Ken Rosenthal: Hall of Fame Steroid Era Selig stance + HOF Contemporary Era ballot speculations

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Alex Rodriguez was talking on a show about bud Selig and said, all this stuff you're talking about was under bud Selig's watch, and he was referring to the ped era and some guys getting in and Bond and Clemens's conversation. Of course, a Rod's part of that conversation. He said, quote the fact that those two guys are not in, but somehow bud Selig is in the Hall of Fame, That to me feels like there's a little bit some hypocrisy around that your thoughts.

00:00:27
Speaker 2: I can see where a road's coming from there, And certainly bud Selig was the commissioner at a time when all this was going on. Now you can make the case that this is more on the players, that while there weren't penalties in place, it certainly was frowned upon and it was illegal by the laws of the United States in some ways. But you can also argue, if you're bud Selig, well I wanted to do things and the Union wouldn't let me. Question then becomes, okay, do you really see him as a Hall of Famer? Now that goes to the question also, and I'm kind of circling around here, But I'll get to the point of what is a Hall of Famer. It's someone who has a major impact on the sport, to be sure, and Bud celeg definitely did that one way or the other, however you want to look at it. But I understand where Alex is coming from there, because, hey, you're seeing players who played in that ear when it was kind of the wild West and when there wasn't much enforcement from Major League Baseball and they're getting penalized where the guy who was running the sport did not. So it's a very complicated question. I don't know that I entirely agree with a Rod because I can see why Bud Selig is in the Hall of Fame. But at the same time, hey, there's some responsibility there, and I don't know that Bud Selig has ever taken full responsibility for that, or the responsibility you would want him to take. Basically, he's kind of said, the Union would let me do stuff and we didn't know all these things. Hey, other people or taking the hit for that. Players are taking the hit for that, And I don't know that the commissioner should be out of the Hall of Fame for it or should not have been inducted into the Hall of Fame for it, but I would have liked to have seen more accountability.

00:02:13
Speaker 1: Put it that way. Yeah, yeah, a precedent said, I know it's not a player, it's a commissioner. But yeah, he was the guy in charge during that era. So good conversation. We'll keep it going with the guys right now. Ken, thank you. Safe travels to our backyard Orlando, and expect a big bear hug from AJ with drinking hand on Monday.

00:02:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not happening.

00:02:34
Speaker 1: Later that's Ken Rosenthal. Winter Meetings coverage for FT is coming up on Monday, and also Fair Territory. I encourage you to check out yesterday's episode. I'm biased. I was on it hosting with Ken. It's mostly Ken, but he got into this Hall of Fame discussion more and then of course hit on a number of other topics. On the hot stove that is heating up a little bit right now. There it is. That's a beauty right there. Live at the Winter Meetings December eight through ten, which is now happening next week. Yeah, we're already there already at mid December. I am excited it is in Orlando. We get to sleep at home at least AJ and I live nearby, and then we will drive over and we will be there basically all day. We have a ton of manager and GM conversations that are on the books scheduled and we will talk to them in person. So it's going to be a really fun week for this show. And it's the first time that we're going to be live at the Winter Meeting, so we're excited about it, especially for the fans that have been following us for a long period of time. You know how hard everyone works behind the scenes. This is cool for us to add it to our bucket list of events that we're covering. Okay, guys, so on Sunday we are going to potentially learn of some new Hall of Famers. It is not easy to crack the list from the Veterans Committee, and it's the contemporary era, and the list that is being voted on is stacked and has some controversy to it as well. Right, Bonds and clements are on there. But then you also have Don Mattingly who's had many cracks at it and hasn't been voted in by both the writers or the Veterans Committee. Del Murphy is on there, Jeff Kent is on there. I'll just personally throw my opinion in here because Kent was like my prime era of watching ball as a kid or a little bit older, and I thought Jeff ken was all famer Okay Sheffield to Carlos Delgado, Fernando Venezuela. This is a really good list. And then there was sixteen on the committee that actually does the voting here, and what they do is they all chit chat Todfather. So it's not just like you drop in, you go behind the curtain and you punch in your vote. They have long out where's long conversations first and then everyone votes okay, So kind of like I don't know, survivor if anyone's check that show out. So you've got Fergie Jenkins, Jim Cott, Juan Marichale, Tony Perez, Ozzie Smith, Alan Trammel, Robin Yut on the voting committee, along with executive Mark Attanasio, who is the owner of the Brewers, Doug Melvin former GM Ardie Moreno, owner of the Angels, Kim Ang who's been a long time executive in the game, Tony Reagan's Terry Ryan, historian Steve hurt and Jason Stark is also part of this group too and wrote about it that he's not just going to be an observer, he's going to be a voter anyway. Thoughts on all of this, the process, and then if you think any of these guys will make it and how it will go Todd Father, what do you think?

