IBWAA SELECTS ROY HALLADAY, MARIANO RIVERA IN 2019 HALL OF FAME VOTE

IBWAA SELECTS ROY HALLADAY, MARIANO RIVERA IN 2019 HALL OF FAME VOTE Los Angeles – In its tenth annual Hall of Fame election announced Tuesday, the IBWAA added two players to its digital Hall of Fame. Mariano Rivera was the top vote-getter, with 173 out of 174 ballots cast (99.43%). Roy Halladay received 161 votes (92.53%). A 75% threshold is required for election. Complete election results below.   Barry Bonds (2018), Rogers Clemens (2018), Edgar Martinez (2016) and Mike Mussina (2018) did not appear on the 2019 IBWAA Hall of Fame ballot because they have already been elected in previous years. With those exceptions, the IBWAA ballot was identical to the one used by the BBWAA. All voting is done electronically.   Per a group decision in January, 2014, the IBWAA allows members to vote for up to 15 players, instead of the previous 10, beginning with the 2015 election. In the 2019 election, 62 members voted for 10 or more candidates. Seven members voted for 15 candidates. The average vote per member was 8.25.   Complete voting results are as follows:

Ballot tabulations by Brian Wittig & Associates.   The IBWAA was established July 4, 2009 to organize and promote the growing online baseball media, and to serve as a digital alternative to the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA). Voting for full season awards takes place in September of each year, with selections being announced in November. The IBWAA also holds a Hall of Fame election in December of each year, with results being announced the following January.   In 2010, the IBWAA began voting in its own relief pitcher category, establishing the Rollie Fingers American League Relief Pitcher of the Year and the Hoyt Wilhelm National League Relief Pitcher of the Year Awards. Among others, IBWAA members include Jim Bowden, Pedro Moura, Ken Rosenthal and Eno Sarris, The Athletic; Tim Brown, Yahoo! Sports; Craig Calcaterra, NBC Sports Hardball Talk; Bill Chuck, Billy-Ball.com; Chris De Luca, Chicago Sun-Times; Jon Heyman, Fancred; Tyler Kepner, New York Times; Danny Knobler, Bleacher Report; Kevin Kennedy; Kostya Kennedy, Sports Illustrated; Brian Kenny, MLBN; Will Leitch, New York Magazine; Bruce Markusen, Hardball Times; Ross Newhan; Dayn Perry and Matt Snyder, CBSSports.com; Tom Hoffarth, Los Angeles Times; J.P. Hoornstra Los Angeles Daily News; Tracy Ringolsby, MLB.com; David Schoenfield, ESPN.com; and Bill Arnold.   Association membership is open to any and all Internet baseball writers, with a $75 lifetime fee. Discounts for groups and scholarships are available. Members must be 18 years of age to apply. For more information please visit www.ibwaa.com. Contact:   Howard Cole Founding Director, IBWAA baseballsavvy@aol.com

2019 HALL OF FAME BALLOT

2019 HALL OF FAME BALLOT

INSTRUCTIONS: Please make your selections either by highlighting the names of your choice in yellow, or with a big X, whichever you prefer. A simple list in the body of an email is fine too. Send to Howard Cole, at baseballsavvy@aol.com no later than Monday, December 31, 2018, 9:00 p.m. PST.

Notes: Each name is linked to that particular player's Baseball-Reference.com page. Asterisk (*) for first-time candidates You may vote for up to 15 candidates. 75% required for election. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Edgar Martinez and Mike Mussina have already been honored in previous IBWAA elections, which is why you don’t see their names listed here.

Rick Ankiel*

Jason Bay*

Lance Berkman*

Freddy Garcia*

Jon Garland*

Travis Hafner*

Roy Halladay*

Todd Helton*

Andruw Jones

Jeff Kent

Ted Lilly*

Derek Lowe*

Fred McGriff

Darren Oliver*

Roy Oswalt*

Andy Pettitte*

Juan Pierre*

Placido Polanco*

Manny Ramirez

Mariano Rivera*

Scott Rolen

Curt Schilling

Gary Sheffield

Sammy Sosa

Miguel Tejada*

Omar Vizquel

Billy Wagner

Larry Walker

Vernon Wells*

Kevin Youkilis*

Michael Young*

My 2018 IBWAA Hall of Fame Vote

Patience, Young Grasshopper…

Credit:  AP

I admit that I am the old guy on this site.  I grew up in the era when George Steinbrenner was King.  If you wanted the best baseball player, you went and bought him.  The impulsive side of me loved those days.  Who didn’t want an All-Star at every position?  But there was a price to be paid. 

