While ESPN gets 11 Hall of Fame ballots, Razzball doesn’t even get one.  Perhaps our invitation was forgotten by the same voter who forgot to add Rickey Henderson to the ballot (but remembered Matt Williams)?

Anyway, here is my ballot.  Click on the player names for my analysis:

Yes:  Rickey Henderson, Tim Raines, Mark McGwire, Bert Blyleven, Tommy John

Yes if they were actually on the ballot:  Dick Allen, Reggie Smith

No:  Obviously anyone not mentioned above.  But here are links to players that I reviewed in some depth…Jim Rice, Andre Dawson, Dale Murphy, Dave Parker, Harold Baines, Jack Morris

Apologies to Alan Trammell and Lee Smith as I didn’t get around to doing middle infielder and reliever posts.  My guess is that I’d have ended up voting ‘No’ on both.

In this series of Hall of Fame nomination-based posts, we’re going to focus on specific roles/positions.  We’ll be reviewing both players on the HOF ballot as well as non-HOFers who we feel deserve re-consideration.

This third post focuses on starting pitchers – with Bert Blyleven (61.9%), Jack Morris (42.9%), and Tommy John (29.1%) the three with the highest % of votes from last year’s nomination.  Before we even look at their stats (and those of other non-Hall of Famer contemporaries), we need to set the criteria by which to judge HOF-worthiness.  The criteria by which starters have been judged has been preoccupied by counting stats – primarily Wins but also Strikeouts tend to be considered (think Ryan, Carlton, part of Blyleven’s argument).  Let’s first review modern pitchers in the HOF to determine what criteria seems to define excellence – with a bias towards those that factor out the bias of era, park, and team performance.