00:05:46
Speaker 3: This is very very interesting, not only a group of players that might give voted into all of VAME, but the group the committee. Holy cow, man, I My question Scott, first off is can they all these guys in if they wanted to? Or you can vote no, how many can you vote for to get in?

00:06:07
Speaker 1: So you can vote for three people three three people and to get in only three and to get in you need twelve out of sixteen votes, you need seventy five percent. So it is really challenging because I could see there being a lot of three votesiers, four votes there, nine votes there. The only thing that I think will help curb that is I have to imagine, and I'll bring in KP for this too. KP. I have to imagine that if you get a room of all these baseball minds together and they chit chat and everybody presents their case. It'll start to sway people because everybody can't just put a different name. Now nobody will get in there. So you might be able to say, hey, I feel like this guy deserves that. You start to hear that more and more than maybe some person that was on the fence. It's like, yeah, I'm going to vote for Dale Murphy too.

00:06:53
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:06:58
Speaker 4: I think when you get in a room full of people, you could kind of persuade votes like, Okay, these are the three to five guys that we think deserve to get in. Now go make your vote. But my question to you, also, because I'm not as familiar with this too, is this a one and done situation when they're on this kind of contemporary era election ballot. Is it one and done where they can continue to stay on it?

00:07:23
Speaker 1: They can stay on Also, I forgot one named Tyler Kapner who we love to who's been on. So it's Kepner and Jason Stark, who are great historians and writers. But no, because I think Don Mattingly, at least I want to say three, if not four times now has had a crack at the Veterans Committee. Now he's continuing to build his case even though it doesn't feel that way because it wasn't just as a player. They acknowledge anything that you've done in the baseball world, and it's not like he's been a World Series winning manager or something like that, but he's been in the game for a long time. He's made an impact. So just throwing that out there. Don Mattingly and Del Murphy is who Ken wrote about, and Todd Father Ken I would not say is a super small hapit. He's definitely not a big haul voter, right. I would say kind of in the middle, in a little more towards small, if I had to guess. But he is starting to turn because he said, there's just not that many volume guys that are superstar legends anymore. So it leads him to make a vote for Chase Utley. Ken pointed out in his article how Buster Posey has about fifteen hundred hits and he's probably going to get in likely as a first balloder, and we haven't seen that since Ralph Kiner in the seventies. Nobody else has even been under two thousand hits, So the numbers are changing. It's not just like, oh, five hundred homers and three thousand notes and we got three hundred wins. I mean, can we get two hundred wins or less? So Ken's point was maybe we should reconsider Don Mattingly, whose peak was more like six years, or Dale Murphy, who I think had about a ten year peak. I think Del Murphy should be in. I mean, like I mentioned, I'm in on Kent Sheffield. If Sheffield's got a unique story that he tells and he's very anamant about but with the ped situation that occurred with him, so and I encourage you to read that or we've talked about it on show with him. Anyway, this one's fascinating to me. I do see where Ken is going though on giving more love to guys that don't have the volume that would have stacked up in the past. But I think we have to look at differently.

00:09:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you hate to think of it like this, but you look, like I said before, you look at the names, like you see certain names Jim Katt, Jim Cott, mean old school. You know what he's what is he going to think about with the certain guys with the steroid era. Tony Perez what a beast? Love him to death. He's got a great voice. He's gonna He's very pennated on some things too as well, good and bad. Ozzie Smith, what an absolutely gem of a guy. But you don't know what these people are thinking. Me personally, I think Barry Bond should get in the Hall of Fame.