I loved Billy Martin as Yankees manager.  I was excited with every hiring and devastated with every firing.  Managers, General Managers, and Pitching Coaches seemed to change more often than Lady Gaga’s outfits and hairstyles.  Maybe I’ve always been able to adapt well to change because that was my childhood.  There were no constants in New York other than The Boss ruled supreme. 

I became a Yankees fan on December 31, 1974.  It’s a day that I’ll never forget.  I had grown up rooting for the Oakland A’s and their collection of characters.  My favorite pitcher was Jim “Catfish” Hunter.  The earliest books I remember reading were about baseball.  I think the very first biography I read was about Ty Cobb, but it was a subsequent biography I encountered about the legendary Lou Gehrig that laid the foundation for a lifetime of Pinstripe Passion.  So, it seemed meant to be when Catfish Hunter became a free agent and signed with the Yankees on New Year’s Eve, 1974.  That day, I went with him to New York and I’ve never looked back.

When the Yankees took the field on April 8, 1975, they were my team.  Looking back at the Opening Day lineup, it seems so long ago:

2B-Sandy Alomar

LF-Lou Piniella

CF-Bobby Bonds

RF-Ron Blomberg

3B-Graig Nettles

DH-Ed Herrmann

1B-Chris Chambliss

C-Thurman Munson

SS-Jim Mason

SP-Doc Medich

The Yankees lost that day, 5-3 to the Cleveland Indians.  They finished third for the year with a record of 83-77, 12 games behind the Boston Red Sox.  By the end of the season, Billy Martin had taken over as the Yankees manager (for his first time).  It was a great time to be a Yankees fan and you could sense that something bigger was developing after a decade of apathy under CBS ownership.  By this time, Steinbrenner had owned the Yankees for a couple of years but his influence was starting to grow.  I’ve always loved the quote by then Yankees minority owner (and later Houston Astros owner) John McMullen when he said “There is nothing in life quite so limited as being a limited partner of George Steinbrenner”. 

However, the Yankees desire to field the best collection of players came at a heavy cost.  It was hard to watch a talented young pitcher named Doug Drabek get traded to the Pittsburgh in 1986 (for Rick Rhoden) and later win the NL Cy Young Award for the Pirates.  It was hard to watch young slugger Jay Buhner crush minor league pitching, only to get traded to the Seattle Mariners for a long and productive career (for the forgettable Ken Phelps).   It was hard to watch Fred “Crime Dog” McGriff get traded to the Toronto Blue Jays for a marginal reliever named Dale Murray.  I loved when Al Leiter first came up.  There were growing pains associated with a young starter, but you could tell that he was going to be a good one.  Yet, he ended up getting sent away to Toronto for Jesse Barfield.  Leiter would go on to win three World Series championships with other clubs.

This list goes on and on, but it is very difficult to get excited about young prospects, only to watch them flourish in other organizations. 

I’ve read the blog comments that the Yankees need to get creative.  I couldn’t agree more.  A few years ago, the Boston Red Sox looked like they were saddled with age and bad contracts.  Then, in one trade late in the 2012 season, they eliminated the contracts of Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, and Carl Crawford.  It doesn’t really matter what they got in return.  The trade freed valuable dollars and put the Red Sox on the path they are on today with one of the better teams in baseball.  When they needed a frontline ace (Chris Sale), they traded their best hitting prospect, Yoan Moncada, perhaps the best prospect in all of baseball, and their best pitching prospect, Michael Kopech, who looks to be a future ace.  Time will tell if this move backfires, but they are doing something. 

I want to win now.  But the realist in me recognizes that it is not yet our time.  The moves today must set up the team for success in 2018 and 2019.  There can be no short-sighted moves.  Many teams load up for the chance at single championships.  If the Yankees play their cards right, it could set the team up for another multiple run.  We may never see a run like the 90’s (or 50’s) again, but try telling the New England Patriots that parity has been achieved in the NFL. 

