Last week, we continued a yearly tradition and rolled out the worst Baseball Hall of Fame ballots following Tuesday’s election of Craig Biggio, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, and John Smoltz. One of the ballots that wasn’t listed, because it was released by the BBWAA after the election announcement, belonged to Jim Alexander of the OC Register. But if that ballot was made public before the election, it would be on the list – Alexander went with the full ten players and inexplicably included former Angels closer Troy Percival on his ballot over John Smoltz and Mike Piazza.
Alexander wrote a column for the Register on Sunday night to explain his vote for Percival, and naturally, he blamed east coast bias for the perceived slight on Percival compared to Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer of all-time.
Eastern bias, perhaps? Rivera, who finished with 652 career saves and is likely a lock when he becomes eligible in 2019, played his entire career as a Yankee. Piazza’s offensive stats as a Met (in eight seasons) and as a Dodger (in seven) were comparable, and you wonder if there would have been as much consternation over his Hall of Fame chances if he’d instead spent all of his prime in Los Angeles, as he would have but for a boneheaded 1998 trade.
Yep, that’s totally it – all of those damn voters located all across the country are biased in favor of New York. It has nothing to do with the fact that Rivera was a member of five World Series winners (including four before Percival got his one ring with the Angels), and that his career Postseason performance was legendary – it’s all east coast bias!
Alexander also recalled a quote from Percival comparing his career to Rivera’s…through the 2003 season.
“I’m at 287 saves at the time and Mariano (Rivera) had 287,” he recalled. “He had 50 blown saves, I had 51. His ERA was a point lower than mine, but my hits-to-innings pitched and strikeouts were far beyond it.
“And they had a special on TV (saying) that he was already a guaranteed first-ballot Hall of Famer. And then they had the lefty … Billy Wagner, as a probable first ballot and he had 240 or 250 at the time. I didn’t quite crack the list and I’m going, ‘Wow, OK. I see where it’s at.’”
Alexander also seemingly ignores the second half of each player’s career, when Percival fell off a cliff and Rivera somehow got even better. But hey, it’s easier to scream “east coast bias!” than to actually do some critical thinking, right?
I also like how he drags Mike Piazza into the east coast bias conversation. If anything, Piazza’s career with the Mets *hurts* his Hall of Fame chances. Maybe if he spent his entire career on the west coast, he wouldn’t have had to deal with stupid trolls like Noted Blogger Murray Chass and his obsession over backne, and would have already coasted into the Hall of Fame.
This is one of the major things wrong with the Hall of Fame voting process, where local writers are more concerned with voting for “their guy” or “keeping him in the conversation” versus actually doing what is asked of them and voting for worthy Hall of Famers.
So let this be a lesson to any aspiring sportswriters out there – if you want to do something silly, you can rationalize it by complaining about east coast bias, and then compare the first half of two players’ careers to try and make your point. Got it? Good.
[OC Register via Hardball Talk]
