MLB Bullets Gains Immortality

I sent in a blank Hall of Fame ballot to protest me not having a vote. I also point you to the 1926 New York Giants as a reason to not get worked up about Cooperstown. Six of the eight players in their starting lineup are in the Hall and all of them were 30 or under and in the prime of their careers that season. They finished three games under .500. Was their pitching that terrible? Nah, they actually had a better-than-league-average pitching staff. It’s just that Frankie Frisch and Bill Terry controlled the Veterans Committee for 20 years and used it to put all their old teammates into Cooperstown, whether they deserved induction or not. They also had some superficially impressive batting statistics, inflated by the offenses of the 1920s that looked better than they were in the pitching-dominated sixties and seventies.

• You’ve no doubt heard (and we already had an article) on how Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and Ivan Rodriguez were all elected to the Hall of fame. Jay Jaffe breaks down the vote totals for every player on the ballot.
• Grant Brisbee gives his take on what was good and bad about the Hall of Fame election results.
• Tom Verducci offers nine lessons from the voting.
• Cliff Corcoran has five things he learned from the results.
• Jeff Passan explains how the internet helped put Tim Raines into Cooperstown. I’m glad to have played my part.
• Jonah Keri explains why, as a Montreal kid, the election of Tim Raines means so much to him.
• Raines wrote a letter explaining what this day meant to him.
• You can watch Ivan Rodriguez’s emotional reaction to getting the call about his winning election.
• Rodriguez took to The Player’s Tribune to talk about his journey to Cooperstown.
• Joe Posnanski writes about how the culture of baseball in Puerto Rico shaped Rodriguez.
• Will Leitch thinks that Bagwell has been underappreciated until now.
• One person who always appreciated Bagwell is Darren Rovell, and he has a special reason for appreciating him. Read the story of how Bagwell attended Rovell’s bar mitzvah in 1991.
• Richard Justice writes about Bagwell’s role as a teammate and clubhouse leader.
• Of the players who fell off the ballot after one vote, one name stands out: Jorge Posada. Honestly, I don’t think Posada is a Hall of Famer, but I think he should have gotten more consideration. Maybe he will in the Veteran’s Committee, or whatever they’re calling it by then.
• Andrew Marchand agrees with me and laments Posada falling off the ballot.
• Christine Brennan thinks that Curt Schilling’s mouth (or more accurately, his use of social media) kept him out of the Hall of Fame. Schilling is a jerk, but he belongs in Cooperstown. He was a better pitcher than Don Drysdale, for example.
• Anthony Castrovince looks at the best induction classes of all time (1939 is first, of course) and where 2017 ranks.
• Craig Calcaterra looks ahead to next year’s vote.
• And Richard Justice looks ahead to the next four years of voting.
• Cameron Martin examines the Hall of Fame plaques and notices how what they say changes over the years to reflect the times.
• On to the players of today. It’s (almost) official: Mark Trumbo is re-joining the Orioles on a three-year, $37.5 million deal.
• Jonathan Bernhardt breaks down what Trumbo staying in Baltimore means for the Orioles.
• The Angels are expected to sign former Cub Luis Valbuena.
• And the Reds traded former Cubs pitcher Dan Straily to the Marlins for three minor leaguers.
• Matt Snyder is impressed with the haul the Reds got for Straily.
• The Brewers signed reliever Neftali Feliz, and Travis Sawchuk thinks that moves like this one are making the Brewers one of the more interesting teams of 2017. Not good, at least not in 2017. But interesting.
• The Dodgers are looking everywhere for a second baseman as talks with the Twins over Brian Dozier have reached an impasse, reports Ken Rosenthal. Rosenthal also reiterates that Javier-Baez-to-the-Dodgers isn’t happening.
• Mike Axisa has some suggestions for the Dodgers’ second base problems.
• Former All-Star pitcher Josh Johnson, who has had three Tommy John surgeries, has retired. Good luck with the rest of your life, Josh.
• The Blue Jays re-signed Jose Bautista after a push from ownership.
• Evan Davis disagrees with a story I linked to last time and says that the Blue Jays made the right choice in signing Bautista over Michael Saunders.
• The Steinbrenner family plans to own the Yankees “for eternity.” That’s a long time.
• Mike Oz continues his series of opening old baseball cards with ballplayers by opening a pack of 1992 cards with Aaron Boone. That was his brother’s rookie season, but they didn’t get that one. They did get a lot of cards of former teammates of Aaron’s, though.
• And finally, I know most of you are going to want to get to Guaranteed Rate Field to see the White Sox on May 13 to get your very own Hawk Harrelson alarm clock. I mean, you can only use it once before smashing it to pieces with a bat, but there’s no way you’ll ever sleep through it, is there?

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster.