A Saber-Slanted Baseball Community

While Barry Larkin and Ron Santo are being deservedly honored for their Hall of Fame careers today, here is a nice article about one of the best players the HOF writers overlooked. The author of the article, Patrick Languzzi, is spearheading the campaign to help get Dwight Evans his rightful place in Cooperstown. Languzzi created his own website, "Call to the Hall," devoted to Evans' HOF candidacy. There is a link to his website in the article and on his website he also has started a petition you can sign to help get "Dewey" on the 2013 Expansion Era HOF ballot. Additionally, here are the links for his website: http://call2thehall.blogspot.com/ and the petition: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/call-to-the-hall-support-dwight-evans-for-mlb-s-hall-o.html

"But with so many deserving candidates on the ballot, it's clear that some players are going to slip through the cracks, especially at the rate that the BBWAA elects candidates (exactly 1.5 per year from 1966-2011). This is unacceptable. " I'd like to respond to this one with a big, resounding NO. It is not clear that anyone deserving is going to slip through the cracks due to the voting threshold. First of all, players stay on the ballot for fifteen years and have a shot at the veterans ballot long after that. That's plenty of time for the HOF-level greats of our era to win a trip to Cooperstown. Second of all, what ever happened to era-by-era comparison? If the run environment jumped during a specific era, then we should be discounting the accomplishments of the great run producers. We should treat pitchers in the opposite manner. Perhaps if it looks like there's a glut of players with Hall of Fame credentials, we should re-examine their credentials, not the voting process.

Joe Posnanski's first class for his alternate Hall of Fame based in Hoboken. He's only inducting people who aren't in Cooperstown for whatever reason.

I'm not linking to this article because it's an argument against Jack Morris' Hall of Fame credentials. I'm linking to it because of the fun way it examines the concept of "Pitcher Of The 80s". One, that's a pretty arbitrary set of years. Two, how many pitchers had their prime seasons exactly line up with Morris'? Three, was Morris REALLY the pitcher of the 80s? Four, what if you adjust the years a bit? Five, what if you compare Morris to pitchers of his age group? Six, well, just read the article. It has a very Bill James style to it, where you can just feel the author playing with the data, coming up with creative ways to re-frame the question, and sharing what he found.