and voters get one more year closer to senility.

I don’t think that’s totally accurate. Many voters still give close guys a bump on their last year, for no good reason. I doubt most of those swing voters logically worked out why they were changing their vote.

A lot of boggling occurs this time of year.

What evidence does anybody have that Rickey was juicing? This is terrible speculation. I think people didn’t vote for him because (a) he’s such a jerk and an idiot, and (b) race.

This sounds like the HoF voters to me. As good an explanation as we’ll ever here.

I’ve read similar comments from some of our very own Cleveland sportswriters. Not about Ricky, but saying things like, “He’s a Hall Of Famer. Not a first-ballot kind of guy, but probably second ballot.” It was the sort of stuff that led me to believe that some voters have strata in their minds—he deserves it, but not on the first try.

Explaining HOF voter behavior is beyond me.

I used to understand that but now the logic just comes to pieces when I think about it.

If someone has to be the first unanimous choice for Cooperstown, you’d have a hard time finding someone more suitable than Henderson. Who are they waiting for, Superman? Superman in a Yankees hat?

Rickey versus the People of New York.

they listed it as their main criteria right at the front of the show and didn’t even allude to what made it up until about half way though – like everyone knows what ERA+ was. i was very impressed.

pedro 2000 was #1. walter johnson in 1913, christy mathewson in 08, doc gooden’s second year, bob gibson before they lowered the mound, sandy koufax the year they on the ws, maddux in 95, steve carlton when he won 27, and the last one is escaping me. no – guidry in 78.

Considering that DTV is an investor and Dish isn’t, it’s probably a good thing that Dish is a toll-free call.

Found it. The Official Guide to the 2003 Season that MLB puts out. In this list, they just cite ERA+ for each player, but don’t rank the players based on it. The list:

1. Bob Gibson, 1968, 258 ERA+
2. Walter Johnson, 1913, 258 ERA+
3. Pedro, 2000, 292 ERA+
4. Christy Mathewson, 1905, 230 ERA+
5. Charles Radbourn, 1884, 206 ERA+
6. Dwight Gooden, 1985, 227 ERA+
7. Greg Maddux, 1995, 262 ERA+
8. Grover Cleveland Alexander, 1915, 225 ERA+
9. Ron Guidry, 1978, 208 ERA+
10. Sandy Koufax, 1966, 191 ERA+

Looks to me like the most recent guys are getting some serious disrespect.

He had an article about sabermetric stats in the Dispatch some time in the fall. I was shocked as well. It introduced people to stats such as VORP and OPS+. They also had an article about Craig Calceterra, who’s a lawyer living in Columbus who writes the baseball blog Shysterball (which is now part of THT). I emailed Preistle telling him how much I liked the article and I was hoping to see more of those stats in the Dispatch during baseball season, but he didn’t think they would use any of them with any regularity because most people still aren’t familiar with them.