Well, it’s that time of the year, again. You know what I’m talking about. It’s the time where a bunch of bonehead baseball writers vote for the HOF and screw everything up. I’m not going to bother to talk about Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn, the guys who got in, because there really isn’t anything going on with them. They’re both no-brainers. However, the voting for some of the guys who didn’t get in, specifically Bert Blyleven, Jim Rice, Goose Gossage, and Mark McGwire are more interesting.

I really think it’s a shame that Blyleven isn’t in the Hall of Fame, and the fact that Jim Rice received more votes than him really upsets me. Bert is 5th in career strikeouts, 9th in shutouts, 13th in innings pitched and 26th in wins. If that isn’t enough, his ERA was 18% better than his league (the “great” Nolan Ryan had an ERA only 12% better than his league, and he received over 98% of the vote).

Jim Rice, on the other hand, has got to be one of the most overrated players in the past 50 years and shouldn’t be able to come with in 50 miles of the Hall of Fame. Rice was a bad left fielder who never walked and hit into a ton of twin killings, which is a combination that I hate. For the record, he’s 6th all time in GIDP. Also, he led his league in outs twice. I don’t think the “best hitter of the decade” would lead the league in outs made, let alone do it twice. Rice also had an OPS+ of 128, which is pretty good, even for a LF, but he just didn’t get on base enough and made too many outs.

Goose Gossage has the most blown saves of all time. Yeah, I bet you just learned something new, didn’t you? He also blew 13 saves in one season, the second most ever. Now you’ve learned two things. He’s also not even in the top 50 for save percentage. There’s three. I understand he was pitching two and sometimes even three innings, but so was everyone else in his era, and they weren’t blowing saves like he was. Also, out of the three years he lead the league in saves, at least half of his saves were less than 2 innings. Gossage pitched just under 2,000 innings, had an ERA+ of 128, and had 160 pitching runs. He does get some credit for pitching in high leverage situations, but to me, that just isn’t Hall-worthy.

McGwire’s case is the most interesting, and obviously has the most controversy surrounding it. Steroids: how do we penalize him for this? As of I right now, I’m not sure if I would have voted him in or not, but I’m leaning towards not. Let me just say this: steroids are not some kind of magical potion that gets injected into your ass, and turns you into Mickey Mantle (thought I was going to say Babe Ruth, didn’t you?). You have to have some sort of talent for this stuff to actually give you results. You also just don’t use them and just sit around, and all of a sudden turn into Arnold Schwarzenegger. You still have to work and you still have to possess some sort of talent. If you didn’t, guys like Jason Grimsley and Ryan Franklin would be All-Stars.

Also, when did McGwire start using steroids, and how much did it affect his performances? He probably wouldn’t have had years like ’98 and ’99, but I still think he would have been pretty good. Even before 1996, he was a very good player. Would I vote him in? Probably not. He did break a law and cheat the game. But then again, we don’t know what he was taking, or whether it was outlawed by MLB. It’s definitely isn’t a simple topic, and takes a lot of consideration before you start throwing asterisks around.