Rocking the (HOF) Vote with Steve Gietschier

In my second interview of Hall of Fame voting members, I asked friend, fellow SABR member, and former research editor at the Sporting News, Steve Gietschier, to share his votes and thoughts about the Hall of Fame.

Mike Lynch: First of all I want to thank you for taking time to talk to me; I really appreciate it. You voted for Rickey Henderson, Andre Dawson, and Dale Murphy. I think most will agree that Henderson is a first-ballot Hall of Famer, but can you explain why you chose Dawson and Murphy over the others?

Steve Gietschier: Sure. I have said on many occasions that the current ballot, that is, the ballot that I have considered over the past decade or so, is full of a number of candidates who are on the cusp, so to speak. They are neither slam-dunk candidates for induction nor slam-dunk candidates for not being inducted. In this group, I would put such players as Harold Baines, Bert Blyleven, Andre Dawson, Tommy John, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Dave Parker, Tim Raines, Jim Rice, et al. These were all very, very good ballplayers. Honest evaluators can, I think, make a plausible case either for or against any one of them, but getting 75 percent of the voters to agree on their greatness has proven to be impossible, so far.

Of this group, I have consistently voted for Dawson and Murphy. In my mind, they rise above the others for their outstanding offensive and defensive abilities and for the way they comported themselves on and off the field. Dawson’s numbers may be inflated by the years he spent in Wrigley Field, but when he was in Montreal, he was considered one of the best players in the league and a member of a truly outstanding outfield. His showdown with the owners when he signed a blank contract and dared someone to fill it in gives him another few points in my mind.

As for Murphy, I remember watching him when he was a catcher for Richmond. I do not have a scout’s eye, but when I saw him play, I said, “He’s going to be a star.” And he was: a two-time MVP, a player who switched positions successfully, and one whose home run totals (upper 30s when that was a fine total) were consistent year-after-year. Again, while he played, he was considered one of the best.

Having said this, would I argue with anyone who opposed the candidacy of either of these players? No. They are on the cusp. Nor would I argue strenuously with anyone who advanced the candidacy of any of the other players I mentioned above. But reaching that 75 percent standard has proved to be quite a challenge.

In the last two elections, McGwire received just over 23% of the vote and was nowhere near the required 75% to be inducted. Do you think voters are being too harsh on McGwire considering the era in which he played was rife with performance-enhancing drugs and he was just one of many who allegedly used them?

No, I do not think that the voters have been too harsh on McGwire. In fact, I think the voters will be equally circumspect when other such players begin to appear on the ballot. I’m thinking of players like Rafael Palmeiro and even Roger Clemens.

In my view, the BBWAA voters are a rather conservative lot in that, when a new situation arises, they take several years to figure out how to handle it. For example, we (the voters) are still trying to come to grips with how to evaluate closers. Fingers and Eckersley and Sutter and Gossage are now in, but who else will be? Lee Smith? John Franco? Jesse Orosco? Trevor Hoffman, when his turn comes? The voters do not trust the save as a defining statistic, but we have not yet come up with a suitable alternative.

Similarly, I think the voters will proceed slowly when we begin to consider candidates from the steroid era. I’m not saying that none of these guys, users or suspected users, will be inducted. I’m just saying that it will take some time.

I have not voted for McGwire, and I do not plan to do so in the future. He certainly would have helped his case if he had not performed so arrogantly before Congress, but that’s just one aspect of his situation. Forgive me for splitting hairs, but I do not say “I voted AGAINST McGwire.” I prefer to say, “I do not vote FOR McGwire.” There is a difference.

Let’s go back to Henderson for a moment. No player has ever received 100% of the vote—Tom Seaver has come closest at 98.84%, but was left off of five ballots—but I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more than Rickey. He ranks first in runs scored and stolen bases, second in walks, and fourth in games and plate appearances; he’s a 10-time All-Star, an MVP Award winner, a Gold Glove winner, and he played in 14 postseason series and was brilliant in the three World Series in which he played. And few would argue that he was the greatest lead-off hitter who ever lived. But if voting patterns hold true, he won’t get 100% of the vote. Explain to me how some voters can justify leaving him off their ballots. In other words, if one were to argue against Henderson going into the Hall of Fame, what kind of argument could one make?

Well, I voted for Rickey, so I’d have a tough time justifying the opposite position. I guess someone might be turned off by his arrogance and ignorance, but I’d still want him in my lineup. Who knows why anyone would not vote for him? We had a fellow at the Sporting News who was, in his private life, a New York Giants fan. He knew that Willie Mays had not been a unanimous choice, and so he took it upon himself to make sure that no one ever got elected unanimously. He declined to vote for anyone on the first ballot simply for this reason, “If Willie Mays was not unanimous, no one will be unanimous.”

I disagree with that position, but I am a democrat (small “d”), fully approving of the system we have in place. Heck, when Gene Sunnen did a massive poll of SABR members a few years ago trying to identify the top 100 players of all time, several voters left Babe Ruth off their ballots entirely. Go figure.

