Murray Chass and the writing he posts on his non-blog hasn't really been covered by me of late. He's usually at his best (worst) when it comes time for awards season, because that's when he takes his boring and repetitious stabs at criticizing Sabermetrics. He specifically doesn't like WAR, not because he understands WAR, but because it is the easiest metric to spell. Simplicity in all things. WAR is the most popular advanced statistic for the anti-stats crowd to criticize, just because it's easy to spell and sticks in one's mind. Murray writes on his non-blog about how Bryce Harper and Mike Trout are not MVP candidates as much anymore because their team may not make the playoffs. Murray wants to be clear that he understands a team's record and whether that team makes the playoffs isn't what determines which player(s) should win the MVP. That's not what Murray is saying. What he is saying is that he won't vote for a player as MVP if his team doesn't make the playoffs, because he can't be individually valuable if the players around him aren't good enough to make the playoffs. So the MVP can go to a player whose team doesn't make the playoffs, except not really. As always, Murray explains his idiotic point of view in the most aggravating way possible.
At some relatively early point in the season some people were already
proclaiming Bryce Harper and Mike Trout this year’s most valuable
players.
Yes, "people" were doing this. "People" always do this, especially when referenced in such a vague manner.
Send the plaques to the engraver, etch their names on them and just wait for an appropriate moment to put them in their hands.
That appropriate moment being when that appropriate moment always happens, which is after the season is over.
One minor problem. Four weeks remain in the season, and no votes have been cast. The voters haven’t even received their ballots.
What? So "people" are going to have stop handing the MVP awards to Harper and Trout. Stop that, "people" who are doing this! Stop right now. Murray will further explain why you must immediately stop or face the wrath of bacne accusations from Murray on this here non-blog.
Both Trout and Harper have encountered potholes en route to their anticipated awards.
Both have been only slightly worse at hitting the baseball in the second half of the season (or were when Murray wrote this), and therefore even though they are still hitting the hell out of the ball Murray is going to use this as an excuse to say neither player should be MVP? Is that the pothole?
Their teams, contenders earlier in the season, have fallen by the wayside.
Individual awards presented to a player based on his team's achievement. It's a shining day for those who seem to think individual athletes should be rewarded based on the team around him. I am not one of those people.
The Angels were in first place in the A.L. West at the All-Star
break, but they lost 27 of 41 games before Sunday and fell 5 ½ games
from the division lead and 3 ½ games off the second wild-card spot.
The Nationals were also in first place at the All-Star break in the
N.L. East, but a subsequent 20-26 stretch left them in second place
fighting for their post-season lives as the Mets barreled past them with
a rejuvenated offensive onslaught.
And obviously, because the Mets are a better overall team than the Nationals then this means Bryce Harper is less valuable. The Nationals team moves down in the standings, but this is really just a reflection on one person's ability to be valuable. Harper is the constant for the Nationals, but his value is determined by the variables around him. Makes sense in Murray's head.
What does their teams’ status have to do with their candidacy for the most valuable player award?
Not as much as Murray seems to think it should. I won't completely dismiss a team's record when evaluating a player's MVP candidacy, but it's pretty far down the list of things I believe should be considered when evaluating a specific player.
Voters generally focus on the word “value,” which is what they should do
no matter what the analytics-obsessed non-voters think and say.
I don't think analytics-obsessed non-voters fail to focus on the word "value" at all. Some people simply have a different method they use to evaluate a player's value. That's all. Murray wants to frame this as a "right or wrong" argument, but it's more of an argument over the best way to evaluate a player's value to his team.
These relatively new-to-the-party noisemakers fail to understand the
award’s meaning. They cite their WAR rankings – that would be wins above
replacement for the ignorant and unwashed among you – and proclaim the
player with the highest WAR ranking most valuable.
Murray is always using WAR. It's easy to write, that's why. I don't know if anyone just looks at WAR and then ends the discussion there. Murray wants to believe this is true so he can portray those who use WAR as a way to evaluate an MVP candidate as being narrow-minded and not thoughtful. In reality, Murray is the narrow-minded and not thoughtful person when tying a team's record to a member of that team's MVP candidacy.
The player’s value to his team doesn’t seem to have a bearing on his
selection. In other words, they are choosing the player they think is
the best in the league, not the most valuable.
What is the difference in "best" and "most valuable" though? Isn't a player who contributes the most Wins Above Replacement the "most valuable" player because he contributes the most wins compared to a replacement player? I'm playing devil's advocate in part, but a player who brings the most wins compared to other players in the majors is certainly also most valuable. It's not that anyone who disagrees with Murray is wrong, as he insists they are, it's is simply that those who are new-to-the-party use a different method of determining the best in the league.
That’s what is good about the Baseball Writers Association award. They require the voters to think, perhaps to debate.
If thinking were really required then I would have to think many of these voters would understand it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to base a significant part of a player's MVP candidacy on where that player's team is in the playoff standings. The whole "If he was so good then why didn't his team make the playoffs?" line of reasoning is such a shockingly lazy way of voting for MVP. Yet, that's the reasoning given by Murray and other voters when explaining why they didn't vote for a certain player. It's so lazy.
WAR doesn’t require thinking, as far as I know.
It doesn't require thinking? Then calculate Bryce Harper's WAR right now. Go for it.
WAR is a statistic, which after being calculated, speaks for itself. This is much like where a player's team is in the standings doesn't require thinking either. How WAR combines with other factors that determine a player's MVP worthiness is a matter of debate and thought.
If I’m wrong, I’m sure someone will tell me.
Murray says this as if it is ridiculous someone would correct him when he's wrong. Yes, God forbid someone should tell Murray when he's disseminating misleading or incorrect information. It just shows how these Stats Geeks love to be right that they won't allow Murray to unfairly criticize and mock advanced statistics without them pointing out the factual inaccuracies in his arguments. How silly of them to expect Murray to be honest and informed.
I recall the BBWAA selection of Justin Morneau as A.L. MVP in 2006. The
metrics monster attacked the choice as if it were a violation of one of
the 10 Commandments. They brought out their rankings and proudly and
boastfully showed why Morneau should not have received the award. Again,
they failed to consider Morneau’s value to the Twins, counting only his
value to their WAR rankings.
If I remember correctly, the argument was being made that Justin Morneau may not have been even the MVP of his own team. Joe Mauer hit .347/.429/.507 that season while playing the position of catcher, while Morneau hit more dingerz but hit .321/.375/.559 while playing first base. Yes, Mauer had a higher WAR then Morneau that season, but Morneau's selection as AL MVP was questioned in that he may not have even been the most valuable player on his own team, much less the most valuable American League player.
If their teams don’t make the playoffs, it could undermine their chances
for MVP. I’m not saying a player’s team has to reach the post-season,
but if, say, the Angels fall short, how valuable was Trout?
Murray isn't saying a player's team has to reach the postseason, but if a player's team doesn't reach the postseason then how could he be valuable? That's his point apparently. So it's not required for a player's team to make the playoffs, except it sort of is. And to expect a player to singlehandedly drag his team to the playoffs is unrealistic. Trout can still be the most valuable player in the American League if the team around him just isn't very good.
That would especially be the case if a playoff team had a player who was
valuable in helping his team get to the playoffs. I’ll get to those
players after looking at another element of the award that outsiders
don’t understand.
Yes, those things "outsiders" don't understand. Murray wrote about sports for a living a decade ago and those people who love baseball don't understand those things that Murray understands. It's fun how Murray brags about the BBWAA voters being open-minded and up for a debate, while using closed-minded and narrow reasoning for why he personally understands the debate better than those without a vote understand the debate.
Both Goldschmidt, Arizona’s first baseman, and Arenado, Colorado’s third baseman, are having terrific seasons, but MVP?
If they are the most valuable player in the National League, regardless of how good their teams are, then they should be considered for NL MVP.
The Diamondbacks started Sunday tied for third in the N.L. West. The
Rockies were in last place in the division, both with losing records. As
good as Goldschmidt and Arenado have been, what have they done that is
so valuable? Maybe the Rockies could have lost a few more games than the
79 they have already lost.
Probably the same thing Josh Donaldson has done to make himself so valuable. They are good players who put up great statistics, except Paul Goldschmidt doesn't have David Price, Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Bautista and and Russell Martin on his team. Here's a question for Murray. If Josh Donaldson put up the exact same numbers, but played for the Diamondbacks, does he believe the Diamondbacks would then make the playoffs while the Blue Jays with Goldschmidt would miss the playoffs? If he does, he is stupid because that's ridiculous, and if he doesn't, then how does it make sense for Donaldson to be suddenly less valuable because he plays for a Diamondbacks team that stinks?
Once more these analysts, whether or not they realized it, were mistaking “best” for “most valuable.”
Once more Murray Chass, whether he realizes it or not, doesn't understand that the argument is over how to evaluate what makes a player so valuable.
Despite the Nationals’ effort to undermine Harper’s chances, they
have been in post-season contention and continue to be even if they have
been shoved to the fringe, and Harper has been the primary reason.
He leads the league in batting average (.337), on-base (.469) and
slugging (.647) percentages and runs scored (100), is second in walks
(106) and total bases (280) and is third in home runs (33) and
extra-base hits (67).
And so, if Harper puts up those numbers with the Blue Jays then he is an MVP candidate. Same numbers, different team. All of a sudden Harper is more valuable because his teammates are more talented. My point is this doesn't make sense to judge Harper on his team's ability to win games. Sure, factor it in a small amount, but don't dismiss his candidacy because the Nationals are better at talking about how good they are at winning games than they are at actually winning games.
Some other names to consider for the N.L. award, though no likely winner in the bunch:
Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant of the Cubs, Matt Carpenter and Jason
Heyward of the Cardinals, Curtis Granderson of the Mets, Adrian Gonzalez
of the Dodgers and Buster Posey of the Giants.
Harper's numbers are below. Here are other candidates for MVP (and their stats around the time Murray wrote this post) who play for winning teams and therefore are more valuable than Harper:
Harper: .337/.469/.647, 100 runs, 106 walks, 280 total bases, 33 home runs, 67 extra base hits.
Rizzo: .276/.386/.516, 84 runs, 71 walks, 271 total bases, 29 home runs, 65 extra base hits.
Bryant: .270/.364/.486, 79 runs, 68 walks, 243 total bases, 24 home runs, 55 extra base hits.
Carpenter: .261/.360/.468, 85 runs, 77 walks, 242 total bases, 22 home runs, 61 extra base hits.
Heyward: .293/.355/.466, 72 runs, 47 walks, 222 total bases, 12 home runs, 48 extra base hits.
Granderson: .259/.366/.454, 88 runs, 85 walks, 240 total bases, 23 home runs, 55 extra base hits.
Gonzalez: .280/.356/.493, 73 runs, 58 walks, 259 total bases, 27 home runs, 58 extra base hits.
Posey: .328/.392/.487, 70 runs, 54 walks, 245 total bases, 18 home runs, 44 extra base hits.
Notice something? I do. Bryce Harper is better than every one of these other MVP candidates in every single category Murray listed. Not one of these other candidates beats Harper in any category, except one, and that category is "Will his team make the playoffs?" So obviously, (notice two teams have multiple players on this list as "most valuable") Bryce Harper isn't as valuable as these other players. After all, how could Anthony Rizzo benefit from having Kris Bryant in the lineup with him everyday? Inconceivable. So yeah, Harper should be the NL MVP.
And then there’s Andrew McCutchen of the Pirates, the 2013 MVP. He
started the season at a standstill, batting .194 in April with .302
on-base and .333 slugging percentages. However, he proceeded to fuel the
Pirates third consecutive wild-card bid, culminating in his N.L.
player-of-the-month August in which he batted .348 with .470 on-base and
.609 slugging percentages.
A similar September with the Pirates clinching a post-season spot
could make McCutchen a formidable challenger to Harper if Harper is
unable to spark the Nationals into the post-season.
McCutchen: .298/.397/.502, 86 runs, 80 walks, 258 total bases, 22 home runs, 58 extra base hits.
Murray can hide behind the fact these other players are just as qualified, but it simply isn't true. The only difference in the MVP candidacy of Harper and these other 8 players is Harper's team isn't going to make the playoffs, so that makes him "less valuable" despite his performance exceeding the performance of every other serious NL MVP candidate.
With Trout sinking slowly – or rapidly with the Angels in the West – the
A.L. MVP award should go to Josh Donaldson, the Toronto third baseman,
however the Blue Jays get to the playoffs.
Donaldson has had a lot of help from Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista
– and I’ve always felt that the more good players a team has the less
valuable each one is – but Donaldson has been too overwhelming to
ignore. He plays a pretty good third base, too.
Murray has always felt the more good players a team has the less valuable each one is, but he's going to totally ignore his own beliefs in favor of the belief that no player whose team isn't going to make the playoffs should win the MVP. It seems Murray only has one belief, no matter how much he denies it, and that belief is a player can't win the MVP award if his team isn't going to make the playoffs.
Acquired from Oakland last November for Brett Lawrie in what has to
be one of Billy Beane’s worst trades, Donaldson leads the A.L. in runs
batted in (112), runs scored (104), total bases (304) and extra-base
hits (74), is second in slugging (.581) and third in home runs (36).
Trout, last season’s A.L. MVP, has not disappeared completely in this
season’s MVP contest. He is second in on-base percentage (.396), fourth
in slugging (.575), tied for fourth in runs (87), sixth in home runs
(33) and third in total bases (277), extra-base hits (63) and walks
(73).
I don't really care if Trout gets the MVP or not. Donaldson is pretty deserving, and believe it or not, I try not to get too worked up over stupid awards. I don't think Trout's candidacy for AL MVP should be downgraded because the team around him isn't as good as the team around Donaldson. I'm betting the Blue Jays would have as good of a record as they do now if they replaced Donaldson with Trout. It's just a guess, but just don't downgrade Trout's candidacy based on his team's performance. That's what aggravates me.
Joining teammate Alex Rodriguez in a twin comeback, Teixeira was a
primary force in the Yankees’ surprising run for the post-season, if not
the division title.
Injuries limited the first baseman to 123 games each last season and
in 2012 and to 15 games in 2013. But he came back healthy this season,
hitting 31 home runs and driving in 79 runs in 111 games. His production
and contribution both offensively and defensively warranted MVP
consideration.
Plus, the Yankees were going to make the playoffs, which automatically makes Teixeira more valuable than if he had put up similar numbers on a team that wasn't going to make the playoffs. Obviously, this makes sense. Murray is one of those BBWAA voters who is able to think, so if you think about it in non-Stat Geek terms then you see it makes sense to base an individual award on a team's performance around that individual.
Missing much of the last six weeks of the season, if not all of the
games that remained, doesn’t work well for an MVP candidate, especially
when his team is in a division race and a playoff race.
Unless his team makes the playoffs and every other MVP candidate's team didn't make the playoffs. Then the player who was injured for six weeks all of a sudden becomes more valuable because the team around him was more valuable and he will be handed the MVP. Obviously.
Worse, Teixeira has lost a chance to win an unusual double – MVP and
comeback player of the year.
Can the Comeback Player of the Year be awarded to a player who is on a team that doesn't make the playoffs? After all, how can the player comeback from anything if he doesn't make a difference for his team when he does comeback?
Posey won both in 2012 after suffering a
broken leg and torn ankle ligaments in a home plate collision the
previous season.
The same Buster Posey who was kept in the minors long enough to avoid being a Super-2 and Murray went on and on about how this wasn't fair to the Giants fans to keep Posey in the minors. Then it turns out Giants fans weren't negatively impacted at all, because the Giants won the World Series, and Giants fans knew that after Posey broke his leg and tore ligaments that the team could keep him for an extra season because he was kept in the minors for a few extra weeks.
Showing posts with label murray chass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label murray chass. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Friday, August 28, 2015
1 comments Murray Chass No Like the Twitter
I don't really have a baseball nemesis these days. It used to be Joe Morgan, but he was let go by ESPN a few years ago. Murray Chass has intermittently taken Morgan's place on this blog, but he can only temporarily take Morgan's place in my heart. I say "temporarily" because every once in a while Chass becomes my nemesis again. Usually when he goes on one of his "I want to appear to be an old man" rants about service-time, advanced statistics or any other topic that puts a fly in his morning oatmeal. Murray takes his anger out on Twitter in one of the latest columns on his non-blog. Twitter is the bane of his existence and is ruining sports reporting from his point of view. I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that Murray doesn't like Twitter and is coming off as out-of-touch about social media.
Earlier this week six baseball writers – active or once active – gathered for a farewell salute to one of the writers who is moving to Florida after a recent marriage.
Wait, a senior citizen is moving to Florida? You don't say...
As we sat on the patio recalling old writers and old times, an idea struck me. I thought of three questions to ask everyone:
1. Where are we?
2. Who are you all?
3. Where did I leave my car keys?
How many of us had ever tweeted?
How many had texted?
How many had taken selfies?
I think the answers to these three questions are already pretty obvious. Murray wouldn't write a column like this only to conclude,
"We all Tweet constantly, love texting and here is our latest selfie."
