Positions
It’s much tougher to wield an adequate glove while playing shortstop or center field than it is first base or left field – imagine Mark McGwire trying to do what Ozzie Smith did for 19 years. It’s a blatantly obvious point that somehow gets missed when voting time rolls around.
Alan Trammell excels with the bat and in the field, but he can’t get a whiff of support because he hit 197 fewer homers than Jim Rice. At least Trammell’s still on the ballot. Players with solid Hall of Fame cases like Bobby Grich and Lou Whitaker couldn’t even garner the necessary 5% support to warrant consideration, because voters can’t figure out how to value well-rounded second basemen.
You Had To Be There
It’s after 5 pm here on the West Coast, and I’m watching the sunset at the beach. The sun drops, drops, drops…and it’s gone! Into the ocean! Miraculously, a brand new sun will appear, fully formed, 13 hours from now. This is roughly how Hall of Fame voters justify ignoring numbers in making their case for or against certain players.
Jack Morris is a Hall of Fame pitcher because…well…you had to be there. Here’s the thing about us humans: We’re terrible at observing reality. As in the case of the setting sun, our eyes can only take us so far. Our minds are even more unreliable. We remember Jack Morris’ dominant Game 7 in the 1991 World Series, but conveniently forget his miserable playoff performance the very next year. This is known as confirmation bias, where we collect observations that prove our argument, and throw out the ones that disprove it. This is why science exists, people. Without hard data, our observations can be nearly useless – or worse than useless.
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When umpiring goes wrong in baseball, it’s hard to accept. When it goes really wrong, when power is abused, helmets thrown and expensive beer senselessly wasted, the fans demand robots. But robots will not make you feel better.
