A Re-Focused Blog

Never let it be said that I can't take coaching.

One of the criticisms leveled at this site, and therefore at me, has been that many of the posts focus on some relatively esoteric aspects of the BBWAA's various voting failures. Aren't there more important things to write about, the criticism goes, than whether or not Phil Rogers casts a couple of biased votes at the bottom of an otherwise strong Hall of Fame ballot?

Well in retrospect, yes, there are. I have been trying to demonstrate in this site's first few months that the BBWAA's failures as so numerous that they run the full gamut of impact, from the obviously egregious (Alan Trammell losing the 1987 MVP award; Ron Santo's exclusion from the Hall of Fame) to the nuanced (Gerry Fraley's pitiful list of absent Hall of Famers). Their failures, in other words, aren’t limited to the occasional mishap, but are rather of a systemic nature, impacting an enormous percentage of baseball’s year- and career-end honors. I will continue my effort to make that issue clear, and can’t promise that I won’t still post about some comparatively obscure issue from time to time.

That said, I don’t want to dwell upon every single questionable BBWAA vote. Did Bruce Sutter get a Cy Young Award in 1979 when Phil Niekro probably had a better year? Yeah, I think so. But Sutter was awfully good that year, there was no slam dunk, Cy-worthy season by any other pitcher, and Niekro pitched for an atrocious team and lost twenty games, so you won’t find me tilting at that particular windmill.

Instead, I will make every effort in the future to focus on those voting results that clearly represent failures of the process. Pete Vuckovich’s 1982 Cy Young Award is a good example. I don’t think many people would have had much problem with that award going to Bill Caudill or Dave Stieb or Dan Quisenberry or Rick Sutcliffe or a few other pitchers who turned in solid performances that year. The problem arose because one subset of the BBWAA labeled Pete Vuckovich the best pitcher in the league, over a couple of dozen pitchers who were demonstrably better, while another subset decided that Vuckovich wasn’t even the most valuable pitcher on his team. That kind of result is the hallmark of a horribly broken process, and will continue to get my attention.

Moving forward, I will also make every effort to be clear that I believe there is room for differing opinions in the debate. I have never meant to imply that the views I express here are absolutes, and any BBWAA result that runs counter to them must therefore be in error. Reasonable, intelligent people often come to perfectly acceptable opposing conclusions. As long as the reasons for the difference are explained, particularly when it’s clear that genuine effort is put into the process, you won’t see me complaining. For instance, I will not criticize Jayson Stark or Joe Posnanski on this site, despite the fact that I don’t agree with some of their Hall of Fame ballot choices. Both men demonstrate obvious passion for the game, its history and the awards process, while also making it clear that they are open to both differing opinions and alternate methods of evaluating players. In short, they take their voting responsibilities seriously, and therefore I won’t haggle with the ultimate results of their efforts.

Now, whether or not “effort” was put in by the guys who decided Bartolo Colon was the best pitcher in the American League in 2005, that’s a different story…