A member of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America since 1974, Chaz Scoggins of The Lowell (Massachusetts) Sun has been casting Hall of Fame votes for nearly three decades. This year Scoggins was one of 539 BBWAA voters to fill out a ballot, with Rickey Henderson (511) and Jim Rice (412) being the only two players to cross the 405-vote threshold needed to earn an invitation to the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown on July 26. Scoggins, a former president of the BBWAA, and a longtime official scorer at Fenway Park, explained who he voted for on this year’s ballot, and why.
David Laurila: What did your ballot look like this year?
Chaz Scoggins: You can vote for as many as 10 players, and I voted for seven. I voted for Jim Rice and Rickey Henderson, along with Andre Dawson, Dale Murphy, Mark McGwire, Lee Smith, and Tim Raines.
DL: Rice’s candidacy has elicited a lot of debate. Why did he get your vote?
CS: Having been one of the writers who was fortunate enough to have seen him play, I saw the impact he had on the Red Sox, and the American League, in the 1970s and 1980s. Back in those days, when you’d talk about what a franchise player was, Jim Rice was a franchise player. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind that he was a Hall of Famer.
DL: Two things that Rice’s critics point to are park factors and the number of double plays he hit into. Did either give you pause?
CS: Really, no. With the double plays, he hit the ball so hard it was inevitable he was going to hit into a lot of them. Certainly, had he played another year, he would have set the major league record for grounding into double plays, which is not a record he would have wanted, but he would have had it. As far as Fenway goes, people think it is a right-handed-hitters’ park, but really, it’s not. It’s a left-handed-hitters’ park, so it didn’t really help him. He was not a pull hitter. Most of the home runs he hit, I’d say, went from left center to right center. Very rarely did he ever get what I would call a cheap home run in Fenway.
DL: Andre Dawson’s critics point his low on-base percentage. Did that give you any pause?
CS: Well, I’d have liked to have seen it be higher, but some guys are just hitters. Rice was pretty much the same way. You would have expected that a guy like Rice would have walked 100 times a year, like a lot of power hitters, and usually he only walked a little more than 50. But he was just a hitter, as was Dawson. The reason I’ve always voted for Dawson is that while his numbers aren’t exactly all that eye-popping, I take into account his defense, with all the Gold Gloves. He had a terrific arm, and before his knees went bad he could steal bases; he was one of those five-tool players that rarely come along.
DL: Tim Raines received only 122 votes, one of which came from you. What impressed you about Raines?
CS: I look at Raines in a lot of the ways I look at Rickey Henderson. The thing I really look for in a leadoff hitter, aside from the ability to get on base and score runs, is that he can also drive in runs. That’s something that Rickey Henderson certainly did, and Raines did it too. He could do that, because he had some pop; he could hit some home runs. He was also a good defensive player, so he put the whole package together. But I did have to think about him; he didn’t come as an obvious pick. When I got the ballot, I had to think about it for a couple of days, but I ultimately decided that Raines fit my criteria for a Hall of Famer.
DL: You didn’t vote for Bert Blyleven. Why not?
CS: I just feel that Bert Blyleven was a little better than a .500 pitcher. I just never felt that he had the fortitude that it takes to win big games. People say that he had the misfortune of playing on a lot of mediocre and even bad teams, but to me, if you’re a Hall of Fame pitcher you’re able to lift your team up; you can win the close games that bad teams need to win, and to me, he just never did that. I know that he lost an awful lot of 1-0 games, but I just felt that, despite all his terrific numbers, he just wasn’t quite good enough.
DL: You also didn’t vote for Alan Trammell. Did you give him serious consideration?
CS: I really gave him no thought. To me, Alan Trammell was just a very nice player. He was a good player, but not one of those players who was head and shoulders above everybody else. Actually, I voted for Lou Whitaker, his double-play partner, when he was on the ballot. I thought that Whitaker was more of an impact player than Trammell was.
DL: Mark McGwire is obviously a controversial topic. What went into your decision to mark his name on the ballot?
CS: It’s a case where I just feel that he wasn’t breaking any rules at the time; he wasn’t breaking any baseball rules or any laws. I also think that baseball is just as complicit in the steroids issue as the players are; they turned a blind eye to it as long as people were hitting home runs and the stands were being filled. Baseball didn’t want to know. So I feel that, in a lot of ways, baseball used guys like Mark McGwire, and I’m not going to punish him for something that wasn’t against the rules at the time.
DL: Why did Lee Smith get your vote?
CS: Smith was one of the last Gossage-type relievers. In the early years of his career he was one of those guys who often went more than one inning to pick up a save, while they’re awfully cheap nowadays in comparison. Smith didn’t do it as long as Gossage did, but at the time guys often had to pitch one and a third, two and a third, or two innings, so he earned his saves. And over the course of his career, he had a lot of saves.
DL: How about Dale Murphy?
