Historical Hall of Fame vote comparisons
From SABR member Dave Allen at Baseball Analysts on January 10, 2012:
For the past two years I have written a post taking a graphical look at Hall of Fame vote histories for players with similar first-year vote totals to players on the current year’s ballot. Here is 2010’s, which includes a description of the graphs, and here is 2011’s. As I said these graphs are not meant as sophisticated projection into the future, but rather just a rough look at historical precedent. Folks like Chris Jaffe of the Hardball Times have a better handle on the dynamics of HoF voting and future ballot composition in order to make better prediction.
This year’s ballot had only one first-year player, Bernie Williams, who broke 5% and will be included on future ballots. Williams got 9.6% of the vote. Here I highlighted the vote trajectories of everyone else who got within 2.5% (7.1% to 12.1%) in their first year on the ballot.
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There are a number of historical players who are not going to be a good guide for Williams’ trajectory; Hall of Fame voting was much different in the past. Carl Hubbell, for example, was on 9.7% of the ballots in 1945, his first year; shot up to 50% in his second year; and by 1947 was inducted with 87%. Williams will not see a similar rise. More recent players in Williams’s pool have fallen below the 5% cut off rather quickly. I left off the names because they would all bunch together but they include: Orel Hershiser, Graig Nettles, Bob Boone, Dave Stewart, Albert Belle, and Pete Rose. It will be interesting to see whether Williams can stick around for years like Don Larsen or fall off quickly like Hershiser and others.
Read the full article here: http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2012/01/historical_hall_1.php
Originally published: January 12, 2012. Last Updated: January 12, 2012.