Not voted both, left Bagwell off his ballot for Gonzalez….

Let that sink in what kind of writers there are.

At least… I remember reading in some article posted on here Sunday, that players who reach 50% of the vote tend to make it in the hall eventually because popular opinion is in their favor and the other voters begin to fall into line.

Rick Carpinello voted Don Mattingly and no one else.

I think most of the problem is just that Bagwell’s greatness isn’t really appreciated by most. Anyone looking at more advanced statistics knows that Bagwell is an obvious hall-of-famer, possibly the greatest first baseman between Nellie Fox and Pujols, but his greatness is obscured because (1) He did a lot of things really well instead of one or two things superbly well, (2) his early stats were depressed from the dome, and (3) he didn’t have an especially long career.

Bill James has written about this kind of thing plenty of times. The Hall voters decide who gets in based off of conventional counting stats, and Bagwell’s conventional stats are hall-worthy but not really eye-popping.

Bagwell will eventually get in. If not next year, then probably the year after that. It’s frustrating because most of us understand how great of a ballplayer he really was and meanwhile his name gets dragged through the mud because people want to make up rumors about him, but it will eventually happen.

And no, I’m not just referring to the writers who voted.

HOF voters really have no sort of precedent for a player like Bagwell (a guy who’s been suspected, but never directly linked to steroids), so I think there’s a lot of confusion about what to do. Some writers think he’s hall worthy until proven guilty, some are on the fence, and some think he’s guilty by association.

Of course, the slam dunk “no” group like Palmeiro and McGwire is still relatively small, so think it’ll be interesting to see what happens when guys like Mike Piazza and Frank Thomas get on the ballots themselves.

Eventually, I think most (if not all—including Bagwell) of the HR guys will get elected, but the timeline for doing so is really anyone’s guess.

This just leaves the door open for Bags and Biggio to go in together.

Looks like Bagwell is on track to go in with Biggio. Frustrating as statistically, and going by character/intangibles if you want to go there, he should be a surefire first ballot hall of famer. But, at least it looks pretty certain that he will make it into the Hall.

I just read Verducci’s article on SI (with my temperture rising) and he spent 3/4’ers of the section on Bagwell talking about steriods on and on…I don’t get it…I get that he is supicious but he went way over the top I think.

Bagwell and Biggio have to get in…

As always, go Stros!