So yes, they all do not take part in any of these social media-related activities and are very proud to be stuck in a time when Tweeting, texting and taking a picture of yourself was not possible. By the way, there is a huge difference in the type of people who text and Tweet, as compared to those who take endless selfies. There's more vanity involved with the selfies that isn't necessarily present in the texting and Tweeting.
“How can I take selfies if I don’t have a cell phone?” the group’s eldest member asked.
You could use a thing called "a camera" to take a picture, which is a new-fangled invention that has been around for a couple of centuries now. Don't worry, cameras and pictures are old enough to where it's not scary new technology that you would take pride in not understanding. It's okay to use a camera and not feel like you are being too progressive with your choice in technology.
“You have a cell phone,” someone said.
Murray writes "someone" because he doesn't who said this. Just a voice out of nowhere. It was probably Fay Vincent.
“But I don’t use it,” he retorted.
Whew, be sure to make that clear. Embrace your outward senior citizenry and never, ever fall victim to progressive tendencies.
Neither had he tweeted nor texted. None of us had tweeted. One retired writer acknowledged having received and retrieved two text messages, “but I’ve never sent one,” he quickly added.
Those two text messages probably were:
"Found this phone and couldn't get signal to call. Your wife had an accident is headed to the hospital."
Then:
"Please answer, she is in grave condition and I can't get a signal to call out right now."
This retired writer got these texts, but the bitch is going to have to die without him around because HE DOESN'T MOTHERFUCKING TEXT. SHE KNOWS THIS!
Dinosaurs all, and all proud of it.
I've never understood the ability to be proud that you don't keep up with modern trends that those in your chosen profession keep up with. It's fine for the retired writers to fall behind, but if an active sportswriter isn't keeping up with current technology that helps him do his job better, then he has no business still being in that field. The world moves fast. If you aren't ready to move with it or at least attempt to do so, then you have to find something else to do. I can't use a typewriter at work just because I am proud to be a dinosaur and hate computers.
We covered baseball in a different era when being a reporter meant doing something other than tapping out a sentence or two on a cell phone.
It also meant reporting on a story and being several hours behind when the story breaks. The sports world doesn't work this way now. It's not always about being first, but reporting on the story within minutes of the story being confirmed as true. The world changes. Murray has to accept this.
This is the era of trades by Twitter. As one who reported baseball news the old-fashioned way, I am saddened that it has come to this. The new generation and generations to come will not experience the fun and satisfaction of being a reporter.
Plenty of sportswriters still get the fun and satisfaction of being a reporter. This is where Murray being uninformed comes back to bite him in the ass. Twitter is just one part of the modern sportswriter's job. There is still reporting to be done and Murray has to understand that part of a sportwriter's job on Twitter is finding out news the old-fashioned way, and THEN Tweeting the information out.
Being first with a tweet just won’t do it.
Again Murray, modern sportswriters have other jobs that involve reporting. They don't just Tweet nonsensical rumors all day.
They call and will call themselves reporters, but they are and will really be tweeters. I doubt that I could find half a dozen tweeters who could do the job that the half dozen guys sitting on that patio did.
Well, considering those half dozen guys don't text or Tweet I'm wondering how they will even get the information required to break a story? Remember, anonymous sources and GM's text and Tweet these days. So to get information, reporters have to play the technology game. Those half dozen guys may be great at their if judged 20 years ago (though better than today's reporters?...there's no way of saying that in any accurate way), but they would be beaten to every scoop and every column would be written before the half dozen on the patio had fired up their Gateway computer. These half dozen guys on the patio couldn't do the job that the half dozen Tweeters do, because those on the patio refuse to use modern technology to do their job.
Reporting requires gathering pertinent information and using it to write a comprehensive story. It requires more than 140 characters.
Right, and modern reporters gather pertinent information and write a comprehensive story. One perusal of FoxSports.com shows that Ken Rosenthal Tweets, but then follows up his Tweets with a story on the subject matter.
This is part of the problem with Murray's anti-Twitter rant. He doesn't know what he's talking about and doesn't care to know what he's talking about. He knows how it used to be and that was when sports reporting was the best. That's all he knows and all he wants to know.
When I was a reporter for the Associated Press decades ago, speed counted, but we couldn’t just be fast; we had to be right.
And 95% of the time the reporter is Tweeting out correct information. There are times when Tweets go out that end up being inaccurate. It happened in the newspaper industry too. Remember "Dewey Defeats Truman"?
In the Twitter era, it seems as though it doesn’t matter if you’re right. Being first with a trade or a free-agent signing is what counts. If a reporter is first to report a trade but has it wrong, he can always delete the tweet or send another tweet, saying “oops.”
The reporter can send out a correction to this thousands of followers. This is as opposed to printing a retraction in the lower left hand corner of 6C where those who are looking for the retraction can see it?
The error of tweeters’ ways is what prompted this column. A couple of days before the non-waiver trading deadline last week, tweeters reported a trade between the New York Mets and the Milwaukee Brewers. Outfielder Carlos Gomez had been traded to the New York Mets, the tweeting reporters announced, for disabled pitcher Zack Wheeler and infielder Wilmer Flores.
Apparently Zack Wheeler isn't just injured, he's "disabled." No wonder the Mets-Brewers trade didn't go through. The Brewers found out that Wheeler's last name is just a nickname given to him due to the fact he's in a wheelchair.
The teams, though, had not announced the trade and never did. The Mets balked at taking Gomez, saying their doctors had found that he had a hip problem.
But this happened after all of the other parameters of the deal were agreed to and the only barrier was the health of the players in the trade. How often do players fail a physical and a trade doesn't go through? Not very often, so even a newspaper could have reported on the trade in order to meet the 11pm deadline for printing and then have to publish a retraction in the lower left hand corner of 6C two days later.
The premature report affected Flores in an unusual way.
He became disabled like Zach Wheeler?
Because of social media, the false news spread quickly and widely. Flores learned about it during the Mets’ game with San Diego and at one point stood on the field at his shortstop position noticeably crying at the thought of leaving the Mets.
This is an outlying situation that hasn't happened often and doesn't happen often. It's the first time I can remember this type of thing happening, where a player in a trade was still on the field, found out he was being traded and then the trade fell through.
By reporting the trade prematurely, the tweeting press corps, in such a hurry to get the news out and be No. 1 with it, ignored a basic part of the trade, the last part: the requirement of the traded players to pass the medical test.
It wasn't ignored, it was widely assumed that the players involved with the trade who had no known injuries that were preventing them from playing baseball at the present time indeed had no known injuries.
"Hey look, Carlos Gomez doesn't appear to be hurt and got traded! I wonder if he is hurt? I better not report on this trade just in case of the 2% chance all of the outward signs he isn't injured aren't true."
Writing about the off-track Twitter reports, Ken Rosenthal said on FOXSports.com, “Not all reports included a reference to ‘pending medicals.’ Even the ones that did left the impression that the deal was fait accompli. Many followers interpreted the deal as done, if only because such deals almost always get done.”
This is very true. Rosenthal is correct here.
I have long respected Rosenthal for his work, since before he began tweeting, but I disagree with him on two points. I wouldn’t call tweeters journalists, and there’s no need to provide minute-by-minute accounts because that’s when tweeters get in trouble.
Son of a bitch. Tweeters aren't journalists, but there are those who report on stories who also Tweet. This doesn't make them unless less of a journalist because they have a Twitter account. And yes, if nothing has changed then there is no need to provide updates. If something has changed, then an update would be needed.
Trade talks and free-agent negotiations can change by the minute, and by the time a tweeter tweets a development he has learned, it can be three developments old.
It reminds me of Pete Rose’s free agency in 1978. In a matter of hours on the same day, from about late morning to late afternoon, Milton Richman of United Press International, a good baseball reporter, had Rose signing with three different teams, actually running three different stories on the UPI wire. The third was Philadelphia, which was the right one.
What a day that would have been had Twitter existed then. Richman would have had tweeters wearing out their thumbs.
In the modern day, Richman would have Tweeted three teams were in the running for Rose's services and then eventually broken the story on who Rose chose. That's how a story like this gets reported in the modern day. No specifics are given unless there are specifics to be given. Murray isn't even on Twitter, yet he acts like he knows ALL that happens on the social media platform.
In January 2006 the Orioles reached agreement with Jeromy Burnitz on a two-year, $12 million deal, but the outfielder’s agent, Howard Simon, balked at language about a physical in a letter of agreement the club sent him.
The language, Simon said, gave the Orioles too much latitude for killing the deal after other teams interested in Burnitz had signed other players.
When he couldn’t negotiate a change in the language and before Burnitz took the obligatory physical, Simon rejected the Orioles’ deal and went elsewhere, gaining a one-year, $6.7 million contract with Pittsburgh, which included a mutual option for a second year that would raise the value of the contract to the same $12 million Burnitz would have had with Baltimore.
By the way, 2006 was the last year Burnitz played in the majors, so his option wasn't picked up for the 2007 season. So basically, Burnitz's agent may have cost him $5.3 million. Remember this when Murray is using contractual language about a physical as an example of how Peter Angelos is evil. I mean, Angelos is evil, but Simons balking at the language ended up meaning that Burnitz took a one year deal instead of a two year deal.
In another episode about a year later the Orioles reached agreement with Aaron Sele on a three-year, $21 million contract. A physical preceded the announcement of the deal, and the Orioles’ doctors were concerned about the pitcher’s labrum. They said he had only 400 innings left in it, and Angelos wanted to reduce the contract to two years.
What? Angelos listened to the team doctors that got paid to evaluate players and give their opinion on that player's health? Why in the hell would he do that? Inconceivable.
Was the concern legitimate, or was it Angelos’s way of reducing the value of the contract?
Who knows? I'm kidding, of course. Murray Chass thinks he knows. Murray doesn't even use Twitter and knows all about it to the point that there is no doubt in his mind that someone who Tweets is not a reporter.
Whatever the owner’s reason, Sele signed instead with Seattle for two years and $15 million. In those two years, he posted records of 17-10 in 212 innings and 15-5 in 215 innings.
The Orioles doctor was wrong. This has never happened before.
In six more major league seasons Sele never pitched as well as he did in those two seasons in Seattle, but contrary to the prognosis of the Orioles’ doctors, according to Angelos, that is, Sele pitched an additional 1,113 innings.
I don't know what this has to do with Tweeting and whether sportswriters jump the gun on trades that have happened when none of the players have taken their physical yet. It really has nothing to do with it of course and there isn't a listen to be learned other than, "Sometimes doctors are wrong and a trade isn't complete until all players take a physical."
If the players in a trade are not on the DL or aren't currently missing time due to injury, then the safe assumption would be they are all healthy. Obviously the Mets-Brewers trade was the outlier that started this screed against Twitter and any form of modern technology which Murray doesn't understand, doesn't care to understand, yet seems to believe he knows everything about how it's used by modern sportswriters.
In an interview at the time of the Burnitz episode, Wren told me, “That’s how Peter plays general manager. He uses medical reasons to kill or change a deal if he doesn’t like it.”
When did this column go from a column about the evils of Twitter to the evils of Peter Angelos? This column on Murray's non-blog is like the delusional train-of-thought ramblings and observations a person might have on a given day while jumping from subject to subject. You know, the sort of thing you see on Twitter.
Earlier this week six baseball writers – active or once active – gathered for a farewell salute to one of the writers who is moving to Florida after a recent marriage.
Wait, a senior citizen is moving to Florida? You don't say...
As we sat on the patio recalling old writers and old times, an idea struck me. I thought of three questions to ask everyone:
1. Where are we?
2. Who are you all?
3. Where did I leave my car keys?
How many of us had ever tweeted?
How many had texted?
How many had taken selfies?
I think the answers to these three questions are already pretty obvious. Murray wouldn't write a column like this only to conclude,
"We all Tweet constantly, love texting and here is our latest selfie."
So yes, they all do not take part in any of these social media-related activities and are very proud to be stuck in a time when Tweeting, texting and taking a picture of yourself was not possible. By the way, there is a huge difference in the type of people who text and Tweet, as compared to those who take endless selfies. There's more vanity involved with the selfies that isn't necessarily present in the texting and Tweeting.
“How can I take selfies if I don’t have a cell phone?” the group’s eldest member asked.
You could use a thing called "a camera" to take a picture, which is a new-fangled invention that has been around for a couple of centuries now. Don't worry, cameras and pictures are old enough to where it's not scary new technology that you would take pride in not understanding. It's okay to use a camera and not feel like you are being too progressive with your choice in technology.
“You have a cell phone,” someone said.
Murray writes "someone" because he doesn't who said this. Just a voice out of nowhere. It was probably Fay Vincent.
“But I don’t use it,” he retorted.
Whew, be sure to make that clear. Embrace your outward senior citizenry and never, ever fall victim to progressive tendencies.
Neither had he tweeted nor texted. None of us had tweeted. One retired writer acknowledged having received and retrieved two text messages, “but I’ve never sent one,” he quickly added.
Those two text messages probably were:
"Found this phone and couldn't get signal to call. Your wife had an accident is headed to the hospital."
Then:
"Please answer, she is in grave condition and I can't get a signal to call out right now."
This retired writer got these texts, but the bitch is going to have to die without him around because HE DOESN'T MOTHERFUCKING TEXT. SHE KNOWS THIS!
Dinosaurs all, and all proud of it.
I've never understood the ability to be proud that you don't keep up with modern trends that those in your chosen profession keep up with. It's fine for the retired writers to fall behind, but if an active sportswriter isn't keeping up with current technology that helps him do his job better, then he has no business still being in that field. The world moves fast. If you aren't ready to move with it or at least attempt to do so, then you have to find something else to do. I can't use a typewriter at work just because I am proud to be a dinosaur and hate computers.
We covered baseball in a different era when being a reporter meant doing something other than tapping out a sentence or two on a cell phone.
It also meant reporting on a story and being several hours behind when the story breaks. The sports world doesn't work this way now. It's not always about being first, but reporting on the story within minutes of the story being confirmed as true. The world changes. Murray has to accept this.
This is the era of trades by Twitter. As one who reported baseball news the old-fashioned way, I am saddened that it has come to this. The new generation and generations to come will not experience the fun and satisfaction of being a reporter.
Plenty of sportswriters still get the fun and satisfaction of being a reporter. This is where Murray being uninformed comes back to bite him in the ass. Twitter is just one part of the modern sportswriter's job. There is still reporting to be done and Murray has to understand that part of a sportwriter's job on Twitter is finding out news the old-fashioned way, and THEN Tweeting the information out.
Being first with a tweet just won’t do it.
Again Murray, modern sportswriters have other jobs that involve reporting. They don't just Tweet nonsensical rumors all day.
They call and will call themselves reporters, but they are and will really be tweeters. I doubt that I could find half a dozen tweeters who could do the job that the half dozen guys sitting on that patio did.
Well, considering those half dozen guys don't text or Tweet I'm wondering how they will even get the information required to break a story? Remember, anonymous sources and GM's text and Tweet these days. So to get information, reporters have to play the technology game. Those half dozen guys may be great at their if judged 20 years ago (though better than today's reporters?...there's no way of saying that in any accurate way), but they would be beaten to every scoop and every column would be written before the half dozen on the patio had fired up their Gateway computer. These half dozen guys on the patio couldn't do the job that the half dozen Tweeters do, because those on the patio refuse to use modern technology to do their job.
Reporting requires gathering pertinent information and using it to write a comprehensive story. It requires more than 140 characters.
Right, and modern reporters gather pertinent information and write a comprehensive story. One perusal of FoxSports.com shows that Ken Rosenthal Tweets, but then follows up his Tweets with a story on the subject matter.
This is part of the problem with Murray's anti-Twitter rant. He doesn't know what he's talking about and doesn't care to know what he's talking about. He knows how it used to be and that was when sports reporting was the best. That's all he knows and all he wants to know.
When I was a reporter for the Associated Press decades ago, speed counted, but we couldn’t just be fast; we had to be right.
And 95% of the time the reporter is Tweeting out correct information. There are times when Tweets go out that end up being inaccurate. It happened in the newspaper industry too. Remember "Dewey Defeats Truman"?
In the Twitter era, it seems as though it doesn’t matter if you’re right. Being first with a trade or a free-agent signing is what counts. If a reporter is first to report a trade but has it wrong, he can always delete the tweet or send another tweet, saying “oops.”
The reporter can send out a correction to this thousands of followers. This is as opposed to printing a retraction in the lower left hand corner of 6C where those who are looking for the retraction can see it?
The error of tweeters’ ways is what prompted this column. A couple of days before the non-waiver trading deadline last week, tweeters reported a trade between the New York Mets and the Milwaukee Brewers. Outfielder Carlos Gomez had been traded to the New York Mets, the tweeting reporters announced, for disabled pitcher Zack Wheeler and infielder Wilmer Flores.
Apparently Zack Wheeler isn't just injured, he's "disabled." No wonder the Mets-Brewers trade didn't go through. The Brewers found out that Wheeler's last name is just a nickname given to him due to the fact he's in a wheelchair.
The teams, though, had not announced the trade and never did. The Mets balked at taking Gomez, saying their doctors had found that he had a hip problem.