I am in favor of making the necessary (and creative) moves necessary to build sustained success.  But for the quick fix?  Those days are behind me.

The Yankees and the 2017 Hall of Fame Ballot

The 2017 Hall of Fame Ballot has been released and the 2017 IBWAA ballot is now in my mailbox, it's that time of the year ladies and gentleman. Already once we've discussed here on the blog the possibility of certain players like Manny Ramirez and Pudge Rodriguez making the final vote and being inducted into Cooperstown but today we will focus on the Yankees connection to the ballot and see if any of our former heroes will be enshrined forever. Let's take a look.

Roger Clemens
Mike Mussina
Pudge Rodriguez
Tim Raines
Gary Sheffield
Fred McGriff
Jorge Posada
Lee Smith

Yes, Lee Smith spent exactly eight appearances with the Yankees if you didn't know that. It seems unlikely he, Posada, or McGriff (never played for the Yankees officially but was drafted by the team in 1981 and traded in 1982) really have a shot at making the ballot whatsoever in 2017.

Clemens and Pudge likely won't make it due to steroid concerns and questions and the same can likely be said for Gary Sheffield despite an impressive stat line for his career leaving Raines and the Moose.

Raines had 69% of the 75% necessary in 2016 and in the final year of his eligibility I think "Rock" finally makes the ballot which should bring up a whole new set of questions. Raines openly and admittedly used cocaine in the dugout and clubhouse during games, if that's not (A) illegal and (B) performance enhancing than I don't know what is.

The Steroid Era Did These Players No Favors

With another year of Hall of Fame voting behind us and another year to discuss who should be in, who shouldn’t be in, who took what, who should be able to vote, who the judge, jury and executioner should be and who is really being helped and who is being hurt by the whole steroid era ahead of us I wanted to focus on a little something different today. All the talk surround the steroid era and the Hall of Fame is focused on players who got an unfair advantage and “cheated” the sport that cheated them in 1994 with the strike and work stoppage but what about the players that are being cheated by the steroid era? Players like Mike Piazza until recently and a few other standouts from this year’s class that didn’t get in. names like Jeff Kent, Gary Sheffield, Jim Edmonds, Sammy Sosa, Carlos Delgado, Fred McGriff and Larry Walker. What about them? 

Carlos Delgado finished his MLB career with 473 home runs and a .929 OPS but spent just one year on the ballot, not because he was elected in his first year of eligibility but because he didn’t garner 5% of the vote in his first year and will forever be left off the ballot. Fred McGriff on the other hand thankfully garnered his 5% in his first year of eligibility but it still on the outside looking in despite 493 home runs and a career .886 OPS.  

Then you have more current names like Jeff Kent, Jim Edmonds, Gary Sheffield and Larry Walker who all received around 10% of the vote despite stunning numbers in their careers. In Sheffield’s case specifically he was listed on the Mitchell Report explaining the lack of interest in electing him into baseball’s hall of immortality but the rest of the group is still puzzling. Jeff Kent is possibly the best hitting second baseman of all-time but he played in an era where players took steroids and played beside the most notorious suspected steroid user of all in San Francisco, Barry Lamar Bonds.  

Sammy Sosa has 609 career home runs and Rafael Palmeiro had over 500 home runs and 3000 hits, neither are in the hall or on the ballot. Palmeiro failed a drug test and waived his finger in front of Congress, Sosa did not. Sosa did suddenly forget how to speak English but that’s a thing, right? It’s not even important if you used or not anymore, what’s important now to many of these voters (it seems anyway) is when you played. Steroids may or may not have helped these players during their playing career but they damn sure aren’t helping them now, that much is for sure. 

I’ll probably never get a Hall of Fame vote and it’s probably for the best, I am too vocal and too friendly towards the steroid era. I want these players in because I am 100% sure there are players that used steroids before testing was implemented in the mid-2000’s that are still in the Hall. What’s good for one is good for them all and it’s a shame that Delgado, Kent, Sheffield, Palmeiro, Edmonds, Walker and McGriff may never get into the Hall because of the era they played in, not the stats and such that they compiled while playing. 

