question about it. But (blatantly) cheating in an attempt to win is not quite as bad as if this thing is on the take in the first place. If you want to keep the 'roid users out, I don't object. Fine. But I have two words for you to think about when you square that decision in your mind: Gaylord. Perry.
 
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Re: MLB 2014: I paid the $20 mil posting fee for the right to start this thread

Hammer said:
I also think we're seeing those 4 this year. And in my mind, all 4 are deserving.

At this point, I think we're sending Trammell, Raines, and Walker to the Veteran's Committee to decide their fate at some unknown point in time. Mussina may head that way eventually as well. Bagwell will probably get in after a few more years without the need of the VC. I have not done any analysis on how Piazza's votes have gone.
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Bagwell actually lost votes last year (went from 339 votes (59.6%) in 2013 to 310 votes (54.3%) in 2014), while Piazza gained votes (went from 329 votes (57.8%) in 2013 to 355 votes (62.2%) in 2014). It will be interesting to see how they do this year, as this is Bagwell's midway point on the ballot (as they reduced the number of years one can be on from 15 down to 10).
 
Re: MLB 2014: I paid the $20 mil posting fee for the right to start this thread

Biggio, Johnson, Martinez, Schilling, Smoltz
 
Re: MLB 2014: I paid the $20 mil posting fee for the right to start this thread

Priceless said:
My point remains that, just like Bonds and Clemens "were Hall of Famers" before they juiced, Rose was also a Hall of Famer before the gambling. They cheated the game just as Rose did. Rewarding them while still punishing Rose is wrong.
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This is comparing apples to oranges. The "cheating" of the PED users (placed in air quotes because the rules were unclear, because there was little if no enforcement, and because the now-sanctimonious sports media was celebrating the achievements of PED users at the time) to improve their own performance (in a manner conceptually no different from players who used spitballs or greenies) is categorically different from endangering the competitive integrity of the sport through involvement in gambling. And the thing is, even if he was exclusively betting on his team to win, if they get cold and he loses a bunch of money, all of a sudden he's in trouble and subject to influence by bookies who might appreciate it if he swung and missed a lot in a few particular games.

Fighting Sioux 23 said:
As for Bagwell, I think he clearly juiced (although, he attributes his massive weight gain and subsequent increased home run capabilities (guy hit 6 HRs in all of minor leagues (850+ PAs), like 50 in his first three full seasons, then all of a sudden nearly hits 40 in the strike shortened 1994 season) to "working out"). I think he probably deserves to be in the Hall at some point in time, but I'm going to put in guys like Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa before I put in Bagwell.

As for Piazza, I honestly don't think he juiced, and I also think he deserves to be in. If not for a backlog on the ballot, he would definitely have been on my top 10.
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That's an interesting point about Bagwell's growth of power. On the other hand, he was already hitting for some power and steadily growing in the early years of his career, 15 as a 23-year-old in 1991, 18 as a 24-year-old in 1992, 20 as a 25-year-old in 1993. Obviously 39 the next year is a quantum leap, but not (to me) as suspicious a leap as, say, Brady Anderson hitting 50 that one year in his early 30s when he'd demonstrated nothing like that during his developing years. I also wonder how relevant it is (this is just speculation on my part, so take it for what it's worth) to Bagwell's HR power that, between 1993 and 1994, the fences at the Astrodome were both brought in and lowered in the corners. It didn't produce a similar power explosion in other Astros hitters, so it's probably besides the point, but it might be relevant. In either case, I think he's a better candidate (just by virtue of having been a better player, irrespective of PED issues) than McGwire or Sosa, but clearly all of them are far back of Bonds.

Piazza hit for monster power in the minors and, even before that, was described by the only amateur scout ever to file a report on him thusly: "Large arms and forearms. Big hands. Broad shoulders. Solid long legs. Very young. Still possible growth left." And this was when he was a 6'3" 195 lb. 17-year-old. The same scout said he had above average power potential. He was a lightly-scouted late-round draft pick because, at that point in his career, he was a right-handed-hitting first baseman described in the same scouting report as a poor fielder. Amazin' Avenue did a great post debunking the "power from nowhere" myth about Piazza during the last HoF voting cycle. You can certainly knock his candidacy by pointing out that, after being a poor-fielding first baseman as a kid, he turned out to be a catcher with a poor throwing arm whose value was largely due to his bat, but I don't think there's much reason to believe that he was a PED user. (I'm biased, of course.) I think he will eventually go in; "best hitting catcher of all time" is the kind of distinguisher, like "good as a starter and a reliever" for Smoltz as I mentioned last week, that voters love. (Whether that's really true or not is perhaps open to debate, and I think Yogi Berra and Johnny Bench might have bones to pick with the assertion, but there certainly are people who believe it to be the case.)
 
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Re: MLB 2014: I paid the $20 mil posting fee for the right to start this thread

jmh said:
That's an interesting point about Bagwell's growth of power. On the other hand, he was already hitting for some power and steadily growing in the early years of his career, 15 as a 23-year-old in 1991, 18 as a 24-year-old in 1992, 20 as a 25-year-old in 1993. Obviously 39 the next year is a quantum leap, but not (to me) as suspicious a leap as, say, Brady Anderson hitting 50 that one year in his early 30s when he'd demonstrated nothing like that during his developing years. I also wonder how relevant it is (this is just speculation on my part, so take it for what it's worth) to Bagwell's HR power that, between 1993 and 1994, the fences at the Astrodome were both brought in and lowered in the corners. It didn't produce a similar power explosion in other Astros hitters, so it's probably besides the point, but it might be relevant. In either case, I think he's a better candidate (just by virtue of having been a better player, irrespective of PED issues) than McGwire or Sosa, but clearly all of them are far back of Bonds.
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Keep in mind that the 39 Home Runs wasn't in a full season either. It was in 110 games. Extrapolate that over 162 games, and that's 57 Home Runs. That is only two fewer than he hit in his previous 2700+ ABs, and 725+ Gs. Combined with the change in his physical appearance, and it is very difficult for me to believe that he did it just by "working out." If that was the case, put his trainer in the hall of fame immediately.

Again, I agree with you that he should be in the HOF, but to me McGwire's and Sosa's numbers justify inclusion before Bagwell...albeit not by much.
 
Re: MLB 2014: I paid the $20 mil posting fee for the right to start this thread

Any Blue Jays fans have any idea when single game tickets go on sale? There is nothing on their website, and attemps to email have not been answered.
 
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Re: MLB 2014: I paid the $20 mil posting fee for the right to start this thread

This has to be one of the busiest offseasons in recent memory. I can't even keep up with the moves in the NL West, much less everyone else.
 
Re: MLB 2014: I paid the $20 mil posting fee for the right to start this thread

TOP FINAL #MLB PAYROLL NUMBERS: Dodgers $277,737,082; Yankees $225,653,896; Tigers$187,003,795; Phillies $185,965,235; Red Sox $185,922,329

Weird that the Dodgers have all that TV money and hardly anyone can watch them on TV...
 
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