CS: Murphy is a guy who started out as a catcher and went to center field, and what put me over the line with him, because his batting average wasn’t as high as Rice’s-but the home runs were almost the same-was that at the peak of his career he was great. He was a five-time Gold Glove outfielder in addition to his power, and he was a two-time MVP. I always look at the 10 best years of a player’s career when I decide who I’m going to vote for, for the Hall of Fame. I’m also not one of those guys who votes for a player one year and doesn’t another year. Once I decide that someone is a Hall of Famer, I keep marking him on my ballot. Murphy is actually the one exception, but only because one year there was a really stacked ballot and I didn’t have room for him. Other than that, I’ve voted for him every year he’s been eligible. I’ve always thought it was important to be consistent.
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Apparently, Bert Blyleven\'s stupid terrific numbers were insufficiently inspiring to his teamates, as they failed to score runs for him. You suck, Bert!
so lets get this straight...you have no numbers or statistical evidence to support your statement, you just go by feel??
Unfortunately, it\'s a factor that too often is ignored.
This taken from a recent Keith Law chat.
There is always going to be a traditional movement against the stat-guys, Henderson is one of the exceptions where traditionalists love him because of all his personality and \"grit\" and all that crap.
Sabermetricians love him because the more they look at his career, the better and better it gets as you dig deeper.
Also, lets kep in mind that some people simply don\'t vote for people on the first ballot. It\'s not an indictment of their ability to analyze potential HoF\'ers, its a question of whether or not their self-imposed rules are worthwhile or not.
They aren\'t.
First, his rationale behind voting for McGwire; it is unfair to brand him and a few others for a problem that was widespread and generally ignored for several years.
Second, his consistency in either voting for a player or not voting for a player. Even acknowledging that the electorate changes slightly from one year to the next, it never ceases to amaze me when a player picks up 20 or 30 votes from one year to the next. Are we evaluating players whose careers have been fixed for at least five years, or deciding what color to paint the living room? I can understand the occasional voter changing their mind on a player, but not 50% of the electorate over the course of 15 years.
All in all, I feel a lot more comfortable with Chaz Scoggins having a HOF vote than the 28 knuckleheads who didn\'t think that Rickey Henderson merited a vote.
The reality is that there are a lot of guys like this who just aren\'t interested in objectivity. They aren\'t interested in correcting their own biases. It\'s about what they see and what they feel. When the stats (any stat will do) back up the feeling, that\'s great. When they don\'t, they\'re irrelevant.
But I guess nobody said the HOF was supposed to have the best players...
Why isn\'t this guy on Baseball Tonight?
Except, I guess, for the ones he pitched in during the postseason, in which he went 5-1 with a 2.47 era. And oh yeah, his 5-1 record probably had something to do with why his teams won four of the five postseason series they went to, including two World Series.
\"I know that he lost an awful lot of 1-0 games\"
No pitcher EVER had more 1-0 WINS than Blyleven (15).
And, after Spahn, Seaver and Ryan---the latter two who bested him by 1---he also threw more complete game shutouts than any pitcher whose career began after 1915, including (by my count) 35 Hall of Famers. He\'s 8th alltime behind those three plus Walter Johnson, Pete Alexander, Christy Mathewson, Cy Young, and Eddie Plank. Nice company.
I wonder what pitchers, since 1900, have more wins, strikeouts, and shutouts than Blyleven... Let\'s see...Nolan Ryan...and...nobody.
And there\'s Nolan, with a lower winning percentage than Blyleven (the voters didn\'t seem to hold his barely-over-.500 record against him), sitting in Cooperstown.
What an absurd, asinine, brain dead comment. I\'m speechless.
Really, is it too much to ask that somebody voting for the HOF do just a little bit of work? If a writer can\'t take his task more seriously he doesn\'t deserve a vote.
But that means being conscious of the fact that all that \"baseball knowledge\" they have stored up is essentially not as valuable as a stat-sheet that anyone with the Internet can look at, and who wants to admit that?
If this interview doesn\'t bring Fire Joe Morgan out of retirement, nothing will.
All snarkiness aside, a side point: I\'m not sure we want to live in a world where beat writers don\'t vote for their very very good hometown players for the HOF. There\'s nothing wrong with that.
That\'s my head hitting the keyboard.
I guess he doesn\'t belong in the Hall of Fame after all.
He can\'t have it both ways. This is cognitive dissonance at its finest.
Is it really all that surprising that writers of different generations have different perspectives and use different tools? I think not. Eventually, the vast majority of writers will be stats savvy and the HoF elections will reflect that fact. Hell, we might even see an expansion of voter eligibility as statheads gain a greater degree of respect throughout the industry.