But this happened after all of the other parameters of the deal were agreed to and the only barrier was the health of the players in the trade. How often do players fail a physical and a trade doesn't go through? Not very often, so even a newspaper could have reported on the trade in order to meet the 11pm deadline for printing and then have to publish a retraction in the lower left hand corner of 6C two days later.
The premature report affected Flores in an unusual way.
He became disabled like Zach Wheeler?
Because of social media, the false news spread quickly and widely. Flores learned about it during the Mets’ game with San Diego and at one point stood on the field at his shortstop position noticeably crying at the thought of leaving the Mets.
This is an outlying situation that hasn't happened often and doesn't happen often. It's the first time I can remember this type of thing happening, where a player in a trade was still on the field, found out he was being traded and then the trade fell through.
By reporting the trade prematurely, the tweeting press corps, in such a hurry to get the news out and be No. 1 with it, ignored a basic part of the trade, the last part: the requirement of the traded players to pass the medical test.
It wasn't ignored, it was widely assumed that the players involved with the trade who had no known injuries that were preventing them from playing baseball at the present time indeed had no known injuries.
"Hey look, Carlos Gomez doesn't appear to be hurt and got traded! I wonder if he is hurt? I better not report on this trade just in case of the 2% chance all of the outward signs he isn't injured aren't true."
Writing about the off-track Twitter reports, Ken Rosenthal said on FOXSports.com, “Not all reports included a reference to ‘pending medicals.’ Even the ones that did left the impression that the deal was fait accompli. Many followers interpreted the deal as done, if only because such deals almost always get done.”
This is very true. Rosenthal is correct here.
I have long respected Rosenthal for his work, since before he began tweeting, but I disagree with him on two points. I wouldn’t call tweeters journalists, and there’s no need to provide minute-by-minute accounts because that’s when tweeters get in trouble.
Son of a bitch. Tweeters aren't journalists, but there are those who report on stories who also Tweet. This doesn't make them unless less of a journalist because they have a Twitter account. And yes, if nothing has changed then there is no need to provide updates. If something has changed, then an update would be needed.
Trade talks and free-agent negotiations can change by the minute, and by the time a tweeter tweets a development he has learned, it can be three developments old.
It reminds me of Pete Rose’s free agency in 1978. In a matter of hours on the same day, from about late morning to late afternoon, Milton Richman of United Press International, a good baseball reporter, had Rose signing with three different teams, actually running three different stories on the UPI wire. The third was Philadelphia, which was the right one.
What a day that would have been had Twitter existed then. Richman would have had tweeters wearing out their thumbs.
In the modern day, Richman would have Tweeted three teams were in the running for Rose's services and then eventually broken the story on who Rose chose. That's how a story like this gets reported in the modern day. No specifics are given unless there are specifics to be given. Murray isn't even on Twitter, yet he acts like he knows ALL that happens on the social media platform.
In January 2006 the Orioles reached agreement with Jeromy Burnitz on a two-year, $12 million deal, but the outfielder’s agent, Howard Simon, balked at language about a physical in a letter of agreement the club sent him.
The language, Simon said, gave the Orioles too much latitude for killing the deal after other teams interested in Burnitz had signed other players.
When he couldn’t negotiate a change in the language and before Burnitz took the obligatory physical, Simon rejected the Orioles’ deal and went elsewhere, gaining a one-year, $6.7 million contract with Pittsburgh, which included a mutual option for a second year that would raise the value of the contract to the same $12 million Burnitz would have had with Baltimore.
By the way, 2006 was the last year Burnitz played in the majors, so his option wasn't picked up for the 2007 season. So basically, Burnitz's agent may have cost him $5.3 million. Remember this when Murray is using contractual language about a physical as an example of how Peter Angelos is evil. I mean, Angelos is evil, but Simons balking at the language ended up meaning that Burnitz took a one year deal instead of a two year deal.
In another episode about a year later the Orioles reached agreement with Aaron Sele on a three-year, $21 million contract. A physical preceded the announcement of the deal, and the Orioles’ doctors were concerned about the pitcher’s labrum. They said he had only 400 innings left in it, and Angelos wanted to reduce the contract to two years.
What? Angelos listened to the team doctors that got paid to evaluate players and give their opinion on that player's health? Why in the hell would he do that? Inconceivable.
Was the concern legitimate, or was it Angelos’s way of reducing the value of the contract?
Who knows? I'm kidding, of course. Murray Chass thinks he knows. Murray doesn't even use Twitter and knows all about it to the point that there is no doubt in his mind that someone who Tweets is not a reporter.
Whatever the owner’s reason, Sele signed instead with Seattle for two years and $15 million. In those two years, he posted records of 17-10 in 212 innings and 15-5 in 215 innings.
The Orioles doctor was wrong. This has never happened before.
In six more major league seasons Sele never pitched as well as he did in those two seasons in Seattle, but contrary to the prognosis of the Orioles’ doctors, according to Angelos, that is, Sele pitched an additional 1,113 innings.
I don't know what this has to do with Tweeting and whether sportswriters jump the gun on trades that have happened when none of the players have taken their physical yet. It really has nothing to do with it of course and there isn't a listen to be learned other than, "Sometimes doctors are wrong and a trade isn't complete until all players take a physical."
If the players in a trade are not on the DL or aren't currently missing time due to injury, then the safe assumption would be they are all healthy. Obviously the Mets-Brewers trade was the outlier that started this screed against Twitter and any form of modern technology which Murray doesn't understand, doesn't care to understand, yet seems to believe he knows everything about how it's used by modern sportswriters.
In an interview at the time of the Burnitz episode, Wren told me, “That’s how Peter plays general manager. He uses medical reasons to kill or change a deal if he doesn’t like it.”
When did this column go from a column about the evils of Twitter to the evils of Peter Angelos? This column on Murray's non-blog is like the delusional train-of-thought ramblings and observations a person might have on a given day while jumping from subject to subject. You know, the sort of thing you see on Twitter.
Friday, April 17, 2015
6 comments Murray Chass Is Still Bitching about Integrity and This Year It's the Cubs Who Lack Integrity
What timing that I wrote this post today! Kris Bryant got called up!
Every year Murray Chass accuses MLB teams of lacking integrity for finding reasons to hold players down in the minors in order to not start their service time and get an extra year out of that player before he hits free agency. Murray bitches about it here, here, here, and here. As I've always stated, this isn't an integrity issue to me. This is an issue of a MLB team playing within the rules and getting an extra year out of a player while giving up a month or a few weeks of that player being on the current roster. I bet the Braves wish they had waited another couple months to call Jason Heyward up. Maybe they wouldn't have had to trade him this offseason and could have had more time to work out a long-term deal. Anyway, Murray writes on his non-blog that the Cubs lack integrity for keeping Kris Bryant down in the minors to avoid him becoming a Super Two and this time he has Scott Boras on his side.
It's all about the integrity to Murray. I wonder if he considers accusing a player of using PED's based on bacne as violating his strict integrity guidelines. Probably not.
Theo Epstein, the man who runs the Chicago Cubs’ baseball operations, said this:
In this business of trying to win a world championship for the first time in 107 years, the organization has priority over any one individual.
He also said this:
We have clung to two important ideals during our three years in Chicago. The first is to always be loyal to our mission of building the Cubs into a championship organization that can sustain success. The second is to be transparent with our fans….To our fans: we hope you understand, and we appreciate your continued support of the Cubs.
Epstein should have added, "Unless, you know, if being transparent means that the union can file a grievance on behalf of a player and telling a little white lie will benefit the organization in the long run."
Epstein included both of these comments in a statement he issued when the Cubs fired their manager, Rick Renteria, last October and hired Joe Maddon. If they sound familiar, it’s because I quoted them in last week’s column. I quote them again for this column about a Cubs’ player. Kris Bryant.
Keeping Kris Bryant in the minors fulfills the intent of the first quote and fufills the intent in the first part of the second quote. Two out of three isn't bad. Epstein can't say, "It's in the best interests of the organization long-term to keep Kris Bryant in the minors," even though it's true, because people get their panties in a wad that the Cubs would dare to work within the rules to build a quality team over the long-term.
The last I looked Bryant had hit nine home runs, more than any other player in this spring’s exhibition games. I have long said it doesn’t pay to pay attention to spring statistics, but Bryant has forced the Cubs to pay attention.
Murray has always believed it makes no sense to pay attention to spring statistics, unless those spring statistics go to prove a point that Murray wants to prove. In that case, forget everything else that Murray has ever said and those spring training statistics are vitally important and serve as definitive evidence for what Murray wants to prove. Spring training statistics are of course useless when they serve the need Murray Chass has that point in time.
He has convinced them he is ready to help the Cubs win – a playoff spot, the National League Central title, the N.L. pennant, the World Series. Whatever it is, they’ll take it, though they prefer the World Series, which the Cubs haven’t won since 1908.
And since when have the expectations of fans ever been unrealistic?
Bryant, however, can’t help the Cubs win anything if he’s not on the team, and when last heard on the subject, the Cubs said they plan to have Bryant start the season in the minor leagues. They’re playing a game I have chronicled here for the past several years. It’s the major league service time manipulation game. It’s legal under the labor practice, but it undermines the integrity of the game.
Allowing MLB teams to do something that is legal under the labor practice which helps the team in the long run undermines the integrity of the game? I've never understood this point of view. Maybe it's a bit of a dick move by the Cubs (or Giants or any other MLB team), but it doesn't undermine the integrity of the game because it's not against the rules. It is manipulating service time, which (checks the CBA) isn't against the rules.
If steroids and Pete Rose’s violation of the game’s gambling rule undermines baseball’s integrity, so does the clubs’ manipulation of service time, no matter what an arbitrator said 30 years ago.
Yeah, this is not at all a good parallel. There are rules on the books against gambling and using PED's to gain an advantage. There is no rule that says an MLB team HAS to put their best team on the field, as determined by an old sportswriter-turned-blogger. I recognize there is no help for Murray Chass anyway, but if he can't tell the difference in a player violating a rule that is written in the MLB rule book and a team not violating part of the CBA then there is definitely never going to be help for him.
Boras is Bryant’s agent and could be said to have a vested interest in how the Cubs treat Bryant.
Right, because the more money Kris Bryant makes means that Scott Boras makes more money. Does it undermine the integrity of the game when an agent publicly requests an MLB team makes a personnel move all so that agent can have more money put in his pocket? I guess not. Scott Boras wants more money in his pocket, so he accuses others of wrongdoing so he can get richer.
He and I seldom agree on issues involving his clients, but in this instance I believe he is 100 percent correct.
Just like spring training statistics don't mean anything until Murray needs them to mean something to prove his point, Scott Boras is an evil person until Boras agrees with Murray Chass on an issue. In that case, Boras is just speaking the truth.
The Cubs and the other clubs that behave similarly are hurting Major League Baseball. They are saving money, but they are cheating their fans.
Murray's whole "They are hurting the fans" argument fails every single time. It doesn't hurt Cubs fans that they now get to have Kris Bryant as a part of the Cubs franchise for a longer period of time. The Cubs are not expected to win the World Series this year, so why is it hurting the team to make sure they keep Bryant around for an extra year when they may be able to better compete to win the World Series in the future? The fans aren't being cheated. The player and Scott Boras' pockets are being cheated, which apparently undermines the integrity of the game.
If they are not using their best players, they are not trying to win. That failing goes to the core of integrity.
The Cubs will be using their best players, and using their best players for a longer period of time, if they ensure that Kris Bryant doesn't become a Super Two by holding him down in the minors longer.
If the Cubs open the season with Bryant in the minors and keep him there for at least 12 days, they can ensure his presence with them through the 2021 season instead of the 2020 season, the first seven years of his major league career instead of the first six.
Wow, the Cubs fans are getting screwed. They are trading 12 days of not having Kris Bryant on the roster for an entire year of having Kris Bryant on the roster. I'm surprised there haven't been riots and revolts while fans storm the gates of Wrigley Field. Cubs fans are trading 12 days for 5 more months of Kris Bryant. That sounds pretty good.
For purposes of service time, a season is 172 days so a player can lack 11 days and still receive credit for a full season. If, however, he lacks 12 days and is in the majors the rest of the season, he has 171 days of major league service, one day short of a full year.
So Murray's argument is that because the Cubs are holding down Kris Bryant down in the minors for at least 6.98% of the season, and thereby receiving 100% of another season of Bryant's services, then they are getting screwed? This is a real argument he is furthering? Scott Boras and Kris Bryant may be getting screwed, but it doesn't affect the integrity of the game that Boras is arguing for what is financially beneficial for himself. Of course not.
As a result of clubs’ closely monitoring service time, they have kept major league-ready players in the minors longer than they should,
Which is an opinion and not a fact. These bloggers are always stating opinions as facts.
calling them up usually in late May or early June. The accompanying chart tells a striking story.
Since Murray is all about "the fans" and how they are getting screwed, let's look at all these players and see how many of them are still with their original team that called them up. You know, just for shits and giggles to see how screwed these fans are getting.
This list has 25 players on it. Of these 25 players, only 5 of these players are not on their original team. Oscar Taveras is dead, so he doesn't really count. Kris Medlen was released by the Braves mostly for injury reasons and not performance reasons. Jordan Lyles, Joe Kelly and Stephen Pryor were respectively traded for Dexter Fowler, John Lackey, and Kendry Morales in an effort for the team that called them up to improve their team. So of these 25 players, 20 of them are still with the team that called them up, while four of them are not with their current team, but the reason they aren't with the team didn't "screw over the fans."
So Murray has no point. He argues these late call-ups screw over fans, but I don't think this is true. These late call-ups have allowed teams to have control over these players for a longer period of time.
In Bryant’s case, the Cubs care more about free agency because they could never keep him in the minors until late May or early June.
It's unfathomable that the Cubs would want to keep Bryant on their roster for as long as possible. The fans must feel screwed over knowing they get to keep one of the team's best prospects for a longer period of time.
I had a lot of questions to ask Epstein, but a week’s worth of telephone calls and e-mail did not induce him to respond so the questions remain unasked and unanswered. Oh yes. I also tried reaching Tom Ricketts, the team’s owner, and he didn’t respond. Even the Cubs’ media relations director didn’t call back. I guess they are intent on not answering questions about Bryant.
Or, you know, they don't have to answer questions about Kris Bryant if they care not to or don't want to be accused of lacking integrity by a sportswriter-turned-blogger.
Epstein, however, did speak with reporters at the Cubs’ camp in Arizona and talked in television interviews, and I frankly find it difficult to believe what he said about why Bryant may start the season in the minors:
Why does Murray find it difficult to believe? Because he wants to find it difficult to believe. It's the same reason that Murray doesn't think spring training statistics mean much, until he needs them to mean a lot in order to prove a point.
“It’s not about business. People are trying to make this about business. There are valid baseball reasons. The process of developing a player, taking them from amateur to Major League player and every step along the way, that’s a baseball process and those are baseball decisions, and that’s what we’re doing here.”
Here are several points I have:
1. It doesn't matter if Murray Chass finds this statement difficult to believe or not. MLB teams are entitled to leave whatever players they choose to leave at whatever minor league level they choose to leave that player until they decide they want to promote him.
2. If Theo Epstein said, "Yeah, we are holding him back so his service time doesn't cause him to become a Super Two" then that could be more honest but it would also cause Bryant to file a grievance. The Cubs don't even have to explain themselves anyway. So explaining themselves is pointless and unnecessary.
3. Bryant had been playing left field occasionally in spring training, so it's possible the Cubs decided they wanted him to practice more in left field (not in game situations) while in the minors.
4. The Cubs and Theo Epstein don't have to explain why they sent Bryant down because it's not against the rules for them to run the organization as they see fit.
Epstein pointed out that he had never had a player make his major league debut at the start of a season:
Murray thinks Theo Epstein REALLY lacks integrity now.
“I’ve never put a guy on an opening-day roster who hadn’t played in the big leagues previously. In 13 years, I’ve never done it. I’m not saying I’d never do it, but the general rule, the presumption, is to allow those guys to go out, play, get comfortable, get in rhythm, and come up when you handpick just the right moment for them to have success.”
It makes sense from the perspective of a GM. It does.
Unfortunately, neither that interviewer nor any other asked Epstein why, then, didn’t he call up Bryant late last season, as he did with infielder Mike Olt and outfielder Jorge Soler.
Possibly because the Cubs weren't in competition for a playoff spot and it didn't make sense to call up every single prospect the Cubs had. Perhaps because Olt plays third base too and it doesn't make any fucking sense to call up two prospects from the minors who play the exact same position so that one of those prospects ends up sitting the bench on a given day.
“They had Baez and Soler at Triple A,” Boras said. “Bryant performed far better. They get called up to the big leagues and Bryant doesn’t.”
And never forget while reading about Scott Boras whining that he has a financial stake in when Kris Bryant gets called up. Scott Boras gets paid faster when Kris Bryant is one year closer to free agency.
Had they promoted Bryant with the others, he could open this season with the Cubs without violating Epstein’s stated practice. But they weren’t about to recall Bryant then because his service clock would have started ticking, in Epstein’s view like a time bomb.
