Griffey gets in easy.

My ballot would also include:

Piazza- for the reasons you mentioned
Jeff Bagwell- Another guy who gets indicted for playing in the steroid era and looking like he might have used steroids.  That shouldn't be enough to keep someone out, and his numbers otherwise warrant induction.
Tim Raines- In an article yesterday, Derrick Goold described Raines as the 2nd best lead-off man of his generation behind the best lead-off man of all-time.  One other stat that Goold noted that I thought was really impressive.  As a lead-off man (particularly one with Raines' speed), Raines' job was to get on base.  Raines did so over 3900 times--more times than Tony Gwynn.  Raines' stolen base success rate (84.6%) is the best in the history of MLB for players with a significant number of steal attempts.  I know he had his issues with cocaine, but the numbers are good enough for me.

From there it gets a bit fuzzy for me.  Hoffman would be the next closest, but I'd want to look more closely at the save totals to see what's there.
 

Last edited by forsberg_us (1/06/2016 10:27 am)

"I like numbers. I like milestones."

Then I offer these (stolen from articles written by Goold and Jayson Stark)

Bagwell:

-  A man who can say that only he and Lou Gehrig ever ripped off 12 straight seasons at first with an adjusted OPS of 130 or better. A man who joins just Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx as the only first basemen in the 400-homer, .400-OBP Club. The only first baseman who has ever entered the 400-homer, 200-steal club. 

Raines: 

- Of the first 18 players to have 2,600 hits and 1,300 walks, 16 are in the Hall. Two are not. Raines and Pete Rose.
-  Raines has four season with at least 50 extra-base hits and 70 or more stolen bases. Four. Henderson and Ty Cobb combined had four. The other 200-plus Hall of Famers combined had … four. He would have a third of them if he were in Cooperstown.
Raines reached base more times (3,977) than Tony Gwynn, Honus Wagner, Lou Brock or Roberto Clemente. He owns the greatest stolen-base success rate (84.7 percent) of all time (among players with 400 or more attempts). He was the only player in history to steal 70-plus bases six seasons in a row (1981-86). He was so talented at reaching base pretty much every way possible, he had a seven-year stretch (1982-88) where he led the NL in walks, singles, doubles andtriples. - 

All those points are valid, but I tend to get lost at ...

"an adjusted OPS of 130 or better"

I honestly don't know what this means. I mean, I know how to calculate OPS, but I don't know what an adjusted OPS is an I have no idea what it means in the context of whether a player has Hall of Fame credentials. Now, if you're on a list with Lou Gehrig because both of you hit 400-plus home runs, that's pretty good. But Dave Kingman is on that list, too, and Dave Kingman isn't a Hall of Famer by anyone's estimation, except maybe Mrs. Kingman's.

Last edited by artie_fufkin (1/06/2016 1:53 pm)

"Sandy Koufax doesn't meet any of the milestone criteria.  But that guy was absolutely dominant during a significant part of his career.  If you can achieve that level of dominance, the milestones, for me, are secondary."

Well, there's that eyeball test old school baseball people like Shaughnessy and Reynolds refer to. If you saw Koufax pitch, you knew he was the goods. And he had post-season success. Guys like Gibby and Dizzy Dean, even though they don't have any of the benchmarks, were dominant pitchers, albeit for shorter periods of time. It's the same argument people here are making for Schilling.
I was in the anti-Sutton camp for the longest time, but over time I've become a little bit more tolerant of the Don Suttons and the Craig Biggios of the world. Three hundred wins is a ton, and something we may never see again. No matter how long it takes to get there. In fact, he probably deserves some consideration for being able to take the ball every fifth day for as long as he did, like Biggio was able to be in the lineup every day long enough to get 3,000 hits.

My problem with Schilling is much like mine with walker.  They were not good enough for engough in a row.

Griffey Jr. and Piazza got the votes.

Bagwell 71.6%, Raines 69.8% and Hoffman 67.3% next closest.

This sort of stupid shit happens every year, but who were the 3 people who didn't vote for Griffey Jr. and how do they keep their voting credentials?

Edmonds got less then 3% of the vote.