I have lot of thoughts on HOF voting... so I'll try to organize this a bit.
What Do We Want?
It's not clear to me that we've defined what the problem is in order to fix it. I think there are two things:
- Not enough people are voting
- Not enough players are getting in
Is that it?
Large/Small Hall
I think once a group of people gets beyond a certain size, say 5 or so, it's very hard to find consensus on opinions. It should be no surprise that we're going to have some folks who want to see a large hall with many players getting in and some who want a small hall with just a handful.
Personally, I've historically been small hall, but I think I'm realizing over time that's not exactly it. What I really want is to see a restrictive hall that only allows the best in, but I still want to see a good number of players in it. I was personally disappointed to see only Conan get elected this year. What I'm starting to realize is that what I really want is to see a limited number of players get in each year. I would hate to see a single class of like 8 players. IMO, 3 or 4 should be the max that can get in annually.
Increasing Participation & Technical Aspects of Voting
I think tying CP to something is always valuable for participation, but you're never going to get everyone. So I'm in favor of CP for it.
I think the email balloting part is potentially problematic for some? Maybe it's not quite as front of mind as some other options may be. I do think it'd be very helpful for GM's to have their previous ballot information. Like Mike, I save off a copy of my votes from year to year, but I'm sure that's not something everyone does.
There is a HoF voting module in StatsLab, although I don't think it meets some of the requirements that we have. That said, it does track year to year voting and can be adjusted. The other nice thing is that you can see stat comparisons of players in it.
Big Bang Players
I actually rate Big Bang players more harshly for the missed time. The seasons they missed represent opportunities they didn't have to get injured or to have development turn negative on them. It's also a general OOTP thing that Big Bang players have a higher talent level than ones who've gone through the entire process. So I need these guys to be quite dominant before I'll consider their short careers to be comparable to a less player who came along later. I don't think it's fair to the full lifecycle players to project the Big Bang players to have played at the levels they did during the missed years.
Generating HoF Hype
Years ago I did
Keltner List articles for every HoF candidate in another league I was in. They were a lot of work, but once published, they were a great reference for new GM's. They also were a nice tribute to each player regardless of their HoF status. Really, being on the ballot is. already a recognition of a great career, so it's worth really giving them their due. The Keltner List is pretty subjective, and doesn't definitively answer if a player should be in the Hall, but it's a great way to contextualize a player's career.
I'm not saying we need to do Kelter Lists specifically, but something to that effect, where as a league we really take some time for each player on the ballot could really give folks a chance to get excited about players that came years before. The one nice thing here is that once you've got the ballot documented, however you're going to do it, you really only have to do new articles for the added players.
I'd be open to contributing to this, or if other folks have other formats they like for this (maybe just a general article of their own), I'm cool with that, too.
Pitcher Bias
There seems to be a historical bias towards voting for starting pitchers. We've never had less than 4 SP in the top 6 vote getters. I think the reason for this is that we tend to have a wider talent curve for pitchers. The top end stands out from the rest of their peers more than hitters do. Bringing awareness to this, and highlighting career achievements of hitters should help to get some more hitters elected.
We're currently at 6 pitchers and 4 hitters in the HOF. The elected balance is only off a bit right now as we aren't that far along yet, but it seems to me that those percentages should be reversed based on typical roster distribution.
What Should We Do?
I think we can increase participation and excitement by addressing some of the things I talk about above. Like I said, though, we'll never get everyone. I thought 27 ballots out of 34 was a pretty good response rate of about 80%. If we can get that up to 90% I think we'll be golden.
I'm not convinced that lowering the ballot threshold to 70% gets us what we want... The only players to have finished over 70% and not gotten in were Pat Lilly and Conan, both of whom have now been elected. I also expect that the more GM's that vote, the more likely it is that we'll spread some of the votes around. Including Conan, only 4 players got even half the vote this year.
To me, that says there's too much disagreement about the players that are on the ballot, or people are restricting votes from players they think are worthy because they only have 10 votes. I have no idea how many people submitted 10 players and would have added more if they could have, but even a few people voting that way would increase the tally on some of these guys. I don't think I've ever been inclined to vote for more than 10, but others perhaps have.
Since I like to complicate numbers, I would personally try the following:
- Allow unlimited ballot size
- Elect anyone over 70%
- Consider electing the Top X players with over Y% of the vote if the number of players over 70% are fewer than X players.
The last bullet point would come into play when we have a lot of disagreement at the top end and few players reach the 70% threshold. For example, if we want to put in the top 3 vote getters over 60% of the vote, then Gunnar McGruder would've made it this year in addition to Conan.
My last point here would be that doing all 3 of the above might be a big change to the process, so maybe we start with one or two of them and see how things go.
Celebrating Electees
Ok, one more thing that I think would be an interesting thing to add...
When the election results are announced, it's a fun thing at the Winter Meetings and there's a post about it here in the forums.
I would love to see a special Hall election article come out as well. Maybe we can give the player's plaque team GM a chance to write an article at double CP for the player in particular. Maybe we have an induction weekend in the summer where someone writes an article about the induction ceremony to generate some hype for the Hall at other times of the year. Just throwing out ideas...