Studeman: Time to push the reset button on Hall of Fame voting
From SABR member Dave Studeman at Baseball Prospectus on January 8, 2013:
I grew to love baseball through the Hall of Fame, and I’ll bet there are many others like me. Its success is vitally important to the success of the game itself. But its decision-making roots are broken.
Truth is, there have been issues with the voting process for a long time. The New York Times, Washington Post and Baltimore Sun don’t allow their baseball writers to participate in the process, given the conflict of interest between writers objectively covering a player while also voting on his worthiness of the most prestigious award in the game. There areseveral other issues with the body electorate; I won’t go into those today. Read the link.
Clearly, the steroids controversy has broken the process altogether. Peter Gammons did a nice job of summing up the current state of affairs, and I don’t want to waste more pixels on the subject. Read the link.
I want to propose some ways to fix this rotten thing, because we must fix it. I’m not going to pretend that these are the best ideas available. I just want to get a serious conversation started here. I’m hoping that, in some small way, we can contribute to a consensus that things need changing right away.
I’ve got three broad approaches to put on the table:
1. Create guidelines for resolving issues that arise from the PEDs era.
2. Make small changes to the process.
3. Make great big changes to the process.Let’s discuss.
Read the full article here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=19323
Originally published: January 8, 2013. Last Updated: January 8, 2013.