The 2020 Hall of Fame results came out today, which is exciting if you’re the type of fan who gets excited about that. I personally don’t care much, not because I think the Hall of Fame’s been discredited or some high-minded nonsense like that, but because these aren’t players I have a personal emotional connection to. Of the players eligible this year, only Adam Dunn and Alfonso Soriano ever played for the Nats, and while I’ve got lots of fond memories of both players I’m also aware that neither of them had any sort of Hall of Fame case (although I’m glad that they each got at least one vote). I’ll start feeling differently when Max Scherzer and the rest of the 2012-19 Nats start hitting the ballot and I’ll have someone I actually care about to push for. And yet, because I am a bottomless well of takes about things I don’t actually care about, I’ve got takes about today’s results.
Derek Jeter made the Hall of Fame, like everybody knew he would. Jeter came up just as all the New York sportswriters who had childhood memories of Mickey Mantle entered their writing primes. These sportswriters desperately wanted to believe that baseball was still capable of producing the mythic heroes of their youth — mythic heroes that were gods moreso than they were humans. Of course, the players of these sportswriters’ youth had this mythos form around them because of a press that kept their human foibles from public view, and these sportswriters largely gave Jeter that same treatment; Jeter never shared, the press didn’t ask. The result was a public image of Jeter as a legend on the field and a cipher off of it. And some of us got kind of tired of the myth-making surrounding this one player. For one thing, it reeked of nostalgia for an era that was itself a forgery. For another thing, Jeter, while excellent, wasn’t a player who deserved to be on the Mount Rushmore of baseball. His 119 career wRC+ ranks 279th all time (min. 5000 PA), between Hideki Matsui and Evan Longoria. His defense as a shortstop was subpar for large stretches of his career. These things don’t make him any less of a Hall of Famer; he’s comfortably there on merit, with his 3,465 hits, his .310 career lifetime average, and his 73.1 career fWAR. But the narrative around him always felt so trumped up, so artificial, and so New York-centric (Chipper Jones, statistically, had a better career than Jeter, but he played in Atlanta so there wasn’t a ton of outrage when 12 people didn’t vote for him) that all these calls for him to be unanimous — that he was such an inner-sanctum guy that no one could possibly make an argument against him — got to be insanely annoying. Thankfully, a hero emerged; one lonely person, as yet unnamed, voted against Derek Jeter for the Hall of Fame.
Larry Walker also got in, making it just over the 75% threshold in his 10th year on the ballot. There’s no statistical case against Walker — he had the peak, won an MVP, was very good for a long time, finished with more bWAR than Jeter. I personally didn’t really care about him when he was a player because he generally played for lousy and irrelevant teams, which is not his fault. I got a little irritated when Expos fetishists online took up Walker’s cause, and I always get a little annoyed when statistical consensus anoints a player and everyone determines that it would be a miscarriage of justice if that player didn’t make the Hall, but Walker certainly had the numbers and I’ve got no problem with him getting in.
Curt Schilling did not make it. Neither did Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens. You obviously know that none of these omissions had to do with statistics. I don’t know what I would do if I had the vote. I’ve never made up my mind one way or the other on whether steroid guys should be in the Hall. On the one hand, Bonds and Clemens are integral parts of the game of baseball and if the purpose of a Hall of Fame is to tell the story of baseball it’s gonna be incomplete without them in it. On the other hand, the result of their actions was one of the biggest legitimacy crises baseball has faced in its history. There’s a very reasonable argument to be made that if your actions shake the sport to its core like that, then you should not be memorialized in the Hall of Fame. The sign stealing scandal has convinced me more of the latter position. I see the argument as less about the “character clause” and more about the fact that, on net, Bonds and Clemens probably did more harm to the game than they did good. This is probably an unfair standard to judge them on, because there were lots of players before them who did steroids but whose steroid use didn’t cause as much public damage, either because they weren’t as good or because their steroid use came before fans decided they had a problem with it (see McGwire and Sosa). But I think it makes sense.
On Schilling and the “character clause”; Curt Schilling is a noxious, disgusting human being, who uses his platform to espouse unconscionable views and advocate for white nationalism and harm to journalists. But Bonds has serious allegations of domestic abuse against him, and Clemens was accused of statutory rape of a 15 year old girl. I think you can thread the needle there and say Schilling’s views are disqualifying because he would use the platform given by a Hall induction to espouse them, while Bonds and Clemens would not. But that’s not a line I’m willing to draw, and I’m certainly not willing to say that Schilling’s actions are more deplorable than Bonds’ or Clemens’. I think I would lean towards allowing the scoundrels whose actions didn’t constitute Crimes Against Baseball in, although you could certainly argue that Schilling’s odious public presence hurts public perception of baseball. I think on principle I would have to let Schilling in. On the other hand, him getting in would give him a platform for his bullshit (possibly in his induction speech), and if I had the vote, I don’t think I would feel comfortable playing a role in making that happen. So I think it would be a no for me on all three, although I’ll cop to being a hypocrite on Schilling.
So there you have it; I just ranted for 1,100 words on a subject I admitted I don’t care very much about. I’m lots of fun at parties.
Serious Jammage 