[Johnny Slick]

Originally Posted by Luis_Rivera

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.

1. Selectively picking out the worst of the worst doesn't leave one with a good picture of the whole, which is that most of the time the sportswriters do a pretty good job of picking the best pitcher and most valuable player in the leagues. Obviously, they're far from perfect, and IMO I could do better - you could too, I'm sure - but they're not horrendous by any means.

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.

But he's not being faulted. It's just that, if you're going to make a merit-based argument, you need to compare him to guys who are in based solely on their merit. Whitey Ford is not. Whitey is in the Hall in large part because he won a lot of pennants with the Yankees.

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?

Not necessarily, no. I'm one of those Philistines who think that Tinker, Evers, and Chance are bona fide Hall of Famers, but I also think it's disingenuous to mount a campaign for, say, Carlos Guillen just because he's a better hitter than Tinker (against his era or any other way you want to put it).

Uhh... he is.

Yes, but if you make a retarded argument comparing him against Jackie Robinson (not saying you're doing it, but you are IMO doing the equivalent with Whitey Ford).

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.

No, they are not. However, both are in the Hall primarily for fame-based reasons, not merit-based ones. (As it stands, Jackie Robinson was an extremely good player, too; so was Whitey Ford.)

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.

It's merely an extension of the "screw fame! Fame is for sportswriters and other idiots! Let's pretend the Hall is a collection of grand statistics" argument.

And btw, it is quite a bit more analagous than you realize. Addie Joss is in the Hall because of his really, really low ERA and the fact that his career was cut short by tuberculosis. Those are not merit-based reasons (you could make an argument about the ERA, but not a very good one; his career was, after all, extremely short).