Jaffe: Golden Era vote shutout is disappointing result for Hall of Fame
From SABR member Jay Jaffe at SI.com on December 9, 2014, with mention of SABR member David Laurila:
Once again, a group of Hall of Fame voters has pitched a shutout. On Monday in San Diego, the results of the Golden Era Committee voting were announced, and none of 10 candidates received the necessary 75 percent of the vote from the 16-member panel of Hall of Fame players and managers, writers and former executives. It’s a frustrating result, particularly given the amount of energy and attention devoted to the process, to say nothing of what it must be like for the former players who weren’t elected during stays on the BBWAA ballot that lasted as long as 15 years, not to mention multiple times in front of various Veterans Committees.
Two candidates, Dick Allen and Tony Oliva, received 11 votes (68.8 percent) apiece, missing by a single vote, while Jim Kaat received 10 votes, Maury Wills nine, and Minnie Minoso eight. The other five candidates — Ken Boyer, Gil Hodges, Bob Howsam (the lone executive of the slate), Billy Pierce and Luis Tiant — received fewer than three votes apiece; the Hall of Fame did not release the exact totals of that group. I won’t rehash the credentials of those players — you can read about them here and here — except to say that via my JAWS process and consideration of the candidates’ historical merit, I concluded that Allen, Boyer, Howsam and Minoso were worthy of votes, though none of them represented the level of glaringly obvious omission from Coooperstown that Ron Santo, who was elected by the Golden Era committee in 2011, did.
Read the full article here: http://www.si.com/mlb/2014/12/08/golden-era-vote-hall-of-fame-shutout
Originally published: December 9, 2014. Last Updated: December 9, 2014.