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Originally Posted by Johnny Slick
This is going to sound fantastically un-Slicklike and ria-esque even but I'm not sure that it's constructive to just call the sportswriters "idiots" because their job is to cover a different aspect of the game than you do. We're all really big into economic models of sports. That's fine. Many people are into the heart and soul and emotion and the rah-rah of it. To say that those people should be silenced because they don't subscribe to your worldview is rather pigheaded, if you ask me. Rather like... well, rather like the way that they flat-out refused to listen to statheads for so many years.
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Sure, "idiots" may be a bit of a stretch. How's "ignorant" suit you? Many of the awards they have given and players (Rafael Palmeiro's GG in '99, Pete Vuckovich winning the Cy in '82, and the list goes on...) they have left out of the HoF (Bert Blyleven, Ron Santo), would point to some sort of collective ignorance among the BBWAA.
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You're looking at rate stats, but rate stats have nothing to do with why he's in the Hall. He's in the Hall because he won a lot of pennants for the Yankees in the 50s and early 60s.
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Well, if Moose pitched for the 1950's Yankees in lieu of Ford, in all likelihood, he would have led them to the same pennants. Why should a pitcher be faulted for not pitching on great teams? It's not Mussina's fault that the second best pitcher he pitched with on the Orioles was a mid-30's Jimmy Key.
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If your case for Moose in the Hall is that he's statistically better than Ford, you have a weak case.
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Well, my case for Moose is that he's statistically better than the standard. But, to illustrate that I used Ford since you pointed out that they pitched in a similar amount of games. So, if a pitcher performs better than another (who is deserving for the hall) in a similar amount of time, wouldn't that make him deserving as well no matter how many pennant winning teams he happened to pitch on?
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You may as well argue that Ron Santo is deserving
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Uhh... he is.
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because he hit more homeruns than Jackie Robinson
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Not even the same primary position. Give me some credit. And if you're trying to draw a parallel between Ford and Robinson for their unquantifiable qualities, I don't think I have to point out that they're not not in the same league in that respect.
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or Jim Kaat should go in because he had more Runs Prevented than Addie Joss.
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Are you kidding me? This is far from an analogous situation to comparing Ford and Moose. Jim Kaat was a good pitcher but far from HoF quality. Again, this is an asinine point, give me some credit.