Posted by Got_Worms on 1/3/2014 10:19:00 PM (view original):
Posted by Jtpsops on 1/3/2014 8:29:00 PM (view original):
The only problem with doing that now is that you'd have a class 5x the size next year
What would alleviate that, is to adopt the same process used in the Pro Football HOF where the selection committee provides the group of finalists to vote on, so lesser players that have no shot at the HOF don't even appear on the ballot.
Based upon this year, there are still about 20-25 candidates with somewhat of a HOF case. Players like Mike Timlin & Richie Sexson shouldn't appear on the ballot, period.
That would alleviate nothing - taking those guys who get no votes or a token vote off the ballot doesn't free up any real amount of votes - it just makes you feel better about the ballot. And I'd like to assume no one tossing those guys a token vote was leaving someone off their ballot that they really thought was deserving to do it, so it's probably a net gain of nothing.
You keep throwing out "solutions" that have nothing to do with the real problem - until there's consensus on the steroid era players, guys like Bonds and Clemens are going to sit out there taking up massive amounts of votes but not getting in. Realize that if we had never heard of PEDs and everything had proceeded in the same way, Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro, Bagwell, and Piazza are probably all already in - maybe Biggio too since it seems like there's some smaller percentage of voters who lumped him in - and there's no real issue with only having 10 votes. I think I read last year that the ballots only averaged about 6 votes per anyhow. This sample has it up over 9, so you can see what all these big name holdovers are doing to the situation.
At this point, if I was voting for Sosa, McGwire, and/or Palmeiro and leaving other guys I thought were deserving off the ballot, I'd strongly consider dropping them and hoping for the veteran's committee or something similiar to eventually deal with them once this is all less fresh.