Arthur: The changing standards for Hall of Fame induction
From SABR member Robert Arthur at Baseball Prospectus:
Every year, the Hall of Fame vote brings a great deal of vitriol to baseball. With each year’s ballot, we are confronted by the specter of the steroid era, always a sore subject. But even neglecting the steroid era candidates, the BBWAA voters manage to produce a handful of idiotic ballots, defended with harebrained rationales, sometimes leading to obvious omissions.
It would be easy to pin the Hall’s recent mismanagement solely on the steroid issue, but the problems do not stop there. There’s a clear backlog of players that’s been developing for more than ten years, leaving deserving stars (with no steroid evidence against them) like Tim Raines and Curt Schilling on the outside. The situation is especially dire for pitchers, where the voters seem to rely upon outdated benchmarks like 300 wins, which even the best modern pitchers simply cannot hope to reach. This failure is through no fault of their own—pitcher usage patterns and injuries have changed the game. Clinging to the old milestones has the effect of artificially increasing the standards for induction, so that only the most inner-circle, obvious Hall players can make it.
In truth, the Hall’s problems go back a long way. As long as the BBWAA has been voting, the standards for induction seem to have been changing
Read the full article (subscription required): http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=25296
Originally published: January 8, 2015. Last Updated: January 8, 2015.