Mike Olt is older than Bryant and wasn't exactly hitting terrible at AAA last year when he was called up. But no, Murray is right that public opinion on which prospect should be called up to the majors, and not the opinion of the organization, should be what determines when Kris Bryant gets called up to the majors. The Cubs organization has no right to make personnel moves as they see fit.
Is that bad for the fans? A reader responded to a previous column about the manipulation of service time by saying he would rather have the player for a whole extra season than for a few extra games now.
But there are fans who have lived and died with the Cubs for their entire lives without seeing them win a World Series and may not have seven years left in their lives to see if it happens in 2021.
So the people who will die after the 2020 season who never got a chance to see the Cubs win the World Series are the ones getting screwed. So it's not Cubs fans that are getting screwed, but a specific subset of fans who don't currently know they are getting screwed who are getting screwed. These fans may be dead before 2021, so obviously Theo Epstein needs to factor in how many Cubs fans will be dead between the end of the 2020 season and the beginning of the 2021 season when making any decisions on which prospects to call up to the majors.
That makes sense.
“Is this good for the game?” Boras asked. “Fans are aware these players are extraordinary. They have nothing left to prove in the minors. Every year Kris Bryant has separated himself from everyone else. What standards does he have to achieve to deserve promotion?”
I'm sorry, I can't get past the fact Scott Boras is trying to preach about the integrity of the game when he wants Kris Bryant called up because it benefits them both financially.
Bryant is not expected to match his spring production in the early weeks of the season, even if he opens it with Chicago. Players who are torrid in spring exhibition games seldom take their paces into the season.
Well, it seems spring training statistics don't mean anything to Murray again.
Earlier this month the agent created a spring stir when he talked with Bob Nightengale of USA Today. Nightengale is one of the best baseball writers in the country, maybe the best, but even he swallowed Epstein’s excuse for delaying Bryant’s arrival in the majors.
“The Cubs simply believe that Bryant needs more defensive seasoning at Class AAA Iowa,” Nightengale wrote.
Bob Nightengale wasn't swallowing the excuse, he was repeating the reason given by Theo Epstein for Bryant to start the season at AAA.
Epstein was merely repeating the words of many other general managers who have used that excuse. The Pittsburgh Pirates have practically copyrighted that comment the last few years.
Oh, over the last few years the Pirates have copyrighted that excuse? Is this the same last few years when the Pirates have made the playoffs twice when they had not made the playoffs the 20 years prior to that? I bet Pirates fans feel REALLY screwed by the organization choosing to keep the best prospects in the minors in order to keep these prospects on the team longer. I'm surprised Pirates fans haven't revolted yet. The organization is making moves that results in the team making the playoffs and keeping the team's best players longer? It's outrageous!
Addressing the issue a few years ago, Rob Manfred said, “It has been long established that clubs have a right to call up players when they decide the timing is best for the club.”
However, that case was not on point with call-ups as they have developed, and a grievance probably is in order.
Clark, the Executive Director of the union, commented, “I think it’s disappointing that we are having any conversation that there is a question about the best players not to be available for fans to watch. It takes away from the game.”
I don't really care if the rule gets changed, but these are the rules now. The best players are not available for a smaller portion of a season so they can be available to that team for a longer period of time over that player's career with the team. The fans are not getting screwed over for their patience.
Bryant is not the only players whose immediate major league status is in question. Pitchers Jon Gray of Colorado and Carlos Rodon of the Chicago White Sox also have not been assured of spots on major league rosters.
Unfathomable. Rodon made six starts in the minor leagues after he was drafted. How could he NOT be ready for the majors?
If all three players fail to win opening-day jobs in the majors, their absence will very likely encourage the union to seek a solution with a grievance.
Murray means they would file a grievance for players that aren't really a part of the MLBPA? Seeking to file a grievance for players the MLB players have intentionally left out as being represented by their union? I'm sure Murray sees that as a case of having great integrity. Scott Boras just wants more money for Kris Bryant sooner (which is his right as an agent), whether it be with the Cubs or another team, so it's funny how he preaches integrity and pretends the fans are getting screwed. The Cubs organization is preventing Boras from ripping Kris Bryant away from the Cubs team one year earlier than they otherwise could and the fans are supposed to be getting the raw end of the deal?
Every year Murray Chass accuses MLB teams of lacking integrity for finding reasons to hold players down in the minors in order to not start their service time and get an extra year out of that player before he hits free agency. Murray bitches about it here, here, here, and here. As I've always stated, this isn't an integrity issue to me. This is an issue of a MLB team playing within the rules and getting an extra year out of a player while giving up a month or a few weeks of that player being on the current roster. I bet the Braves wish they had waited another couple months to call Jason Heyward up. Maybe they wouldn't have had to trade him this offseason and could have had more time to work out a long-term deal. Anyway, Murray writes on his non-blog that the Cubs lack integrity for keeping Kris Bryant down in the minors to avoid him becoming a Super Two and this time he has Scott Boras on his side.
It's all about the integrity to Murray. I wonder if he considers accusing a player of using PED's based on bacne as violating his strict integrity guidelines. Probably not.
In this business of trying to win a world championship for the first time in 107 years, the organization has priority over any one individual.
He also said this:
We have clung to two important ideals during our three years in Chicago. The first is to always be loyal to our mission of building the Cubs into a championship organization that can sustain success. The second is to be transparent with our fans….To our fans: we hope you understand, and we appreciate your continued support of the Cubs.
Epstein should have added, "Unless, you know, if being transparent means that the union can file a grievance on behalf of a player and telling a little white lie will benefit the organization in the long run."
Epstein included both of these comments in a statement he issued when the Cubs fired their manager, Rick Renteria, last October and hired Joe Maddon. If they sound familiar, it’s because I quoted them in last week’s column. I quote them again for this column about a Cubs’ player. Kris Bryant.
Keeping Kris Bryant in the minors fulfills the intent of the first quote and fufills the intent in the first part of the second quote. Two out of three isn't bad. Epstein can't say, "It's in the best interests of the organization long-term to keep Kris Bryant in the minors," even though it's true, because people get their panties in a wad that the Cubs would dare to work within the rules to build a quality team over the long-term.
The last I looked Bryant had hit nine home runs, more than any other player in this spring’s exhibition games. I have long said it doesn’t pay to pay attention to spring statistics, but Bryant has forced the Cubs to pay attention.
Murray has always believed it makes no sense to pay attention to spring statistics, unless those spring statistics go to prove a point that Murray wants to prove. In that case, forget everything else that Murray has ever said and those spring training statistics are vitally important and serve as definitive evidence for what Murray wants to prove. Spring training statistics are of course useless when they serve the need Murray Chass has that point in time.
He has convinced them he is ready to help the Cubs win – a playoff spot, the National League Central title, the N.L. pennant, the World Series. Whatever it is, they’ll take it, though they prefer the World Series, which the Cubs haven’t won since 1908.
And since when have the expectations of fans ever been unrealistic?
Bryant, however, can’t help the Cubs win anything if he’s not on the team, and when last heard on the subject, the Cubs said they plan to have Bryant start the season in the minor leagues. They’re playing a game I have chronicled here for the past several years. It’s the major league service time manipulation game. It’s legal under the labor practice, but it undermines the integrity of the game.
Allowing MLB teams to do something that is legal under the labor practice which helps the team in the long run undermines the integrity of the game? I've never understood this point of view. Maybe it's a bit of a dick move by the Cubs (or Giants or any other MLB team), but it doesn't undermine the integrity of the game because it's not against the rules. It is manipulating service time, which (checks the CBA) isn't against the rules.
If steroids and Pete Rose’s violation of the game’s gambling rule undermines baseball’s integrity, so does the clubs’ manipulation of service time, no matter what an arbitrator said 30 years ago.
Yeah, this is not at all a good parallel. There are rules on the books against gambling and using PED's to gain an advantage. There is no rule that says an MLB team HAS to put their best team on the field, as determined by an old sportswriter-turned-blogger. I recognize there is no help for Murray Chass anyway, but if he can't tell the difference in a player violating a rule that is written in the MLB rule book and a team not violating part of the CBA then there is definitely never going to be help for him.
Boras is Bryant’s agent and could be said to have a vested interest in how the Cubs treat Bryant.
Right, because the more money Kris Bryant makes means that Scott Boras makes more money. Does it undermine the integrity of the game when an agent publicly requests an MLB team makes a personnel move all so that agent can have more money put in his pocket? I guess not. Scott Boras wants more money in his pocket, so he accuses others of wrongdoing so he can get richer.
He and I seldom agree on issues involving his clients, but in this instance I believe he is 100 percent correct.
Just like spring training statistics don't mean anything until Murray needs them to mean something to prove his point, Scott Boras is an evil person until Boras agrees with Murray Chass on an issue. In that case, Boras is just speaking the truth.
The Cubs and the other clubs that behave similarly are hurting Major League Baseball. They are saving money, but they are cheating their fans.
Murray's whole "They are hurting the fans" argument fails every single time. It doesn't hurt Cubs fans that they now get to have Kris Bryant as a part of the Cubs franchise for a longer period of time. The Cubs are not expected to win the World Series this year, so why is it hurting the team to make sure they keep Bryant around for an extra year when they may be able to better compete to win the World Series in the future? The fans aren't being cheated. The player and Scott Boras' pockets are being cheated, which apparently undermines the integrity of the game.
If they are not using their best players, they are not trying to win. That failing goes to the core of integrity.
The Cubs will be using their best players, and using their best players for a longer period of time, if they ensure that Kris Bryant doesn't become a Super Two by holding him down in the minors longer.
If the Cubs open the season with Bryant in the minors and keep him there for at least 12 days, they can ensure his presence with them through the 2021 season instead of the 2020 season, the first seven years of his major league career instead of the first six.
Wow, the Cubs fans are getting screwed. They are trading 12 days of not having Kris Bryant on the roster for an entire year of having Kris Bryant on the roster. I'm surprised there haven't been riots and revolts while fans storm the gates of Wrigley Field. Cubs fans are trading 12 days for 5 more months of Kris Bryant. That sounds pretty good.
For purposes of service time, a season is 172 days so a player can lack 11 days and still receive credit for a full season. If, however, he lacks 12 days and is in the majors the rest of the season, he has 171 days of major league service, one day short of a full year.
So Murray's argument is that because the Cubs are holding down Kris Bryant down in the minors for at least 6.98% of the season, and thereby receiving 100% of another season of Bryant's services, then they are getting screwed? This is a real argument he is furthering? Scott Boras and Kris Bryant may be getting screwed, but it doesn't affect the integrity of the game that Boras is arguing for what is financially beneficial for himself. Of course not.
As a result of clubs’ closely monitoring service time, they have kept major league-ready players in the minors longer than they should,
Which is an opinion and not a fact. These bloggers are always stating opinions as facts.
calling them up usually in late May or early June. The accompanying chart tells a striking story.
This list has 25 players on it. Of these 25 players, only 5 of these players are not on their original team. Oscar Taveras is dead, so he doesn't really count. Kris Medlen was released by the Braves mostly for injury reasons and not performance reasons. Jordan Lyles, Joe Kelly and Stephen Pryor were respectively traded for Dexter Fowler, John Lackey, and Kendry Morales in an effort for the team that called them up to improve their team. So of these 25 players, 20 of them are still with the team that called them up, while four of them are not with their current team, but the reason they aren't with the team didn't "screw over the fans."
So Murray has no point. He argues these late call-ups screw over fans, but I don't think this is true. These late call-ups have allowed teams to have control over these players for a longer period of time.
In Bryant’s case, the Cubs care more about free agency because they could never keep him in the minors until late May or early June.
It's unfathomable that the Cubs would want to keep Bryant on their roster for as long as possible. The fans must feel screwed over knowing they get to keep one of the team's best prospects for a longer period of time.
I had a lot of questions to ask Epstein, but a week’s worth of telephone calls and e-mail did not induce him to respond so the questions remain unasked and unanswered. Oh yes. I also tried reaching Tom Ricketts, the team’s owner, and he didn’t respond. Even the Cubs’ media relations director didn’t call back. I guess they are intent on not answering questions about Bryant.
Or, you know, they don't have to answer questions about Kris Bryant if they care not to or don't want to be accused of lacking integrity by a sportswriter-turned-blogger.
Epstein, however, did speak with reporters at the Cubs’ camp in Arizona and talked in television interviews, and I frankly find it difficult to believe what he said about why Bryant may start the season in the minors:
Why does Murray find it difficult to believe? Because he wants to find it difficult to believe. It's the same reason that Murray doesn't think spring training statistics mean much, until he needs them to mean a lot in order to prove a point.
“It’s not about business. People are trying to make this about business. There are valid baseball reasons. The process of developing a player, taking them from amateur to Major League player and every step along the way, that’s a baseball process and those are baseball decisions, and that’s what we’re doing here.”
Here are several points I have:
1. It doesn't matter if Murray Chass finds this statement difficult to believe or not. MLB teams are entitled to leave whatever players they choose to leave at whatever minor league level they choose to leave that player until they decide they want to promote him.
2. If Theo Epstein said, "Yeah, we are holding him back so his service time doesn't cause him to become a Super Two" then that could be more honest but it would also cause Bryant to file a grievance. The Cubs don't even have to explain themselves anyway. So explaining themselves is pointless and unnecessary.
3. Bryant had been playing left field occasionally in spring training, so it's possible the Cubs decided they wanted him to practice more in left field (not in game situations) while in the minors.
4. The Cubs and Theo Epstein don't have to explain why they sent Bryant down because it's not against the rules for them to run the organization as they see fit.
Epstein pointed out that he had never had a player make his major league debut at the start of a season:
Murray thinks Theo Epstein REALLY lacks integrity now.
“I’ve never put a guy on an opening-day roster who hadn’t played in the big leagues previously. In 13 years, I’ve never done it. I’m not saying I’d never do it, but the general rule, the presumption, is to allow those guys to go out, play, get comfortable, get in rhythm, and come up when you handpick just the right moment for them to have success.”
It makes sense from the perspective of a GM. It does.
Unfortunately, neither that interviewer nor any other asked Epstein why, then, didn’t he call up Bryant late last season, as he did with infielder Mike Olt and outfielder Jorge Soler.
Possibly because the Cubs weren't in competition for a playoff spot and it didn't make sense to call up every single prospect the Cubs had. Perhaps because Olt plays third base too and it doesn't make any fucking sense to call up two prospects from the minors who play the exact same position so that one of those prospects ends up sitting the bench on a given day.
“They had Baez and Soler at Triple A,” Boras said. “Bryant performed far better. They get called up to the big leagues and Bryant doesn’t.”
And never forget while reading about Scott Boras whining that he has a financial stake in when Kris Bryant gets called up. Scott Boras gets paid faster when Kris Bryant is one year closer to free agency.
Had they promoted Bryant with the others, he could open this season with the Cubs without violating Epstein’s stated practice. But they weren’t about to recall Bryant then because his service clock would have started ticking, in Epstein’s view like a time bomb.
Mike Olt is older than Bryant and wasn't exactly hitting terrible at AAA last year when he was called up. But no, Murray is right that public opinion on which prospect should be called up to the majors, and not the opinion of the organization, should be what determines when Kris Bryant gets called up to the majors. The Cubs organization has no right to make personnel moves as they see fit.
Is that bad for the fans? A reader responded to a previous column about the manipulation of service time by saying he would rather have the player for a whole extra season than for a few extra games now.
But there are fans who have lived and died with the Cubs for their entire lives without seeing them win a World Series and may not have seven years left in their lives to see if it happens in 2021.
So the people who will die after the 2020 season who never got a chance to see the Cubs win the World Series are the ones getting screwed. So it's not Cubs fans that are getting screwed, but a specific subset of fans who don't currently know they are getting screwed who are getting screwed. These fans may be dead before 2021, so obviously Theo Epstein needs to factor in how many Cubs fans will be dead between the end of the 2020 season and the beginning of the 2021 season when making any decisions on which prospects to call up to the majors.
That makes sense.
“Is this good for the game?” Boras asked. “Fans are aware these players are extraordinary. They have nothing left to prove in the minors. Every year Kris Bryant has separated himself from everyone else. What standards does he have to achieve to deserve promotion?”
I'm sorry, I can't get past the fact Scott Boras is trying to preach about the integrity of the game when he wants Kris Bryant called up because it benefits them both financially.
Bryant is not expected to match his spring production in the early weeks of the season, even if he opens it with Chicago. Players who are torrid in spring exhibition games seldom take their paces into the season.
Well, it seems spring training statistics don't mean anything to Murray again.
Earlier this month the agent created a spring stir when he talked with Bob Nightengale of USA Today. Nightengale is one of the best baseball writers in the country, maybe the best, but even he swallowed Epstein’s excuse for delaying Bryant’s arrival in the majors.
“The Cubs simply believe that Bryant needs more defensive seasoning at Class AAA Iowa,” Nightengale wrote.
Bob Nightengale wasn't swallowing the excuse, he was repeating the reason given by Theo Epstein for Bryant to start the season at AAA.
