The 5 Most Puzzling Things About the 2008 Baseball Hall of Fame Selections

Some stray thoughts from an otherwise unremarkable year for MLB's highest honor... 

5. Someone voted for Todd Stottlemyre.

Mel's son never received a Cy Young Award vote or made an All-Star team and really only had 6 decent major league seasons. I’m not going to say that you have to win Cy Young awards or start every All-Star Game to be inducted, but nothing?

If we open up the doors for Todd and his bloody chin, we’ll have to start getting the plaques ready for Miguel Batista and Steve Trachsel too. 

4. Goose Gossage appeared on 86% of ballots one year after appearing on only 71% of them.

The “Over-the-top Surge” has been well-documented, but 15% is a lot. I guess it just shows the extent to which voters vote according to the previous year’s ballot rather than the players' accomplishments on the field. 

3. Goose Gossage was selected as a Hall of Famer.

Maybe we were destined to be disappointed after seeing Ripken and Gwynn inducted last year, but Gossage did not dominate enough to be a Hall of Famer.

Jayson Stark (a writer whose work I admire and respect) thinks that Gossage belongs in the same discussion as Mariano Rivera. Let’s stop there for a second and look past the stats Stark is throwing at us. He makes a mistake by only comparing the seasons the two men have spent as closers. I mean Gossage was a starting pitcher before and after he closed games, so we can’t rule that out of our discussion. We can’t ignore someone’s weak seasons any more than we can ignore their prime.  

So comparing career numbers, here’s what we get: Rivera leads Gossage in hits allowed per inning, strikeouts per inning, walks per inning and homers allowed per inning. Stark claims that Gossage’s ERA as a closer is better (though Rivera’s overall mark is far better) but Goose played in a pitcher-friendly era. Goose’s era was 26% better than his peers, but Rivera’s era is 94% better than his.  

And we can’t forget about the postseason either—Gossage’s solid playoff numbers are nothing compared to Mo’s 34 saves and 0.77 era. Not that Gossage wasn’t good, he just wasn’t Rivera. 

1.     Bert Blyleven actually caught a break.

The perennial victim of the voters finally made his way up the ballot, from 48% last year to 62% this time around. Given the way players jump up in the voting as they get closer, Blyleven should be rightfully enshrined in Cooperstown by 2010 at the latest.