Things Seem To Be Changing.

       I am not a small hall guy, you know they type that thinks Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle should be the line at which the standard is drawn.  Nor am I an open the doors and let 'em in type - I mean, I understand why they let Harold Baines in the Hall but that they did it before they considered the likes of Dale Murphy (still out) and Dick Allen (they came around last year) is insane. This is not a knock on Baines who seems like a nice guy and was a great hitter for a long time but I think there is an invisible line of the top 2% or so of players who should make the hall of fame and ol' Harry just doesn't quite make it - nor does someone like Vada Pinson or Rusty Staub who have always in my mind been just below that line (though neither of them would embarrass the hall either). 

All that hall rhetoric aside, I do like who got into Cooperstown this time around and they seem like players that a while ago would have taken longer to get in. Of course, I also have personal individual grudges against all these players as well, which I will lay out in excruciating detail. 


Carlos Beltran got 358 of 425 votes, 84.2% on his 4th time on the ballot. 

Will he go in as a Met or a Royal?

 

 

 

 When Beltran first appeared on the ballot, I looked at his career numbers, having not followed him much after the Mets traded him for Zack Wheeler (which is an angry rant for another time), and I realized he was very much in line statistically with players like Andre Dawson and Billy Williams.  Low and behold, when I looked at the baseball reference comparisons, they were all each others top two. So Beltran finished with very impressive stats indeed and certainly deserves enshrinement and got in faster than either Dawson or Williams did.  

This was a LOT of uni changes at the end of his career.

 

 

      Ah, but there was a big shadow cast over his election and that was in his involvement with the 2017 Astros and their trash can scandal.  I have already gone into this nonsense in great detail before and obviously I do not hold that against him (even if the Mets did).  No, I will never forgive him for not swinging at strike three in the bottom of the ninth in game seven of the 2006 NLCS.  People say that Adam Wainwright offering was a perfect pitch and would have frozen Ted Williams.  I say the bases were loaded and he should have been looking curve and could have protected the plate and fouled it off.  I am not a hitting coach but I also stand by my statement. Twenty years later it still gets to me. 

 

Andruw Jones got 333 of 425 votes, 78.4% of the vote in his 9th time on the ballot.

I should make this page all fielding photos.

 

 

      Jones was a transcendent defender from the moment he came up as a 19 year old in 1996 (winning nine Gold Gloves overall) and eventually became one of the most dangerous hitters around and even had what a could have been an MVP in 2005 with great numbers like 51 homers and 126 RBI for a division winner, except Albert Pujols was in the middle of being Albert Pujols so that didn't happen. I watched him kill the Mets 19 times a year with spectacular catches in center and timely hits at the plate so while I respected the other Jones in Atlanta's lineup, I so so hated him as well (though not as much as the other one and now they live together side by side forever in my hall of fame binders). My real issue with his election is not the player but the logic; if Anduw Jones is a hall of famer, why isn't Keith Hernandez?  Keith was also a transcendent defender for a couple of Series winners, who won an MVP (and also finished his career less than heroically just as Jones did).  I cannot figure out why the old-time committee or whatever they call it now hasn't gotten around to him yet.  Is it the cocaine? It might be the cocaine. But with Dave Parker finally making it in, I hope they elect Keith before he drops dead. 

Jeff Kent was elected by the Contemporary Baseball Era committee (that's what they are calling it now) back in December over such names as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens (PED shame holdovers) the aforementioned Dale Murphy and Don Mattingly (Keith Hernandez wasn't even on the ballot and that makes ZERO sense if Don Mattingly is). 

Only the Indians are not represented here.

 

 

 

     Jeff Kent was a great "have bat will travel" kind of player; one that is much more common in the modern era with free agency and later deadline trades. It also helped that he played at the usually light hitting second base. His plaque will have tiny letters to fit in all the teams he played for (Toronto Blue Jays (1992) New York Mets (1992–1996) Cleveland Indians (1996) San Francisco Giants (1997–2002) Houston Astros (2003–2004) Los Angeles Dodgers (2005-2008). The reason he didn't stay in any one place for too long his because he was a renowned red-ass who rubbed teammates and opponents alike the wrong way.  I always liked that he used this evil against Barry Bonds, to the point that he won an MVP in 2000 over him when Barry had superior numbers.  My real issue with Kent is that when he wore out his welcome with the Mets, they traded him for the corpse of Carlos Baerga who forgot how to hit the moment he put on the blue and orange (he is not the only one). They probably could or should have gotten more for him, I mean the Indians flipped him a year later for Matt Williams.

     So you might ask why if I don't post on the blog much anymore do I seem to almost always write about the hall of fame inductions.  It is not because of tradition or even because I hold such deep opinions about the hall, it is because I always move the players from my "retired" binders to the "hall of fame" binders right after the votes are announced so they are out and about and it is easy to scan them together. Convenience? Laziness?  Now those are the American Pastime if ever there was one.