Epstein was merely repeating the words of many other general managers who have used that excuse. The Pittsburgh Pirates have practically copyrighted that comment the last few years.
Oh, over the last few years the Pirates have copyrighted that excuse? Is this the same last few years when the Pirates have made the playoffs twice when they had not made the playoffs the 20 years prior to that? I bet Pirates fans feel REALLY screwed by the organization choosing to keep the best prospects in the minors in order to keep these prospects on the team longer. I'm surprised Pirates fans haven't revolted yet. The organization is making moves that results in the team making the playoffs and keeping the team's best players longer? It's outrageous!
Addressing the issue a few years ago, Rob Manfred said, “It has been long established that clubs have a right to call up players when they decide the timing is best for the club.”
However, that case was not on point with call-ups as they have developed, and a grievance probably is in order.
Clark, the Executive Director of the union, commented, “I think it’s disappointing that we are having any conversation that there is a question about the best players not to be available for fans to watch. It takes away from the game.”
I don't really care if the rule gets changed, but these are the rules now. The best players are not available for a smaller portion of a season so they can be available to that team for a longer period of time over that player's career with the team. The fans are not getting screwed over for their patience.
Bryant is not the only players whose immediate major league status is in question. Pitchers Jon Gray of Colorado and Carlos Rodon of the Chicago White Sox also have not been assured of spots on major league rosters.
Unfathomable. Rodon made six starts in the minor leagues after he was drafted. How could he NOT be ready for the majors?
If all three players fail to win opening-day jobs in the majors, their absence will very likely encourage the union to seek a solution with a grievance.
Murray means they would file a grievance for players that aren't really a part of the MLBPA? Seeking to file a grievance for players the MLB players have intentionally left out as being represented by their union? I'm sure Murray sees that as a case of having great integrity. Scott Boras just wants more money for Kris Bryant sooner (which is his right as an agent), whether it be with the Cubs or another team, so it's funny how he preaches integrity and pretends the fans are getting screwed. The Cubs organization is preventing Boras from ripping Kris Bryant away from the Cubs team one year earlier than they otherwise could and the fans are supposed to be getting the raw end of the deal?
Monday, January 5, 2015
0 comments Murray Chass Thinks No Golden Era Candidates Should Ever Be Elected Into the Hall of Fame, Presumably Will Change His Mind When Jack Morris Is On the Golden Era Ballot
Murray Chass thinks only elite (or the elite of the elite) baseball players should be elected into the baseball Hall of Fame. This means he thinks that Jack Morris was an elite pitcher. I think even the most fervent Jack Morris supporter wouldn't say he was ever an elite pitcher. Very good? Yes. Elite? Not at all. Murray writes on his non-blog (because it's NOT a blog...Murray hates blogs) that he doesn't think Golden Era candidates should be elected into the Hall of Fame. None were elected this year, but presumably Murray believes there shouldn't even be a Golden Era committee. He thinks these players had their chance to be inducted and they failed. The odds are really, really high that Murray changes his opinion once Jack Morris is on the Golden Era ballot. It will happen.
The Hall of Fame season got off to a good start earlier this week when the Hall’s 16-man Golden Era committee elected none of the 10 candidates on the ballot. Only a day later, though, the Baseball Writers Association of America spoiled that strong start by voting to recommend to the Hall’s board of directors that it raise from 10 to 12 the limit on the number of players a voter can mark on the ballot.
Notice the BBWAA didn't raise the limit on the number of players a voter can mark on the ballot. The notoriously slow to change BBWAA made a "recommendation" to raise the limit from 10 to 12. I won't hold my breath that the number of players is increased. Even if it is, so what? It just means voters can vote for 12 players and those who vote for fewer players can carry on with their lives. As we will learn, it's a HUGE difference, because that's not how Murray Chass would do it. He's been around for a long time and that's NOT how things have always been done and so he doesn't understand why things have to change. Change makes Murray sad.
In case it’s not clear, I oppose
any idea that didn't originate 30 years ago?
the election of players by any of the Hall’s various veterans’ committees, and I see no reason to allow writers to vote for more than 10 candidates. If anything, I would favor lowering the limit.
I think lowering the limit is a bad option given the current players on the ballot. Of course Murray doesn't explain why he would lower the limit and how it would benefit the Hall of Fame, instead choosing to write this and leave it out there as one of life's little mysteries for others to try and figure out. Maybe I should get Robert Stack on the case to do an entire "Unsolved Mysteries" episode on why Murray thinks lowering the limit is a good idea.
Nine players appeared on the Golden Era ballot:
Allen and Oliva each fell one vote short of the 12 votes needed for election. Kaat missed by two votes.
Nothing against any of them or any of the six other players on the ballot, but they had 15 years of eligibility on the writers’ ballot beginning five years after retirement and didn’t make it. Why do they get yet another chance?
Because they were put on the Golden Era ballot as candidates who could possibly get enough votes in order to enter the Hall of Fame once their candidacy was given more time to be pondered.
Could the writers have made a mistake?
Never. How could writers, some of whom haven't actively covered the sport of baseball in a decade or so, make a mistake? Impossible. These are infallible people like Murray Chass. Mistakes don't exist in their world.
Allen began by getting 3.7 percent of the writers’ vote and didn’t reach 10 percent until his fourth year on the ballot and never reached 20 percent.
Oliva attained 40 percent of the vote only three times, reached his high mark of 47.3 percent in his seventh try and finished his candidacy at 36.2 percent.
Kaat didn’t reach 20 percent until his fourth year on the ballot, slipped under 20 percent in his eighth year and concluded his candidacy at 26.2 percent.
These were the most attractive candidates considered by the Historical Overview committee, which the BBWAA appoints.
These are all guys who probably don't deserve Hall of Fame induction. Murray and I can agree on that. They are all Jack Morris to me. Really good, but not great.
Chances were slim that any of the players would be elected, but two nearly were. Do Allen and Oliva belong in an induction ceremony in July with Randy Johnson, John Smoltz and Pedro Martinez, who are expected to be elected by the writers in their first year on the ballot?
Probably not. I am not trying to create a strawman argument, but we all know that Murray is going to change his mind about Golden Era candidates not deserving induction once Jack Morris is on the Golden Era ballot. I'm sure Murray will use reasoning such as "Morris is different because he came close to induction the first time he was on the ballot" or some other bullshit reason that will attempt to distract from his basic belief that these players had 15 years to be on the ballot and couldn't make it then, so they don't deserve induction now? Make no mistake, Murray Chass will support Jack Morris when/if he is on the Golden Era ballot.
Bill Mazeroski is one of the typical players who got to the Hall of Fame via a veterans committee. The former Pittsburgh second baseman was elected in 2001 even though his 15-year run of percentages on the writers’ ballot read 6.1, 8.3, 8.6, 9.5, 6.7, 12.8, 18.4, 22.0, 23.5, 30.3, 33.5, 30.0, 29.5, 32.1 and 42.3.
He should not be in the Hall of Fame. No doubt.
The increase in Mazeroski’s percentages, from the first five years to the last six, was interesting, but he exceeded half of the necessary 75 percent only in his final year on the ballot.
I do agree Mazeroski should not be in the Hall of Fame, but his percentage of votes seemed to go up almost every year he was eligible. Sure, it may have taken him another 15 years to get in with 75% of the vote, but it seems the voters were considering him a Hall of Famer more and more as the years went on. This is the only reason I can see Mazeroski is in the Hall of Fame.
Mazeroski was the best defensive second baseman of his time, one of the best in major league history. He was an excellent clutch hitter.
(Bengoodfella makes wanking motion with his hand)
He became a Hall of Famer, the story goes, because Joe L. Brown, the former long-time Pirates’ general manager, was chairman of the veterans committee, and in the way the committee worked in those days, it was his turn, if he chose, to select a candidate.
Remember this story the next time you read sportswriters (like Murray Chass) screaming about the importance of integrity and the morality clause in an effort to keep PED users out of the Hall of Fame. The whole requirement of having integrity and the morality clause being quoted over the last decade is fairly new to baseball Hall of Fame voting. It's a new reason using an old solution to the problem of PED users being on the Hall of Fame ballot. Prior to the Steroid Era, any time baseball Hall of Fame voters cared about integrity and morality would be the first time they cared about this.
At the other end of the spectrum, no deserving player has ever been deprived of entry into the Hall of Fame because of a limit of 10 imposed on voters. Yet, some writers have pushed for elimination of the limit or an increase in the number.
I think there is an understanding of statistically-qualified baseball players on the ballot now who won't be voted in due to suspected or proven PED use. I know these are words Murray hates hearing, but times have changed and players who performed at a level to be inducted into the Hall of Fame (without proven/suspected PED use) will now just sit on the ballot. I think the increase is so Hall of Fame voters can vote for PED users and the other players on the ballot who they feel deserve induction. Look at the ballot. I count 12-15 players who have a shot at being elected into the Hall of Fame (this includes PED users), so at a 10 person limit a potentially deserving candidate like Tim Raines or John Smoltz wouldn't receive a vote. I realize that Murray thinks PED users should not be elected into the Hall of Fame, and that's his right as a voter, but those who vote for PED users are going to keep voting for these PED users and the names will start accumulating on the ballot. It's not a huge issue, but I think recognition of the Steroid Era's effect on the ballot must be paid by the BBWAA.
Jack O’Connell, BBWAA secretary-treasurer, told me that 50 percent of the voters last year used all 10 of their ballot spots compared with a previous high of 22 percent
Like I say, it's not a huge issue, but I also don't see the problem with allowing voters to select 12 players instead of 10.
I suspect that last year’s stuffed ballots were intended to enhance the argument to change or eliminate the limit of 10.
Yes Murray, it's always a conspiracy designed to go against your wishes. That's exactly what happened. It's not that 50% of the voters wanted to vote for 10 candidates, but 50% of the voters colluded to put 10 candidates on the ballot in order to achieve an increase (a RECOMMENDED increase, that's all) in the number of candidates that can receive a vote from a single voter. For what purpose other than to annoy Murray? Who knows, but Murray does know it was a conspiracy designed by 50% of Hall of Fame voters. And why should 50% of the Hall of Fame voters have their say on an idea when Murray Chass doesn't like that idea?
At a national writers’ meeting last Tuesday the writers voted 59 to 21 to recommend that the limit be raised from 10 to 12.
They recommended it.
I don’t understand the desire or the need to raise the limit. In my first year of eligibility to vote, I checked off the maximum of 10 names, apparently flush with having the vote for the first time.
Only Murray Chass would not understand why voters need to check off 10 names when he has done this himself in the past.
Before my next vote a year later, I realized that by voting for 10 I was saying I wanted 10 players to be elected at once, creating an induction ceremony with 10 players on the Cooperstown stage all taking turns speaking into the Hall of Fame microphone.
And of course that tyranny can not stand. The Hall of Fame induction ceremony isn't about baseball players who have spent their lives dedicated to perfecting a craft and then being honored for their achievement, the induction ceremony is about Murray Chass and how long he feels like sitting in a chair listening to speeches. Look no further than this to find out the mindset of Hall of Fame voters when filling out their ballot. It's about them, not the candidates.
Not only would that make for an awfully long afternoon,
I mean, really, it's about Murray and how long he has to sit and listen to speeches. Decades of hard work down the drain because Murray wants to get home before the news starts.
but it would also dilute from the experience of each player.
I think if Murray asked Hall of Fame candidates if they would rather be inducted with 9 other people or not receive induction because their experience at the microphone will be diluted, then I know which option they would choose. I think I would be honored about being elected into the Hall of Fame rather than be concerned about having to spend a long day hearing speeches and feeling like my experience was diluted. But Murray doesn't care about the inductees, he just wants to avoid a long day. As expected, the Hall of Fame ballot is about Murray Chass, not the players.
Even more critical, it would speak to the standards of the voters.
Murray Chass has voted for 10 candidates before, but he thinks voters who will vote for 10 candidates have low standards. Of course.
In a column last week in The New York Times, Tyler Kepner wrote that the primary problem with the limit of 10 is the presence on the ballot of players involved in or suspected of being involved in performance-enhancing drugs, particularly Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
They are not likely to be elected, Kepner wrote, but their presence clogs the ballot. That, frankly, is a silly notion.
I don't think it's silly, because those players are on the ballot and will force voters who think Clemens/Bonds should be in the Hall of Fame to not give a vote to another seemingly qualified candidate. Still, only 50% of voters even vote for 10 candidates, so it's not a huge problem. BUT since it's not a huge problem, then I don't see the harm in increasing the limit to 12.
If a writer wants ignore PEDs and to vote for Bonds and Clemens, which is the writer’s prerogative, he still has eight spots on his ballot. Those should be more than enough to give the voter enough boxes to vote for whom he wants.
Incorrect. These are the following players on the ballot who I think would receive induction based on their statistics if they weren't tied to PED's.
Jeff Bagwell
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Sammy Sosa
Mark McGwire
Mike Piazza
If I were a voter who voted for candidates that performed well enough to be in the Hall of Fame while ignoring their potential/proven PED use, that leaves four spots for Craig Biggio, Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, Pedro Martinez, Fred McGriff, Don Mattingly, Tim Raines, Curt Schilling, and John Smoltz. And those six players above who are tied to PED's aren't leaving the ballot. They all got 7% or more of the vote last year and only Sammy Sosa got less than 11% of the vote.
If he wants to vote for more than eight others, he should re-examine the players he plans to vote for. Under my way of viewing players, I couldn’t possibly find even eight players worthy of election.
Right, but Murray also won't vote for players who are suspected of using PED's or are proven to have used PED's. That complicates the discussion a lot. If a voter will not vote for PED users than finding 10 qualified candidates isn't easy, but 10 worthy candidates isn't hard to find if PED users are included on a voter's ballot.
The Hall of Fame is for the elite, maybe the elite of the elite. It is not for good players or even very good players.
You mean players like Jack Morris? He was a really good pitcher, but despite Murray's attempts to get Morris in the Hall of Fame, he wasn't elite.
It’s up to the voter to decide who belongs,
But just don't decide that more than 10 players belong. That's unacceptable and means you have low standards.
and if he thinks more belong than he is allowed to vote for, he should think again.
I do agree tough decisions should be made, but the presence of PED users on the ballot does throw the voting process off a bit and it's only going to get worse. These are a group of players who are going to be on the ballot for the next decade and it's not their performance that prevents them from getting a vote, but their use or suspected use of PED's. The Steroid Era does bring a semi-different type of question to the 10 person limit on the Hall of Fame ballot and whether this limit should be increased.
In lamenting the clogged ballot, Kepner cites the case of Fred McGriff, who has good career statistics but whose percentage of votes has dropped to 11.7. Contrary to what Kepner might think, McGriff is not endangered because of a clogged ballot but because nearly 90 percent of the voters don’t think he belongs in the Hall of Fame.
Very true, but there is a group of voters who will have to eliminate what they consider to be worthy players from receiving a vote if they vote for PED users to receive induction. The issue isn't those players who come in at 11.7% of ballots, but players who come in at 50-74% of ballots. How many lost a vote due to the 10 person limit? That would be the question.
Writing about the people who want to change or eliminate the maximum, Kepner said, “Some of our most thoughtful members make up the committee, and whatever they decide will come from a good place. They cared deeply about this.”
I'm a Hall of Fame snob. I probably would rarely have 10 players on my ballot. I just think the Hall of Fame needs to readjust the 10 person limit in recognition of the Steroid Era and it's divisive impact on ballots. Just do it for a decade or so. I don't know.
For Kepner’s information, writers who have been doing this job a lot longer than he and some of those other people have cared deeply for many more years about a lot of issues involving the BBWAA.
Your feelings are getting hurt Murray? Oh, poor guy. Murray has cared longer than Tyler Kepner has cared so that means what Murray wants he should get.
The fact that Murray has had the opportunity to care longer doesn't mean that what he says should have more impact or should be weighed more heavily. There are also members of the committee who are currently actively covering baseball, while the same can't be said of those Murray is talking about who have cared deeply for many more years.
The Hall of Fame season got off to a good start earlier this week when the Hall’s 16-man Golden Era committee elected none of the 10 candidates on the ballot. Only a day later, though, the Baseball Writers Association of America spoiled that strong start by voting to recommend to the Hall’s board of directors that it raise from 10 to 12 the limit on the number of players a voter can mark on the ballot.
Notice the BBWAA didn't raise the limit on the number of players a voter can mark on the ballot. The notoriously slow to change BBWAA made a "recommendation" to raise the limit from 10 to 12. I won't hold my breath that the number of players is increased. Even if it is, so what? It just means voters can vote for 12 players and those who vote for fewer players can carry on with their lives. As we will learn, it's a HUGE difference, because that's not how Murray Chass would do it. He's been around for a long time and that's NOT how things have always been done and so he doesn't understand why things have to change. Change makes Murray sad.
In case it’s not clear, I oppose
any idea that didn't originate 30 years ago?
the election of players by any of the Hall’s various veterans’ committees, and I see no reason to allow writers to vote for more than 10 candidates. If anything, I would favor lowering the limit.
