Bucco breakfast: Four elected to Hall of Fame

The Baseball Hall of Fame now has four new members: pitchers Mariano Rivera (the first unanimous selection ever), Mike Mussina and Roy Halladay, and designated hitter deluxe Edgar Martinez. Nobody else came extremely close. The most significant misses were Curt Schilling (60.9% of the vote, with 75% required), Roger Clemens (59.5%), Barry Bonds (59.1%) and Larry Walker (54.6%).

Picking up on a suggestion from NastyNate82, this is your chance to fix the HOF voting. It seems like a good time, seeing as how just this week we’ve already fixed the electoral college, the senate, baseball’s economic system, the labor system generally, gerrymandering and several other pressing national issues.

Personally, I’m not sure the writers’ ballot is much in need of repair. The only pressing issue, arguably, is what to do about the ‘roid boys. I honestly don’t know how I’d vote on Bonds or Clemens, if I had a vote. I guess you could also question whether a DH should be in the HOF, but Martinez had quite a record. Despite providing no, or negative, defensive value, and negative baserunning value, he put up between 5.3 and 7.0 fWAR nine times in eleven years (he was hurt the other two).

The real issues seem to be with the many ludicrous veterans’ committee votes that already happened, mostly players with some connection to Frankie Frisch or Bill Terry. Fred Lindstrom? George Kelly? Travis Jackson? Of course, there are also the obvious politics involved with the failure to elect Marvin Miller.

Daily Links

• The Manny Machado thing ripples on. MLBTR put in its two cents: “Heyman also shoots down a much more fanciful idea that evidently arose involving a certain superstar free agent.” The snide wording, as well as Heyman’s apparent haste to puncture the rumor, says a lot about how the Pirates are viewed elsewhere. But Héctor Gómez is not giving up.
• Nick Markakis is off the board at a cost to Atlanta of just 1/$6M guaranteed, with a $6M club option for a second year. Markakis had a better year than Adam Jones in 2018, but the two have been very similar offensively over the last five years or so. Jones did have an advantage defensively at one point, but that’s gone away. So the Markakis deal may provide some indication of what Jones would get, although Markakis has said he had better offers.