IBWAA SELECTS KEN GRIFFEY, JR. AND EDGAR MARTINEZ IN 2016 HALL OF FAME VOTE

Los Angeles – In its seventh annual Hall of Fame election, the IBWAA selected Ken Griffey, Jr. unanimously (230 votes) and Edgar Martinez, with 75.22% of the vote (173 votes). A 75% threshold is required for election.

 

Trevor Hoffman finished in third place with 70.87%, followed by Mike Mussina (68.26%), Roger Clemens (66.09%, after receiving 64.76% in 2015) and Barry Bonds (65.65%; 63.44% last year). There are 423 members in the IBWAA; 230 voted in this election.

 

The 2016 IBWAA Hall of Fame ballot compared identically to the BBWAA ballot, with the following exceptions:

 

1. Mike Piazza’s name did not appear on the IBWAA ballot because he was elected by the group in 2013.

 

2. Jeff Bagwell’s name does not appear on the IBWAA ballot because he was elected by the group in 2015.

 

3. Tim Raines’ name does not appear on the IBWAA ballot because he was elected by the group in 2015.

 

Per a group decision in January, 2014, the IBWAA allows members to vote for up to 15 players, instead of the previous 10, beginning with the 2015 election. In the 2016 election, 99 members voted for 10 or more candidates. Twenty-one members voted for 15 candidates. The average vote per member was 8.74.

 

Complete voting results are as follows:

 

Player Name	Votes	Percentage
Ken Griffey, Jr.	230	100.00%
Edgar Martinez	173	75.22%
Trevor Hoffman	163	70.87%
Mike Mussina	157	68.26%
Roger Clemens	152	66.09%
Barry Bonds	151	65.65%
Curt Schilling	147	63.91%
Alan Trammell	135	58.70%
Larry Walker	104	45.22%
Fred McGriff	83	36.09%
Mark McGwire	83	36.09%
Jeff Kent	78	33.91%
Lee Smith	75	32.61%
Gary Sheffield	74	32.17%
Billy Wagner	71	30.87%
Sammy Sosa	57	24.78%
Jim Edmonds	50	21.74%
Nomar Garciaparra	14	6.09%
Mike Hampton	3	1.30%
Mike Lowell	2	0.87%
Troy Glaus	2	0.87%
David Eckstein	1	0.43%
Garret Anderson	1	0.43%
Jason Kendall	1	0.43%
Luis Castillo	1	0.43%
Mark Grudzielanek	1	0.43%
Mike Sweeney	1	0.43%
Brad Ausmus	0	0.00%
Randy Winn	0	0.00%

 

Ballot tabulations by Brian Wittig & Associates.

 

The IBWAA was established July 4, 2009 to organize and promote the growing online baseball media, and to serve as a digital alternative to the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA). Voting for full season awards takes place in September of each year, with selections being announced in November. The IBWAA also holds a Hall of Fame election in December of each year, with results being announced the following January.

 

In 2010, the IBWAA began voting in its own relief pitcher category, establishing the Rollie Fingers American League Relief Pitcher of the Year and the Hoyt Wilhelm National League Relief Pitcher of the Year Awards.

Among approximately 400 others, IBWAA members include Jim Bowden, Jim Caple, David Schoenfield and Mark A. Simon of ESPN.com; Tim Brown, Yahoo! Sports; Craig Calcaterra, NBC Sports Hardball Talk; Bill Chuck, GammonsDaily.com; Derrick Goold, St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Danny Knobler, Bleacher Report; Kevin Kennedy; Kostya Kennedy, Sports Illustrated; Will Leitch, Sports on Earth; Bruce Markusen, Hardball Times; Ross Newhan; Dayn Perry and Matt Snyder, CBSSports.com; Tom Hoffarth and J.P. Hoornstra Los Angeles Daily News; Pedro Moura, Orange County Register; Tracy Ringolsby, MLB.com; Ken Rosenthal, FoxSports.com; Eno Sarris, FanGraphs; Dan Schlossberg, USA Today; Jesse Spector, Sporting News and Wendy Thurm.

 

Association membership is open to any and all Internet baseball writers, with a yearly fee of $20, or $35 lifetime. Discounts for groups and scholarships are available. Members must be 18 years of age to apply.

For more information please visit www.ibwaa.com.

Contact:

 

Howard Cole
Founding Director, IBWAAbaseballsavvy@aol.com