I think lowering the limit is a bad option given the current players on the ballot. Of course Murray doesn't explain why he would lower the limit and how it would benefit the Hall of Fame, instead choosing to write this and leave it out there as one of life's little mysteries for others to try and figure out. Maybe I should get Robert Stack on the case to do an entire "Unsolved Mysteries" episode on why Murray thinks lowering the limit is a good idea.
Nine players appeared on the Golden Era ballot:
Allen and Oliva each fell one vote short of the 12 votes needed for election. Kaat missed by two votes.
Nothing against any of them or any of the six other players on the ballot, but they had 15 years of eligibility on the writers’ ballot beginning five years after retirement and didn’t make it. Why do they get yet another chance?
Because they were put on the Golden Era ballot as candidates who could possibly get enough votes in order to enter the Hall of Fame once their candidacy was given more time to be pondered.
Could the writers have made a mistake?
Never. How could writers, some of whom haven't actively covered the sport of baseball in a decade or so, make a mistake? Impossible. These are infallible people like Murray Chass. Mistakes don't exist in their world.
Allen began by getting 3.7 percent of the writers’ vote and didn’t reach 10 percent until his fourth year on the ballot and never reached 20 percent.
Oliva attained 40 percent of the vote only three times, reached his high mark of 47.3 percent in his seventh try and finished his candidacy at 36.2 percent.
Kaat didn’t reach 20 percent until his fourth year on the ballot, slipped under 20 percent in his eighth year and concluded his candidacy at 26.2 percent.
These were the most attractive candidates considered by the Historical Overview committee, which the BBWAA appoints.
These are all guys who probably don't deserve Hall of Fame induction. Murray and I can agree on that. They are all Jack Morris to me. Really good, but not great.
Chances were slim that any of the players would be elected, but two nearly were. Do Allen and Oliva belong in an induction ceremony in July with Randy Johnson, John Smoltz and Pedro Martinez, who are expected to be elected by the writers in their first year on the ballot?
Probably not. I am not trying to create a strawman argument, but we all know that Murray is going to change his mind about Golden Era candidates not deserving induction once Jack Morris is on the Golden Era ballot. I'm sure Murray will use reasoning such as "Morris is different because he came close to induction the first time he was on the ballot" or some other bullshit reason that will attempt to distract from his basic belief that these players had 15 years to be on the ballot and couldn't make it then, so they don't deserve induction now? Make no mistake, Murray Chass will support Jack Morris when/if he is on the Golden Era ballot.
Bill Mazeroski is one of the typical players who got to the Hall of Fame via a veterans committee. The former Pittsburgh second baseman was elected in 2001 even though his 15-year run of percentages on the writers’ ballot read 6.1, 8.3, 8.6, 9.5, 6.7, 12.8, 18.4, 22.0, 23.5, 30.3, 33.5, 30.0, 29.5, 32.1 and 42.3.
He should not be in the Hall of Fame. No doubt.
The increase in Mazeroski’s percentages, from the first five years to the last six, was interesting, but he exceeded half of the necessary 75 percent only in his final year on the ballot.
I do agree Mazeroski should not be in the Hall of Fame, but his percentage of votes seemed to go up almost every year he was eligible. Sure, it may have taken him another 15 years to get in with 75% of the vote, but it seems the voters were considering him a Hall of Famer more and more as the years went on. This is the only reason I can see Mazeroski is in the Hall of Fame.
Mazeroski was the best defensive second baseman of his time, one of the best in major league history. He was an excellent clutch hitter.
(Bengoodfella makes wanking motion with his hand)
He became a Hall of Famer, the story goes, because Joe L. Brown, the former long-time Pirates’ general manager, was chairman of the veterans committee, and in the way the committee worked in those days, it was his turn, if he chose, to select a candidate.
Remember this story the next time you read sportswriters (like Murray Chass) screaming about the importance of integrity and the morality clause in an effort to keep PED users out of the Hall of Fame. The whole requirement of having integrity and the morality clause being quoted over the last decade is fairly new to baseball Hall of Fame voting. It's a new reason using an old solution to the problem of PED users being on the Hall of Fame ballot. Prior to the Steroid Era, any time baseball Hall of Fame voters cared about integrity and morality would be the first time they cared about this.
At the other end of the spectrum, no deserving player has ever been deprived of entry into the Hall of Fame because of a limit of 10 imposed on voters. Yet, some writers have pushed for elimination of the limit or an increase in the number.
I think there is an understanding of statistically-qualified baseball players on the ballot now who won't be voted in due to suspected or proven PED use. I know these are words Murray hates hearing, but times have changed and players who performed at a level to be inducted into the Hall of Fame (without proven/suspected PED use) will now just sit on the ballot. I think the increase is so Hall of Fame voters can vote for PED users and the other players on the ballot who they feel deserve induction. Look at the ballot. I count 12-15 players who have a shot at being elected into the Hall of Fame (this includes PED users), so at a 10 person limit a potentially deserving candidate like Tim Raines or John Smoltz wouldn't receive a vote. I realize that Murray thinks PED users should not be elected into the Hall of Fame, and that's his right as a voter, but those who vote for PED users are going to keep voting for these PED users and the names will start accumulating on the ballot. It's not a huge issue, but I think recognition of the Steroid Era's effect on the ballot must be paid by the BBWAA.
Jack O’Connell, BBWAA secretary-treasurer, told me that 50 percent of the voters last year used all 10 of their ballot spots compared with a previous high of 22 percent
Like I say, it's not a huge issue, but I also don't see the problem with allowing voters to select 12 players instead of 10.
I suspect that last year’s stuffed ballots were intended to enhance the argument to change or eliminate the limit of 10.
Yes Murray, it's always a conspiracy designed to go against your wishes. That's exactly what happened. It's not that 50% of the voters wanted to vote for 10 candidates, but 50% of the voters colluded to put 10 candidates on the ballot in order to achieve an increase (a RECOMMENDED increase, that's all) in the number of candidates that can receive a vote from a single voter. For what purpose other than to annoy Murray? Who knows, but Murray does know it was a conspiracy designed by 50% of Hall of Fame voters. And why should 50% of the Hall of Fame voters have their say on an idea when Murray Chass doesn't like that idea?
At a national writers’ meeting last Tuesday the writers voted 59 to 21 to recommend that the limit be raised from 10 to 12.
They recommended it.
I don’t understand the desire or the need to raise the limit. In my first year of eligibility to vote, I checked off the maximum of 10 names, apparently flush with having the vote for the first time.
Only Murray Chass would not understand why voters need to check off 10 names when he has done this himself in the past.
Before my next vote a year later, I realized that by voting for 10 I was saying I wanted 10 players to be elected at once, creating an induction ceremony with 10 players on the Cooperstown stage all taking turns speaking into the Hall of Fame microphone.
And of course that tyranny can not stand. The Hall of Fame induction ceremony isn't about baseball players who have spent their lives dedicated to perfecting a craft and then being honored for their achievement, the induction ceremony is about Murray Chass and how long he feels like sitting in a chair listening to speeches. Look no further than this to find out the mindset of Hall of Fame voters when filling out their ballot. It's about them, not the candidates.
Not only would that make for an awfully long afternoon,
I mean, really, it's about Murray and how long he has to sit and listen to speeches. Decades of hard work down the drain because Murray wants to get home before the news starts.
but it would also dilute from the experience of each player.
I think if Murray asked Hall of Fame candidates if they would rather be inducted with 9 other people or not receive induction because their experience at the microphone will be diluted, then I know which option they would choose. I think I would be honored about being elected into the Hall of Fame rather than be concerned about having to spend a long day hearing speeches and feeling like my experience was diluted. But Murray doesn't care about the inductees, he just wants to avoid a long day. As expected, the Hall of Fame ballot is about Murray Chass, not the players.
Even more critical, it would speak to the standards of the voters.
Murray Chass has voted for 10 candidates before, but he thinks voters who will vote for 10 candidates have low standards. Of course.
In a column last week in The New York Times, Tyler Kepner wrote that the primary problem with the limit of 10 is the presence on the ballot of players involved in or suspected of being involved in performance-enhancing drugs, particularly Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
They are not likely to be elected, Kepner wrote, but their presence clogs the ballot. That, frankly, is a silly notion.
I don't think it's silly, because those players are on the ballot and will force voters who think Clemens/Bonds should be in the Hall of Fame to not give a vote to another seemingly qualified candidate. Still, only 50% of voters even vote for 10 candidates, so it's not a huge problem. BUT since it's not a huge problem, then I don't see the harm in increasing the limit to 12.
If a writer wants ignore PEDs and to vote for Bonds and Clemens, which is the writer’s prerogative, he still has eight spots on his ballot. Those should be more than enough to give the voter enough boxes to vote for whom he wants.
Incorrect. These are the following players on the ballot who I think would receive induction based on their statistics if they weren't tied to PED's.
Jeff Bagwell
Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Sammy Sosa
Mark McGwire
Mike Piazza
If I were a voter who voted for candidates that performed well enough to be in the Hall of Fame while ignoring their potential/proven PED use, that leaves four spots for Craig Biggio, Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, Pedro Martinez, Fred McGriff, Don Mattingly, Tim Raines, Curt Schilling, and John Smoltz. And those six players above who are tied to PED's aren't leaving the ballot. They all got 7% or more of the vote last year and only Sammy Sosa got less than 11% of the vote.
If he wants to vote for more than eight others, he should re-examine the players he plans to vote for. Under my way of viewing players, I couldn’t possibly find even eight players worthy of election.
Right, but Murray also won't vote for players who are suspected of using PED's or are proven to have used PED's. That complicates the discussion a lot. If a voter will not vote for PED users than finding 10 qualified candidates isn't easy, but 10 worthy candidates isn't hard to find if PED users are included on a voter's ballot.
The Hall of Fame is for the elite, maybe the elite of the elite. It is not for good players or even very good players.
You mean players like Jack Morris? He was a really good pitcher, but despite Murray's attempts to get Morris in the Hall of Fame, he wasn't elite.
It’s up to the voter to decide who belongs,
But just don't decide that more than 10 players belong. That's unacceptable and means you have low standards.
and if he thinks more belong than he is allowed to vote for, he should think again.
I do agree tough decisions should be made, but the presence of PED users on the ballot does throw the voting process off a bit and it's only going to get worse. These are a group of players who are going to be on the ballot for the next decade and it's not their performance that prevents them from getting a vote, but their use or suspected use of PED's. The Steroid Era does bring a semi-different type of question to the 10 person limit on the Hall of Fame ballot and whether this limit should be increased.
In lamenting the clogged ballot, Kepner cites the case of Fred McGriff, who has good career statistics but whose percentage of votes has dropped to 11.7. Contrary to what Kepner might think, McGriff is not endangered because of a clogged ballot but because nearly 90 percent of the voters don’t think he belongs in the Hall of Fame.
Very true, but there is a group of voters who will have to eliminate what they consider to be worthy players from receiving a vote if they vote for PED users to receive induction. The issue isn't those players who come in at 11.7% of ballots, but players who come in at 50-74% of ballots. How many lost a vote due to the 10 person limit? That would be the question.
Writing about the people who want to change or eliminate the maximum, Kepner said, “Some of our most thoughtful members make up the committee, and whatever they decide will come from a good place. They cared deeply about this.”
I'm a Hall of Fame snob. I probably would rarely have 10 players on my ballot. I just think the Hall of Fame needs to readjust the 10 person limit in recognition of the Steroid Era and it's divisive impact on ballots. Just do it for a decade or so. I don't know.
For Kepner’s information, writers who have been doing this job a lot longer than he and some of those other people have cared deeply for many more years about a lot of issues involving the BBWAA.
Your feelings are getting hurt Murray? Oh, poor guy. Murray has cared longer than Tyler Kepner has cared so that means what Murray wants he should get.
The fact that Murray has had the opportunity to care longer doesn't mean that what he says should have more impact or should be weighed more heavily. There are also members of the committee who are currently actively covering baseball, while the same can't be said of those Murray is talking about who have cared deeply for many more years.
Friday, December 19, 2014
4 comments Murray Chass Bases His Hall of Fame Vote on Bacne And Rumors
It's well-known around these parts that Murray Chass is obsessed with Mike Piazza and his bacne. When he isn't solidifying his case against Mike Piazza entering the Hall of Fame with scientific bacne reports, suspicious that Piazza will admit to PED use in his book conveniently released AFTER he has been elected to the Hall of Fame, admitting that, okay maybe Piazza didn't admit to PED use in his book, but he still totally used PED's and the bacne proves it, Murray is threatening to stop voting for the Hall of Fame if Jack Morris isn't inducted into the Hall of Fame. It turns out Murray is still voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame and Jack Morris wasn't inducted in his final year of eligibility. You know, no one will believe what Murray has to say if he continues bluffing or lying like this.
I didn't expect that Murray would actually give away his Hall of Fame vote. He probably enjoys the power and the ability to be one of baseball's moral arbiters too much to give up his vote. That's exactly what Murray is doing today on his non-blog. He talks about Barry Bonds' ego-trip that leads him to believe he should be inducted into the Hall of Fame, and of course, discusses Mike Piazza's bacne. It seems that Murray is some sort of bacne expert. But remember, this isn't a blog, it's a diary of Murray's thoughts electronically written and placed on the Internet. That's completely different from having a blog.
Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Barry Bonds deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, and he shall be elected to the Hall of Fame.
Who makes such a proclamation? Why none other than Bonds himself.
I think this deserves a "BREAKING NEWS" label. A professional athlete believes that he deserves to be elected into that sport's Hall of Fame? Say it isn't so, Murray! How unforeseen is this turn of events? Do athletes usually have a great amount of confidence in their skill level as Bonds is displaying here or is his insistence he should be in the Hall of Fame just a result of his huge ego overshooting his career accomplishments? I know the answer, but of course, Murray comes to a different answer.
In a typically arrogant and self-serving interview with an MLB.com reporter who has long been a Bonds sycophant, Bonds said:
What's more arrogant? To call another baseball reporter "arrogant" while referring to and quoting an article that reporter wrote WITHOUT ACTUALLY LINKING THE ARTICLE in your non-blog column, or actually being an arrogant baseball reporter? I would argue criticizing a fellow baseball writer and using his words without even kindly providing a link to the article you are criticizing is more arrogant. Of course, Murray is a non-blogger, so he doesn't understand the courtesy required on the Interwebs. Criticize if you will, but provide a link so the reader can make a decision for him/herself.
“I love Major League Baseball. I always have and I loved playing the game. I don’t have any doubts that I’ll get there in time. I’m bothered about it, but I don’t sit here going, ‘I’m not going to make it.’ I don’t see how it stays the way it’s going. In my mind, in my head, I’m a lot more positive about it than I am negative. I think eventually they’ll do the right thing.”
I do disagree with Bonds' language of "do the right thing," otherwise there is nothing to report here. Bonds thinks he should be in the Hall of Fame and he's trying to stay positive. I don't think Bonds is out of line or really saying anything that a reasonable person (in other words, not a person who builds an anti-Hall of Fame case around bacne) wouldn't expect Bonds to say.
“I deserve to be there. Clemens deserves to be there. The guys that are supposed to be there are supposed to be there. Period. I don’t even know how to say it. We are Hall of Famers. Why are we having these conversations about it? Why are we talking about a baseball era that has come and gone?
“Era, era, era. Do the best players in the game deserve to be in the Hall of Fame? Yes. Everything that everyone has accomplished in baseball is in that book. Correct? So if that’s correct, then we need to be in there. End of story.”
I figure the "deserve to be there" part really has Murray's attention and is a source of anger for him. As a Hall of Fame moral arbiter, no one DESERVES to be in the Hall of Fame. Except for Jack Morris of course. Otherwise, Bonds is still pleading his case for the Hall of Fame and doing so in terms where he thinks his records that are recognized by MLB should also be recognized by the Hall of Fame. Again, it's a simple argument that really shouldn't be offensive.
Bonds referred to the baseball record book, not the excellent 2006 book “Game of Shadows” that tells you all you need to know about Bonds and performance-enhancing drugs.
Except the book left out that chapter about bacne. Murray will forgive the authors for this oversight just this once.
But Bonds indeed is in the record book – for having hit the most home runs in a single season (73) and for having hit the most home runs in a career (762). He is there, on page 19 of The Elias Book of Baseball Records, because Major League Baseball has not amended his achievements.
Seymour Siwoff, decades-long head of Elias Sports Bureau, explained why Bonds is there.
“He wasn’t accused of anything,” Siwoff said in a telephone interview Saturday, then referring specifically to the 73 home runs Bonds hit in 2001 added, “When he did it, he wasn’t guilty of anything we knew of so he was put in. It was the record. I couldn’t dispute it.”
Don't be a Bonds sycophant! Just change the record books on your own.
In retrospect, Siwoff said, “We know it’s a fraud. He never hit more than 49 home runs and he suddenly hits 73.”
What was his bacne status? THAT is the real test of steroid use. What do the record books say about Bonds' bacne status and give Murray a straight answer or he will accuse you of being in league with Bonds.