00:09:45
Speaker 2: Man.

00:09:45
Speaker 3: I've said it before, I've said it all the time. He is the greatest hitter to ever play in this game. And again, you guys brought it up a while ago. It was frowned upon when this was going on. So oh, it just so hard. I think Don Maddingley should be in the Hall of Fame. The guy was so clutch. He didn't win a World Series. Okay, what are you going to do? I mean Gary Sheffield, monster hitter, he was very, very good. I would find it hard to believe that they don't put three guys in here that deserve it, and do I think all of I think all of them have a really good shot and should get in. But you know, for me, first and foremost, I think Barry Bond should should be in the Hall of Fame.

00:10:26
Speaker 1: Man.

00:10:26
Speaker 3: I just personally think he was the greatest hitter to ever play this game in baseball.

00:10:32
Speaker 1: And I will tell you this, I would say there's almost no chance that, and I'm not a debate on what you're talking about. I'm not trying to debate that right now. Almost no chance he gets voted in based on who is making votes, right Like there's guy like Jim Cotton. No freaking chance he's voting in clements based on the connections. You're right, you never know. I just think that they're going to try and look at some other guys that have been around here for a while that are borderline, that are not connected to peds like Murphy and Mattingly. Let me point this out two KP. You know Syrus tweeted this yesterday. Doesn't Jeff Kent have a better Hall of Fame case than Murphy and Maddingley, who I think should definitely get serious consideration. He's well ahead in the war numbers. He looks like he's got an edge on the slash line. The home run totals are similar to Murphy, well ahead of Mattingly. The weighted runs graded plus, which is a very similar number to ops plus puts him at a very nice spot. Consistently in his career, he's won an MVP, five time All Star. What am I missing on? Jeff Kent that people didn't love his defense. Oh I'm sorry. He was a monster slugging second basement and played It's not like he was a disaster over there.

00:11:41
Speaker 4: Well, he also had the hardest job in baseball for a long time, hitting behind Barry Bonds. You know that should be something. But he wasn't a guy who was beloved by the media. He wasn't very available, didn't care to spend a lot of time with the media. I mean, that's a knock against him, But I want to steal kind of a quote that Ken dropped on us. It said impact on the game when talking about a rod and but seely do not all these guys have an impact on the game. My challenge is it feels like when you get to the Hall of Fame as a player, your kind of perspective changes, like you're in this super elite group of players. But when you read off those list of names of guys that are on the committee and the guys that are trying to get elected, do not all of them sound like Hall of Famers To me, I'm personally not a numbers guy in terms of you need to have x amount of hits or home runs or innings pitched or wins or whatever the criteria is. I like to look at it from a player's perspective. If I play, and you can ask Todd, you can ask me about guys that we played against that maybe are currently still playing or just got done playing. You know, a Hall of Famer when you see one, did they dominate the era that they played in? Were they one of the best players in that era, whether it was for five, six, eight, ten, fifteen years. There's no doubt in my mind when you talk about a guy like Buster Posey, he doesn't have the statistical number and the accomplishments, but was he one of the best players in the or the best player for the six years that he was on the field every single day? Without a doubt. So I've always kind of been a little bit bigger haul guy. I don't think it should be for everyone. But if you go around a room and ask players, Hey, you ask guys who played against Dale Murphy. Was he the best player in the field almost every single time he stepped on the field. Absolutely. Same goes for Don Mattingly, same goes for Gary Sheffield. I think a lot of these guys are very deserving to Todd's point two. I'm a huge believer. I know, I know, you know all the noise and speculation and all the things around Barry Bonds. But when you talk about impact on the game, this guy's been retired for how long and we're still talking about this guy as the greatest player to ever play. You know, maybe show Hayes kind of coming up on that eventually, if his career continues to go the way he's going. But you talk about the most dominant baseball player of all time, it's Barry Bonds. It's a very easy answer, much like you would get in the NBA if you ask someone, it's Michael Jordan. You know. So there's some people that can make an argument for Lebron or Kobe and some other players. But if you're having that argument a best player and it comes down to three guys and he's not in the Hall of Fame, I think we're doing the Hall of Fame injustice by not having him in there.