RallyKiller
It\'s instructive to look at another Twins\' pitcher in \'71, Jim Perry, to see why the votes of the writers and the baseball establishment becomes a sort of self-reaffirming thing: Perry, the reigning Cy Young Award winner, had 12 wins by the All Star break and was named to the All Star team, despite an era over 4.00. Blyleven was just 7-12---but with a 3.13 era. Bert didn\'t deserve a spot on the All Star team, but did Perry? People talk about BB\'s lack of All Star appearances, but if he had done better in Cy Young voting, thus raising his profile, maybe he, like Perry, would have made additional AS teams. And if he\'d made more AS teams, maybe he\'d have been thought of more as a Cy Young-caliber pitcher, and done better in the voting, which would have made him more Hall-worthy in some voters\' eyes as well.
For the record, in that \'71 season, the Twins averaged 4.15 rpg, but only 3.51 rpg in Blyleven\'s starts. He ended up over .500 with a strong finish, but Perry still won more games, with 17---and with the Twins scoring 4.36 rpg for him, almost a run more per start than for Bert.
ERA, shutouts, strikeouts...don\'t waste your time on those trivialites. Pitchers need to demonstrate sufficient \'fortitude\' and figure out some way to make their teammates play better.
If you\'re going to hit into a zillion DPs, make sure they are hard ground balls. Those don\'t count against you so much.
You know who he is, you know where he works. It shouldn\'t be difficult to find out his email address and write to him, advocating your position. The chances that he is reading these comments is probably below 5%. Like everything else, this is politics. If you have an opinion, advocate it to your local BBWAA scribe.
Also, Trammell should have received more votes in my opinion. I put him as a top 10 shortstop of all time. Is there any reason that a top 10 player at a position shouldn\'t be in the HOF (excluding DH because there hasn\'t been 100+ years of DHing)?
The only thing I agree with this guy about is his willingness to open the floodgates - excepting poor, unfortunate Bly. Should let every Tom, Dick, and Harry in.
It\'s like if track hadnt awakened to roids until yesterday. Ok that 7.2 in 100 meters...hmm guess we\'ll have to assume 15 good\'s in a hypothetical roidless universe.
Only integrity view of this is too accept that baseball\'s lacking any. Only difference between Selig and your average drug pimp is the set of bars they\'re viewed through. Oh yea, let Rose in since baseball\'s unqualified to set distinctions.
There is value to the vast amount of experience these individuals have in watching the game. But unless this generation attempts to engage them on those facts which can be isolated from mere opinion, we\'ll simply have to wait until that generation has moved on. I see a lost opportunity for a teaching event, if an old school guy would be willing to swallow a touch of pride and let down his guard and the person on the stat side were able to approach the conversation with sufficient earnestness and patience.
That argument would have some validity if you could show overall walk rates during Rice\'s career were lower than at any time since.
But you can\'t, because they weren\'t.
[I feel like there was more emphasis on hitting than getting on base]
Yes, because baseball players of that era were too stupid to realize making outs was worse than being on base.
Those arguments have been soundly disproved in several articles on this site alone.
Chaz Scoggins is the poster boy for everything wrong with entrusting MLB awards to the BBWAA.
The ultimate question is really what defines the Hall of Fame? Is it the \"Hall of the best baseball players evaluated statistically,\" or the Hall of the most \"Fame\"-ous baseball players?
I think we all here agree that the best players evaluated statistically ought to be the \"most famous,\" but we\'ve all been at this long enough to know that\'s not been the case in the past, and while it\'s getting better, it\'s still not the case today.
I\'m not defending this guy\'s opinion -- I think his selections are mostly nonsense as other have described. But perhaps we understand where he\'s coming from IF he\'s applying a different definition of \"Fame\". Given that he (and the other selectors) are lifetime sportswriters, they helped create the very \"Fame\" they are now evaluating. So while Rice\'s stats may not add up as impressively in retrospect as they did then, I\'m sure Rice was the opposing player most often profiled when the Red Sox came to whatever local market, given his counting stats and prodigious power. Similarly, the Blyleven/Perry example above demonstrates that, in the context of the time (that season), Perry was viewed as the better pitcher. Of course now we know that\'s wrong, but one could certainly view Perry as being more \"famous\" that year as a result (e.g., the All-Star vote). That\'s what James\' Hall of Fame Monitor and Grey/Black Ink data are getting at -- they attempt to measure what the Hall voters perceive as \"Fame\" more than strict statistical performance.
It\'s clear to us here that the best performing players ought to be the most \"famous,\" and we all share the frustration when great players fly under the radar.
That said, I strongly disagree with, but I think I can understand, someone taking the position that a statistically lesser player (Rice) was more \"famous\" than a statistically better player (Blyleven).
Let\'s hope the the diligence of stat-heads everywhere help to further close the gap between fame and statistical performance going forward...
\"Opinions\" that perpetuate falsehoods, miunderstanding, and ignorance of the game are not \"necessary\" to baseball.
Do I want how my mechanic \"feels\" about my engine, or what the facts tell him is needed for my car to run?
Should my cardiologist use his guts and fortitude, or should he maybe use medical knowledge and training?
I fail to see any logic in saying that there is a \"need\" for this. I would certainly listen to/read an argument on this, but it doesn\'t magically appear out of thin air.