As for Bonds’ linking the record book and the Hall of Fame, Siwoff said, “The book has no bearing on the Hall of Fame.”
I am making a grimace face. Not a Grimace face like this, but a grimace/wince face more like this.
I mean, yeah, the record book has no bearing on the Hall of Fame in a world where Hall of Fame voters don't use the record book or statistics a player compiled that appear in the record book as part of a player's Hall of Fame candidacy. In the real world, the record book does have a bearing on the Hall of Fame. Like or not.
Bonds is not in the Hall of Fame because in the two years he has been on the ballot, the voters – members of the Baseball Writers Association – have rejected his achievements, believing they were chemically aided.
Voting individually but collectively coming to the same conclusion, they have done that because they believe Bonds achieved his record numbers with the aid of performance-enhancing drugs.
This is an instance where I'm not entirely sure what the hell Murray is trying to prove. Yes, the voters seem to think Bonds' achievements were chemically aided. That seems clear. I am not sure who would argue otherwise. This doesn't mean Barry Bonds shouldn't believe that he should be a member of the Hall of Fame. It's a personal opinion he holds.
Circumstantial evidence, however, weighs heavily against Bonds. In the five seasons 2000 through 2004 Bonds hit 258 home runs. In the previous five years he hit 186. Siwoff pointed out the unnatural leap in Bonds’ single-season home runs.
I think it's past the "Did Bonds use PED's?" part of the discussion. For the sake of argument, let's assume he did use PED's. That's the point we are at, so Murray shouldn't waste time explaining why he thinks Bonds used PED's and focus more on bacne and how rumors about Jeff Bagwell are considered sufficient evidence to prevent him from being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Sosa, meanwhile, was raising an equal amount of eyebrows. He slugged 292 home runs in a five-year period, including more than 60 in three of four seasons within those five years.
And we have reached the "rambling along without a point" portion of the column on Murray's non-blog.
Before Sosa and McGwire waged their PED duel in 1998, Roger Maris and Babe Ruth had been the only players to reach 60, and they did it once each. From 1927 until 1998, two players reached 60. In the four-year span 1998-2001, three players did it a total of six times.
Like Bonds, Sosa eluded detection, but is any more circumstantial evidence needed? Convicts have been executed on less.
Well then the only solution is that Bonds definitely should be executed. If his hat no longer fits then you must not acquit. I would say give Bonds the electric chair, but it could only serve as a way to make him stronger if something goes wrong and Bonds' steroid strength turns into the ability to shoot electric charges from his hands at unsuspecting people on the street requiring a superhero like Derek Jeter to come along and save baseball and America by taking down Bonds "the right way." So the electric chair is out.
I think lethal injection is the way to go to execute Bonds. But hold on, wouldn't he enjoy the feeling of needles going in his arm? Isn't that what got him into the situation in the first place? So no lethal injection.
Then perhaps Bonds should be hanged (hung?), but how on Earth would anyone find rope big enough to get around his huge steroid-aided neck?
I guess the only option to execute Bonds based on the circumstantial evidence is to execute him by firing squad. Let's get it done.
In an interview a couple of years before the recent one, the same reporter, Barry Bloom, quoted Bonds as saying about the Hall of Fame:
Yet again, Murray doesn't provide a link. I say some critical things on this blog, but I always provide a link. I think it's only the right way to go about criticizing someone on the Internet. Obviously, as a non-blogger Murray disagrees.
“You have to vote on baseball the way baseball needs to be voted on. If you vote on your assumptions or what you believe or what you think might have been going on there, that’s your problem. You’re at fault. It has nothing to do with what your opinion is. Period.
This really isn't a terrible point overall. In regard to Bonds, the assumption he cheated by using PED's is there and I think it's a pretty safe assumption. Now in the case of other Hall of Fame candidates like Jeff Bagwell then I think this may be good advice.
“If that’s the case, you better go way, way back and start thinking about your opinions. If that’s how you feel life should be run, I would say then you run your Hall of Fame the way you want to run your Hall of Fame. That’s what I think. That’s my personal opinion. If you want to do the Hall of Fame the way the Hall of Fame is supposed to be done, then you make the right decision on that. If you don’t, that’s on you. To stamp something on your assumptions, it doesn’t work for me.”
Unfortunately for Bonds, the Hall of Fame voters did run the Hall of Fame the way they wanted to run it and that's why he isn't in the Hall of Fame. I do agree with not "stamping something based on assumptions." I think that can be a dangerous game.
His words did not sway them. With 75 percent of the vote needed for election, Bonds received 36.2 percent, less than half. In his second appearance on the ballot last year, he fared even worse, dropping to 34.7 percent.
Look at who is grasping the use of basic statistics! And here I thought Murray Chass would tally Hall of Fame voting totals for a player based on "feel."
The history of Hall of Fame voting shows that when players of star status appear for the first time, others on the ballot suffer.
Now Bonds is selfishly hurting others with his insistence that he thinks he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Stop advocating for yourself and taking away votes for others! Only Jack Morris is allowed to do that.
It is always possible that something could happen that would catapult Bonds into the Hall of Fame, but he shouldn’t hold his breath.
Well, he won't have any breath after he gets executed through the use of circumstantial evidence for Premeditated PED Use. This crime carries a death sentence, while Involuntary PED Use, the kind that Andy Pettitte has been convicted of carries a sentence of everyone forgetting about it because he acted contrite.
There is also the crime of Assumption of PED Use Due To Affiliation with Other PED Users. This is the crime Jeff Bagwell is guilty of. Bonds can be convicted of that crime as well. The only way to avoid being convicted for this PED-related crime is to be Derek Jeter.
The Hall’s board also knows that players already in the Hall object to being joined by players whose credentials includes PEDs. Some members have gone so far as to say they would boycott induction ceremonies if steroids users are elected.
If these members have intestinal fortitude of backing up their threats with actions like Murray Chass did when he claimed he was giving away his Hall of Fame vote if Jack Morris wasn't inducted in his final year of eligibility, then I would expect the entire Hall board to be present even if Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, and McGwire all got elected in the same Hall of Fame class.
Three other players on the ballot have resumes that are foggier than these five. Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza and Craig Biggio have never been linked to steroids by anything other than news media mention,
And by "news media mention" what Murray means is "there is no direct evidence that they used steroids, but writers like me won't stop talking about their assumed link to steroids so it's just accepted as fact they used steroids at this point."
It must be nice to be the one stirring the dust about a story and then blame the media attention on other "news media." I can't think of a sportswriter more fervent in his insistence that Mike Piazza used steroids than Murray Chass. So one of the biggest ways Piazza is linked to steroids is through Murray's refusal to drop the issue of Piazza's bacne as anything more than speculation as to Piazza's PED use.
but in my view more time is needed to learn more about their past practices.
What the fuck does this even mean? "...more time is needed to learn more about their past practices."
Does Murray want the Hall of Fame to hire an outside investigative firm and do interviews as to whether Bagwell, Piazza and Biggio used steroids? If it requires this much work to get some semblance of an answer on whether any/all of these three players used PED's, then I think perhaps it should just be assumed they didn't use those PED's. I mean, "more time" is needed? Why not just assume these players didn't use PED's since there isn't evidence they did rather than spend time and money drumming up evidence one way or another. Murray just wants the tiniest bit of circumstantial evidence that he could use to point and say, "See! I told you Mike Piazza used steroids!"
I voted for Bagwell on his first appearance on the ballot, when he received 41.7 percent of the votes. After several people told me that he had been heavily involved in steroids, I left him off my ballot the second year.
Wait, what? Murray Chass, a professional journalist and amateur non-blogger, voted for Bagwell, and then some people whispered in his ear that Bagwell used steroids and Chass thought, "Well fuck my original thoughts, CLEARLY there is something to this rumor that Bagwell used steroids. After all, when have rumors ever been wrong? I'm going to now change my vote based on the speculation others have told me without personally doing one little bit of investigation into the truth of this speculation."
So yes, Murray Chass thinks more information needs to be learned about Bagwell's past practices in order to prove that Bagwell didn't use steroids, but ZERO investigation needs to be done in order to find out if the rumors he's being told by "several people" of Bagwell's PED use are true or not. Wow, that's a pretty embarrassing set of positions for a respected sportswriter. In fact, I think I would call this position of refusing to do research on second-hand information to be arrogant and even a little self-serving.
He received 56 percent of the votes that year and climbed to 59.6 percent the next year. But last year he slipped to 54.3 percent, perhaps a victim of the newcomers on the ballot.
Barry Bonds is such an asshole. Now he is lowering the vote total of Hall of Fame candidates that Murray Chass doesn't even believe should be in the Hall of Fame. YOU ARE JUST HURTING YOUR OWN SCUMMY KIND NOW!
Biggio will almost certainly be elected this time. He was only two votes short of election in the last election and should clear the threshold, even though a reporter friend told me that a dozen or more players told him that Biggio used steroids.
I bet there are a dozen or so players who will say that Biggio didn't use steroids. Why blindly accept one group's word over another group's word? Other than the fact Murray has a conclusion he wants to reach so he has no use for anyone who would tell him differently from what he wants to believe is true.
When I wrote that, Biggio’s fans were outraged.
I'm not a Biggio fan in any way. I didn't really like him as a player. I am a fan of using reason to make decisions and not ignoring information that disputes my conclusion, while only paying attention to information that proves the conclusion I want to reach.
If it’s not clear by now, I don’t vote for steroids-tainted players.
If it's also not clear by now, Murray Chass struggles with what is a rumor and what needs to be investigated as to whether it is rumor or not.
If steroids were legal, I’d have no problem with players using them. But they are illegal, and players who use them cheat. I can’t vote for players who cheat at the expense of their fellow players who don’t cheat.
That brings me to Piazza...
It shouldn't bring you to Piazza because he hasn't been proven to have cheated. Perhaps he did, but this goes double for Jeff Bagwell, speculation of PED use isn't proof of PED use.
But I have written about my belief that he was one of the steroids gang.
I have a lot of beliefs, but simply because they are my beliefs doesn't make them factually true. I have a list of players in my head of baseball players that I believe used PED's, but it doesn't mean I am correct. I think potentially up to 35-40% of NFL and NBA players use some some form of PED, because those are some really big guys. Does it mean my belief is true and if I were a sportswriter I could just start eliminating these players from Hall of Fame contention? Absolutely not. There should be proof, not conjecture or a couple dudes whispering sweet nothing rumors in my ear. Hall of Fame voters have to be better than that.
His many fans have excoriated me for my view, but they are blind to what I believe is strong evidence of his use.
Bacne. Maybe Piazza did use PED's. I'm not waffling on the issue. Gun to my head, I die if the answer is wrong, I think Piazza used PED's. But there's no proof of this like there is proof of other baseball players. I'm the person who thinks Marcus Giles used PED's. Little Marcus Giles. This is why personal beliefs can't be taken into account on issues like this. Leave out Bonds if you think he used PED's. Whatever, fine. It's Murray's right as a Hall of Fame voter. Don't invent reasons to leave out players from the Hall of Fame because of your personal beliefs that haven't been proven publicly.
I am not a Mike Piazza fan. I actually hated him as a player and wish Roger Clemens had hit him with the bat he threw. So I'm not a fan, but I will excoriate Murray for his view because there are other causes of bacne that pertain to Piazza. His bacne isn't "strong evidence" of his PED use, it is circumstantial evidence used to reach a conclusion Murray wants to reach. If Piazza were David Eckstein's size then Murray would chalk his bacne up to another cause, but because Piazza is a bigger guy then it's an easy and lazy conclusion to reach that Piazza's PED use can be seen in his bacne.
When he played for the New York Mets, he didn’t hide his acne-covered back. Steroids experts say that Piazza’s condition is one of the signs of steroids use.
Yes, it is a sign of steroid use. What steroid experts haven't told Murray, or he has chosen to ignore, is that there are other causes of bacne that apply directly to Piazza as a baseball player.
Heredity may also be a factor in how acne affects you. If one or both of your parents had acne, you're at a greater risk for inheriting the triggers that cause overproduction of sebum and lead to clogged follicles
Has Murray checked any of Piazza's relatives for bacne? Hey, Tommy Lasorda is related to Mike Piazza! Murray should make Lasorda take his shirt off to check for bacne.
Okay, now for the real cause of Piazza's bacne if one doesn't just care to claim it is PED-related:
If you participate in sports, you can get acne mechanica along your hairline from wearing a helmet.
HEY! Piazza wore a helmet while playing baseball!
Tight uniforms that put a lot of pressure on the skin can also be a cause of acne mechanica.
So playing in a tight uniform in the hot summer sun could cause acne as well? Weirdly, that's exactly what Piazza was doing for most of his career while playing catcher. It's almost like this could be an explanation for Piazza's bacne, just like his PED use could be an explanation for his bacne. It's funny how Murray just conveniently ignores any other logical causes of Piazza's bacne so he can reach the conclusion he wants to reach.
When I first wrote about Piazza’s possible use several years ago, his fans ridiculed me. They completely ignored a critical aspect of what I wrote.
Sort of like how you ignored tight uniforms can put pressure on the skin creating bacne? Or exactly like that? I think it is hilarious that Murray is playing the victim here, acting like everyone else is ignoring reasonable information he is presenting to them, while he ignores reasonable evidence that contradicts his "strong" (circumstantial) evidence of Piazza's PED use.
Piazza’s back cleared up completely when baseball began testing for steroids and remained clear to his retirement.
It's very possible he got treatment for his bacne or it cleared up as he played the catcher position less and first base/DH more, thereby not having his tight uniform directly pushing on his back as it did while in a crouched position behind home plate. Around the time MLB started testing for steroids, Piazza started playing catcher less.
Murray's whole "Piazza had bacne and then it cleared up!" argument fails for me because it's very circumstantial and because Piazza's bacne can easily be explained by kneeling in a catcher's crouch for most of his career. Get in a catcher's crouch sometime with a shirt on and see how your back naturally arches slightly more than when standing at first base or sitting. Piazza had a tight uniform on and it was more directly pressured against his back when crouched in a catcher's position. He also played the catcher position during the hottest months of the year. Piazza may have used PED's, but there are other logical explanations for his bacne that Murray ignores.
It was not a stretch to conclude that Piazza had stopped using steroids to avoid being caught by a urine test.
It's also not a stretch that Piazza got treatment for his bacne or his bacne started to clear up as he played the catcher position less and less. What is a stretch is using bacne as "strong evidence" and (damn you Murray for making me take my eye off the ball here) using some rumor you heard about Jeff Bagwell's PED use, then basing your Hall of Fame vote on this rumor without doing ANY research into whether the rumors were true or not. It's terrible journalism and is an embarrassment to those baseball writers who vote for the Hall of Fame. I wish Murray had not been lying when he stated he was giving up his Hall of Fame vote if Jack Morris didn't get in. It would have allowed a voter who actually cares to do research and base his vote on the research he/she has done to have a vote, rather than a bitter old man to base his Hall of Fame vote on rumors that support what he wants to believe.
I didn't expect that Murray would actually give away his Hall of Fame vote. He probably enjoys the power and the ability to be one of baseball's moral arbiters too much to give up his vote. That's exactly what Murray is doing today on his non-blog. He talks about Barry Bonds' ego-trip that leads him to believe he should be inducted into the Hall of Fame, and of course, discusses Mike Piazza's bacne. It seems that Murray is some sort of bacne expert. But remember, this isn't a blog, it's a diary of Murray's thoughts electronically written and placed on the Internet. That's completely different from having a blog.
Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Barry Bonds deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, and he shall be elected to the Hall of Fame.
Who makes such a proclamation? Why none other than Bonds himself.
I think this deserves a "BREAKING NEWS" label. A professional athlete believes that he deserves to be elected into that sport's Hall of Fame? Say it isn't so, Murray! How unforeseen is this turn of events? Do athletes usually have a great amount of confidence in their skill level as Bonds is displaying here or is his insistence he should be in the Hall of Fame just a result of his huge ego overshooting his career accomplishments? I know the answer, but of course, Murray comes to a different answer.
In a typically arrogant and self-serving interview with an MLB.com reporter who has long been a Bonds sycophant, Bonds said:
What's more arrogant? To call another baseball reporter "arrogant" while referring to and quoting an article that reporter wrote WITHOUT ACTUALLY LINKING THE ARTICLE in your non-blog column, or actually being an arrogant baseball reporter? I would argue criticizing a fellow baseball writer and using his words without even kindly providing a link to the article you are criticizing is more arrogant. Of course, Murray is a non-blogger, so he doesn't understand the courtesy required on the Interwebs. Criticize if you will, but provide a link so the reader can make a decision for him/herself.
“I love Major League Baseball. I always have and I loved playing the game. I don’t have any doubts that I’ll get there in time. I’m bothered about it, but I don’t sit here going, ‘I’m not going to make it.’ I don’t see how it stays the way it’s going. In my mind, in my head, I’m a lot more positive about it than I am negative. I think eventually they’ll do the right thing.”
I do disagree with Bonds' language of "do the right thing," otherwise there is nothing to report here. Bonds thinks he should be in the Hall of Fame and he's trying to stay positive. I don't think Bonds is out of line or really saying anything that a reasonable person (in other words, not a person who builds an anti-Hall of Fame case around bacne) wouldn't expect Bonds to say.