MLB.com’s Barry Bloom told me his most difficult decision was on Jim Rice. What was your most difficult decision in this year’s vote and why?

I did not have any difficult choices this year. Among the first timers, Henderson stands out, and no one else does. And while I reconsider all the returnees every year, and while I have changed my mind once or twice, I did not feel the need to make any changes this time around. I know that this is Rice’s last time on the ballot, and while I think he is close, I don’t think he is any closer this year than he was last year or the year before. So I cast my ballot relatively easily.

He also said that he held his ballot until the last minute and that he discussed Rice with other voters before making his final decision. Did you discuss your choices or potential choices with any of your colleagues and, if so, were you influenced by any of their opinions?

Well, Barry Bloom is, I think, in a newsroom every day. I am not. The problem with discussing one’s ballot with others is that the ballot arrives well after the end of the season at a time when daily contact among various members of the BBWAA is at a minimum. We do not hold any confabs to go over the ballot name by name.

That being said, I fully believe that there are several voters in the St. Louis chapter who are more knowledgeable about baseball than I am, and we do discuss such things from time to time, not just when we have our ballots in hand, but year round. And I value their counsel. Similarly, once the results are announced each year, several writers around the country discuss their ballots, and I read their opinions, too.

This year, as a fun exercise, I took my blank ballot to one of our SABR chapter’s monthly meetings, and we went over every name. Unfortunately, bad weather held attendance down to eight as opposed to our normal 25-30, so I did not get a good reading of our chapter’s sentiments.

You’ve been voting for the Hall of Fame for 12 years now. Has the information revolution made your job easier or do you find yourself getting bogged down with too much information?

I cast my first vote in December 1996. I voted for Phil Niekro and Tony Perez. Niekro was inducted. Perez got in three years later. One has to be a BBWAA member for ten years before one gets a ballot. In those ten years, one learns an awful lot. I would not say that I get bogged down in information, nor would I say that I voted in ignorance in those early years. I believe that when I cast my first ballot, I did so intelligently.

How about the statistical revolution? Do you still rely on traditional stats to make your selections or have you branched out to include newer measures like Win Shares, VORP (Value Over Replacement Player), WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player), DIPS (Defense Independent Pitching Statistics) or any other sabermetric measure?

I would say that the statistical revolution has influenced how I evaluate players, but that I do not pull every tool out of the sabermetric statistical tool box. Do I value on-base percentage and OPS more than batting average? Yes. Do I value earned run average and WHIP more than wins and losses? Of course. But I think that eligible candidates can rise to the top of the ballot easily without depending on statistical measures, some of them rather subjective, that most fans simply do not understand or accept. I think these newer statistics are quite good when evaluating players in the present, for purposes of trades and signing free agents, etc., but that we do not need Win Shares to tell us that Rickey Henderson was a Hall of Famer.

How do you feel about the job the Veterans Committee is doing?

As you know, the Veterans Committee has been refashioned, what is it, twice in the last few years, and I don’t think I could quote chapter and verse on how the procedure works now. I did not like the old Veterans Committee, the fifteen old codgers who gathered in Florida each winter to trade votes, but at least that procedure was comprehensible. Now the whole thing seems to be muddled. And as you know, we went several years without the Veterans Committee electing anyone. And transparency has gone by the wayside.

There was a time when I kind of agreed with some that a committee of experts should be convened to go over the remaining 19th-century players and the remaining Negro Leagues players once and for all, and then we could close those two books. But the Hall did exactly this with the Negro Leaguers, and look what happened! Similarly, I think a committee of experts could handle the remaining pre-1945 players, but do we really need to do this?

Clearly, the Veterans Committee to induct Joe Gordon is defensible, but its decision to induct such folks as Bowie Kuhn is not. That go-round was shameful, in my opinion.

If you had the power to put one player in the Hall of Fame, regardless of the rules, parameters, or whether or not he’s still eligible, who would it be and why?

I guess I might pick Gil Hodges, one of my “cusp” players who just did not make it. Hodges was a fine player with very good offensive numbers, but more than this, he was a superb defensive first baseman, rivaled only, in my mind, by Keith Hernandez for his grace around the bag. Then, too, Gil went on to become a fine manager and a true leader. What would he have accomplished if he had not succumbed to that heart attack?

Significantly, when Tom Seaver was elected, someone asked him, “If you had your career to do over again, would you do anything differently?” And he answered, “Yes, I would have Gil Hodges live.” What an extraordinary answer.

If there was one player you could remove from the Hall of Fame who would it be and why?

Boy, this subject could tie me in knots for a long time. I know others have taken this question to heart and picked players like Tinker and Bancroft. I could live without either of them in the Hall. But more importantly, I think the Hall should reconsider its approach to executives. Having some of these league presidents and owners and commissioners in the Hall is a simple disgrace. But we can’t undo it.

Thanks, Steve!