“I deserve to be there. Clemens deserves to be there. The guys that are supposed to be there are supposed to be there. Period. I don’t even know how to say it. We are Hall of Famers. Why are we having these conversations about it? Why are we talking about a baseball era that has come and gone?
“Era, era, era. Do the best players in the game deserve to be in the Hall of Fame? Yes. Everything that everyone has accomplished in baseball is in that book. Correct? So if that’s correct, then we need to be in there. End of story.”
I figure the "deserve to be there" part really has Murray's attention and is a source of anger for him. As a Hall of Fame moral arbiter, no one DESERVES to be in the Hall of Fame. Except for Jack Morris of course. Otherwise, Bonds is still pleading his case for the Hall of Fame and doing so in terms where he thinks his records that are recognized by MLB should also be recognized by the Hall of Fame. Again, it's a simple argument that really shouldn't be offensive.
Bonds referred to the baseball record book, not the excellent 2006 book “Game of Shadows” that tells you all you need to know about Bonds and performance-enhancing drugs.
Except the book left out that chapter about bacne. Murray will forgive the authors for this oversight just this once.
But Bonds indeed is in the record book – for having hit the most home runs in a single season (73) and for having hit the most home runs in a career (762). He is there, on page 19 of The Elias Book of Baseball Records, because Major League Baseball has not amended his achievements.
Seymour Siwoff, decades-long head of Elias Sports Bureau, explained why Bonds is there.
“He wasn’t accused of anything,” Siwoff said in a telephone interview Saturday, then referring specifically to the 73 home runs Bonds hit in 2001 added, “When he did it, he wasn’t guilty of anything we knew of so he was put in. It was the record. I couldn’t dispute it.”
Don't be a Bonds sycophant! Just change the record books on your own.
In retrospect, Siwoff said, “We know it’s a fraud. He never hit more than 49 home runs and he suddenly hits 73.”
What was his bacne status? THAT is the real test of steroid use. What do the record books say about Bonds' bacne status and give Murray a straight answer or he will accuse you of being in league with Bonds.
As for Bonds’ linking the record book and the Hall of Fame, Siwoff said, “The book has no bearing on the Hall of Fame.”
I am making a grimace face. Not a Grimace face like this, but a grimace/wince face more like this.
I mean, yeah, the record book has no bearing on the Hall of Fame in a world where Hall of Fame voters don't use the record book or statistics a player compiled that appear in the record book as part of a player's Hall of Fame candidacy. In the real world, the record book does have a bearing on the Hall of Fame. Like or not.
Bonds is not in the Hall of Fame because in the two years he has been on the ballot, the voters – members of the Baseball Writers Association – have rejected his achievements, believing they were chemically aided.
Voting individually but collectively coming to the same conclusion, they have done that because they believe Bonds achieved his record numbers with the aid of performance-enhancing drugs.
This is an instance where I'm not entirely sure what the hell Murray is trying to prove. Yes, the voters seem to think Bonds' achievements were chemically aided. That seems clear. I am not sure who would argue otherwise. This doesn't mean Barry Bonds shouldn't believe that he should be a member of the Hall of Fame. It's a personal opinion he holds.
Circumstantial evidence, however, weighs heavily against Bonds. In the five seasons 2000 through 2004 Bonds hit 258 home runs. In the previous five years he hit 186. Siwoff pointed out the unnatural leap in Bonds’ single-season home runs.
I think it's past the "Did Bonds use PED's?" part of the discussion. For the sake of argument, let's assume he did use PED's. That's the point we are at, so Murray shouldn't waste time explaining why he thinks Bonds used PED's and focus more on bacne and how rumors about Jeff Bagwell are considered sufficient evidence to prevent him from being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Sosa, meanwhile, was raising an equal amount of eyebrows. He slugged 292 home runs in a five-year period, including more than 60 in three of four seasons within those five years.
And we have reached the "rambling along without a point" portion of the column on Murray's non-blog.
Before Sosa and McGwire waged their PED duel in 1998, Roger Maris and Babe Ruth had been the only players to reach 60, and they did it once each. From 1927 until 1998, two players reached 60. In the four-year span 1998-2001, three players did it a total of six times.
Like Bonds, Sosa eluded detection, but is any more circumstantial evidence needed? Convicts have been executed on less.
Well then the only solution is that Bonds definitely should be executed. If his hat no longer fits then you must not acquit. I would say give Bonds the electric chair, but it could only serve as a way to make him stronger if something goes wrong and Bonds' steroid strength turns into the ability to shoot electric charges from his hands at unsuspecting people on the street requiring a superhero like Derek Jeter to come along and save baseball and America by taking down Bonds "the right way." So the electric chair is out.
I think lethal injection is the way to go to execute Bonds. But hold on, wouldn't he enjoy the feeling of needles going in his arm? Isn't that what got him into the situation in the first place? So no lethal injection.
Then perhaps Bonds should be hanged (hung?), but how on Earth would anyone find rope big enough to get around his huge steroid-aided neck?
I guess the only option to execute Bonds based on the circumstantial evidence is to execute him by firing squad. Let's get it done.
In an interview a couple of years before the recent one, the same reporter, Barry Bloom, quoted Bonds as saying about the Hall of Fame:
Yet again, Murray doesn't provide a link. I say some critical things on this blog, but I always provide a link. I think it's only the right way to go about criticizing someone on the Internet. Obviously, as a non-blogger Murray disagrees.
“You have to vote on baseball the way baseball needs to be voted on. If you vote on your assumptions or what you believe or what you think might have been going on there, that’s your problem. You’re at fault. It has nothing to do with what your opinion is. Period.
This really isn't a terrible point overall. In regard to Bonds, the assumption he cheated by using PED's is there and I think it's a pretty safe assumption. Now in the case of other Hall of Fame candidates like Jeff Bagwell then I think this may be good advice.
“If that’s the case, you better go way, way back and start thinking about your opinions. If that’s how you feel life should be run, I would say then you run your Hall of Fame the way you want to run your Hall of Fame. That’s what I think. That’s my personal opinion. If you want to do the Hall of Fame the way the Hall of Fame is supposed to be done, then you make the right decision on that. If you don’t, that’s on you. To stamp something on your assumptions, it doesn’t work for me.”
Unfortunately for Bonds, the Hall of Fame voters did run the Hall of Fame the way they wanted to run it and that's why he isn't in the Hall of Fame. I do agree with not "stamping something based on assumptions." I think that can be a dangerous game.
His words did not sway them. With 75 percent of the vote needed for election, Bonds received 36.2 percent, less than half. In his second appearance on the ballot last year, he fared even worse, dropping to 34.7 percent.
Look at who is grasping the use of basic statistics! And here I thought Murray Chass would tally Hall of Fame voting totals for a player based on "feel."
The history of Hall of Fame voting shows that when players of star status appear for the first time, others on the ballot suffer.
Now Bonds is selfishly hurting others with his insistence that he thinks he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Stop advocating for yourself and taking away votes for others! Only Jack Morris is allowed to do that.
It is always possible that something could happen that would catapult Bonds into the Hall of Fame, but he shouldn’t hold his breath.
Well, he won't have any breath after he gets executed through the use of circumstantial evidence for Premeditated PED Use. This crime carries a death sentence, while Involuntary PED Use, the kind that Andy Pettitte has been convicted of carries a sentence of everyone forgetting about it because he acted contrite.
There is also the crime of Assumption of PED Use Due To Affiliation with Other PED Users. This is the crime Jeff Bagwell is guilty of. Bonds can be convicted of that crime as well. The only way to avoid being convicted for this PED-related crime is to be Derek Jeter.
The Hall’s board also knows that players already in the Hall object to being joined by players whose credentials includes PEDs. Some members have gone so far as to say they would boycott induction ceremonies if steroids users are elected.
If these members have intestinal fortitude of backing up their threats with actions like Murray Chass did when he claimed he was giving away his Hall of Fame vote if Jack Morris wasn't inducted in his final year of eligibility, then I would expect the entire Hall board to be present even if Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, and McGwire all got elected in the same Hall of Fame class.
Three other players on the ballot have resumes that are foggier than these five. Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza and Craig Biggio have never been linked to steroids by anything other than news media mention,
And by "news media mention" what Murray means is "there is no direct evidence that they used steroids, but writers like me won't stop talking about their assumed link to steroids so it's just accepted as fact they used steroids at this point."
It must be nice to be the one stirring the dust about a story and then blame the media attention on other "news media." I can't think of a sportswriter more fervent in his insistence that Mike Piazza used steroids than Murray Chass. So one of the biggest ways Piazza is linked to steroids is through Murray's refusal to drop the issue of Piazza's bacne as anything more than speculation as to Piazza's PED use.
but in my view more time is needed to learn more about their past practices.
What the fuck does this even mean? "...more time is needed to learn more about their past practices."
Does Murray want the Hall of Fame to hire an outside investigative firm and do interviews as to whether Bagwell, Piazza and Biggio used steroids? If it requires this much work to get some semblance of an answer on whether any/all of these three players used PED's, then I think perhaps it should just be assumed they didn't use those PED's. I mean, "more time" is needed? Why not just assume these players didn't use PED's since there isn't evidence they did rather than spend time and money drumming up evidence one way or another. Murray just wants the tiniest bit of circumstantial evidence that he could use to point and say, "See! I told you Mike Piazza used steroids!"
I voted for Bagwell on his first appearance on the ballot, when he received 41.7 percent of the votes. After several people told me that he had been heavily involved in steroids, I left him off my ballot the second year.
Wait, what? Murray Chass, a professional journalist and amateur non-blogger, voted for Bagwell, and then some people whispered in his ear that Bagwell used steroids and Chass thought, "Well fuck my original thoughts, CLEARLY there is something to this rumor that Bagwell used steroids. After all, when have rumors ever been wrong? I'm going to now change my vote based on the speculation others have told me without personally doing one little bit of investigation into the truth of this speculation."
So yes, Murray Chass thinks more information needs to be learned about Bagwell's past practices in order to prove that Bagwell didn't use steroids, but ZERO investigation needs to be done in order to find out if the rumors he's being told by "several people" of Bagwell's PED use are true or not. Wow, that's a pretty embarrassing set of positions for a respected sportswriter. In fact, I think I would call this position of refusing to do research on second-hand information to be arrogant and even a little self-serving.
He received 56 percent of the votes that year and climbed to 59.6 percent the next year. But last year he slipped to 54.3 percent, perhaps a victim of the newcomers on the ballot.
Barry Bonds is such an asshole. Now he is lowering the vote total of Hall of Fame candidates that Murray Chass doesn't even believe should be in the Hall of Fame. YOU ARE JUST HURTING YOUR OWN SCUMMY KIND NOW!
Biggio will almost certainly be elected this time. He was only two votes short of election in the last election and should clear the threshold, even though a reporter friend told me that a dozen or more players told him that Biggio used steroids.
I bet there are a dozen or so players who will say that Biggio didn't use steroids. Why blindly accept one group's word over another group's word? Other than the fact Murray has a conclusion he wants to reach so he has no use for anyone who would tell him differently from what he wants to believe is true.
When I wrote that, Biggio’s fans were outraged.
I'm not a Biggio fan in any way. I didn't really like him as a player. I am a fan of using reason to make decisions and not ignoring information that disputes my conclusion, while only paying attention to information that proves the conclusion I want to reach.
If it’s not clear by now, I don’t vote for steroids-tainted players.
If it's also not clear by now, Murray Chass struggles with what is a rumor and what needs to be investigated as to whether it is rumor or not.
If steroids were legal, I’d have no problem with players using them. But they are illegal, and players who use them cheat. I can’t vote for players who cheat at the expense of their fellow players who don’t cheat.
That brings me to Piazza...
It shouldn't bring you to Piazza because he hasn't been proven to have cheated. Perhaps he did, but this goes double for Jeff Bagwell, speculation of PED use isn't proof of PED use.
But I have written about my belief that he was one of the steroids gang.
I have a lot of beliefs, but simply because they are my beliefs doesn't make them factually true. I have a list of players in my head of baseball players that I believe used PED's, but it doesn't mean I am correct. I think potentially up to 35-40% of NFL and NBA players use some some form of PED, because those are some really big guys. Does it mean my belief is true and if I were a sportswriter I could just start eliminating these players from Hall of Fame contention? Absolutely not. There should be proof, not conjecture or a couple dudes whispering sweet nothing rumors in my ear. Hall of Fame voters have to be better than that.
His many fans have excoriated me for my view, but they are blind to what I believe is strong evidence of his use.
Bacne. Maybe Piazza did use PED's. I'm not waffling on the issue. Gun to my head, I die if the answer is wrong, I think Piazza used PED's. But there's no proof of this like there is proof of other baseball players. I'm the person who thinks Marcus Giles used PED's. Little Marcus Giles. This is why personal beliefs can't be taken into account on issues like this. Leave out Bonds if you think he used PED's. Whatever, fine. It's Murray's right as a Hall of Fame voter. Don't invent reasons to leave out players from the Hall of Fame because of your personal beliefs that haven't been proven publicly.
I am not a Mike Piazza fan. I actually hated him as a player and wish Roger Clemens had hit him with the bat he threw. So I'm not a fan, but I will excoriate Murray for his view because there are other causes of bacne that pertain to Piazza. His bacne isn't "strong evidence" of his PED use, it is circumstantial evidence used to reach a conclusion Murray wants to reach. If Piazza were David Eckstein's size then Murray would chalk his bacne up to another cause, but because Piazza is a bigger guy then it's an easy and lazy conclusion to reach that Piazza's PED use can be seen in his bacne.
When he played for the New York Mets, he didn’t hide his acne-covered back. Steroids experts say that Piazza’s condition is one of the signs of steroids use.
Yes, it is a sign of steroid use. What steroid experts haven't told Murray, or he has chosen to ignore, is that there are other causes of bacne that apply directly to Piazza as a baseball player.
Heredity may also be a factor in how acne affects you. If one or both of your parents had acne, you're at a greater risk for inheriting the triggers that cause overproduction of sebum and lead to clogged follicles
Has Murray checked any of Piazza's relatives for bacne? Hey, Tommy Lasorda is related to Mike Piazza! Murray should make Lasorda take his shirt off to check for bacne.
Okay, now for the real cause of Piazza's bacne if one doesn't just care to claim it is PED-related:
If you participate in sports, you can get acne mechanica along your hairline from wearing a helmet.
HEY! Piazza wore a helmet while playing baseball!
Tight uniforms that put a lot of pressure on the skin can also be a cause of acne mechanica.
So playing in a tight uniform in the hot summer sun could cause acne as well? Weirdly, that's exactly what Piazza was doing for most of his career while playing catcher. It's almost like this could be an explanation for Piazza's bacne, just like his PED use could be an explanation for his bacne. It's funny how Murray just conveniently ignores any other logical causes of Piazza's bacne so he can reach the conclusion he wants to reach.
When I first wrote about Piazza’s possible use several years ago, his fans ridiculed me. They completely ignored a critical aspect of what I wrote.
Sort of like how you ignored tight uniforms can put pressure on the skin creating bacne? Or exactly like that? I think it is hilarious that Murray is playing the victim here, acting like everyone else is ignoring reasonable information he is presenting to them, while he ignores reasonable evidence that contradicts his "strong" (circumstantial) evidence of Piazza's PED use.
Piazza’s back cleared up completely when baseball began testing for steroids and remained clear to his retirement.
It's very possible he got treatment for his bacne or it cleared up as he played the catcher position less and first base/DH more, thereby not having his tight uniform directly pushing on his back as it did while in a crouched position behind home plate. Around the time MLB started testing for steroids, Piazza started playing catcher less.
Murray's whole "Piazza had bacne and then it cleared up!" argument fails for me because it's very circumstantial and because Piazza's bacne can easily be explained by kneeling in a catcher's crouch for most of his career. Get in a catcher's crouch sometime with a shirt on and see how your back naturally arches slightly more than when standing at first base or sitting. Piazza had a tight uniform on and it was more directly pressured against his back when crouched in a catcher's position. He also played the catcher position during the hottest months of the year. Piazza may have used PED's, but there are other logical explanations for his bacne that Murray ignores.
It was not a stretch to conclude that Piazza had stopped using steroids to avoid being caught by a urine test.
It's also not a stretch that Piazza got treatment for his bacne or his bacne started to clear up as he played the catcher position less and less. What is a stretch is using bacne as "strong evidence" and (damn you Murray for making me take my eye off the ball here) using some rumor you heard about Jeff Bagwell's PED use, then basing your Hall of Fame vote on this rumor without doing ANY research into whether the rumors were true or not. It's terrible journalism and is an embarrassment to those baseball writers who vote for the Hall of Fame. I wish Murray had not been lying when he stated he was giving up his Hall of Fame vote if Jack Morris didn't get in. It would have allowed a voter who actually cares to do research and base his vote on the research he/she has done to have a vote, rather than a bitter old man to base his Hall of Fame vote on rumors that support what he wants to believe.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)